4 
R. G. McConnell, of the Geological Survey, Canada, visited the Salt 
Plains in 1887 (38). He made a careful examination of the geological 
features of the region. 
Frank Russell (61) , a naturalist from the University of Iowa, entered the 
country in the spring of 1893 to collect birds, mammals, and ethnological 
materials. He spent a month in the early summer collecting in the Quatre 
Fourches delta west of Chipewyan, the account of which gives a few notes 
on the topography and vegetation of that area. In January of 1894 he 
made a trip southwest from Resolution, reaching, apparently, the same 
district that Pike visited. He gives the locality and the nature of the 
country in somewhat more detail. 
In the summer of 1892 Miss Elizabeth Taylor made the trip down the 
main rivers to the Mackenzie delta and back. She made minor plant collec- 
tions along the way, and those gathered at Fort Smith are of some interest 
in connexion with the flora of Wood Buffalo park. 
Caspar Whitney (71), a hunter and sportsman, made a winter journey 
through the area in 1895. In February of that year, with Indian guides 
and a companion named Mnnn, he set out from Fitzgerald (Smith Land- 
ing) in a southwesterly direction to hunt buffalo. The party crossed Salt 
river and a wide stretch of semi-open prairie country, and entered a 
wooded area in which there were many sink-holes and muskegs. From 
the brief description given, they must have passed close to Heart lake 
and Pine lake, and gone on westward and southwestward toward Moose 
Lake basin. Near the end of their hunt they had a close view of 
Caribou mountains from a ridge. So far as the writer can find, this is 
the first published description of the upland country between the upper 
Slave river and Caribou mountains. It is all too brief, taking into account 
only casual notes as to openness, ridge, timber, muskeg, etc. 
Although E. A. Preble (49) did not enter the park area on his two 
journeys (1901 and 1903-4), his account of the condition of the wood bison 
is the most complete up to that time. A list of trees and shrubs collected 
along his routes of travel is of considerable interest. 
In 1902, Charles Carasell(13) of the Geological Survey, Canada, made 
three journeys into the country southwest of Fort Smith. The first of 
these was a canoe trip up Salt river, far into the Salt Plain district. The 
second was an overland trip by pack-horse to the shore of Moose lake, 
via Salt mountain, Flatgrass lake, and Ninishith hills. On the third trip 
he ascended the Little Buffalo to its headwaters and portaged to the head- 
waters of the Jackfish, which he descended to Peace river. His narrative 
is filled with excellent notes on the topography and vegetation of the 
country he traversed. 
E. T. Seton (65), in 1907, made one trip from Fitzgerald and two from 
Fort Smith, in company with Major A. M. Jarvis, of the Royal Canadian 
Mounted Police, in search of the wood buffalo. The first two of these trips 
were overland to the upland semi-open country west of the Salt Mountain 
escarpment, and to Little Buffalo river. The third consisted of a canoe 
journey down Slave river as far as Grande Detour portage to the Little 
Buffalo, then down the latter stream and up its principal western tributary, 
the Nyarling, which is now the northern boundary of the park. Seton’s 
description has many valuable notes on the arrangement of the vegetation. 
