As we pull out, we mentally run our fingers along the parallel of 56 deg. 40’ North to find out by comparison, as they say in Chicago, “where we are at.”  In Europe we would be on the top of Ben Nevis and not so far north as Aberdeen.  Our line of latitude run westward will cut Sitka, and the lone Pribilof, “where the little blue fox is bred for his skin and the seals they breed for themselves.”  Crossing the junction of the Clearwater with the Athabasca, we strike for the first time the trail of Sir Alexander Mackenzie, who came in by Portage la Loche, and in 1789 traced to the sea the great river which bears his name.  At its confluence with the Clearwater the Athabasca is perhaps three-quarters of a mile wide, and it maintains a steady current with a somewhat contracting channel to the point of its discharge into Lake Athabasca in latitude 58 deg. 36’ North.

[Illustration:  An Oil Derrick on the Athabasca]

In all Canada there is no more interesting stretch of waterway than that upon which we are entering.  An earth-movement here has created a line of fault clearly visible for seventy or eighty miles along the river-bank, out of which oil oozes at frequent intervals.  Count von Hammerstein, building derricks from point to point along the stream, has put in much time, toil, and money in oil-development here.  Our traverse of those ninety miles of Athabasca Rapids has given us respect for the labor and determination which in this wilderness has erected these giant derricks.  Looking at them, we waft a wish that the plucky prospector may reap his reward and abundantly strike oil.  The Count tells us of striking one hundred and fifty feet of rock salt while “punching” one of his oil-shafts through the ground.  Here are overhanging dykes of limestone; and out of the lime and clay shoot up splendid trees of pine, poplar, and spruce.

[Illustration:  Tar Banks on the Athabasca]

At Fort McKay, thirty miles below McMurray, a fine seam of coal is exposed on the river-bank.  It is bituminous, and can be used for blacksmithing, but probably not for welding.  Ochre is found on these banks, with sand of the very best quality for making glass, while extensive sulphur deposits have been discovered on the east side of the river between Fort McMurray and the lake.  On the Clearwater are medicinal springs whose output tastes very much like Hunyadi water.

Tar there is, too, in plenty.  Out of the over-hanging banks it oozes at every fissure, and into some of the bituminous tar-wells we can poke a twenty foot pole and find no resistance.  These tar-sands lithologically may be described as a soft sandstone, the cementing material of which is a bitumen or petroleum.  They are estimated to have a distribution of over five hundred square miles.  Where it is possible to expose a section, as on a river-bank, the formation extends from one hundred and twenty-five to two hundred feet in depth, the bitumen being distributed through the sands.