The New North is a public-domain classic of history by Agnes Deans Cameron.
The complete text is on this page and the chapter pages below — all 42 chapters, about 93,080 words (~8 hours of reading), free to read online with no signup. Chapters include “CHAPTER VII. Lake Athabasca and Its Fond Du Lac”, “CHAPTER VIII. Fond Du Lac to Fort Smith”, “CHAPTER IX. Slave River and Great Slave Lake”, and more.
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LAKE ATHABASCA AND ITS FOND DU LAC
Farewell to the Mounted Police--Our blankets on the deck--Fern odours by untravelled ways--Typewriting and kodaking in 20 hours of daylight--Navigating Lake Athabasca by the power o' man--A 23-inch trout--First white women at Fond du Lac--Carlyle among the Chipewyans, a Fond du Lac library--The hermit padre and the hermit thrush--Worn north trails of the trapper--Caribou by the hundred thousands--The phalarope and the suffragette
FOND DU LAC TO FORT SMITH
World's records beaten on the Athabasca--Down the Slave to Smith's Landing--Priests sink in the Rapid of the Drowned--The Mosquito Portage--Fort Smith, the new headquarters--Lady-slippers and night-hawks--Steamer built in the wilderness--Last stand of the wood bison--The grey wolf persists--Fur-trade and the silver-fox--Breeding pelicans.
SLAVE RIVER AND GREAT SLAVE LAKE
"Red lemol-lade" kiddies--Tons of crystal salt--Great Slave Lake and its fertile shores--Yellow-Knife and Dog-Rib, subjects of the Seventh Edward--Hay River and its annual mail--Ploughing with dogs--Bill balked--The Alexandra Falls--Bishop Bompas as a surgeon; amputations while you wait.
PROVIDENCE TO SIMPSON, ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILES DOWN THE MACKENZIE
Drowning of De-deed--Fort Simpson, the old headquarters--A mouldy museum--The shrew-mice that were not preserved in rum--The farthest north library--Gold-seekers and grub-staked brides--Bishop Bompas, the Apostle of the North--Owindia, the Weeping One--Fort Simpson in the first year of Victoria the Good.
FORT GOOD HOPE ON THE ARCTIC CIRCLE
Tenny Gouley tells us things--Mackenzie River, past and present--The fringed gentian at Fort Wrigley--The fires Mackenzie saw--The weathered knob of Bear Rock--Great Bear Lake--Orangeman's Day at Norman--The Ramparts of the Mackenzie--Fort Good Hope under the Arctic Circle--Mignonette and Old World courtesy--We meet Hagar once more--Potatoes on the Circle--The Little Church of the Open Door
ARCTIC RED RIVER AND ITS ESKIMO
Arctic Red River--Wilfrid Laurier, the merger--Mrs. Ila-la-Rocko, the danseuse--Marriage as the Oo-vai-oo-aks see it--Orange-blossoms at Su-pi-di-do's--Trading tryst at Barter Island--Floating fathers--By-o Baby Bunting--Wild roses and tame Eskimo--Midnight football with walrus bladder and enthusiasm--Education that makes for manliness
FORT MACPHERSON FOLK
Sir John Franklin's lobsticks at Point Separation--We reach Fort Macpherson on the Peel--Sergeant Fitzgerald, R.N.W.M.P., eulogizes the Eskimo--An Eskimo wife must make boots that are waterproof--She ariseth also while it is yet night and cheweth the boots of her household--Cribbage-boards the link between Dick Swiveller and the Eskimo--Linked sweetness long drawn out--Chauncey Depew of the Kogmollycs
MORALIZING UNDER THE MIDNIGHT SUN
The Midnight Sun--Our friend the heathen--"We want to go to hell"--Catching fish by prayer--The Eskimo and the Flood--Pink tea at the Pole--Always a balance in the Eskimo Bank--Marriage for better and not for worse--Christmas carols even here
MAINLY CONCERNING FOOD
Jurisprudence on ice--The generous Innuit--Emmie-ray, the Delineator pattern--Weak races are pressed south--Roxi, a re-incarnation of Sir Philip Sidney--Blubbery bon vivants--Eskimo knew the Elephant--We write the last chapter of the story of McClure, the navigator--Cannibalism at the Circle
THE TALE OF A WHALE
Circumpolar Bowhead makes his last stand--Whales here and elsewhere--The Yankee peddler at Canada's back-door--Thirteen and a half million in whale values--Wind-swept Herschel, the Isle of Whales--One wife for a thousand years--Baleen, Spermaceti, and Ambergris--Save the Whale
SOUTH FROM THE ARCTIC TO CHIPEWYAN
Lives lost for the sake of a white bead--The stars come back--The Keele party from the Dollarless Divide--"Here and there a grayling"--Across Great Slave Lake--The first white women at Fort Rae--Land of the musk-ox--Tales of 76 below--Two Thursdays in one week--Rabbits on ice
TO MC MURRAY AND BACK TO THE PEACE
The nuptials of 'Norine--Ladies round gents and gents don't go--The fossil-gatherers--I give my name to a Cree kiddie--A solid mile of red raspberries--The typewriter an uncanny medicine--The Beetle Fleet leaves for Outside--Shipwrecked on a batture
UP THE PEACE TO VERMILION
Ho! for the Peace--One break in 900 miles of navigation--A grey wolf--Bear-meat and the Se-weep-i-gons--Ninety-foot spruces--Tom Kerr and his bairns--The fish-seine that never fails--Our lobsticks by Red River--The Chutes of the Peace
VERMILION-ON-THE-PEACE
The farthest north flour-mill--The man who made Vermilion--Wheat at $1.25 a bushel--An Experimental Farm in latitude 58° 30'--An unoccupied kingdom as large as Belgium--Where the steamer Peace River was built--The hospitable home of the Wilsons--Vermilion a Land of Promise Fulfilled--Culture and the Cloister--Thomas of Canterbury on the Stump
FORT VERMILION TO LESSER SLAVE
