NAME OF THE DENES AND THEIR HABITAT IN THE NORTH. 17

Geographical Features.

As to the physical features of the northern land in general, it is but
natural that most pronounced differences should result from such widely
separated latitudes. The northernmost portion of it is, as a rule, as bleak,
desolate and inhospitable as could be imagined. Almost immediately to the
northwest of Fort Churchill, on Hudson Bay, and far into the interior, the
eye wanders upon endless reaches of wastes silent as the grave, treeless as
the great Canadian plains hundreds of miles away, but with no other soil
than frozen mossy bogs, or barren tracts of land destitute of any vegetation
Save, here and there, a few scrubby bushes and, almost everywhere, mono-
tonous beds of lichens. These are the well known Barren Grounds of Canada,
the Othel-néne, or Broad Lands, of the natives.

Yet, while these apparently resourceless regions would certainly prove
the death of the white man rash enough to venture through them alone, they
are the granary or, if you will, the larder of the Déné huntsman, which a kind
Providence keeps well filled with moving masses of reindeer, a noble animal
which subsists mostly on the particular kind of lichen (Z. rangiferinus) which
nature does not grudge that unfruitful soil. There also, but generally north
of the reindeer herds, are to be found, sedulously segregated from every other
living creature, the musk ox (Ovibos moschatus), that delight of the naturalist,
which is so much the more prized as it is the rarer. In fact, it has no other
habitat on the whole surface of the globe.

Further west again, limitless forests of coniferous trees, interspersed with
birch (Betula Papyracea), aspen (Populus tremuloides), poplar or liard (P. bal-
samea) and the humbler willow (Salix longifolia), constitute the hunting
ground of various tribes until 67° N. lat. is reached, where all important
vegetation ceases again.

Within Alaska low mountains alternate with tundras, rolling plains covered
with moss and more or less marshy, when primeval woods do not extend as
far as the eye can reach. South of these we have the sombre forests and
snow-capped mountains of northern British Columbia, famous among which
is the Cariboo group, of golden fame.

The eastern and western Dénés are divided by the great orographic
system of the American continent. I mean the Rocky Mountains (Tsé-thi, or
Great Rocks) which, continuous in the south, except for a few gaps leaving
passage to the Peace and Liard Rivers or without any stream of importance,
become more or less broken as we go north, assuming at intervals an over-
lapping or echelon-like arrangement. This is, according to the Indians, the
backbone of the earth. Besides the few special kinds of game to which the
range affords excellent retreats, its main object, in the economy of nature,
seems to be to feed with its eternal snows numberless rivers which water the
country and drain the multitude of lakes which dot it on either side.

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