Читать книгу By Canadian Streams - Burpee Lawrence Johnstone - Страница 1

Who that has travelled upon their far-spreading waters has not felt the compelling charm of the rivers of Canada? The matchless variety of their scenery, from the gentle grace of the Sissibou to the tempestuous grandeur of the Fraser; the romance that clings to their shores-legends and tales of Micmac and Iroquois, Cree, Blackfoot, and Chilcotin; stories of peaceful Acadian villages beside the Gaspereau, and fortified towns along the St. Lawrence; of warlike expeditions and missionary enterprises up the Richelieu and the Saguenay; of heroic exploits at the Long Sault and at Verchères; of memorable explorations in the north and the far west? How many of us realise the illimitable possibilities of these arteries of a nation, their vital importance as avenues of commerce and communication, the potential energy stored in their rushing waters? Do we even appreciate their actual extent, or thoroughly grasp the fact that this network of waterways covers half a continent, and reaches every corner of this vast Dominion?

Two hundred years ago little was known of these rivers outside the valley of the St. Lawrence. One hundred years later scores of new waterways had been explored from source to outlet, some of them ranking among the great rivers of the earth. The Western Sea, that had lured the restless sons of New France toward the setting sun, that had furnished a dominating impulse to her explorers, from Jacques Cartier to La Vérendrye, was at last reached by Canadians of another race-and the road that they travelled was the water-road that connects three oceans. In their frail canoes these tireless pathfinders journeyed up the mighty St. Lawrence and its great tributary the Ottawa, through Lake Nipissing, and down the French river to Georgian Bay; they skirted the shores of the inland seas to the head of Lake Superior, and by way of numberless portages crossed the almost indistinguishable height of land to Rainy Lake and the beautiful Lake of the Woods. They descended the wild Winnipeg to Lake Winnipeg, paddled up the Saskatchewan to Cumberland House, turned north by way of Frog Portage to the Churchill, and ascended that waterway to its source, where they climbed over Meythe Portage-famous in the annals of exploration and the fur trade-to the Clearwater, a branch of the Athabaska, and so came to Fort Chipewyan, on Lake Athabaska. Descending Slave River for a few miles, they came to the mouth of Peace River, and after many days' weary paddling were in sight of the Rocky Mountains. Still ascending the same river, they traversed the mountains, and by other streams were borne down the western slope to the shores of the remote Pacific.

The world offers no parallel to this extraordinary water-road from the Atlantic to the Pacific; nor is the tale all told. From that great central reservoir, that master-key to the whole system of water communications, the traveller might turn his canoe in any direction, and traverse the length and breadth of the continent to its most remote boundaries: east to the Atlantic, west to the Pacific, north to the Arctic or to Hudson Bay, and south to the Gulf of Mexico.

The story of Canadian rivers would fill several volumes if one attempted to do justice to such a broad and varied theme. One may only hope, in the few pages that follow, to give glimpses of the story; to suggest, however inadequately, the dramatic and romantic possibilities of the subject; to recall a few of the memories that cling to the rivers of Canada.