"One of the most adventurous canoe voyages ever undertaken." - The Critic, 1896

"Will forever remain one of the classics of northwestern travel." -Charles Sheldon

"Pike was to British Columbia what Selous himself was to Africa" -Life of Selous (1918)

"The story of Mr. Pike's adventures is often exciting, and presents many incidents of hunting and fishing which will interest sportsmen." -New Outlook, 1896

" Warburton Pike, Caspar Whitney, and Frederick Schwatka have given fairly full and very interesting accounts of boreal sport." -Theodore Roosevelt

Starting out in 1887 from Wrangel's Island on the Alaska coast and thence inland by the Pelly River in a small boat of 18 feet length, with two companions, Pike undertook and safely carried to completion an inland trip of 4000 miles through difficult and dangerous rivers, interrupted by many rapids and portages via the immense interior flood of the vast Yukon River to the Pacific, and thence for many miles along the perilous open-sea navigation of the Alaskan coast. The whole trip occupied more than fifteen months of such voyaging.

In his 1896 book, "Through the Subarctic Forest," Pike gives a breezy, inspiriting description of two summers and a winter spent hunting and exploring in Northern British Columbia and the adjoining portions of Canada and Alaska, steering his canoe, carrying his heavy loads across the portages, building his shanty, hauling his sledge, driving dogs, prospecting for gold and silver, and all the time hunting moose, geese, ducks, rabbits, or any other game that he might be able to Obtain to supply the larder.

Of course, such a journey in the wilderness is fraught with dangers around every corner. In describing a canoe accident while negotiating whitewater rapids, Pike writes:

"We inquired about the rapid below, and were told it was good, and that we should have no difficulty in running it on the right side. So without landing to pick out a course, I ran my canoe into the right hand channel, and found that we had entered a shallow rapid with a strong current, absolutely choked with boulders, and no room for the canoe to pass. Then a sharp stone tore a hole in the thin planking, the water rose over the bottom boards immediately...."

Regarding, relations with Native Americans of the region, Pike notes:

" At the mouth of the Frances we met the Liard Chief with his band of Indians, and from them secured a guide. The Liard Chief was full of anxiety for our welfare, and advised us to turn back at once, or we should surely come to an untimely end at the hands of the savages who inhabit the head-waters of the Pelly. Far up among the mountains, the chief told us, there dwelt a band of cannibals, who would slay any intruder into their country more cheerfully than they would kill a moose. The foundation for this rumour seems to have been the disappearance of a miner named Munro, who pushed out alone on a prospecting trip towards the Pelly, and was no more heard of. The Indians assume that he was killed by a nomadic band of hunters...."

Pike's book is a classic of chronicle of northern wilderness travel, of difficulties of transit successfully overcome, of fishing and of hunting, in a part of the globe where the river rapids are rocky and dangerous, where game is plentiful and has not yet learnt to be wild, and where, salmon, are killed in numbers which will seem incredible to anglers.

About the author:

Warburton Mayer Pike (1861-1915) was an explorer of British Columbia and the Canadian Arctic. A mountain on Saturna Island; a memorial at Dease Lake; and a portage between Great Slave Lake and Artillery Lake honor his name.