A city founded is no city builtTill faith becomes prolific by the fathering taleOf good report and all-availing effort.—J. M. HARPER.
The sweet of life is something small,A resting by a wayside wallWith God's good sunshine over all.—R. W. GILBERT.
This is the rainy season at Athabasca Landing, so that the streets are very muddy. Long ago, it was like this in Edmonton, my continuing city, but when we were come to a very considerable puddle our escorts carried us. This is why big, fine-looking men were in high demand.
But, this day, by some strange providence, the glut of rain has abated and the clemency of the sky fills me with an importunate inclination to gad about and use my eyes. There are no moments to be lost, to-morrow it is sure to be raining again. Never was land more golden; never one more grey.
Here at the Landing, it makes no difference where one goes in search of diversion, for it is to be found in all directions and every foot of the way. This morning I preferably take to the hill back of the town, for the water has drained off it to the river and the footing is good.
The hill is held by the Honourable the Hudson's Bay Company, who have owned it time out of mind. It hurts the Company to sell land, for they are the true lineal descendants of that classical tree which groaned with torture when a limb was dissevered from its trunk. This being the case, they may be expected to hold the hill until the municipality taxes it away from them.
Ignorant people like the wheat-sellers of Winnipeg, speak of this settlement as a new place, a mushroomic upstart of yesterday, whereas it was an old post before Winnipeg was thought of. North of the Landing, there are thirty thousand people who depend on the local rivermen to bring down their year's supplies, so that this is a place of no small concernment and it has seven streets, you might say. As yet, its houses and public buildings do not run to paint or useless ornamentations, and there is a stolid practicability about its front doors.
But about the hill: Terry, who is in "the Mounted," tells me it is a walk of three cigarettes to the top of it, but two if you step lively. This Terry has a bold and busy fancy, and if he cared to write, he would, like Xenophon, be "an author of wonderful consequence." Once, he tried to set down a story, but it was like trying to make a fire with a wet match.
Aha! Terry, Aha! you have said it exactly—defined it to a hair's-breadth—the plight of the authors who would rise up on wings as eagles but only they faint and are weary. A wet match! What greater or more invincible deterrent could exist to the kindling of a fire? If Terry's manners were less adroit and his hair less curly, I could almost love him. I am half-purposed to anyway.
And now that we are on matters literary I wish to announce that some day, when my thoughts have come to issue, I intend writing an article on the evil taste of pen-handles. There are several million dollars in store for the man who will manufacture handles that are toothsome—say of licorice, cinnamon, or sassafras wood, or of some composition agreeable to the palate. The connection between the tongue and the pen is a much closer one than generally recognized.
We might even have pleasantly medicated pen-handles guaranteed to stimulate our addled heads, or—Heigh, my hearts of the fourth estate!—to fill us with an irresistible desire to work when there is music and laughter downstairs, or a horse and sunshine out of doors. The invention of such a pen could not fail to be imparted as righteousness.... The roses are in full blast, and all the way along I walk the earth in a fine rapture. On the hill-top, there is a spread of blue hyacinths like a torn veil that has been thrown to the earth. Here, in bewildering array, grow wild parsnips, feverfew, painter's brush, mint-flowers, and lilies that flame riotously across the sheens and greens of the open ways. I love the crimson glories of these lilies; they seem to bring grist to life. Indeed, there is no question but they do.
The poplars and cottonwoods are hanging out long tassels of woolly silver. It is a pity these do not pledge fruit like the tassels of the Indian corn. Mayhap, some day, a scientist will cause the black poplar to produce something for the sustenance of the North. Even the honey which the bees store in its cavities becomes bitter and acrid to the taste. Or it may happen we shall discover a cordial substance which will transmute the tassels of the poplar into something else—say into mulberries. Long ago, the English orchardists believed such things to be possible, for, in the fourteenth century, one wrote down that "a peach-tree shall bring forth pomegranates if it be sprinkled with goat's milk three days when it beginneth to flower."
It is good to be here this day enjoying the pleasant amity of the earth and sky. One may draw physical and spiritual renovation from both. It is very good to feel on one's face the soft-handed wind that is seldom still. This is the kindly unrestricted breeze which brings gifts to the North and West. It blesses the grain by swaying it to and fro, for the word "bless" means literally to fructify. On some such day as this I will come back here from the dead.
On this hill, the Hudson's Bay Company, the world's oldest trust, have erected their storehouse and factor's residence. These are log buildings, austerely square and ugly in the extreme. In the factor's garden is an old sundial which adds the needed touch of romance to the place; also, it connotes a fine leisureliness.
The erstwhile typical régime of a Hudson's Bay fort is a phase of existence which shortly will be sponged off human memory. It has never been as fully explained to me as I could desire, but as nearly as I can make out, the staff of a well-manned post consisted of the factor and chief factor, the trader and chief trader, an accountant, a postmaster, two or more clerks, a cooper, a carpenter, a blacksmith, and labourers, the work of the last mentioned being to haul water, cut wood, and secure meat. There were also as many cooks as required. Food was sometimes scarce, so that the men were required to lick their platters clean. Contrariwise, they drank not a little of heady beverages which they are said to have "carried well."
