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THE BARREN GROUND
OF
NORTHERN CANADA
Ready for Tracking
THE
BARREN GROUND
OF
NORTHERN CANADA
WARBURTON PIKE
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE
By E. P. DUTTON & CO.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION
In many of the outlying districts of Canadaan idea is prevalent, fostered by former travellers,that somewhere in London there exists abenevolent society whose object is to send menincapable of making any useful scientific observationsto the uttermost parts of the earth, in orderto indulge their taste for sport or travel.Several times before I had fairly started for theNorth, and again on my return, I was asked if Ihad been sent out under the auspices of this society,and, I am afraid, rather fell in the estimationof the interviewers when I was obliged toconfess that my journey was only an ordinaryshooting expedition, such as one might maketo the Rocky Mountains or the interior of Africa,and that no great political reformation dependedupon my report as to what I had seen.
In talking with officers of the Hudson's BayCompany, many of whom had been stationed forlong periods in the Athabasca and MackenzieRiver districts, I had often heard of a strangeanimal, a relic of an earlier age, that was stillto be found roaming the Barren Ground, the vastdesert that lies be