Let us imagine ourselves taking a trip over this route, which penetrates to the very heart of the Northwest Territories. The train leaves Edmonton only once a week. It usually starts Tuesday morning, and we should reach “End of Steel,” on the bank of the Clearwater River, the following day. Here we take one of the little motor boats that push along the freight scows carrying supplies to the trading posts during the open season, and chug down that stream for twenty miles to its junction with the Athabaska at Fort McMurray. At Fort McMurray we take a steamer and go down the Athabaska and across the lake of that name. The river loses its identity when it empties into the lake, the river that joins Lake Athabaska and Great Slave Lake being known as the Slave. The latter stream at times flows through land soaked in oil. This “tar sand,” as it is called, has been used as paving material in Edmonton, and is said to have outlasted asphalt. It is probable that when better transportation facilities are available it will be commercially valuable. Just before reaching Fort Smith, halfway between Lake Athabaska and Great Slave Lake, we leave our boat and ride in wagons over a portage of fifteen miles. Fort Smith is just across the Alberta boundary. It is the capital of the Northwest Territories. Here the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is all-powerful, and it must be satisfied that the traveller going farther north has food and other essentials sufficient for his trip. In this land, where supplies are brought in only once a year, no chances are taken on allowing inexperienced prospectors to become public burdens. Two hundred miles north of Fort Smith we reach Great Slave Lake, the fourth largest inland body of water on the North American continent. It is almost three hundred miles long, and the delta that is being pushed out at the mouth of the Slave River may some day divide the lake into two parts. Great Slave Lake is drained by the mighty Mackenzie, down which we float on the last lap of our journey. This river is as long as the Missouri, and carries a much larger volume of water. It is like the mighty waterways of Siberia.