Mammal Observations at Lower Back River, Northwest Territories, Canada

Abstract

The Back River drains the interior barrens of the Northwest Territories of Canada. According to Blanchet (1930) the river has its headwaters in a high plateau and flows through a sand plain basin (not in accord with conditions of our base camp). The country north of the Back River drainage is of low relief. The river takes a northerly direction for the last one-third of its course. To the east, between the river and Wager Bay, the country is known to be very rugged. The first known exploration of the Back River, then called the Great Fish River, was by Sir George Back and his party, who left England in 1833 to search for Sir John Ross. Back's party wintered at Ft. Reliance. During the summer of 1834 they went down the Back River to its mouth and returned to Ft. Reliance where they again spent the winter, returning to England in 1835. In the appendix of Back's report (1836) there is a list of specimens collected and observed. The collecting was done by Mr. Richard King, surgeon to the expedition. In 1855 Chief Factor James Anderson of the Hudson's Bay Company made a similar journey (Clarke, 1940a) hoping to find traces of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition. Both these exploring trips support Stefansson's statement (1929) that much arctic exploration has been a by-product of search parties. So far as is known, Back and Anderson and their parties were the only white men who had visited in summer the area selected for the University of Minnesota-Wilkie Foundation expedition to the Back River. Members of the expedition were Dr. W. J. Breckenridge, Harvey L. Gunderson, John A. Jarosz, R. Spence Taylor, Robert J. Wilkie, James W. Wilkie and Dr. Lawrence Larson. The party was in the vicinity of Mount Meadowbank along the …