Practically the first authoritative data as to the natural resources of Canada’s unexploited northland was contained in the published evidence of a British parliamentary committee which sat in 1749 to enquire into the resources of the country administered by the Hudson’s Bay Company. With this as a nucleus, a considerable amount of information on the subject has gradually accumulated. The journals of officials of the big fur-trading companies have contributed to this fund of information and so have the writings of missionaries, the reports of British, Canadian and United States official government explorers, the narratives of sportsmen and adventurous travellers, and the patrol records of that inimitable and ubiquitous body the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. A very wide range of information regarding the various sections of these territories, too, has been placed on record as a result of several Canadian parliamentary investigations. Some idea of the large amount of literature relating to the great northland which has accumulated, can be obtained from the fact that in the preparation of the present book nearly three hundred publications have been consulted, necessitating an amount of reading which was not anticipated when the task was undertaken. Much of this reading was absolutely unproductive, a considerable portion of the books written by men who have lived in or travelled through the country being merely narratives of travel and adventure, containing no direct information of any value as to natural resources. For various obvious reasons many books written by scientific and observant men who have visited the still new west are of little value in throwing light upon the questions of the natural resources of the country. One of these reasons is referred to by Sir Alexander Mackenzie, who states in the introduction to his narrative:—“I could not stop to dig into the earth, over whose surface I was compelled to pass with rapid steps; nor could I turn aside to collect the plants which nature might have scattered in the way, when my thoughts were anxiously employed in making provision for the day that was passing over me.” The distances to be travelled in the far Northland are generally so great that the slender stores of supplies carried by the explorer and traveller do not permit of time being devoted to thorough investigation by the way. Again, much of the travelling in the unsettled north has been done in winter, when the surface of the ground was covered with snow, making an examination of the soil and rocks impossible. Nevertheless, the literature relating to the new Canadian northwest is so voluminous that it contains, scattered throughout it, an aggregate amount of practical information regarding the resources of even the more remote sections of the country that, as assembled within the two covers of a single volume, will probably astonish most readers.