Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/239

Rh seaports of that vast interior now thrown open to settlement, Manitoba, Keewatin, and the other provinces yet unborn, must be sought in Hudson Bay. The mouth of the Churchill River would undoubtedly be the future shipping-port for the agricultural products of the Northwest, and the route by which immigrants would enter the country. In Canada the subject was brought before Parliament for the first time in 1878, and thenceforth pressed upon its attention every year, until, finally, after a committee had gathered all available information upon the subject, it was decided, at the session of 1884, to dispatch a fully equipped expedition having for it's main object the determination of the one point upon which the whole question rested, namely, whether the bay and strait might be relied upon as safe and serviceable highways of commerce. It was, of course, a matter of general knowledge that these waters had been plowed by keels for two hundred and seventy-four years back; that sailing-vessels of all descriptions, from the pinnace of twenty tons to the seventy-four-gun man-of-war, had passed through the strait and spread their white wings all across the bay; and that Moose Factory had been visited by a supply-ship with unfailing regularity every year since 1735. But facts like these, encouraging as they might be, were not conclusive, because in all cases these vessels had been free to choose their own time for entering and leaving the bay, and they therefore still left the question open as to whether these waters were navigable during a sufficient portion of the year to render possible the development of a great and permanent commerce. In order that there should be successful shipping-ports upon the bay, there must, of course, be railways leading from the interior to these ports, and these railways must be assured of a profitable volume of business during a good long season, or they would never be built. The expedition, therefore, was charged primarily with the duty of affixing the limits of the period of navigation, and at the same time was instructed to gather as much information concerning the climate, resources, flora, fauna, and other features of the region as the limited time at its command would permit.

On the 22d of July last the steamship Neptune, a wooden vessel, built and equipped with special reference to northern navigation in prosecution of the seal-fishery, set forth from the port of Halifax, with the members of the expedition on board. These were some twenty-six in number, Lieutenant Andrew R. Gordon, R. N., of the Meteorological Survey of Canada, being in command, and having with him, in the double capacity of geologist and medical officer, Dr. Robert Bell, whose explorations in the vicinity of Hudson Bay have been already referred to. The rest of the party comprised a photographer, eight observers, three carpenters, and twelve station-men. As the observers and station-men were to be left for the winter, they had each of them been carefully examined by medical authority, and pronounced physically well fitted to withstand the rigors of an Arctic climate.