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One of the most interesting facts concerning Canada is that very little is known about it. Its eight million people are scattered along the southern strip—a mere fraction of the country. The great bulk of Canada is neither settled nor surveyed. Nay, it has not been explored, save in the sense that a person proceeding along the road from London to Scotland may be said to have explored England.

Settlement in Western Canada is necessarily of recent date. But in Eastern Canada civilisation has already had a good innings. The colonising of Quebec province began three hundred years ago. Therefore a hasty thinker would be apt to suppose that, however much uncertainty may envelop other parts of the Dominion, Quebec province must by this time be well-trodden territory. What smiles that supposition would cause among the urbane politicians and officials I met in the provincial Parliament House!

If the population of Canada, instead of being eight millions, were one hundred and ten millions—that is, an equivalent to the German and French nations rolled into one—and if the whole of that population were concentrated in Quebec province, the inference of the hasty thinker would probably be correct. For the area of Quebec province is nearly equal to France and Germany combined.

QUEBEC FROM THE ST. LAWRENCE: WINTER SCENE

How can a couple of million busy people inspect and investigate, let alone settle and develop, such an area? Necessarily they and their homes, their farms, their factories, and their railways occupy but a fraction of their vast territory. All the rest of the country is available to whomsoever cares to go and unlock its riches.

Time was when the French-Canadians gave little attention to the problems and possibilities presented by the unknown geography with which they were associated. Prosperous, healthy, and happy, they were satisfied to let the land north of 48° latitude and west of 70° longitude look after itself. But nowadays settled Quebec is much interested in unsettled Quebec. I will tell you why.

Canada, having a pre-vision of her destiny, is vigorously engaged in promoting it. She has set herself the task of attracting population by proclaiming her resources. The paramount need has become the ruling interest. In travelling through the country, you will find that matter uppermost in the mind of every adult with whom you converse. And it is recognised as a leading concern of the State. The Federal Government and the Provincial Governments are expending much thought, ingenuity, and money in furthering this national policy of promoting immigration. The collecting of facts, with a view to their publication, is recognised as one important means to that end. Therefore the Governments are constantly sending prospecting scientists into the unknown lands to scratch the face of Nature and gain some clues.

To give an idea of Quebec province, I will briefly outline a journey made in 1905 by Mr. A. P. Low (now Deputy Minister of Mines) into the Chibougamau district. It is by no means remote, being not much more than a hundred miles from a railway. How Mr. Low came to be sent there was because certain prominent citizens of Quebec, having received interesting tidings from the Chibougamau district, suggested to Sir Wilfrid Laurier that a member of the Geological Survey ought to go and have a look at it. The interesting tidings are worth recalling, since they illustrate the sort of treatment pioneers receive at the hands of Fate. It appears that Mr. Peter McKenzie made a “prospecting and trading journey” through the region in 1903, and while this enterprising gentleman was looking for iron ores “he chanced upon an important discovery of asbestos” (I quote from a Government record, save that I decline to spell the infusible fibrous mineral with a “u”). Thus encouraged, Mr. McKenzie re-visited the district in the following year, and this time he searched for copper deposits, and found “a large mass of gold-bearing quartz.” Had he gone yet a third time, and tried to locate a tin mine, he would, I presume, have stumbled upon a reef of diamonds; but that is mere conjecture.

Now for Mr. Low’s experiences. Leaving Ottawa on June 21st, he went by rail to Lake St. John, and there secured the services of eight Indians, four (who knew the Chibougamau district as well as I know Charing Cross) being engaged to act as canoemen, the other four being required merely to assist with the baggage on the outward journey. And here let me point out what a useful rôle, in connection with the development of Canada, is served by the red man, now that he has been tamed and completely cured of his old abominable practice of removing people’s scalps. To the prospector and the surveyor the Indians are invaluable pilots and porters, their navigation of swift currents being marked by a skill to which the average white man is a stranger. Sustained toil is not to their liking, since it is inconsistent with that large measure of leisure and meditation which they associate with human existence; but, for the rest, Canada’s pioneers and explorers give them a good name. One distinguished surveyor, who has had much experience in the wilds, told me he could recall only a single instance of dishonesty on the part of an Indian who had served him; nor, when he detailed the affair, could I shut my eyes to an element of justification in the delinquent’s conduct.

ASBESTOS QUARRY AT THETFORD, QUEBEC PROVINCE

FARMLAND SCENERY, ASCOT, QUEBEC PROVINCE

“I arranged with the Indian,” said the surveyor, “that, for an agreed sum, he should pilot me along a dangerous stretch of river to a portage where I proposed to camp for the night. He did so, and I paid him his money; but you may imagine my annoyance when, on returning to the river-side after half an hour’s stroll in the woods, I found that the ruffian had absconded with a pair of my blankets. Such an unusual occurrence rankled in my memory, and four months later, on the return journey, I made it my business to inquire for that Indian. It turned out that he was still in the district, and when I charged him with the theft he calmly admitted it. But it was right, he contended, that he should take my blankets, and he went on to tell me why. Nine years previously, a white man engaged him as guide, and afterwards slipped off without paying the promised fee. It was a mean thing to do, and a most unwise one, because the Indian has a very tenacious memory for anything in the nature of treachery. For nine years, you see, this Ojibway had nursed his wrong, and from the next white man who came along he exacted retribution. From my point of view this was rather crude justice, and at first I requested the return of my property. But I did not press the point when I saw how incapable he was of grasping the subtlety that white men are not answerable for one another’s sins.”

