216 
F ORES T 
A X I) S T R E A M 
In the Land of Little Sticks 
Three Level Headed Young Men Spent a Year in the Barren Land Country Without a Single 
Discomfort—It’s All in Knowing How 
the ordinary level-headed 
man can visit the far-off places 
of earth and come back safely 
after having enjoyed himself, 
and suffered few if any priva¬ 
tions is not a new theory, al¬ 
though one which in practice 
too often breaks down be¬ 
cause of lack of knowledge 
or preparedness, or even un¬ 
expected bad luck. So seldom 
is it that men undergo experi¬ 
ences in the real wilds with¬ 
out attendant privation and 
danger that we have almost 
gotten to the point of expect¬ 
ing or insisting on the tales 
of harrowing ’scapes by flood 
and field, when the explorers, 
amateur or otherwise, get 
back to civilization and tell 
us all about it. But that it is 
not impossible to take long 
trips, to stay away from 
civilization a year or more, 
and come back safely, is 
shown in one of the pleasant¬ 
est stories of adventures writ¬ 
ten during the past year or 
more, describing the journey 
of three young men through 
the Barren Land of Canada, 
and to the Arctic Ocean and 
back. (Lands Forlorn; A 
Story of an Expedition to 
(Hearne’s Coppermine River, 
by Geo. M. Douglas; G. P. 
Putnam’s Sons, 300 pp. Price 
$4.00.) 
George Douglas, a young 
Canadian engineer, who writes 
of the journey, was accom¬ 
panied by Lieut. Lionel Doug¬ 
las, another Canadian and by 
August Sandberg, a Swedish 
chemist and metallurgist. The 
object of the expedition was 
to investigate rumors of great 
copper deposits among the 
mountains in the far north, 
which rumors have been cur¬ 
rent for much more than a 
century and stories of which 
are given in every account by 
earlier explorers through that 
country. Mr. Douglas says 
little or nothing of this fea¬ 
ture of the expedition, but 
tells rather of the interesting 
parts of the trip from the 
sportsman’s and naturalist’s standpoint. The 
party went into the Barren Land country by the 
usual route from Edmonton, freighting their out¬ 
fit to Athabasca Lake, taking the long and thrill¬ 
ing trip down the Athabasca to Fort McMurray. 
thence by Hudson Bay steamer up the Slave 
River, across Great Slave Lake and up the 
magnificent Mackenzie River for hundreds of 
miles until they reached Fort Norman, a Hudson 
Bay post almost within the Arctic circle and 
which lies at the junction of the Great Bear River 
and the. Mackenzie about one hundred miles west 
of Great Bear Lake. 
This journey has been described a number of 
times before, but it is one that 
few people have yet taken, 
but one which opens up a 
prospect of magnificent lakes 
and rivers that some day will 
be better known. The Douglas 
party went fully outfitted, stay- 
in in the Great Bear country 
through the winter season and 
it is set forth in the story that 
their supplies weighed three 
and a half tons. They were 
very fortunate at Fort Norman 
in negotiating for a big boat or 
scow which had been towed to 
that far-off place loaded down 
with experimental farming 
machinery for government 
purposes and in this boat they 
started out on July 8, accom¬ 
panied by eight or ten Indians 
hired for the purpose and tow¬ 
ed the boat and two additional 
canoes up Great Bear River 
until Great Bear Lake was 
reached. 
Here they dismissed the 
Indians, with the exception of 
one man and his family, who 
accompanied them, and by the 
use of sails made the rest of 
the hundred or two hundred 
mile journey along one side of 
Great Bear Lake, until they 
landed at the mouth of the 
Dease River, which empties 
into one of the north bays of 
Great Bear Lake. 
At this point they erected 
for themselves a comfortable 
log cabin which they used as 
a winter base, making several 
preliminary trips before they 
had thoroughly settled down to 
the long sub-Arctic winter 
season. Even in this far-off 
place, they were not altogether 
out of touch with civilization, 
for they were joined by a 
rather interesting English 
character, one Hornby, who 
was doing some trade with the 
far-north Indians and Esquim- 
THE “ATHABASCA BRIGADE.” 
Tons of Freight are Taken Far Into the North Country by This Method of 
Hudson Bay Transport. 
