The Great Lone Land: A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America

The Great Lone Land: A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America, by William Francis Butler, appeared 1872 in London. Butler's accounts of his adventures are the most poetic and the most personable of the 19th-century Canadian travel narratives. His lyrical descriptions of landscape, climate and seasonal change testify to his deep admiration for the sheer, unpopulated expanse and beauty of the Canadian West. Sent by the English in 1870 to gather intelligence about the Red River Resistance, Butler actually met with Louis Riel at Ft Garry; his description of the encounter remains one of the most vivid portraits of Riel in our literature. The Great Lone Land was reprinted (Edmonton, 1968) with an introduction by Edward McCourt.