Before railways were invented, and when the whole world depended on roads and rivers, it must have been hard to say where settlement ended and the wilderness began. But to-day civilisation marks its domain by steel lines, and a territory that lacks railways is unable to compete, whether in agriculture, mining, or manufactures, with territories that possess railways. Mr. Low’s experiences—which are the experiences of Canada’s hundred and one other explorers—reintroduce us to the world as it existed before Watt and Stephenson interfered. No road having been made to the Chibougamau district, he had to fall back on the rivers. And with rivers, be it noted, Nature has liberally endowed Quebec province.

Having laid in a good stock of provisions, Mr. Low secured some stout cedar canoes, and set off on his journey from Lake St. John—he and the Indians. They did not advance with the speed which readers of Fenimore Cooper’s novels would expect. Their rate of progress averaged fifteen miles a day, the responsibility for this dilatoriness lying wholly with the Ashwapmuchuan River. Only every now and then is it a level, composed, and Thames-like avenue of water. In between whiles, after the wont of Canadian rivers, it plays leap-frog down the gradients. On approaching foaming rapids and roaring cascades, Mr. Low and the Indians got out and walked. Carrying canoes, stores, and baggage over portages that are sometimes a mile in length is, of course, a laborious and slow business. On the other hand, it is better to go through with that ordeal than to be whirled over a waterfall that has a sheer drop of sixty feet—to mention one picturesque feature occurring along Mr. Low’s route.

I will not dilate upon the glorious mountains and the verdant valleys that came under the explorer’s notice. The lovely lakes—some of them twenty miles and more in length—rather tried his patience. “Many of them are so indented and dotted with islands,” he deplored, “that it is difficult for even the Indian guides to follow correctly the channels.”

He noted the millions of dormant dollars existing in the form of timber: the black spruce (most abundant of all), the fir, the banksian pine, the aspen and balsam poplars, the white birch, the cedar, and other useful sorts. “White spruce up to twenty-four inches in diameter are,” he reported, “in many places numerous enough to permit of profitable lumbering if any means existed for transport to the southern markets.” But discerning science did not confine itself to indicating the fortunes in forests that awaited human immigrants. It shed a passing tear over the timber wealth that had been already consumed by immigrants of another genus. “Larch formerly grew in abundance,” Mr. Low reported, “and often they exceeded the white spruce in size,” as was obvious from old trees still standing as skeletons. But about twelve years ago, it seems, those forests were destroyed by a visitation of the European larch saw-fly—that wasp without a waist whose caterpillars have a large appetite, twenty legs, and an interesting way of standing with the hind part of their bodies gracefully curled over their heads. So our European saw-fly was the guilty party, was he? One wonders how in the name of Christopher Columbus he got across.

Mr. Low found some white fellow-creatures in the virgin territory he was exploring. To begin with, he saw (as the opening of this narrative will have prepared my readers to learn) a small party of miners working at the asbestos outcrops on Asbestos Island in McKenzie Bay, which is situated in the north-west corner of Chibougamau Lake. He also found in the district other white, or whitish, people, who were residents of long standing. Indeed, the strange fact has to be noted that groups of these white or whitish people are to be found in even the most northerly and remote districts of unexplored and unexploited Canada. The history of the Hudson’s Bay Company—one of the greatest dramas that the world and the centuries have witnessed—was sufficiently outlined in the preceding chapter. In this place it is merely necessary to relate that, on approaching Lake Mistassini, Mr. Low found “a number of old men, women and children” congregated on the shore, awaiting the arrival of some flour and groceries they were expecting by canoe from Hudson Bay. Much earlier in his travels, at a point only some sixty miles from Lake St. John, he had come upon another settlement of the ancient fur-collecting corporation.

In a manner wholly unforeseen, the Hudson’s Bay Company is proving of great value to modern Canada. Each of its outposts of civilisation is a treasury of clues to the agricultural possibilities of an unknown country. The trappers, in their remote isolation, have naturally gone in for a little gardening. It has helped to pass the time, not to mention the advantage of having fresh vegetables and ripe gooseberries on the dinner-table. When the rare visitor now arrives, as an emissary from populated regions away in the south, the Hudson Bay folk must be intensely gratified by the interest he takes in their cultivated back-yards.

