Taking passage on the steamer Northern Light, we leave the settlement of Lesser Slave Lake, this world-in-small, on the first day of October, and, from here to Athabasca Landing, travel in company with Mr. J.K.  Cornwall, President of the Northern Transportation Company.  Between the time of our journey and this writing, Mr. Cornwall has been returned as Member of the Alberta Legislature for the district we are now traversing.  He certainly knows his constituency better than most representatives do.  There is scarcely a mile of these unmapped ways that he has not tramped alone; not an Indian guide in the North can last with “Jim” for a week, in summer, or on snow-shoes.  When some Lesser Slave half-breeds were told that Mr. Cornwall was going to run for the legislature against Allie Brick, one of them said, “Jim wins.  Allie Brick can’t run.  Not much fun in that race.  No man on Peace River can run like Jim.”

Mr. Cornwall’s pronouncement on the North Country can be taken as authoritative.  He says, “Practically all the timber of any commercial value between the Great Lakes and the Rocky Mountains is in these northern watersheds.  This timber will be a very important factor in the coming development of Prairie Canada to the south, and fortunately, too, it is most get-at-able.  There are thirty-six hundred miles of river and lake in the North on which steamers are plying to-day and which are open for navigation for six months in every year.  The first railway that comes in will tap a system of transporation equalled only on this continent by the Mississippi and St. Lawrence with the Great Lakes.  The American Government has spent two hundred million dollars on the improvement of Mississippi navigation, and to-day it is not as valuable a national asset as the great Athabasca-Mackenzie-Peace system is as it came from the hand of Nature.  Thirty thousand bushels of wheat that would grade ‘No. 1 Northern’ was produced in the Peace River Country this year, besides thousands of bushels of oats and barley.  In this Northland there are 100,000,000 acres of land fit for the growing of grain.”

Charles Dickens used to carry a note-book in his vest-pocket in which he jotted down names that tickled his fancy.  Were Dickens to travel this route with us, his name-note-books would bulge.  Where Lesser Slave River issues out of Lesser Slave Lake, we found Tom Lilac in earnest conversation with Jilly Loo-bird.  Jilly has navigated the North all the way from Athabasca Landing to Hudson’s Hope on the Peace, seeking a wife, and still lacks his connubial rib.  Being told that ladies are on board, he breathlessly asks, “What colour?” When he learns that we are white, Jilly makes a dash for some cache in the woods which takes the place of clothes-closet, but the steamer has passed on before he emerges.  Another lost chance, both for Jilly and the writer!  For two or three miles here, where the river runs out of the lake, it never freezes,