The Indian's idea of a house is a different one to the trader's. It is not a place to be lived in, but exists merely as a shield from the weather. Accompanied by Goodfellow, a frowsy, stump-tailed dog from the hotel, I visited the Indian houses hereabout. Goodfellow came with me, not as a protector, but because he wouldn't be driven back. He is a reprobate cur, forever spoiling for a fight; a natural born feudist who lives in a state of violent excitement. Terry says he is "no bloomin' lap-dog," but a four-legged incarnation of the devil himself. Sometime soon, this dog's day will be over, for he is surely going to die of lead poisoning.
All the way to the Indians, with a stupid malignity, and in defiance of the plainest laws of fence, Goodfellow gave chase to every cat and rabbit and bit every cow. It is not open for me to say what I thought of him, except that his conduct was solidly wrong. It was, accordingly, of high gratification to the rancour I hid in my heart when the Indians' huskies made short shrift of him. Like Humpty Dumpty, it will be hard to put him together again. They are no dealers in sophistries, these wide-mouthed wolf-dogs, with their wicked teeth, and would fight against the stars in their courses.
When the women have beaten them off and learn I am not offended concerning Goodfellow's drubbing, they are pleasant to me. A thin, pock-marked squaw invites me into a shack or, more properly speaking, into a baby-warren which fairly bristles with a flock of semi-wild children, for, as yet, the squaws have not deliberately ceased from having children.
What I said awhile ago about the Indian's house applies equally to his children's wearing apparel. It shelters rather than ornaments. Their clothes seem to have no visible supports, but are held to their small fat bodies by some inexplicable attraction. One may see the same phenomenon on the apostolic figures on stained glass windows.
A chocolate-coloured baby with blackberry eyes is propped against the wall in a moss bag, and looks for all the world like a cocoon that might any moment push off its sheath and take to wings.
An unsavoury mess of entrails is stewing in a black pot and filling the house with an unpleasant odour. I try not to show my repugnance lest my hostesses consider the white woman to be proud-stomached with no proper appetite for lowly faring. I tell them as I take down the blanket from the door—not untruthfully you understand, but as a small matter of immediate expediency—how it is light one desires rather than fresh air, and that it is hard to see aright when one has been walking in the sunlight.
This Hudson's Bay blanket is, next touskik, the kettle, the one indispensable thing in an Indian household. It serves as a door, a coat, a carpet, a bed, and for other things which it boots not to mention. It is, therefore, well to be explanatory when one removes it from its place, just as it is wise to apologize when one pokes an Englishman's fire of coals.
Mrs. Lo tells me the old woman who is making moccasins isNaka, which word, she explains for my better understanding, is the Cree for "My Mother." Naka is a very old woman and "can no English say." Neither can she be considered as typical of Whistler's mother.
There are amusing things to be done in this shack. For instance, you may by signs and smiles make Naka, my mother, to understand how you greatly desire to sew upon the moccasins she holds, and Naka may, in the amiability of her disposition, accede to your importunity.
As thread, deer sinew is not so easily manipulated as you might imagine; indeed, I should say it is distinctly uncontrollable. The audience, in spite of its manifest efforts at politeness, is nevertheless widely diverted. Who would have thought a white woman could be so droll in the woods, and so very stupid?
Huh! Huh! she may be so stupid that even old Naka, who is a proper woman with her needle, has to scrub the air with her arms and show her yellow gums in laughter.
Their always wakeful curiosity leads the maidens to enquire as to what might be inside a white woman's hand-bag, and that they may sufficiently know about this matter, the white woman empties it upon her knees. Immediately, the articles are passed around for appraisal and approval. Bank cheques! ...Oui!Oui! The men who work on the boats get these. The girls know how it is talking [Transcriber's note: taking?] paper to get money.
My penknife, pencil, note-book, purse, and handkerchief are duly examined and quietly commented upon, but a package of tablets packed in a silver paper, and small tube of cold cream, cause no small flutter in our circle. When I am through demonstrating their use, every one's breath is laden with the odour of mint, and their hands with that of roses. Um—m—m—mh!
The women feel my arms, try on my bracelet and rings, and ask me to take off my hat that they may see my hair, which, alas! is devoid of all waywardness and coquetry. I can see they are disappointed in this and think me what Artemus Ward calls "a he-looking female."
In one shack to which the girls accompany me, an emaciated, coughing boy is bed-ridden and near to death. Lili Abi has him in her arms, and he may not go free.
Who this Lili Abi, or Lilith, is does not certainly appear, but, according to the Rabbis who wrote of old time, she is the first wife of Adam and queen of the succubi. Some there are who declare this to be an ill-framed story, and a conceit of the fancy, but others hold it as a creed that she lives by sucking the blood of children till they fade away and die. It is from Lili Abi that we get our word lullaby. The malific lullaby she sings has come nigh to breaking the heart of humanity, but, one day, it shall happen that a sure and strong-handed scientist will get a strangle hold on Lili Abi and pierce her to death with his slender but omnipotent needle.
Amil, who is the lad's father, says, "I am mooch scare' 'bout leetle boy, for sure. I ees pray all tam to de holy mother. Mabbe he ees get well... la bonne chance ... mabbe non! Leetle boy sing all de tam when he ees well."
