Saskatchewan River

   Ultimate source is at the head waters of the Bow River, about lat. 51° 40', in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. After a course of 1205 miles, it flows into Lake Winnipeg, finally discharging its waters by the Nelson into Hudson Bay. The length of the South Saskatchewan to its junction with the North Saskatchewan at the Forks is 865 miles; and of the North Saskatchewan, which rises in the watershed range of the Rocky Mountains, near the source of the Athabaska, is 760 miles. La Vérendrye reached the river, then known as the Pasquia, or Poskoyac, in 1748, and built Fort Bourbon on the shores of Cedar Lake. He ascended the river to the Forks, a few miles below which he built Fort Poskoyac. In 1751 a party of French explorers ascended one of the branches to the mountains, where they built Fort La Jonquière. Anthony Hendry reached the Saskatchewan from Hudson Bay in 1754, and descended the river from the upper waters of the Red Deer, to the Pas. Many trading posts were afterwards built at different points on the two branches, both by the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company.

   Bib.: White, Atlas of Canada; Tyrrell, Report on Northern Alberta(Geol. Survey, 1886); Burpee, Search for the Western Sea; Hind, Canadian Red River and Assiniboine and Saskatchewan Expeditions.

   [Illustration: The Promised Land From the painting by Paul Wickson]