The Arctic Prairies : A Canoe-Journey of 2,000 Miles in Search of the Caribou;: Being the Account of a Voyage to the Region North of Aylemer Lake

In 1907, Ernest Thompson Seton embarked on an expedition that most men would call madness: two thousand miles by canoe through the trackless wilderness north of Aylemer Lake, in search of caribou that most believed existed only in stories. What he found was a world on the edge of vanishing, rendered in his vivid, often hilarious prose. Lazy guides, swarms of mosquitoes capable of driving a man to madness, endless portages through mud and forest, sudden storms on nameless lakes, the eerie silence of the empty prairies where buffalo once roamed - Seton chronicles it all with the unflagging enthusiasm of a man who genuinely believes every hardship is worth it for one glimpse of a herd in the distance. Part adventure narrative, part natural history, part elegy for a world that has since been tamed, The Arctic Prairies stands as one of the great unsung travel books of the early twentieth century, illustrated with Seton's own line drawings and photographs of places and wildlife that exist now only in memory. For readers who long for the open road, the unmapped country, the wild North that exists more in spirit than on any modern map.