Amil has never been to the south, or over the mountains, but he has heard much about these countries. He has been told how, in the United States, they do not believe in the pope and get married many times. He has also heard that the Yankees mean to conquer Canada and pull down the tricolor.
Michele Daubeny, who once went across the mountains to where the fish-eaters are, told him that the ocean never freezes. But this Michele has a tongue which is not straight, also he has been known to steal fur out of the traps, so that Amil does not know what to believe.
"I have mak rip'ly," says Amil, "dat mabbe by'me by, I ees tak de trail dem queeck an' seekickekume, de great sea water, to myse'f."
And when I leave the shacks and go back towards the village, I fall in with some swart broodlings, who are shooting with arrows. At first, they will have none of me until I make the mortifying confession and concession that I cannot shoot and desire greatly to be taught. After this, nothing could exceed their pedagogic enthusiasm. Apollo, prince of archers, could do no better.
In the pale face, the hunting instinct, while never entirely lost, is still greatly modified. In the red man it is a passion. Watch this little lean-bellied Indian as he stalks his game. The bird rises and settles again a few yards away. The boy trails it up closer and closer with a feline softness of tread, a queer slurring movement that belongs only to animals of prey, and then, standing taut and tense as a finely-bred setter making game, he concentrates the whole energy of his body on one piercing point and sends his arrow home.
The bow-and-arrow stage through which these Indian lads are passing corresponds in the white boy to that inevitable condition of development known as gun fever. In our city, at a highly immoral price, we dress up in khaki the boys of the lower classes, give them guns, and call them scouts. I like the Indian way better. Of course, there is this to be said for our method, that it instils a martial spirit into the youngsters so that when they are grown larger we shall have no lack of soldiers. This is a statement so obvious and axiomatic that it hardly needs writing down.
Well, so be it! How else are our bonds to be protected? And may not the lower classes be relied upon to constantly produce batches of boys to step into the ranks? Yes! I believe in Boys' Brigades and in war. I have some bonds myself.
In the village, several homesteaders who are trending northward to the Peace River country, have drawn up to the hotel. Their wagons are piled high with farm implements and household stuff which they purchased at Edmonton.
All of these people are topful of enthusiasm, being of wise and gallant mind. Indeed, the whole country seems surcharged with it and even the poplars clap their hands. The settlers will tell you the only knocker here is Opportunity. There is always a mirage in the pioneer's sky which, God be praised, he manages to haul down bit by bit and pin to the solid earth. "The pins!" you ask. Ah yes! I may as well tell you; they are surveyors' stakes and tamarack fence-poles.
I have some little talk with a woman who is resting on the balcony while her horses are being fed. She comes from the United States and, until her marriage three months ago, practised her profession as a trained nurse. Her husband is going to make entry for a homestead, and when, in three years, he has "proven up," they will open a store in one of the villages. By that time, the railway will have reached their district. Here is a woman of varied interests and many pursuits; one with more than an arm up her sleeve. I am doubly sure of her practicability now that she has told me of the stuff she has packed in the corners of the wagon, and in the narrow spaces between the household utensils. She has seeds for her kitchen garden, also sweet peas, mignonette, sunflowers, hollyhocks, and pansies. The firebox of her stove contains a hand sewing-machine, while the oven is the receptacle for a guitar, some music a surgical case, a box of medicines, a small looking-glass, two metal candlesticks, a roll of coloured pictures for her walls, a few thin paper classics, stationery, fishing-tackle, and a well-stored work-bag. The matches she carries in a case with a close top, while the groceries are packed in tin bread boxes which will serve the same end in her new home. Besides their cooking utensils, toilet articles, clothing, blankets, and tent, this couple carry a rifle, a shot-gun, ammunition, and other small but useful things like a map, a compass, and an almanac. The wagon has a canvas top.
One man who is also heading for the far north tells me he has sold everything from painkiller to mining stock. Of late, he has been selling real-estate, but the bottom has dropped out of this business. For the future, he intends raising potatoes on the land instead of prices. He has "cleaned up" eight thousand dollars in real-estate, but he wishes me to understand he made this honestly by taking options on property and selling before the options came due.
With remarkable precision of language, he explains how the slump in real-estate is chiefly due to those large, didactic gentlemen of slow conscience and insulting superior manner who come here by the trainload and tell the North she is still a flapper, and that it is unbecoming of her to do up her hair and lengthen her skirts, after which cheap and unsolicited advice, they take themselves and their pestiferous money homewards.
Their opinions are quoted from the Atlantic to the Pacific, which I must know takes in Spruceville, till the bankers are seized with the complaint known as cold feet—pest take them!—and "get orders from headquarters" to close up all outstanding accounts. These banker fellows, my informant says, lose their beauty sleep, but as far as he can see, lose nothing else. A business man may be potentially rich and yet be put into bankruptcy by a corporation, the spoils going to the corporation, or its manager. There should be a law against elderly wide-jawed financiers who prophesy hard times because, with them, the wish is father to the thought. There is nothing in all the world they desire so much in order that they may, by their phenomenal rates of interest, pillage the country to their heart's satisfaction. So gainful is their pursuit, my friend will not be at all surprised if, at the last day, it is found that these tongue-lolling financiers have a lien on heaven; indeed, he believes this to be inevitable. Owing to the fact that we are unaccustomed to it, the process of thinking is a somewhat painful one to us of Alberta, but it is wonderful what flashes of illumination come to us sometimes.
