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Updated: June 26, 2025
Some of my notes are as follows: May 18th, Athabaska River, on roof of a trapper's hut found the bodies of 30 Lynxes. May 19th, young Lynx shot to-day, female, very thin, weighed only 12 1/2 lbs., should have weighed 25. In its stomach nothing but the tail of a white-footed mouse. Liver somewhat diseased. In its bowels at least one tapeworm.
It was on Wednesday, June 3, 1789, that Alexander Mackenzie's little flotilla of four birch-bark canoes set out across Lake Athabaska on its way to the north. In Mackenzie's canoe were four French-Canadian voyageurs, two of them accompanied by their wives, and a German. Two other canoes were filled with Indians, who were to act as guides and interpreters.
Some years ago, when the flood had severed all communication between Athabaska Landing and Edmonton, Billy volunteered to carry some important despatches, and covered the 96 miles on foot in one and a half days, although much of the road was under water.
Large Wolves became quite numerous evidently we were now in their country. Apparently they had killed a Moose, as their dung was full of Moose hair. We were now in the Canyon of the Athabaska and from this on our journey was a fight with the rapids. One by one my skilful boatmen negotiated them; either we tracked up or half unloaded, or landed and portaged, but it was hard and weary work.
In this capacity Alexander Mackenzie was sent out to the Athabaska district to take control, in that vast and scarcely known region, of the posts of the traders now united into the North-West Company. A glance at the map of Canada will show the commanding geographical position occupied by Lake Athabaska, in a country where the waterways formed the only means of communication.
There was a long stretch of dead water before we could resume our downward drift, and, worse than that, there was such a flood on the Peace River that it was backing the Athabaska, that is, the tide of the latter was reversed on the Rocher River, which extends twenty-five miles between here and Peace mouth. To meet this, I hired Colin Fraser's steamer.
The Athabaska is a great river, the Peace is a greater, and the Slave, formed by their union, is worthy of its parents. Its placid flood is here nearly a mile wide, and its banks are covered with a great continuous forest of spruce trees of the largest size. How far back this extends I do not know, but the natives say the best timber is along the river.
Athabaska River. In the Canyon. This has been a day of horrors and mercies. We left the camp early, 6.55 long before sunrise, and portaged the first rapid.
On the Pacific coast west of the Cascade and Sierra Nevada mountains, they occur only as stragglers. The most northern point at which they have been known to breed is the neighborhood of Little Slave Lake in southern Athabaska.
No moose, of course, are found in the plains country of Assiniboia, Saskatchewan, and Alberta; but east in Keewatin, and to the north in Athabaska, northern British Columbia, and northwest into Alaska we have an unbroken range, in which moose are scattered everywhere. They are increasing wherever their ancient foe, the Indian, is dying off, and where white hunters do not pursue too persistently.
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