l the forenoon. A corner of
Great Slave Lake has to be traversed in order to reach Fort Resolution.

To Samuel Hearne, the Mungo Park of Canada, belongs the double honour of
tracing the Coppermine River and discovering Great Slave Lake. Just one
hundred and thirty-seven years ago on Christmas Eve, Hearne got his
first glimpse of this magnificent inland sea which is cut through the
centre by the parallel of 62 deg., and which lies east and west between the
meridians of 109 deg. and 117 deg.. No survey of Great Slave Lake has been made,
but it is estimated to have a superficial area of 10,500 square
miles--just one-third the size of troubled Ireland, and as great as
Delaware, Connecticut, and Rhode Island combined.

Great Slave Lake, lying wholly within the forested region, is three
hundred miles long, and its width at one point exceeds sixty miles. At
every place on its banks where the fur-traders have their stations
ordinary farm-crops are grown. Barley sown at Fort Resolution in mid-May
reaches maturity in a hundred days; potatoes planted at the same time
are dug in mid-September. The gardens of Fort Rae on the North Arm of
the Lake produce beets, peas, cabbages, onions, carrots, and turnips. As
Fort Rae is built on a rocky island with a bleak exposure, this would
seem to promise in some future day generous harvests for the more
favoured lands on the south and west.

The names given by the old fur-traders to their posts make the
traveller think that in these North lands he, a second Christian, is
essaying a new Pilgrim's Progress. At the south entry to the Lake we are
at Resolution; when we cross it we arrive at Providence; away off at the
eastern extremity is Reliance; Confidence takes us to Great Bear Lake;
and Good Hope stretches far ahead down the lower reaches of the
Mackenzie. Fort Resolution on the south side of Great Slave Lake, a
little west of the mouth of the Slave, lies back of an island-sheltered
entrance.

[Illustration: Unloading at Fort Resolution]

The striking feature as we enter is an immense Roman Catholic Mission
school in process of construction, to supplement the existing church and
school of that faith. There is neither station of the Mounted Police nor
Church of England here; their places are taken by two independent
fur-trading concerns operating in opposition to the Ancient Company.

We had been told that the children down North had the kiddies at Fort
Smith and Chipewyan "all skinned"