To-day, the first train of cars has entered this place. It belongs to the Canadian Northern Railway Company. For many years Edmonton was known as the last house in the world. This, of course, was not literally true, and it would be hard to state where or which is the ultimate hearth-stone in this very good land of Canada, but assuredly Edmonton was the last post-office and, until this year, the End of Steel. To-day, this road is born. When will it die? We fall into a way of thinking it is here for eternity, but railways vanish like everything else. Even the great Appian Way, which lasted for over two thousand years, has, in these last centuries, become little more than a name.
To build even one of our railways, a hundred forests are sacrificed, and, in the uncanny gloom of the dead country which lies in the heart of the earth, thousands of bowed, grim workers toil, Vulcan-like, for the iron to make its spikes and nails.
The railroad seems like a huge centipede with rails for the body, ties for the limbs and smoke for the breath. The men who stand by her side are the waiters who feed her with coal and slake her thirst with water. Sometimes, when she is weary of the freightage these men lay upon her, she rises and crushes it to atoms. Men call this happening "a broken rail" or "an open switch," but we know better.
Or we may think of the railroad as a streak of light through desolate places telling the pioneer to be strong and of good courage with the hope of better days.
Or, again, it is a belt which binds the lustrous provinces of the East and West into the eager land of Canada. What odds that the belt, partaking of its environment, is rocky here or sandy there, so long as it be really a belt?
No one can truly say when this road will die. It may be—if one may hazard so saucy a suggestion—that the airships will kill her by taking her traffic in men and merchandise. And maybe the great-grandchildren of the "Coming Canadians" who arrived this year from Scandinavia or Austria, will plough long furrows on her right-of-way and haul off her bridge timbers for firewood. Guesswork all!
I might have gone on musing about this railway until now, and computing what its advent means to the North, the country which has hitherto been the land of the dog and the canoe, had not a commanding voice bade me come and "drape" myself with the crowd beside the first train in order to have my picture taken.
"I won't go! not a toe," said I, but I went, for no woman who is even fairly normal can successfully resist having her photograph taken. She always hopes it will turn out better than the last one, and I hoped so too.
I am but mad north-northwest: when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.—Hamlet.
All the world is a deluge of rain when we leave Athabasca Landing, and we wait at the hotel till the last minute, hoping the storm may abate in order that we may reach our steamer without losing too much starch. But the horn is making the asthmatic lamentations, meaning thereby that everybody should be aboard, so we say good-bye to all at the hotel; promise to be good; to take care of ourselves; and to come back soon. I say "we" because it is journalistic etiquette to be impersonal, but actually there is only myself, the other passengers having gone down to the river over an hour ago.
It is a troublous jaunt which I make, for a streak of wind turns my umbrella into a cornucopia; the fat drops of rain splash into my eyes; I take the wrong turn, get mired and lose my rubber shoes. When the river is reached, I find the descent to the steamer is buttered with mud and so steep that sliding is the only method of locomotion possible.
A vastly tall man stands on the gangway at the foot of the hill; holds out a pair of arms that must measure ten feet from tip to tip and says, "Come on, lady." The lady comes, but with such impact that we nearly go through to the opposite side of the steamer. Our final resting place is on a banana crate, which, in all conscience, is yielding enough, the fruit proving to be over-ripe. The passengers are distinctly amused, but the freight master is in no gallant temper over it and disapproves of the whole affair. I could tell you what he said to the vastly tall man, but you would have to come very close to hear me.
After supper, which consists of beef with stuffing, macaroni with cheese, pork with beans, white fish, stewed tomatoes, escalloped corn, boiled potatoes, walnut pickles, catsup, soda biscuits, pumpkin-pie, apple-pie, currant buns, cocoanut cake, cheese, coffee, stewed figs, tooth-picks and other things which I cannot remember, I crawl to the deck to find out where Grouard is, and how we are to get there.
Although thither bound, my knowledge of its location is shamefully vague. Here is what I learn. We sail north and west on the Athabasca River till we come to Mirror Landing, at the confluence of the Athabasca and Lesser Slave River, at which point we leave the steamer and make a portage of fourteen miles to Soto Landing. This portage is to avoid the government dams which have been built to make the Lesser Slave River navigable. At Soto Landing we embark on theMidnight Sun, another steamer of the Northern Navigation Company, and travel on till we enter Lesser Slave Lake, down which we journey to its extreme western end, where Grouard sits on a hill overlooking a bit of the lake called Buffalo Bay. Without mishaps, we ought to reach Grouard in four or five days, but no one will cut off our heads if we loiter a bit on the way.
