Volume 11, 1958 - The Arctic Circle - Home

VOL XI No.3 THE ARCTIC CIRCULAR 4Z
day Or two. We had been warned about this by oUr guide, and, when
the reverse flow started we got out and tracked our boat downstream
to the junction of the Peace. Here there were great whirlpools,
and Our boat got sucked into one and was whirled round and round,
and we had a hard time getting out of it.
At the mouth of the Peace River we came in contact
with quite a number of men who had left Edmonton in the fall of
'97 to go overland to the Klondike from there, some of whom we
knew from Hamilton. It appears that the thrifty, wide-awake
business men and storekeepers of Edmonton had hired a gang of
men to cut a trail from Edmonton about fifty miles out into the
country, supposedly in the direction of the Yukon, with a dead end,
and called it the overland trail to the Yukon. Many outfits started
out with pack horses, or sleds, but few made it through, mOre
turned back. I was told by several men who followed it through
the winter that in the Swan Hills dead horses by the s",ore lay
ac ross the trail. Those who got through to the Peace River. after
a hard winter's trip, built boats and came down the river, where
we met them.
Our next hard work occurred when we came to the
Mountain Portage. Here the river takes a short U -turn around
a high rocky point. over which freight and boats had to be packed,
as the river opposite this rocky shoulder was impassable to boats,
being a mass of boulders. The boats were hauled up by block and
tackle, lowered down to the water and reloaded. From here to
Smith's Landing (now called Fort Fitzgerald) was easy going, but
for about the ncxt fifteen miles there was a succession of rapids
and travellers had the choice of making several short portages or
getting their goods hauled to Fort Smith by an ox team. Fort
Smith was at the head of navigation for the Hudson's Bay Company
steamboat which plied between here and Fort McPherson near the
mouth of the Mackenzie during the short summer.
After Fort Smith our next port of call was Fort
Resolution, where the Slave River enters Great Slave Lake, which
we reached without incident. From there our journey continued
along the south shore of this great inland sea to Hay River, where
at the time there was a Protestant Mis sionary and his wife, and an
Indian School with a young white school teacher. We stopped here
over night, and next day with a favourable breeze we reached Fort