At Tete Jaune Cache, they are preparing to "strike camp" and move on to Mile 149. This has been the supply station for all the outposts, which means more than you may think, for the Railway Company furnishes an amazingly generous and varied bill-of-fare to its employees.
Don't ask me what you can get here, for I won't tell lest the urban epicures whose jaded palates need tickling should start out in a body for this lodge at Tete Jaune.
And the leading man in the kitchen has the most substantial merit and can roast a sirloin of beef or bake a cake of prodigious bigness for the men's supper just as he can cunningly and designedly contrive a pimento bisque, an omelette espanol, or shrimps à la créole for the boss and his company. I'll not tell another word about the fare, but, believe me it is "with such cookery a monkey might eat his own father."
Te' Jaune, as it is familiarly called in the North, is situated on the Fraser River. Because of the snow melting on the mountains, the Fraser is swollen as if the waters surged from underneath. While we wait, swart, husky-looking men are putting off to Fort George in primitive craft built of squared logs. These boats are called scows. They are carried along by the current which is from six to eight miles an hour, and are guided by means of a paddle with a vast yellow blade.
As the men pass on and wave their hands to us, a fret falls on me to go with them along this river-road to its very end, and if you are of my kin you would want it too. We would live sturdily; we would be sopped in sunshine, and God would give us joy.
At Te' Jaune there are many tongues spoken, for the workmen hail from all over the universe. Of late, we have heard much about these foreigners and of "those nations which we, so full-mouthed, call barbarous." Certain Canadians are enwrathed and utterly discomfited because of them. It is their desire to tidy up the country by sending the "alien offscourings" to where they belong. They tell us that our manners will become corrupted and our institutions imperilled by them.
This fear of strangers is not peculiar to our country and age. Strangers have, in all lands, been looked upon as enemies to the commonwealth, and consequently to be avoided or extinguished. According to Flavius Josephus, when Moses came to die he said, "Oh you Israelites and fellow-soldiers.... I would advise you to preserve these laws to leave none of your enemies alive when you have conquered them, but to look upon it as for your advantage to destroy them all, lest if you permit them to live, you taste of their manners and thereby corrupt your own proper institutions. I do farther exhort you to overthrow their altars and their groves and whatsoever temples they have among them, and burn all such, their nation and their very memory with fire; for by this means alone the safety of your own happy constitution can be secured to you."
The Jewish constitution was not worth the price asked; neither is ours. This should be far from the spirit of Canada—"the manless land that is crying out for the landless man." Canada is the child of the nations and our husky provinces have need of these husky peoples. Not only must we open wide our doors and bid them a good welcome, but having entered, it must be our endeavour to weld them into a seemly and coherent whole.
This is a task which is half accomplished e'er it is begun, for the Russian, the Italian, the Scandinavian and all our immigrants are eager to be like the Canadians, to speak our language, to wear our clothes, and to think, talk and walk like us. Their differentiation is a burden to them and they desire to drop it as quickly as possible.
These Coming Canadians from Europe are of a fine advantage to this country where thousands of miles of roads and railways are to be built, in that they perform the more onerous tasks of digging and drainage which the Canadian, British, and American turns from as menial and unworthy. It would be a wide mistake for us to turn back from our sea-ports these unlearned and common peoples who seek entrance—as foolish as the farmer who would fear a large yield of wheat lest he could not thresh it, or a banker who dreaded an inrush of gold lest he could not count it.
It was Michael Gowda, a Ruthenian living at Edmonton, who expressed for his people their feelings of loyalty towards the land of their adoption in a poem entitled "O Free and Fresh-home Canada"—
"And are you not, O Canada, our own?Nay, we are still but holders of thy soil,—We have not earned by sacrifice and groanThe right to boast the country where we toil.
But, Canada, our hearts are thine till death,Our children shall be free to call thee theirs,Their own dear land where, gladly drawing breath,Their parents found safe homes, and left strong heirs.
Of homes, and native freedom, and the heartTo live and strive and die, if need be,In standing manfully by honour's partTo guard the country that has made us free."