There are about thirty male passengers on board and seven women. This half-hour I have been talking to a plausible prolix villain whom it would be easy to like greatly. He is going to make three million dollars from his oil-wells on the Mackenzie River. He says so himself. He has been down north for several years and walks like one who has been used to the spring of a snowshoe beneath his foot. His clothes have the odour of the forest—that is to say of leaf mould, poplar smoke and spruce resin. He went to England two years ago to persuade Grandfather Bull to invest in oil and asphaltum, but was not as successful as he could desire. "I figure," he says, "it will take another century to convince Grandfather, and by that time the fourth generation of America 'Coal-oil Johnnies' will have squandered the dividends on actresses and aeroplanes. Pouf! these Americans have no idea the world belongs to the Lord."
It was well I agreed with him so civilly, for he said, "If you wish to invest in some oil-stocks, Madam—and no doubt you will after what I have told you—I will see to it that you get in on the ground-floor and no questions asked."
Now I did not like to inquire of him what is meant by the ground-floor, lest he should think me the veriest ignoramus, but I am persuaded it means something most excellent, for I have frequently heard promoters mention it to people like me, who have not much money to buy with.
This man originally hailed from New Zealand, but he tells me that country is no good; it is too far from Fort McMurray. At Fort McMurray life is one round of pleasurable anticipation and all the day seems morning. Who can tell at what moment a gusher may shoot into the clouds and blot out the sun itself? Then it's gorged with gold we should all be—those of us on the ground-floor—and are millionaires, with hundreds of universities and public libraries to give away. What would be the use of having oil and hiding it under bushels of rocks, we'd like to know.
At this point the purser explains that the steep ascent to our right is called Bald Hill. It can be seen from a long distance, and is one of the features of the landscape from which, in the winter, the freighters measure distances—a kind of millarium or central milestone. Surely this is a country of vast horizons, both mentally and visually.
About every twelve miles we pass a stopping place where the winter freighters and their teams are fed. These houses and stables are built of logs and are sheltered by the forest. I prefer to say they have a roof-tree, the words seeming to suggest a good deal more. In spite of their splendid isolation, these stopping places do an excellent business and, while warm and well-provisioned, are still somewhat in the rough. The purser says this roughness is not worth regarding, for while here is the country a fellow roughs it, in the city he "gets it rough."
"And that reminds me, ladies, of my errand to you," he continues; "you are probably aware there are only sixteen bunks on this boat and eight mattresses. You, of course, will use your own blankets and pillows, but I perceive you have not secured mattresses. It would be wonderfully easy if you were to carry off one, or even two, from the priests' state-rooms, for at this very minute the priests say prayers on the lower deck."
"And believe me," he concludes in a highly chivalrous manner, "you two ladies have an unquestionable right to the mattresses, so that I shall consider your act to be one of perfect propriety."
Thus encouraged by the pursuer I proceeded with my room-mate to seize our "unquestionable rights," but, approaching the priests' door, my heart failed me, and our undertaking seemed a plain and undeniable demonstration of wickedness like the robbing of a child's bank. They are such quiet, well-deserving men, these eight black-smocked Brothers who are going North to the jubilee of the great Bishop Grouard, the like of whom there never was. Also, they are very polite, and the one who is an astronomer and comes from Italy, picked out the tenderest cut of beef for me at supper.
"Pray don't be silly," snorted my room-mate, "the rules of their Order say distinctly they shall deny themselves and not sleep softly. Besides, when men take terrible vows that they will never get married, it is a woman's stoutest duty to steal their mattress whenever the opportunity serves."
She also told me with rapid brevity some names which Clement of Alexandria, a Father of the Church, applied to women in the early days of the Christian era. She had read about them in a history......
In the falling of the night, at the mauve hour, our ship having been made fast, we go ashore and talk with the Indians who are camped here in a wigwam. One of the passengers, who has lived among the Crees for many years, tells me I express myself with redundancy in that the literal meaning of wigwam is camping-ground. She says the Indians have many grotesque folk tales, which are told by the men. Each story has a moral which they desire their wives to consider from an educative standpoint. Once there was a man whoseutim(that is to say his dog) used to turn into aniskwao, or woman, when it became dark. She had yellow hair and her arms were white and soft like the breast feathers of a young bird. This happened long ago, before the Indians were baptized and when people were not so pious as they are now. Any man can do the same thing to this day if he happens to know the magic formula.
There is also a tale about a woman of the woods whom we, in our scientific conceit, call the echo. Once when her man was away for many moons on the greatsepe, or river, the woman took another husband, so that when her man came back she flouted him and slapped his face. That night the moon changed her into a voice, and now she calls for her husband to come and love her, but he only mocks at her.
This habit of the husbands in telling tales with palpable deductions attached would seem to be common to other races than the Indians, for the Romans, likewise, had a story about the echo. It appears that Jupiter confided to Madam Echo the history of his amours, and when she told his secrets among her friends she was deprived of speech and could only repeat the questions which were asked of her. The Cree story is the better one. It has a fine human motive which the other lacks, and also it drops, a much-needed tribute on the worn altar of domesticity.
When a fire is lighted with birch bark and tamarack knots, we sit beside it and are more merry than you could believe.
The sweetheart of Jacques dances for us to the well-cadenced rhythm of a Tea Song. I cannot spell her Indian name, but it means "Fat of the Flowers," by which term they express our word "nectar." The cree is a droll language.
