Identification of Petitot's Riviere La Ronciere-le Noury

N SPITE of the vastness of the northern portions of Canada's mainland, it is unusual that a river of one hundred and ninety miles in length should remain unexplored for some eighty years after its discovery. This is apparently what happened to a river discovered in 1868 by a French missionary who mapped its course during his explorations, but unfortunately never reached its mouth and consequently drew in the lower reaches and the outlet from hearsay. Later explorers found no river where he had placed it on the map, and were apt to conclude that it did not exist. Recent mapping from air photographs (Fig. 1) and geographical studies in the area have now probably vindicated this explorer and show that his maps were not as inaccurate as cartographers had believed. But it remains a mystery why intelligent travellers should conclude from one negative piece of evidence that the river was non-existent, especially when the rest of the map was found to be fairly accurate. This river, now known as the Hornaday, drains part of the virtually unexplored country between Great Bear Lake and the coast of the Arctic Ocean. Access to the arctic coast was supplied to early explorers by the valleys of the Mackenzie and Coppermine rivers and consequently there was little reason at first to investigate and map the area between these rivers. The main migration routes of the caribou swing away to the Coppermine and Bathurst Inlet country to the east, and so only a few Eskimo occupy the northern coastal fringe, while the Hare and Yellowknife Indians living along the northern shores of Great Bear Lake seldom venture north of the tree line. No explorer has searched here for gold and copper. No wealth of fur exists in the treeless lands north and south of the ribbon of spruce along the winding Horton River. This region has been almost by-passed in the explor- ation of the north and only in the last three years has it been photographed from the air and the drainage features added to the map. The first white men entered the area from the west and visited only the coasts washed by the arctic waters. In 1826 the eastern detachment of Franklin's Second Expedition under the command of Dr. John Richardson examined and mapped most of the coastline from the Mackenzie River to the Coppermine (Franklin, 1828). The head of Darnley Bay was not explored, but they traversed the shores of Franklin Bay and a large river entering the sea from the west was given the name of Wilmot Horton River for the then "Presented at the second annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Geographers, Quebec, 19S2, and published with the permission of the Director, Geographical Branch, Department of Mines and Technical Surveys, Ottawa.