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Page 57
Frazer's Lake is only about thirty miles distant from Fort St. James
(on Stuart's Lake), yet there they raise abundance of vegetables,
potatoes and turnips, and sometimes even wheat and barley. The post
stands in a valley open to the south-west,--a fine champaign country,
of a sandy soil; it is protected from the north-east winds by a high
ridge of hills. The winter seldom sets in before December, and the
navigation is generally open about the beginning of May.
Few countries present a more beautiful variety of scenery than New
Caledonia. Stuart's Lake and its environs I have already attempted to
describe, but many such landscapes present themselves in different
parts of the country, where towering mountains, hill and dale, forest
and lake, and verdant plains, blended together in the happiest manner,
are taken in by the eye at a glance. Some scenes there are that recall
forcibly to the remembrance of a son of Scotia, the hills and glens
and "bonnie braes" of his own poor, yet beloved native land. New
Caledonia, however, has the advantage over the Old, of being generally
well wooded, and possessed of lakes of far greater magnitude;
unfortunately, however, the woods are decaying rapidly, particularly
several varieties of fir, which are being destroyed by an insect that
preys on the bark: when the country is denuded of this ornament, and
its ridges have become bald, it will present a very desolate
appearance. In some parts of the country, the poplar and aspen tree
are to be found, together with a species of birch, of whose bark
canoes are built; but there is neither hard wood nor cedar.
Such parts of the district as are not in the immediate vicinity of the
regions of eternal snow, yield a variety of wild fruit, grateful to
the palate, wholesome, and nutritious. Of these, the Indian pear is
the most abundant, and most sought after, both by natives and whites;
when fully ripe, it is of a black colour, with somewhat of a reddish
tinge, pear-shaped, and very sweet to the taste. The natives dry them
in the sun, and afterwards bake them into cakes, which are said to be
delicious; for my own part, having seen the process of manufacturing
them, I could not overcome my prejudices so far as to partake of a
delicacy in whose composition filth formed so considerable an
ingredient. When dried, the cakes are placed in wooden vessels to
receive the juice of green fruit, which is expressed by placing
weights upon it, in wooden troughs, from which spouts of bark draw off
the liquid into the vessels containing the dry fruit; this being
thoroughly saturated, is again bruised with the unclean hand, then
re-formed into cakes, and dried again; and these processes are
repeated alternately, until the cakes suit the taste of the maker.
Blue berries are plentiful in some parts of the district; there is a
peculiar variety of them, which I preferred to any fruit I ever
tasted; it is about the size of a musket-ball, of a purple colour,
translucid, and in its taste sweet and acid are deliciously blended.
The district is still rich in fur-bearing animals, especially beavers
and martens, which are likely to continue numerous for many years to
come, as they find a safe retreat among the fastnesses of the Rocky
Mountains, where they multiply undisturbed. This is the great beaver
nursery, which continues to replace the numbers destroyed in the more
exposed situations; there is, nevertheless, a sensible decrease in the
returns of the fur since the introduction of steel traps among the
natives: there are also otters, musk-rats, minxes, and lynxes. Of the
larger quadrupeds bears only are numerous, and in all their varieties,
grizzled, black, brown, and chocolate: numbers of them are taken by
the natives in wooden traps. A chance moose or reindeer is sometimes
found. The mountain sheep generally keeps aloft in the most
inaccessible parts of the mountains, and is seldom "bagged" by a
Carrier, but often by the Tsekanies. I have before observed that
rabbits sometimes abound. Another small animal, whose flesh is
delicious in season, the marmot, is found in great numbers. In the
neighbourhood of Fort Alexandria, the jumping deer, or chevreuil, is
abundant. To these add dog and horse flesh, and you have all the
varieties of animal food the country affords to its inhabitants,
civilized or savage.
A most destructive little animal, the wood-rat, infests the country,
and generally nestles in the crevices of the rocks, but prefers still
more human habitations; they domicile under the floors of
out-buildings, and not content with this, force their way into the
inside, where they destroy and carry off every thing they can; nor is
there any way of securing the property in the stores from their
depredations but by placing it in strong boxes. When fairly located,
it is almost impossible to root them out. They are of a grey colour,
and of nearly the size and form of the common rat, but the tail
resembles that of the ground squirrel.
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