"Ha! He! ne matatow,Ha! He! ne saghehow."
she chants and rechants as the fitful flames make sharp high-lights on her dark skin, causing her to appear as the flying figure of a bronze Daphne, and, in truth, the boughs of the trees lend likeness to my fancy, for as she dances into them, they seem to absorb her, even as the laurel absorbed the Grecian nymph of old time.
Translated literally, the words of the Tea Song read thus—
"Ha! He! I love him,Ha! He! I miss him."
This is a supremely cunning song, in that it utters in six words (if we exclude the interjections) the summary of all the love songs which have ever been written—"I love him: I miss him." I am glad it was framed in the unsophisticated North.
And Fat of the Flowers sings another song which is addressed to her lover. She is lonely for him, our interpreter explains, but drinks her tears in silence. Sometimes his presence comes to her in the hour of twilight, and she kneels to it as the poplar kneels to the wind. When he returns to the camp fire she will give to him a blanket made out of the claw skins of the lynx, and a white and scarlet belt from the young quills of the porcupine.
I can see that her honeyed words are agreeable to Jacques and give him fullness of pleasure, for there is a tell-tale joy in his face that refuses to be hid.
Jacques, who is a riverman, was educated at a mission school on the Mackenzie, and he tells me that Fat of the Flowers is nearly as "magneloquent" and clever as a man. He is almost sure there is a little white bird that sings in her heart.
After a time, our dusky friends steal away one by one to their rest, or two by two. The ship lolls lazily on the bank and there is no sound save the whimper of the fire and the deep breathing of some over-tired sleeper, but once a sleeper laughed aloud.
I step carefully between the recumbent forms on the deck lest I hurt them or disturb their quietude. I am sorry now that I stole the mattresses. Surely I am a bitter sinner and unlovely of heart.
In the morning, when I told the Brothers how I had privily taken the mattresses because I disapproved of their vows concerning marriage, and because of the unseemly remarks Clement of Alexandria had applied to women in the early days of the Christian era, they laughed again and again with much hilarity. Indeed, one of the Brothers said he applauded my moderation and marvelled that I was good enough to leave their blankets and pillows. Another gave it as his opinion that Clement's pleasantry was a shabby-minded one and needlessly sarcastic, the result of an ill-governed disposition. But this Brother, like the others, took full care to evade the question I had raised as to celibacy....
What Clement of Alexandria said was that women, like Egyptian temples, were beautiful without, but when you entered and withdrew the veil, there was nothing behind it but a cat or a crocodile.
Through these shores amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing,Pioneers! O Pioneers!—WHITMAN.
In the morning, soon after sunup, we continue our joyous journey on the Athabasca, but the birds are out and about before us. An occasional duck rises off the water sharply with a whir of wet wings, but generally they are self-complacent and play at last across the road with the ship, just as if they sought trouble and despised it. The young ducklings, who have only taken to water these few days agone, form themselves into tiny rafts and one might almost expect to see a fairy step aboard them. The fish jump out of the water, praying to be caught. They look like strips of silver ribbon. Mr. Patrick O'Kelly, who is also watching their come and go, declares this to be a sign of rain. "When birds fly low, lady, and when fish swim near the surface, it is well to bring in the clothes off the line." He also says that the plover's cry indicates rain, even as does its name—thepluvoir, or rain-bird.
There are few birds to be seen, except an occasional hawk, who seems to have no other object than to curvet about and display his clipper-built wings for our admiration. Sometimes he soars into the skies in order to exercise a keen vision that covers half the province, or, again, he appears to hang in the air with an invisible string, so perfect is his poise. It is foolish to call hawks ravening birds and to impute evil motives to them. We only do this because they like chickens and other gallinaceous fowl whose end we should prefer to be pot-pie. This is not a reprobate taste on the hawk's part, for, of course, he has never read the game-laws, nor the Book of Leviticus, and cannot be expected to know that certain flesh, in certain localities, in certain seasons, is the particular appurtenance of thegenus homo. In truth, we are so uninstructed in these laws ourselves that the government must, perforce, keep game-wardens and the churches must keep preachers to educate us more fully.
The Athabasca River, Mr. O'Kelly calculates, is about eight hundred feet wide and about twelve feet deep. Its current is about five or six miles an hour. The less said about its colour the better. At Athabasca Landing they use the water as a top-dressing for the land.
I get on well with Mr. O'Kelly because he does not mind answering questions, and I am rather stupid and do not understand irony, a fact now published for the first time.
Mr. Patrick O'Kelly started on "his own" thirty years ago in Manitoba. His name isn't really O'Kelly, but in this country a name is neither here nor there. He homesteaded one hundred and sixty statute acres, but to be a farmer one had to possess a capacity for waiting and he didn't possess it. After this, he became a prospector. Now, in prospecting, a man does not have to wait: his money is always discernible to the eye of faith. Mr. O'Kelly still holds his on this unnegotiable, spiritualistic plane. In the meanwhile he is boss of a big lumber camp over Prince Albert way. He used to be a captain on this river, but he doesn't captain any more. Some of these days he intends to take a wander back home. He hears that northern folk are foreigners in the South. This last remark is made with a rising inflection as if an answer were expected.
