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F O R T C H I P E W Y A N TO F O R T M ' M U R R A Y 119
It was certainly a motley crowd, and some of its members
by no means honest. Chief- factor Caiusell, who had just
come from Fort Simpson, told me they had stolen from
every house where they had a chance, and mentioned,
amongst other things, - a particularly ungrateful theft of a
whip- saw from a native's cabin shortly after an Indian had,
with much pains, overtaken them with a similar one, which
they had lost on the t r a i l . Their departure, therefore, was
not lamented, and the natives were glad to get r i d of them.
We ourselves boarded the steamer for Fort McMurray on
the 11th, but, owing to bad weather, did not get off t i l l midday,
and even then the lake was so rough that we had to
anchor for a while i n the lee of an island. Colin Fraser
had started ahead of us with his big scow and cargo of furs,
valued at $ 15,000, and kept ahead with his fine crew of
ten expert trackers. When the weather calmed we steamed
across to the entrance of one of the various channels connecting
the Athabasca River with the lake, and soon found
ourselves skirting the most extensive marshes and feeding-grounds
for game i n a l l Canada; a delta renowned throughout
vegetable food was found, probably tropical, at all events unknown to
the botany of to- day. The foregoing facts seem to be at variance with
the doctrine of Uniformity, or with anything like a slow process.
The entombment of these animals must have been very sudden,
and due, one would naturally think, to a tremendous cataclysm
followed by immediate freezing, else their flesh would have become
tainted. A recent English writer predicts another deluge owing to
the constant accumulation of ice at the Antarctic Pole, which for
untold ages has been attracting and freezing the waters of the
Northern Hemisphere. A lowering process, he says, has thus been
going on in the ocean levels to the north through immeasurable
time, its record being the ancient water- marks now high up on the
mountain sides of British Columbia and elsewhere. It is certainly
not unthinkable that, if subject to such a displacement of its centre
of gravity, our planet at some inconceivably remote period capsized,
so that what were before the Tropics became the Poles, and that
such a catastrophe is not only possible but is certain to happen
again. As a conjecture it may be unscientific; but how many of
the accepted theories of science have ceased to be! As a matter
of fact, she has been very busy burying her dead, particularly of
late years, and her theory of the extinction of the primeval elephant
may yet prove to be one of them.
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| Title | Page 135 |
| OCR | F O R T C H I P E W Y A N TO F O R T M ' M U R R A Y 119 It was certainly a motley crowd, and some of its members by no means honest. Chief- factor Caiusell, who had just come from Fort Simpson, told me they had stolen from every house where they had a chance, and mentioned, amongst other things, - a particularly ungrateful theft of a whip- saw from a native's cabin shortly after an Indian had, with much pains, overtaken them with a similar one, which they had lost on the t r a i l . Their departure, therefore, was not lamented, and the natives were glad to get r i d of them. We ourselves boarded the steamer for Fort McMurray on the 11th, but, owing to bad weather, did not get off t i l l midday, and even then the lake was so rough that we had to anchor for a while i n the lee of an island. Colin Fraser had started ahead of us with his big scow and cargo of furs, valued at $ 15,000, and kept ahead with his fine crew of ten expert trackers. When the weather calmed we steamed across to the entrance of one of the various channels connecting the Athabasca River with the lake, and soon found ourselves skirting the most extensive marshes and feeding-grounds for game i n a l l Canada; a delta renowned throughout vegetable food was found, probably tropical, at all events unknown to the botany of to- day. The foregoing facts seem to be at variance with the doctrine of Uniformity, or with anything like a slow process. The entombment of these animals must have been very sudden, and due, one would naturally think, to a tremendous cataclysm followed by immediate freezing, else their flesh would have become tainted. A recent English writer predicts another deluge owing to the constant accumulation of ice at the Antarctic Pole, which for untold ages has been attracting and freezing the waters of the Northern Hemisphere. A lowering process, he says, has thus been going on in the ocean levels to the north through immeasurable time, its record being the ancient water- marks now high up on the mountain sides of British Columbia and elsewhere. It is certainly not unthinkable that, if subject to such a displacement of its centre of gravity, our planet at some inconceivably remote period capsized, so that what were before the Tropics became the Poles, and that such a catastrophe is not only possible but is certain to happen again. As a conjecture it may be unscientific; but how many of the accepted theories of science have ceased to be! As a matter of fact, she has been very busy burying her dead, particularly of late years, and her theory of the extinction of the primeval elephant may yet prove to be one of them. |
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