Along our course
the bluish Devonian shales are capped by yellow boulder-clay.
We awaken on Friday, July 10th, to find ourselves at Rabbitskin River
and everybody busy carrying on wood for fuel. By ten o'clock we are at
Fort Simpson in latitude 62 deg., the old metropolis of the North. Fort
Simpson is built on an island where the Liard River joins the Mackenzie,
the river being a mile and a half wide at this point. The foundation of
the fort dates back to the beginning of the nineteenth century, when it
was known in fur annals as "The Forks of the Mackenzie."
Simpson is essentially a has-been. We look upon the warehouses of its
quadrangle with their slanting walls and dipping moss-covered roofs and
try to conjure up the time long past when all was smart and imposing. In
those days when the Indians brought in their precious peltries they were
received and sent out again with military precision and all that goes
with red tape and gold braid. Surely the musty archives of Simpson hold
stories well worth the reading! We would fain linger and dream in front
of this sun-dial across whose dulled face the suns of twenty lustrums
have cast their shadows, but we begrudge every moment not spent in
fossicking round the old buildings.
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