Who would have thought such a pathetic fear to be lurking under so confident and so square-shouldered an exterior? I can see now why Mr. O'Kelly finds it hard to get away. Without letting him know that his secret is suspected, I try to explain how it is the northerners who have changed. We pioneers talk of going home but we really never go back—that is the person who went away. This may be equally true of all migrants who go into a far country, whether it be Abraham who went into Ur of Chaldea, or Reginald of Oxford who goes into Saskatchewan.
There are several scribes on board, and one of them, "a editor in human form," gives us greeting and joins our company. He is a thin, straight young fellow with a likeable face, but his hair is shockingly awry.
"So you are an editor," says Mr. O'Kelly. "Your unpeaceable tribe has committed much damage in this country."
"What do you mean by calling us a tribe? I conceive that you are an old fool and perhaps a liberal in politics. Although I am an editor, and by no means proud, I consider myself to be much better than you."
"Young person! you mean you are no worse," answers Mr. O'Kelly, "but, in faith, I meant no offence and I am not a liberal."
Being thus reassured, the editor proceeds to discuss his difficulties with us. He has been treated with great unfairness in one of the northern towns. They gave him a fine mouthful of promises when he went there, but they gave him nothing else. They failed to pay their subscriptions and their advertisements, so that he had to leave the place naked and ashamed. Some day, he is going to write a story in an American magazine and describe this town as a real-estate office in a muskeg. It will be marrow to his bones, and he will let the magazine have the story for nothing.
Or, worse still, he will tell the truth about all the leading citizens; he will set it down without equivocation or shadow of turning.
"But you wouldn't do this latter," I argue; "only a man with ink for blood could do so terrible a thing."
"On the contrary, lady," snaps he, "I shall take blood for ink, that is what I will do."
"But," said I, "you must expect to be beat a few times in your life, little man, if you live such a life as a man ought to live, let you be as strong and healthy as you may." This was quite a clever answer, and I wish Charles Kingsley had not said it first, then it would have been original with me.
This young editor talks with so much vigor and so many gesticulations one might think he was acting a picture for a biograph machine. It is a pity his political heroes do not avail themselves of his services. As a fighter, the dear lad would have a fine genius if properly incited; also, he has a marvellous vocabulary of flaming adjectives.
There is an Indian woman on the ship who is married to a white man, who seems most kind to her. The northern woman who interpreted the Toa Song for me, says this man believes the world well lost for love, his heart being very full and his head very empty. You will observe that this northern woman is a philosopher, probably owing to the fact that she has had little to read and plenty of time to think. She was born in this country over fifty years ago but was educated in the South. At the age of sixteen, she married a Factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, and is now his widow. This year agone she has been in Europe, but has returned once more to her native North with its hidden wilds and yet unhappened things. I tell you that some secret presage lies upon this land, and one who has sensed it must come back again and again to its intangible allurement. It may be the strong, austere spirit of the land that holds one; or the vast voids of the sky, with their blue and gold, and blue and silver. Or it may be that Tornarsuk, the great devil of the Arctic, who rides on the wind, steals from their breasts the midget souls of humans so that they belong to him and must follow whither he wills. It is not for me to know the reason, or to tell it to you, for I am southron born and cannot construe aright.
Time was when this woman only tasted flour once a year. It was in New Year's Day, when her mother baked cakes for the gentlemen who came to pay their respects to her—the doctor, the missionary, the clerks at the post, or the visitors from other posts. On the first of these occasions her mother, with an ill-grounded confidence, passed the plate of cakes to the earliest visitors so that there were no cakes left for the callers who came afterwards.
When flour became more plentiful, it was her mother's custom to have cakes every Sunday evening. A cake was baked for each member of the family and one for the plate. No one dreamed of taking the last cake. It would have been accounted a gross breach of etiquette to have done so, and one not to be thought of.
"But what became of it?" I ask; "who ate it ultimately? Surely some one knew?"
Apparently no one did, for I am answered by a lift of one shoulder, suggestive of ignorance and possibly indifference—a little defensive shrug which precludes further intrusion into the subject. It is unkind of her to leave me with this worrying problem, for there are fifty-two cakes a year to be disposed of, and I may never hope to dispose of them alone.
The Indian woman who has the white husband gives me bon-bons from a box she purchased in Edmonton last week. Nothing so makes for confidence in women as to eat sweets together. Authors write much about breaking bread and the sacredness of salt, but, in actual life, nothing cements friendship like chocolate drops. This is why the woman opens her heart to me and says she desires to write a book—a great book about the white people of whom she knows many things. I have no doubt she does, and that if she put down all that is in her heart without one glance at the gallery and without trimming her language to the rules of syntax, her book would be the literary sensation of the year.
She wants to know if ever I wrote a book. Now, once I did, but it was a simple book, so that wise people did not care so much as one finger's fillip for it, but, sometime, I am going to put all their counsel together and compose a really great one. It will not be disjointed, but will flow along without a break in the smooth, natural way people talk when they are alone with their families. It shall concern psychic phenomena, yearnings, root-causes, the untrammelled life, strange decadencies, and things like that. It shall be paradoxical, epigrammatic, erudite, even vitriolic. I will pierce the self-conceit of these Canadians and tell them they have need to mend their manners; that they are primitive beasts—evenDiprotodons.