Mr. Low is not the man to neglect opportunities. “The surrounding country appears to be fertile,” he noted, “as, in the clearing about the old Hudson’s Bay Company post, timothy grass grows abundantly and small fruits ripen early.” On the other hand, no great success had apparently attended horticultural efforts at the second trappers’ settlement he visited. “Great difficulty is experienced,” we are told, “in growing a small crop of potatoes, although the soil is the best in the region.” Again, “attempts have been made at this place to grow oats, barley, and wheat, but without success.” The explanation of this unsatisfactory state of things is detected by the scientific mind, and a valuable hint to the agricultural world is the result. This particular Hudson’s Bay post happens to be twelve hundred feet above sea-level—indeed, it occurs very near the line of greatest elevation running through Quebec province. “When lands are situated above the thousand-foot level,” Mr. Low points out, “there is constant danger of summer frosts, though these would probably be lessened by clearing the lands and breaking the surface with the plough.” He emphasises his contention by instancing experiences at the Hudson’s Bay post beside Waswanipi Lake, which is situated about one hundred and fifty miles away to the south-west. The climatic conditions are more favourable there because the elevation is only seven hundred feet above sea-level. At the Waswanipi station, we learn, “excellent root crops are grown annually, while experiments with the cultivation of cereals show that oats, barley, and the hardier varieties of wheat easily ripen.” The Canadian settler, when choosing a northern homestead, will be well advised to keep this matter of elevation in mind.

Mr. Low, it will be observed, by no means limits his investigations, when travelling through a new country, to matters germane to his own science. “The fisheries of the larger lakes,” reported this broad-minded geologist, “will undoubtedly be a source of considerable wealth to the province as soon as a railway provides quick transport.” Speaking from personal experience, he goes on to say that “the chief food fishes are lake-trout, brook-trout, pike, pickerel, sturgeon, whitefish, and two species of sucker.” The sucker is, I believe, also known on the North American continent as the “stone-roller” and the “red-horse.” No doubt it is more appetising than it sounds.

Coming now to matters belonging to Mr. Low’s special province, I must first mention his discovery of an interesting freak of Nature. “Near the western end of McKenzie Bay,” it seems, “is a low cone of dark, rotten serpentine, peculiar on account of its magnetic attraction, the compass pointing to it from all directions within a radius of half a mile.”

A geological report is, of course, a solemn, technical, and unsensational document. The business of a geologist is to identify the rocks, seen and unseen, the word “rocks,” in its scientific application, including pretty well every constituent of the globe save water and air. The geologist does not mine for gold, silver, and precious stones; he merely decides whether and where it would be worth while to mine for them. His task is to go in advance and prepare the way for the prospector.

Thus Mr. Low’s report does little more than hint at mineral wealth. Having confirmed the discovery of a large mass of gold-bearing quartz, he states the conditions under which similar bodies may perhaps be found in neighbouring localities. As to copper, we have to be content with the information that “in a number of places good signs of ore are seen in diabase schists.” Concerning iron, a “locality of promise” is indicated. With regard to asbestos, which lends itself to readier identification, we have more definite information. “All the areas of serpentine discovered in the region up to the present time,” Mr. Low’s report bears witness, “contain veins of asbestos, and in many places these veins are of sufficient size and number to form valuable deposits as soon as a railway is built to the shores of Chibougamau Lake.”

Mr. Low made the return journey in fine style, “shooting all the rapids along the river,” and arriving at Lake St. John on September 1st. Thus his explorations occupied more than nine weeks, and—rendering testimony on yet another important point—he mentions a sustained experience of fine weather, “not a day having been lost by rain or head-winds.”

Thus by following in the footsteps of a scientific scout of civilisation, we have had a peep at one morsel of a huge territory which man has scarcely begun to utilise. There are no means of measuring its natural resources; we know only that they are vast. Conjecture may, however, be based on analogy. The present population of Quebec is practically restricted to a tenth part of the province. What is being done in that tenth part does not by any means represent finality, since development in many districts is still at an early stage. Nevertheless, the achievements of a part supply a clue to the possibilities of the whole, so I will mention a few instructive facts.

Last year some fifty million bushels of oats were grown in the province of Quebec; and since to most persons 50,000,000 is an indefinite total, and only vaguely impressive, like 5,000,000 or 500,000,000, I may mention, for the purpose of affording the reader a standard of comparison, that in 1909 the quantity of that grain grown in Scotland—the national head-quarters of oat-cakes and porridge—was only thirty-eight million bushels. Let me quote another item from the long list of products yielded by the fraction of Quebec province that is at present under cultivation. The French-Canadians and their neighbours annually grow about seventeen million bushels of potatoes, or enough to supply the entire population of Ireland from one year’s end to another, allowing for a consumption of 2½ lbs. per week for every man, woman and child. They also grow enough tobacco (principally black and strong kinds, but including a good deal of Havana) to meet the annual requirements of over a million moderate smokers; while Quebec’s immense quantities of apples, cheese, cherries, butter, pears, pumpkins and melons also provide the statistician with much food for thought.

And, while I am about it, let me give a hint or two with reference to the present mineral output of the province. Note, then, that in 1909 some three thousand miners received £270,000 as wages for wresting £459,000 worth of asbestos from the serpentine rocks of Quebec—a region which in the same year enriched the world with over a million barrels of Portland cement (representing a value of £263,000), besides noteworthy quantities of copper, graphite, marble, granite, phosphate, mica, chromite, and ochres.