12 ONE OF CANADA S EXPLORERS. 



by field assistants whom he has trained and specially equipped 

 for each particular survey. Some of these which we recall 

 are the Megiskun and VVaswanipi rivers and connected lakes, 

 a route south from Lake Mistassini toward Lake St. John, 

 God's Lake, Island Lake, various rivers on the east side of 

 Lake Winnipeg, Pine River from Cross Lake on Nelson River 

 westward to Moose Lake and the Saskatchewan, and this river 

 itself, two routes from this stream northward to Reindeer Lake, 

 this large lake itself; Wollaston Like and route thence to 

 Athabasca Lake, this lake and the chain of lakes forming the 

 upper Churchill River, Black Sturgeon Lake and River, Cat 

 Lake and River, with the connected lakes, the Abitibi River 

 and numerous other important features in various regions. 



Dr. Bell was on all the steamship expeditions sent out by the 

 Canadian Government to Hudson Strait and Bay. In addition 

 to his duties as geologist and naturalist, he was medical offi- 

 cer on the Neptune and Alert expeditions, but on the Diana 

 expedition of 1S97 he was obliged to leave the ship in order to 

 make his surveys by means of a yacht and boat, so that it be- 

 came necessary to take out another medical man. 



At the close of his field operations in 1SS0, he sailed by the 

 Hudson's Bav Company's barque Ocean Nymph, from York 

 Factory, on the west side of the bay, to London, and had a 

 long and very stormy voyage. He has passed through Hud 

 son Strait nine different times, and having studied the naviga- 

 bility of these waters is considered an authority on this subject. 



On account of the length of time he has devoted to the work, 

 together with the fact that the expenses were defrayed by the 

 Government, and with a great capacity for physical endurance, 

 Dr. Bell has been enabled to accomplish a greater amount of 

 geographical and geological work than any other man in 

 America, or probably in any other country. As most of this 

 work was in heretofore unknown regions without many dis- 

 tinctive names, he has been obliged to give a vast number of 

 such names as a necessity for the sake of identification and de 