Now theDiprotodonwas a kind of ferocious kangaroo, carnivorous and predaceous, which lived in the Tertiary Period and had a skull three feet in length. Those who are not of this species, I shall designate as fanatics who cling to worn-out shibboleths over which they snarl like pestilent dogs; or prigs who affect neurotic cults that are exceedingly false and not native to this country. I will be superior and insufferably arrogant so that they may be vastly annoyed with me and rage like the Psalmist's "heathen." I shall not be kindly to any, nor say them fair words, no matter how much I may desire to, nor how much it hurts me to tell lies.
Then will the wise people take their pens in hand to say that "This writer is possessed of the discriminating sense to an extraordinary degree. She has vision, luminosity, verve, technique, and artistic self-restraint—these, and other palpable qualities which bid us hope, in spite of all which has been said to the contrary, that the time is not so hopelessly remote when Canada may lay some small claim to having a literature of her own."
Oh Me! Oh Me! This is what they will say, and I will laugh in my throat and in my sleeves. I win not care the point of one pencil what they say, so long as they refrain from using the adjective breezy. When a northern woman goes visiting and the wise people wish to be kind, they all apply this word to her. When the dubious visitor looks into the dictionary for the exact meaning of breeze, she finds it stands for either an uproar or a gentle gale. People have been murdered for less obvious errors, so that all wise people will please to be forewarned.
If you were to ask here what the Indian woman wished to write in a book about the white people, I would not be able to tell you, for, at this juncture, we all forgot to talk and crowded to the prow of the vessel to see a moose that swam boldly ahead of us in the river. He kept far enough away to be out of range, so that no one shot him. I use the word shot in deference to the untaught urban folk into whose hands this book may pass. What the men really desired was to "trump" him.
We did not see him take to the bank, for we took to the bank ourselves in order to load wood for the engine. He is a worthy gentleman, the moose, and should be well esteemed. Dropped in a thicket, hunted by wolves, unprotected save by his sharp hoof, which, however, will rip anything softer than a steel plate, he ranges the forests till his antlers are full-branched, and then, at the age of three, without costing the Province or the Indian a cent, he tips the scales at a thousand pounds of meat.
We are invited to the tent of Mrs. Jack Fish, who receives us seated. This is not owing to any lack of hospitality on her part, but because she is very old and quite blind. The Oblate Brothers say she is over a hundred years old, and truly she might pass for the honourable great-grandmother of all Canada. Her son, with whom she lives, minds a wood-pile on the Athabasca, but in the winter he has a house of logs at Tomato Creek to which he retires. All Indians live in tents from preference, and not from the sordid reason assigned them by the would-be poet who declares that "Itchie, Mitchie lives in a tent," for "He can't afford to pay the rent." There are no rented houses in this country, and no man has ever heard of a landlord. Every person holds his house, or his several houses, in fee simple. In Great Britain, these residences would be designated as "shooting boxes."
Neither would it be a sign of mental superiority on the part of the traveller to consider Jack Knife's job a menial one. Banking situations or provincial politics may have an importance in the fence country, but in boreal regions the prime test of intelligence is a knowledge of how to handle a boat or an axe.
Madam, our hostess, informs the Factor's widow that she keeps quite well except for an evil and tormenting spirit in her chest. She desires to know who are in our company, and when she learns that theOkimow, or Great Chief of the Peace River Country, is one of us, she asks for tobacco. Ah! the Chief at Fort Edmonton would be generous to her, but he is dead now and there is no tobacco to soothe her pain. When she was young, her people fought with the Blackfeet tribe in the Bear Hills, and many of the Crees were scalped. She fled through the forests to Fort Edmonton, carrying her two children on her back, but there was much rain and almost she was drowned crossing the rivers. That was many, many nesting-moons ago, and now she is old and her pipe is empty of tobacco.
"Is the kind lady going down the river to find a man?"
No! the kind lady has white hair and her man is dead.
"May be it is theOkimow?"
No! theOkimowhas a wife in the South with brown hair.
Ah well! Ah well! but it was different when she was young. Then every woman's skin was full of oil and there were many braves who loved her.
After she has been led into the open, and has had her picture taken with us, the greatOkimowtakes her back to her blankets and fills her lap with a heap of pungent tobacco. It will be many moons before our honourable great-grandmother requires a fresh supply. "An old straggler," that is what I call her, after the beggar-woman who asked Sir Walter Scott for alms.
The religion of the gentle Nazarene has cut the fighting sinews of the Indians. This was why the Christianized Hurons were brushed off the earth by the tigerish and unapproachable Iroquois. The Hurons became soft, and being soft, they became a prey. In some inexplicable way, we Anglo-Saxons have managed to keep our bumps of veneration and combativeness well partitioned or estranged and so keep mastery of the changeling tribes who permit them to commingle. This is why the Indians are a dying race in a new country. This is why our honourable great-grandmother whimpers for tobacco instead of hurling us over the bank and throwing her camp-fire on the top of us. I could almost find it in my heart to wish that she had.