They could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter.—The Pentateuch.
"Tweet, my little plover! Thy lips are like unto the bleeding strawberry."
Wasi, the father, smiled indulgently on this child-play, cooing chatter, and sweet-flavoured words of his girl-wife as she fondled their wonder-eyed baby.
And in truth, it was a round dimpled baby—a cunning, cuddling papoose that looked for all the world like a live bronze. Wasi did well to smile.
The older Braves had sneered at Wasi, "the Yellow Pine," for had he not, they asked, breathed the breath of his squaw till his heart was even as faint and soft as a squaw's heart. But Wasi of the swart face heeded not their gibes for he loved Ermi with the flaming love known only to men of hot heart and greedy senses.
"Lazy one, to sleep till sun is high," merrily chided Ermi. "Little Ninon has been awake since the dawn raised the meadow-larks."
Wasi rose hastily, for he would take the trail early to the sun-dance, and it was four suns' journey to the North.
Once, Ermi had gone when she was ten spring-tides old, but the cruelties of the scene with its shrill jubilations, had bitten themselves into her memory. Her brother had been one of the candidates for the coveted title of "Brave," and she had seen the wooden skewers thrust through the muscles of his chest by which he was suspended to a tree and from which he only freed himself by tearing away the flesh. Since then, she had been to the mission school at St. Albert, and the nuns had taught her that the body was holy, "a temple," they called it, and that the sun-dance was sinful exceedingly.
Father Lament at the cathedral had christened her Agatha, for she had come to them in February on the day of the virgin-martyr of Sicily. But Wasi was a Pagan, and called her Ermi.
Ermi busied herself laying out Wasi's beaded moccasins, his bow of cherry-wood with its leathern thong, and his arrows of Albertan willows, that were winged with eagle feathers and tipped with iron.
All the while she sang a quaint song about love.
"Why singest thou thus!" asked Wasi. "'Tis the foolish song of the hunters from the south-land."
But Ermi laughed as she sang—
"'Twas odour fledAs soon as shed,'Twas morning's winged dream;'Twas a light that ne'er can shine againOn life's dull stream."
Then, as Wasi held his pony, Ermi kissed her brave and rested her slight little body against him with love speaking in every line of its limp abandon.
Outside, the smouldering sun sank earthward in a drapery of blood-red. In the tepee, the fierce dryness of the hot winds breathed on the baby that lay dying by the open door.
The Indian women feared the measles more than any other plague, and so Ermi had been alone all the days, save only for the medicine-man who had come to her thrice. He would drive out the evil spirits who had caused the sickness, but Ermi only shook her head and held little Ninon the closer. Once, she had seen him sear the flesh of Cheneka with a burning piece of touchwood, and he had sucked the blood from the breast of Kon. Besides, Ermi was a Christian and worshipped always at the shrine of the great white virgin.
The hours passed, horrible hours, and still in her loneliness and parching anxiety she cried for the life of her baby, cried the prayers of impotence to omnipotence. Already the baby-face was old and tired, but the mother crooned and rocked her all through the night till, at dawn, the wearied eyelids drooped over the darkened eyes for the last time. The dove had found no rest for the sole of her foot.
Ermi knew where there lay a great stone in the coulee off by the river bank. She would carry her baby thence and bury it under the stone, safe from the grovelling of wolves.
Then she washed the tiny form and combed the tangles from the soft hair, looping it back from the face with a band of scarlet. "After all," she mused, "life has no beauty so wonderful as death."
And because it was the tribal belief that if a corpse were carried through a door, the next person following would shortly die, Ermi put Ninon through the window, for Wasi would come home soon and the dread fate might fall on him.
Gathering the little clod of flesh in her arms and pressing it closely, the dry-eyed mother set out on her journey across the wide-lying plains. On and on she walked, trudge, trudge, trudge, under a brazen sky that looked down pitiless and tearless.
"Oh! If Wasi were here," she thought. "He would carry the spade and I would hold little Ninon only. If Wasi were here!"
