line, and at Smith Landing, sixteen miles, over which the Hudson Bay
Company has a tramway. There are four or five other portages of a few
hundred yards, but with these exceptions there is a fine "down grade"
water route all the way. It is the old Hudson Bay trunk line to the
north that has been in use for nearly a century. Wherever there is a
lake or a long stretch of deep water river navigation the company has
small freight steamers which ply back and forward during the summer
between the portage points or shallows. With comparatively little
expenditure the company or the Government can improve the facilities
along the line so that any amount of freight or any number of passengers
can be taken into the gold region at less than half the time and cost
that it takes Americans to reach it from Port St. Michael, at the mouth
of the Yukon to the Klondyke, exclusive of the steamer trip of 2500
miles from Seattle to Port St. Michael.

"Canadians can leave here on a Monday at 11.15 A.M., and reach Edmonton
on Friday at 7 P.M. From that point, a party of three men with a canoe,
should reach Fort Macpherson easily in from 50 to 60 days, provided they
are able-bodied young fellows with experience in that sort of travel.
They will need to take canoes from here, unless they propose to hire
Indians with large birch bark canoes to carry them. Birch bark canoes
can be secured of any size up to the big ones manned by ten Indians that
carry three tons. But birch barks are not reliable unless Indians are
taken along to doctor them, and keep them from getting water-logged. The
Hudson Bay Company will also contract to take freight northward on their
steamers until the close of navigation. Travellers to the gold mines
leaving now would probably reach Fort Macpherson before navigation
closed.

"The letter from Rev. Mr. Stringer, the missionary, published in the