UNTRODDEN WAYS.
By Mary T. S. Schaffer.
In the summer of 1907, on June 20th, two women and two guides left the little station of Laggan, Alberta, and started for the vast wilderness to the north. It was cold and raw, snow flew in our not over-jubilant faces, the way was one of grind over fallen timbers and through the most discouraging muskegs. For our trail lay up the Bow Valley, across the summit of the same name, down Mistaya Creek to its junction with the Saskatchewan River, and from thence on by the various branches of the Saskatchewan and Athabasca Rivers.
Not as the crow flies, but as the trail winds, we reached in our wanderings a point about 200 miles from Laggan, not far from the junction of the Whirlpool and Athabasca Rivers. In this section there are four distinct streams: the Chaba, which flows up from the south and joins the West Branch of the Athabasca about twelve miles from its own source; a branch which flows from the south-east and joins the Chaba about three miles from the latter's source; the West Branch mentioned above, and the Sun Wapta, which joins the main stream several miles below. About half way up the Chaba, and to the west of it, lies beautiful Fortress Lake, discovered in 1893 by Dr. A. P. Coleman. It is a wild and strikingly picturesque valley, though probably not more so than many similarly situated on the Saskatchewan River. Yet the West Branch appealed to us more; there was a sense of loneliness, of freedom from all touch of human life, a purity, a bloom, which the white man's hand so quickly brushes aside. I say "white," for the red man defiles it no more than does the passing caribou or the wandering bear. His standing teepee-poles but give the touch the artist loves, while the centuries-old hunting trails are filled with soundless stories which interested eyes may easily read as they follow in the wake of the feet that have gone by and will never return.
