Many times I saw where some frightful jam of ice had
planed off all the trees; then a deep overwhelming layer of mud
had buried the stumps and grown in time a new spruce forest. Now
the mighty erratic river was tearing all this work away again,
exposing all its history.
In the delta of the Slave, near Fort Resolution, we saw the plan of
delta work. Millions of tons of mud poured into the deep translucent
lake have filled it for miles, so that it is scarcely deep enough
to float a canoe; thousands of huge trees, stolen from the upper
forest, are here stranded as wing-dams that check the current and
hold more mud. Rushes grow on this and catch more mud. Then the
willows bind it more, and the sawing down of the outlet into the
Mackenzie results in all this mud being left dry land.
This is the process that has made all the lowlands at the mouth
of Great Slave and Athabaska Rivers. And the lines of tree trunks
to-day, preparing for the next constructive annexation of the lake,
are so regular that one's first thought is that this is the work
of man. But these are things that my sketches and photographs will
show better than words.
When later we got onto the treeless Barrens or Tundra, the process
was equally evident, though at this time dormant, and the chief
agent was not running water, but the giant Jack Frost.
CHAPTER XXIX
PIKE'S PORTAGE
Part of my plan was to leave a provision cache every hundred
miles, with enough food to carry us 200 miles, and thus cover the
possibility of considerable loss. I had left supplies at Chipewyan,
Smith, and Resolution, but these were settlements; now we were
pushing off into the absolute wilderness, where it was unlikely
we should see any human beings but ourselves. Now, indeed, we
were facing all primitive conditions. Other travellers have made
similar plans for food stores, but there are three deadly enemies
to a cache - weather, ravens, and wolverines., I was prepared for
all three. Water-proof leatheroid cases were to turn the storm,
dancing tins and lines will scare the ravens, and each cache tree
was made unclimbable to Wolverines by the addition of a necklace of
charms in the form of large fish-hooks, all nailed on with points
downward. This idea, borrowed from, Tyrrell, has always proved a
success; and not one of our caches was touched or injured.
Tyrrell has done much for this region; his name will ever be
linked with its geography and history. His map of the portage was
a godsend, for now we found that our guide had been here only once,
and that when he was a child, with many resultant lapses of memory
and doubts about the trail.
