Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE CANADIAN NORTH WEST Leaving Newfoundland, the St. Lawrence and the region of the Great Lakes on our north-westward travels, we now enter the drainage area of the mighty Mackenzie River which conducts its muddy waters to the Arctic Ocean. We know from Mr. A. H. Harrison's recent exploit that it is possible to journey down the one thousand eight hundred miles from the Athabaska landing and reach the Arctic Ocean entirely by boat. But we obtain a better idea of tha fauna and flora of this vast Athabaska-Mackenzie region by crossing the country on foot, or by a perusal of the excellent report lately published by the biological survey of the United States Department of Agriculture. The task of furnishing this report was entrusted to Mr. Edward A. Preble,f a naturalist who already had the advantage of accomplishing the dim- cult survey of the Hudson Bay region, and who had shown himself possessed of the necessary qualifications for such an undertaking. The Mackenzie basin comprises a vast region of nearly 700,000 square miles, or about six times the size of the British Islands. As is usually the case in regions covered by glacial drift, the country is studded with innumerable fresh-water lakes extending in a more or less connected system from Lake Superior to the Arctic Ocean. With the exception of a large area in the north, which is mainly outside the actual drainage basin of the Mackenzie, much of this region is entirely covered with forests. The principal trees are white and black spruce, the canoe birch, tamarack, aspen and balsam Harrison, A. H., "In Search of a Polar Continent." f Preble, E. A., " Athabaska-Mackenzie Eegion." Compare also Macfarlane, R., " Mammals of North-West Territory." poplars, Banksian pine and balsam fir. With these are assoc...