The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-10-28
EUROPE BY HUDSON BAY
Proposed Route Of Short Line From Western Grain Fields

stated frankly, Churchill summer and
winter is subject to just as furious
gales as ever battered the iron rocks of
| Newfoundland. One other danger pc
culiar to Churchill must be noted. Five
miles out the bay is open all the year
| round, but as the cold becomes intense
what is known as the frost fog lies
| thick as wool on the sea, obscuring
everything.
The entrance between the two head
| lands is not a half-mile wide, against
| the tremendous current of river and
ebb tide; but the depth is untouchable.
Port Churchill is the harbor inside,
magnificent expanse of land-locked wa
ter. with the fur posts five miles up
stream
But all railroad projects to Hud-
| son bay hinge not on Churchill har-
Dor, but on the straits. Can they be
| navigated? How long are they open?
| Even if they can be navIgated by
slow oceangoers, will they be of any
avail for a fast Atlantic route?
| Hudson straits are really deep
/ gorge which the ice of the Arctic
world-the ice of the prehistoric ages
has cut and grooved and torn forci-
bly, out of the solid rock. finding
egress from Fox channel of the Arc
| tic to open water of the Atlantic.
Into this funnel of rock. $50 miles
| long, is damned from the west and
pounded and contracted the area OF
an ice continent, and I'D this chan
mel from the east runs a tlderip
thirty-five feet high, When tiderip
and ice meet there occure what the old
navigators of the Hudson bay FUR
trade call 1.-The furious overall"
The Canadian government has sent
two special expeditions (in 1885 and
1890 10 test the navigation of the
straits and one general expedition to
navigate the northern waters
0903-4). but the question has become so
terribly political-so much a question
of east versus west-that the official
reports on the expedition are more
noteworthy for what they leave unsaid
than for what they say.
The Gordon expedition of 1885 and
the Wakeham of 1897 definitely estab-
lished these facts: Hudson bay is open
all the year round; an open current
flows through the straits winter as well
as summer. but owing to the ice drive
this current of the straits is closed to
navigation after November. and not
open again until June-that is, there
are always five months when the
straits can be navigated, sometimes
six. There was also discovered just
straits a splendid lard-locked harbor,
or haven of refuge-Port Burwell--shel-
tered from all winds but the south.
A. P. Lows expedition of 10000 made
still more important contribution to
the data on the straits. From actual
experience and from the testimony of
old Hudson bay navigators, Mr.. Low
established the fact of two open cur
rents always flowing in the straits; one
along the north shore, inland westward.
bearing the ice drift Of Greenland, so
that the ships entering can go with the
ice drive; one along the south shore,
outward eastward, bearing the raft ice
of Hudson bay, so that the ships go
ing to sea can also go with the ice
drift; in both cases ships can navigate
the straits with the ice drift. not
against it. In fact, the difficulties of
the old navigators seemed to have been
that they did not know these currents
and attempted to sail against the drive
But wrecks or no wrecks. the Hudson
bay route is coming. If the straits are
not fit for navigation they will be made
fit