This lively narrative tells of the famous adventures of John Palliser, one of the first to explore and document the vast areas of what is now western Canada. The Palliser Expedition provides a revealing look at the western interior in the last years of the Old Northwest before it became home to countless homesteaders. Born in South Africa and educated in England, Irene M. Spry did extensive research and field work in the preparation of this book, including travels in western Canada to retrace the original route of the expedition.
The Palliser Expedition is one of the great works in Canadian exploration literature and the only full-scale account of the British North America Exploring Expedition. This lively narrative tells of the famous adventures of John Palliser, one of the first to explore and document vast areas of what is now western Canada. Palliser and his colleagues accumulated a wealth of new scientific and geological knowledge, providing some of the first detailed information about the plants, animals, soil, rocks, and climate of the land they had traversed. They discovered formerly unknown passes through the Rocky Mountains, and determined that much of this immense country was suitable for settlement. Spry describes what was known about the prairies in the late 1850s and why the British government accepted Palliser's proposal to dispatch a team to the area between Lake Superior and the Pacific Coast. She explains what the expedition learned during its three years, offering at the same time an intimate understanding of these men and their perspective on the region. Much more than the story of a scientific survey, The Palliser Expedition provides a revealing look at the western interior in the last years of the Old Northwest before it became home to countless thousands of homesteaders.
The Palliser Expedition is one of the great works in Canadian exploration literature and the only full-scale account of the British North America Exploring Expedition. This lively narrative tells of the famous adventures of John Palliser, one of the first to explore and document vast areas of what is now western Canada. Palliser and his colleagues accumulated a wealth of new scientific and geological knowledge, providing some of the first detailed information about the plants, animals, soil, rocks, and climate of the land they had traversed. They discovered formerly unknown passes through the Rocky Mountains, and determined that much of this immense country was suitable for settlement. Spry describes what was known about the prairies in the late 1850s and why the British government accepted Palliser's proposal to dispatch a team to the area between Lake Superior and the Pacific Coast. She explains what the expedition learned during its three years, offering at the same time an intimate understanding of these men and their perspective on the region. Much more than the story of a scientific survey, The Palliser Expedition provides a revealing look at the western interior in the last years of the Old Northwest before it became home to countless thousands of homesteaders.