FOLLOWING THE FVR TRAIL 
A Cruise Through the Albany River Region 
By CHARLES B. REED 
In Two Parts—Part I. 
O NE who has attempted to make his way 
through the unbroken forest quickly un¬ 
derstands why the earliest settlements 
are located upon a country’s waterways. The 
great rivers and their tributaries form avenues 
of easy communication and of vast importance 
to the settler as well as to the hunter and trap¬ 
per. The waves of immigration and invasion, in 
obedience to the same influence, follow the paths 
of least resistance through the long fertile river 
valleys and leave the historian the indelible evi¬ 
dence of their passage in the variations in the 
shape of the heads among the descendants of the 
original inhabitants. A country is settled upon 
in proportion to its value and ease of access, and 
this latter condition becomes very largely a ques¬ 
tion of the presence or absence of navigable 
waters which penetrate the interior. Where rivers 
fail, the undaunted pioneer will still press on 
over an Oregon trail or a Santa Fe trail to the 
golden dreams beyond the desert, but the ab¬ 
sence of waterways alone has been sufficient to 
prevent the Kimberly diamonds from decorating 
the golden crowns of monarchs who lived hun¬ 
dreds of years ago. 
Trails long or short connect the different 
waterways and bind the collateral branches and' 
the main trunks into a gigantic network of inter¬ 
lacing thoroughfares which radiate from every 
side to the principal foci. By these trails alone 
can the use and importance of a given route be 
judged. In our country a very few portions only 
of these great highways have escaped the ob¬ 
literating heel of our modern industrial system, 
but with our Northern neighbor the transit of 
the train and the travel of the trail are contem¬ 
poraneous events of almost equal importance. 
The introduction of steam with the advance 
of civilization has gradually pushed back the 
fur bearers from the settlements, and has di¬ 
verted the traffic to such an extent that a post 
like Fort William, formerly the great center of 
the fur trade for the entire Lake Superior re¬ 
gion, has become merely the head of a subor¬ 
dinate district, and thus the survivors of the fur 
traffic no longer find a mecca on Lake Superior 
but turn their canoes to the north and east and 
find an outlet through converging rivers at York 
Factory, Albany House or Moose Factory on the 
coast of Hudson’s Bay. Since 1670, when the 
“governor and company of adventurers of Eng¬ 
land trading into Hudson’s Bay” first began ac¬ 
tive operations, the majestic Albany has received 
annually upon her mighty bosom a great store of 
the wealth accumulated in the interior and con¬ 
veyed it safely to the coast and the congested 
coffers, of the company. 
For one who loves the forest for its freedom 
and isolation, the romance, of the river and the 
myths and mysteries of the fur trail have en¬ 
thralling allurements that lead him almost irre¬ 
sistibly to recurrent visitations. It was not sur¬ 
prising, therefore, one raw day in spring to de¬ 
tect the first slight knocking of an impulse that 
became daily stronger and more insistent that the 
next excursion should extend to the Albany 
River, to follow some of the important highways 
of the fur traffic before obliteration occurred. 
Now, the usual way of going to Lake St. 
Joseph, the source of the Albany, is by way of 
Wabigoon or Dinorwic north to Lac Seul and then 
east, the entire trip requiring only six or eight 
days under favorable conditions, but wishing to 
include the Nepigon River, another route was 
chosen that would lead up this famous stream 
and over its mighty mother to one of the tribu¬ 
taries on the west, then northwest to Lake St. 
Joseph; from this point to follow the Albany 
about 200 miles eastward to the mouth of the 
Ivageinagomi River and thence southwest to 
Lake Nepigon. Such an undertaking was some¬ 
what unusual. Considerable difficulty was met 
with in procuring guides; in fact, we were un¬ 
able to find guides who had been over all the 
route, so a compromise was necessary and we 
took two full blood Ojibway Indians with us, 
one of whom was familiar with the western or 
Wabinosh leg, while the other was acquainted 
with the eastern or Ombabika side of the tri¬ 
angle, and we hoped to work out the northern 
leg (Albany River) by general knowledge. Many 
dubious and discouraging criticisms were made 
about our ability to make the circuit as planned, 
but we were undismayed and alive only to the 
keen interest we felt in our undertaking. Thus 
is was arranged and the party, consisting of the 
Lady Clare, our nephew and two Indians em¬ 
barked with the writer in two small birch canoes 
already heavily laden with duffle and provisions, 
began the ascent of the aristocratic and far- 
famed Nepigon. 
Forty miles of up stream work relieved by oc¬ 
casional lakes, would bring the canoes to the 
source of the river where Nepigon Lake dis¬ 
charges its mighty volume over Virgin Falls. 
This marks the “edge of cultivation” and the 
POLING UP THROUGH SWIFT WATER. 
