taking, and everyone was happy.

The Last Covered
Wagon Trail

The Author of this Interesting Article Travelled by Pack-train Throughout the
Peace River Country While It Was Still a Virgin Wilderness Inhabited by
Traders, Trappers and Indians — Railroads and the Alaska Highway Now

IT WAS A far cry in the summer of 1911
from the frozen muskegs of Hudson Bay
to the deeper muskegs of the Yellowhead
Pass. Yet, hardly had my first contract
with the Hudson’s Bay Company expired,
than my desire for adventure landed me in
the far-famed “city” of Edson—a sprawling
shack village of multitudinous smells set
in a bottomless
abyss two hun-
dred and twen-
ty miles west of
Edmonton and
loudly adver-
tised in every
real-estate office
in the land as
“The Gateway
to the Peace,”
and other high-
sounding | titles
calculated to
bait the un-
wary. Three
hundred miles

ae to the north-
ward lay the

The Author : ee
rolling prairies

of the Peace River and Pouce Coupe, while
to the westward, extended British Colum-
bia’s untamed wilderness, which, with
theodolite and compass, a handful of
bronzed engineers were endeavouring to
bend to the will of a new generation by
blasting a way through the serrated peaks
to Prince Rupert on the Pacific.

They were great days those! Everything
was booming. Work was looking for men
—not men for work; it was there for the
The
rotundas of the West’s hotels were filled
with rugged, broad-shouldered men with
sun-tanned faces who spoke a jargon all
their own. They talked of ballasting and
blasting, of rock work, and the laying down
of steel. There was something fascinating
in the airy friendliness of those contractors
who were pushing civilization’s tentacles
across the muskegs and blasting a way
through the seemingly impenetrable barrier
of British Columbia’s Rockies.

One met all sorts of men in those days of
vast colonization schemes and land booms.
Introductions were unnecessary for the
West was still the frontier. Fortunes were

TENTH EDITION

Follow the Trails He Trod.

made every twenty-four hours—on paper!
New “cities” mushroomed overnight on
bald-headed prairie, and beside the swift-
flowing Fraser. Within a week “corner
lots’ on blueprints were selling for five
thousands dollars to trusting souls who
hadn't seen them.

Inspired by the friendliness of those
about me, anxious to see the “Last Great
West,” I decided to accept a proffered posi-
tion from Superintendent Brewer of the
Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. Boarding
a train to take up a temporary assignment
as timekeeper on Ballast Gang 13—what-
ever that might be—I was deposited in the
odoriferous and not particularly picturesque
beginning of the frontier settlement of

Edson.

FLEECING THE SETTLER

Being the “gateway” to the Peace some
enterprising parties had opened up a stage
line to Grand Prairie, whence, one was
assured, he could continue on by wagon
road to the fertile acres of Pouce Coupe and
the Peace River block; this alleged road
being widely advertised to bring business
to the town and make prospects seem the
brightest wherever “city lots” were sold.
Actually the Edson trail was an ancient
pack-trail which meandered crazily over
hills and mountains, entailed the fording or
swimming of the Smoky and Athabasca
rivers, and for the greater part of the way
passed through almost impenetrable muskeg.

Once a week the stage—a wagon with a
couple of seats thrown across the box—

By
PHILIP H. GODSELL

F.R.G.S.

Author of “Arctic Trader”.
Fur Trader, Arctic Traveller and former
Inspecting Officer for the Hudson's Bay
Company.

*

drew up with a mighty attempt at a flourish
on the muddy street before the diminutive
plank post office. Optimistic travellers and
settlers, who'd paid their sixty dollar fare
in advance, crawled aboard; the buckskin-
coated driver posed with reins held high, his
ten-gallon hat cocked jauntily over one eye;
the passengers smiled—probably for the last
t'me in many months—onlookers snapped
their cameras, and with a crack of the whip
the stage lurched on its way.

A wary traveller would have noticed in
the corner of the wagon-box a begrimed and
mud-encrusted riding saddle, a pack-saddle
and rawhide apperjos, and might have
wondered what they were for. But those
who knew the Edson trail had little doubt
as to their ultimate purpose.

Usually the wagon got mired five miles
out of town. The driver would smilingly
suggest that the passengers jump out and
stretch their legs over the little bit of bad
road ahead. For the ensuing two hundred
and fifty miles they'd continue to walk and
wade and swim—depending on the state of
the rivers. If they reached their destination
with the full sixty pounds of baggage
allowed them they were lucky. For the
wagon was usually ditched a few miles out
of town, one horse was converted into a
pack-horse for grub and baggage, and the
other into a saddle horse for the driver.

Many would-be settlers, misled by glow-
ing accounts they'd read, and anxious to
reach the beckoning Peace River country
by what they thought the quickest route,

Athabasca Landing,

jumping

off place for the covered wagon caravans bound for the Peace River
Block and the Peace.

Page Eleven