Like many a Victorian man of science, Alfred Selwyn, the head of the Geological Survey of Canada, believes in photography. When his men set out to survey a route for the new Canadian transcontinental railway, he asks William Notman to make a photographic record of their trip.

Notman assigns the job to an employee, Benjamin Baltzly.

And that is how Benjamin Baltzly comes to set out on a unique journey. He heads to Victoria, where he meets up with the survey team and together they journey into the uncharted interior of British Columbia.

For almost six months, plagued by rain and then by snow, they proceed with their work, through impenetrable forest, breaking trail as they go.

Into this virgin landscape, Benjamin Baltzly must haul cameras, tripod, glass plates, darkroom chemicals and a dark tent.

He is the first ever to photograph this land. Everywhere, he sees views that astound him.

Baltzly takes only 120 photographs. They are a remarkable record of his journey, and of the land, before it was altered by human hand.

I guess what impresses me about the Baltzly photographs that were taken on that expedition in the West, is the remarkable sense you have in each of the images that he is a part of the expeditionary force, that he’s part of the team, he’s right in there. And as a consequence you feel, you feel the muscle strain, you feel the, you feel the, the bruises from the rock, the dampness, the slickness, the…its, I find them quite remarkable.

For his employer, William Notman, these photographs are of more than artistic interest. People are anxious to buy Benjamin Baltzly’s pictures. On his return to Victoria, he sells over $400 worth of images, covering the cost of his wages and his photographic supplies. Wilderness, William Notman discovers from Benjamin Baltzly’s fine example, is a very popular subject.