Se-li-nah of the happy heart--My premier moose--The rare and resourceful boatmen of the North--Alexander Mackenzie's last camp
PEACE RIVER CROSSING TO LESSER SLAVE LAKE
Pleasant prairies of the Peace--We tramp a hundred miles--The Angelus at Lesser Slave--Poole coats and Norfolk shooting-jackets--Roast duck galore--Alec Kennedy of the Nile--Louise the Wetigo, she ate nineteen
LESSER SLAVE LAKE TO EDMONTON
Jim wins: Allie Brick can't run--100,000,000 acres of wheat-land--Jilly-Loo bird still lacks a rib--100 moose in one month--Peripatetic judges but no prisoners--The best-tattooed man in the Province of Alberta--The-Man-Who-Goes-Around-and-Helps
HOMES AMONG THE YELLOW WHEAT
Edmonton again--Wyllie goes out on the Long Journey--Donaldson killed by a walrus--Two drowned in the Athabasca--Steel kings and iron horses--Wheat-plains the melting-pot of a New Nation
ROUTES OF TRAVEL
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
A magnificent trophy Map showing the Author's Route Sir Wilfred Laurier Earl Grey, Governor-General of Canada Winnipeg, the Buckle of the Wheat Belt The Canadian Women's Press Club A section of Edmonton The Golden Fleece of Saskatchewan Irrigation ditch, Calgary, Alberta A Waldorf-Astoria on the prairie's edge Athabasca Landing Necessity knows no law at Athabasca The Missionary Hymnal for the Indians C.C. Chipman, Commissioner of the H.B. Co. A "sturgeon-head" on the Athabasca "Farewell, Nistow!" Grand Rapids, on the Athabasca River Portage at Grand Rapids Island Our transport at Grand Rapids Island Cheese-shaped nodules, Grand Rapids Island Scouts of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police Towing the wrecked barge ashore The scow breaks her back and fills Miss Gordon, a Fort McMurray trader The steamer Grahame An oil derrick on the Athabasca Tar banks on the Athabasca Fort Chipewyan, Lake Athabasca Three of a kind Woman's work of the Far North Lake Athabasca in winter Bishop Grouard The modern note-book Tepee of a Caribou-eater Indian A bit of Fond du Lac Birch-barks at Fond du Lac Fond du Lac Father Beibler carrying water to a dying Indian Smith's Landing A transport between Fort Smith and Smith's Landing Lord Strathcona, Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company The world's last buffalo Tracking a scow across mountain portage The "red lemol-lade" boys Salt beds Unloading at Fort Resolution Coming to "take Treaty" on Great Slave Lake On the Slave Dogs cultivating potatoes David Villeneuve Hudson's Bay House, Fort Simpson A Slavi family at Fort Simpson A Slavi type from Fort Simpson Interior of St. David's Cathedral Fort Simpson by the light of the Aurora Indians at Fort Norman Roman Catholic Church at Fort Norman The ramparts of the Mackenzie Rampart House on the Porcupine near the Mackenzie mouth A Kogmollye family Roxi and the Oo-vai-oo-ak family Farthest North football Two spectators at the game An Eskimo exhibit Constable Walker and Sergeant Fitzgerald in Eskimo togs Two wise ones A Nunatalmute Eskimo family Cribbage-boards of walrus tusks Useful articles made by the Eskimo Home of Mrs. Macdonald Eskimo kayaks at the Arctic edge A wise man of the Dog-Ribs A study in expression We tell the tale of a whale Two little ones at Herschel Island Breeding grounds of the seal The Keele party on the Gravel River The first typewriter on Great Slave Lake The bell at Fort Rae mission The musk-ox A meadow at McMurray Starting up the Athabasca On the Clearwater Evening on the Peace Our lobsticks on the Peace The chutes of the Peace Pulling out the Mee-wah-sin The flour mill at Vermilion-on-the-Peace Articles made by Indians The Hudson's Bay Store Papillon, a Beaver brave Going to school in winter My premier moose Beaver camp, on Paddle River The site of old Fort McLeod Jean Baptiste, pilot on the Peace Fort Dunvegan on the Peace Fort St. John on the Peace Where King was arrested Alec Kennedy with his two sons Cannibal Louise, her little girl and Miss Cameron A Peace River Pioneer Three generations A family at the Lesser Slave A one-night stand A rye field in Brandon, Manitoba Charles M. Hays, President of the Grand Trunk Railway William Mackenzie, President of the Canadian Northern Railway Donald D. Maun, Vice-president of the Canadian Northern Railway William Whyte, Second Vice-president of the Canadian Pacific Railway In the wheat fields Hon. Frank Oliver, Minister of the Interior Threshing grain Doukhobors threshing flax Sir William Van Horne, first President of the Canadian Pacific Railway
THE NEW NORTH
THE MENDICANTS REACH WINNIPEG
"We are as mendicants who wait Along the roadside in the sun. Tatters of yesterday and shreds Of morrow clothe us every one.
"And some are dotards, who believe And glory in the days of old; While some are dreamers, harping still Upon an unknown age of gold.
"O foolish ones, put by your care! Where wants are many, joys are few; And at the wilding springs of peace, God keeps an open house for you.
"But there be others, happier few, The vagabondish sons of God, Who know the by-ways and the flowers, And care not how the world may plod."
Isn't it Riley who says, "Ef you want something, an' jest dead set a-longin' fer it with both eyes wet, and tears won't bring it, why, you try sweat"? Well, we had tried sweat and longing for two years, with planning and hoping and the saving of nickels, and now we are off!
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