Henry James Warre's and Paul Kane's Sketches in the Athabasca ...

Solomon Creek (downriver) and Fiddle River (upriver). The shape ofRoche Miette is so distinctive that one has trouble dismissing as erroneousthe identification of it in both sketches. Kane himself wrote thenumbers 31 (for the view from the mouth of Fiddle) and 32 (for the viewfrom the mouth of Solomon) in the upper left corner of the twosketches. It would seem necessary, then, to allow for the possibility thata site downriver from Solomon Creek remains to be identified as correct.However, one must also allow for the possibility that, although he tookthe trouble to make sketches, Kane made no entries in either his fieldnotes or his landscape log for a stretch of several days before arriving atJasper House and taking shelter from the wind and cold. When amoment at last afforded, perhaps he confused their order while writinghis entries in both field notebook and portrait and landscape log notebookand while numbering his sketches. 21 That these finished sketchesare, at least on occasion, later versions of more preliminary efforts iscertainly suggested by their colouring, which would have been nearlyimpossible to accomplish in the weather that Kane and the Hudson’sBay Company brigade encountered below Jasper House. What he couldhave accomplished on the spot in either case is clearer from an initialuncoloured sketch (Fig. 2.10) for number 31.If the photograph taken from the mouth of Fiddle River (Fig. 2.11) isfaithful in location to Kane’s sketch, notable again is the remarkablygreater vegetation cover on the unnamed ridge in the middle ground,which, washed in a reddish hue in Kane’s sketch, looks comparativelybarren. 22 As well, though, it is worth noting how much more green occupiesthe landscape in number 31 (Fig. 2.9) than in number 32 (Fig. 2.7);the lack of green on the lower slopes of the Boule Range in number 32 istherefore all the more striking and notable for its suggestiveness ofrecent fire activity.After reaching Jasper House by horse on 3 November and staying twonights, Kane continued by horse with the brigade up the valleys of theAthabasca and Whirlpool rivers to Athabasca Pass. He was able to rideuntil 10 November. Then, after sending the horses back to Jasper House,he continued for two days by snowshoe (“sum ware rude affairs,” hisfield note for 10 November states) before reaching the Committee’sPunch Bowl, which sits atop the pass. These days afforded him opportunityfor several landscape and other sketches. Evidence of the numbersthat Kane wrote in the upper left corner of sketches and their correspondingentries in his landscape log seems reliable as an indication of52 Henry James Warre’s and Paul Kane’s Sketches in the Athabasca Watershed, 1846