Excerpt from An Exploration of the Tazin and Taltson Rivers, North West Territories

This report contains an account of an exploration carried out during the Summer of 1914 in the hitherto unexplored region lying between Lake Athabaska and Great Slave lake and east of Slave river. The expedition was undertaken with the object of obtaining as much information as possible on the geography, topography, geology, and natural history of a region that had previously been visited by only one man who had left any written record of his journey. That man was Samuel Hearne, an officer of the Hudson's Bay Company, who crossed the region in company with a band of Chipewyan Indians in the winter of 1771-72 as he was returning to Fort Churchill from his voyage of exploration to the Coppermine river.

The exploration carried out by the writer consisted of a single canoe traverse across the region from south to north leaving Lake Athabaska at a point a few miles west of the mouth of Charlot river and entering Great Slave lake at the mouth of the Taltson river about 40 miles east of the mouth of Slave river. Parts of the route are travelled by the Indians that live and hunt in the region, but the whole route is appar ently not known to any single individual, and there are certain parts of it that have never been travelled by any one of the present generation. As a result, it was found impossible to get any native to accompany the expedition in the capacity of guide and the route was followed with the aid only of a rough sketch drawn by an Indian, in which there were many blanks.

Though a period of five and a half months elapsed from the time the party left Ottawa on May 5 until its return on October18only about 2 months of this time was actually employed in geographical and geological investigation of the field, the remainder of the time having been taken up in travel to the point of starting on Lake Athabaska, and from the point of completion of field work on Great Slave lake.

Our course to the point on the north shore of Lake Athabaska where exploration actually began followed the usual boat route from Athabaska, at the end of the railway line, down the Athabaska river to its mouth and thence northeast for about 100 miles on Lake Athabaska. The return journey 'from Resolution, on Great Slave lake, was made by way of Slave river to Lake Athabaska and thence by the Athabaska river to the point of starting at Athabaska.

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