FOREST AND STREAM 
1185 
:r~7 - ' TTP^y '• 
- : 
Thluicho Lake, in the Athabaska Region, Looking North From the Portage The Twin Gorges, 
at the South End. 
Taltson River—The Fall From Point Where First Water 
Is Seen Is 90 Feet. 
FIFTY THOUSAND MILES OF NEW GAME COUNTRY 
A REMOTE SECTION OF THE CANADIAN DOMINION THAT 
PROMISES MUCH FOR THE SPORTSMAN OF TO-MORROW 
By Charles Camsell. 
(Story and Photographs by courtesy of the Canadian Government.) 
T HIS is an account of an exploration car- ’ 
ried out in the hitherto unexplored region 
lying between Lake Athabaska and Great 
Slave Lake and east of Slave River, Canada. 
The expedition was undertaken with the object 
of obtaining as much information as possible 
on the geography, topography, geology and na¬ 
tural history of a region that had previously 
been visited by only one man who had left any 
written record of his journey. 
That man was Samuel Hearne, an officer of 
the Hudson’s Bay Company, who crossed the 
region in company with a band of Chipewyan 
Indians in the winter of 1771-72 as he was re¬ 
turning to Fort Churchill from his voyage of 
exploration in the Coppermine River. 
The exploration carried out by the writer con¬ 
sisted of a single canoe traverse across the 
region from south to north leaving Lake Atha¬ 
baska at a point a few miles west of the mouth 
of Chariot River and entering Great Slave 
Lake at the mouth of the Talston River ,about 
40 miles east of the mouth of Slave River. 
Parts of the route are traveled by the Indians 
that live and hunt in the region, but the whole 
route apparently not known to any single in¬ 
dividual, and there are certain parts of it that 
have never been traveled by any one of the 
present generation. As a result, it was found 
impossible to get any native to accompany the 
expedition in the capacity of guide and the 
route was followed with the aid only of a rough 
sketch drawn by an Indian, in which there were 
many blanks. 
Though a period of five and a half months 
elapsed from the time the party left Ottawa 
on May 5 until its return on October 18 only 
about 2 months of this time was actually em¬ 
ployed in geographical and geological investi¬ 
gation of the field, the remainder of the time 
having been taken up in travel to the point of 
starting on Lake Athabaska, and from the point 
of completion of field work on Great Slave Lake. 
Our course to the point on the north shore 
of Lake Athabaska where exploration actually 
began followed the usual boat route from Atha¬ 
baska, at the end of the railway line, down the 
Athabaska River to its mouth and thence north¬ 
east for about 100 miles on Lake Athabaska. 
The return journey from Resolution, on Great 
Slave Lake, was made by way of Slave River 
to Lake Athabaska and thence by the Athabaska 
River to the point of starting at Athabaska. 
The party consisted of eight men in three 
canoes. The writer was entrusted with the 
general charge of the expedition, with Francis 
Harper as naturalist and A. J. C. Nettell as 
geological ana topographical assistant. 
The unexplored portion of northern Canada, 
exclusive of the islands of the Arctic, is em¬ 
braced in a number of blocks of territory 
marked off from each other by the traveled 
routes of explorers. The largest of these blocks 
has an area of about 75,000 square miles and 
the total number of those over 5,000 square 
miles in extent is about twenty-five. The ag¬ 
gregate area of all the unexplored blocks is over 
850.000 square miles, or about one-fourth of the 
total area of continental Canada. 
One of the largest of these unexplored blocks 
is that across which our traverse was made. It 
covers an area of about 53,000 square miles and 
extends in a north and south direction from 
Athabaska Lake to Great Slave Lake and Han- 
bury River, and in an east and west direction 
from Slave River to the Thelon and Dubawnt 
Rivers. It embraces the whole of the basin of 
the Taltson River and the headwaters of the 
Thelon River. It includes the extreme north¬ 
west corner of the province of Saskatchewan 
and the northeast corner of the province of 
Alberta, but the greater portion of it is in the 
Northwest Territories, beyond latitude 60 de¬ 
grees north. 
From Edmonton, which is a convenient start¬ 
ing point for expeditions into that northern 
country, the region may be reached by either of 
two routes. One follows the course of the Atha¬ 
baska River for 430 miles, to Lake Athabaska, 
and the other lies over the new Edmonton, 
Dunvegan and British Columbia -Railway to 
Peace River Crossing and thence follows the 
Peace River to Athabaska Lake. 
The only means of entering this unexplored 
block of territory in the summer and of travel¬ 
ing through it, is by canoe, and there are several 
Indian canoe routes leading into it from points 
on Athabaska Lake, Slave River and Great 
Slave Lake. Most of these routes lead to a 
point on the edge of the Barren lands near the 
headwaters of the Taltson River, which has 
been a rendezvous for many years for the In¬ 
dians of Fort Smith, Fond du Lac, and Resolu¬ 
tion, during the autumn hunting season. 
The route followed by our expedition leaves 
