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

figure 2.20Paul Kane, Snow Scene inthe Mountains, watercolourover graphite on paper, 13.3x 22.9 cm, November 1846;also known as A WinterScene in the Rockies.[Courtesy Stark Museum of Art, Orange,Texas, WWC18, 31.78/18.]Cavell), the Grande Traverse (just upriver from the confluence of theWhirlpool and Athabasca rivers), and points beyond, Kane remarked inhis field note for 9 November that “the treese ware loaded with snowhever then I had aver seene it in anney country.” By then, he hadreached the Whirlpool River’s Grand Batture, a prominent series ofbraided gravel bars that the Whirlpool, like most mountain-fed rivers,produces for several kilometres. There, the Athabasca Portage climbsthrough its middle stretch where Ross Cox Creek flows into the Whirlpoolfrom the south. Kane did not illustrate these; though not withouttheir charms, battures simply do not measure up to mountainsaesthetically.Kane does not appear to have camped at Kane Meadow/Campementdu Fusil during his westbound trip, although he did so on his eastboundtrip a year later (2 November 1847): “My bard is one mass of ise,” henoted before writing that he “Camped at the Campmaw de fusee afterdark.” 27 The next sketch in the westbound sequence of 1846 (Fig. 2.20)confirms that the lack of snow-covered trees in number 37 does notresult from Kane’s inability to portray them. In number 38 (Fig. 2.20),none of the land is green, though it is in number 37. The former appearsto be a fall scene and the latter a winter scene, and Kane’s two entries inhis landscape log—“37 a sketch in the mountens” and “38 a snow seenein the Mountens”—suggest that he made the two drawings in seasons of60 Henry James Warre’s and Paul Kane’s Sketches in the Athabasca Watershed, 1846