The ground reflected heat to her weary soul and body, and the weight of the world seemed to crush her frail being.
"Oh, Mother of God! Sweet Mother of God!" she moaned. "How the sun burns, and I am very tired."
But the women of the Braves are in pain and weariness often, so Ermi staggered on till she reached the coulee, with its boulder that had been carried hither by the river when it overflowed its banks at the last springtide.
Laying her burden in the shadow of the rock, Ermi hollowed out an earthen cradle for the baby. She lined it with green, too, just as they had done at school when any one died, and then passionately kissing Ninon, she wrapped a bit of blanket about her, for the living would have the dead sleep soft and warm.
Ermi tried to think a prayer, but she had forgotten them all since the nights when Ninon was sick. She could not think of even one. She only noticed that the white butterflies swam lazily to and fro like floating blossoms, and that the sunflowers were wondrously beautiful as they punctuated the rank, shaggy grass with gold. Lissome lilies swayed gently in the hot breeze and made blotches on the earth like spilled wine.
At midday, the lilt of a lark stabbed the air, and the sound roused Ermi, for she rose sharply to her feet and sang with hoarse voice and stiff lips—
"'Twas odour fledAs soon as shed;'Twas morning's winged dream;'Twas a light that ne'er can shine againOn life's dull stream."
The startled gophers darted into their cover and waited. When they looked again, the mother had packed the little form in clay, had rolled to the stone and lay face down wards on the earth. It was early dawn when she rose from her vigil.
As Ermi neared the house, she saw that Wasi had returned, and with bursting heart she ran to tell him of their sorrow. His face grew sad and stern as he listened, but again, it lit up as he took her by the hand and led her to see Asa, the woman he had brought as a wife to his hut. Asa, who would be to her as a sister, one whom she would love in the place of Ninon, the child.
There are half-hours that dilate to years, and Ermi seemed to have suddenly grown cold. It was as though the vampire vixen who haunts the muskeg swamp had suddenly sapped her youth. Ermi spoke nought, only she laughed like Kayosk, the sea-gull, as he flies across Lac Wabamun, a loud laugh and bitter, like the taste of sleugh salt in summer.
She knew the unwritten laws of their tribe permitted polygamy, but she knew not that, even in his best love, a man's heart is never entirely absorbed, that no Wasi ever belongs wholly to any Ermi, knew not that this is the tree of woman's crucifixion.
And Wasi endeavoured to comfort her, but she was only silent and motionless. He told her of the great sun-dance, and of the feastings, and of how the sisters of the youths had cut little pieces of flesh from them, but the youths cried not, for they were no weak women.
Then Ermi moved around gently and prepared food for Asa, who wore a wreath of yellow blossoms wherewith Wasi had crowned her.
Sometimes, as she moved to and fro, she stopped as in a dream to look at the glowing and beautiful body of her rival. The woman was lithe as a sapling, her cheeks were like wild red roses, and her mouth was like to a bow and arrow when it is set. Asa's hair was blue-black, but her skin was almost white, for her father had been a pale face, one of the Company's men at Fort Edmonton.
But Ermi neither spoke nor complained, even when she read in Wasi's eyes strange depths of passion as he looked on the lovely stranger. A few days agone, she would have torn this woman to pieces, but there was no rage in her heart now. The world had hardened around her, and she could not cut through.
And so four moons filled and waned, and darkness and sun passed unheeded to the stricken Ermi, for the light had gone out of her life, and from the heavens too.
The women who loved her, and even Asa, tried to break her apathy, but guessed not that her wound was past all surgery—that her life was a bitter marah into which no tree of healing could fall.
Some said the sun had kissed her when she carried little Ninon to the coulee, and others said it was the touch of God, for the world has always a name for a broken heart.
Once the wife of Tusda told her that Ninon was better off and not needing her in the least, but this only made Ermi's heart the more dull and leaden. Wazakoo thought that Ninon might have grown into such a wicked woman as the bold Asa, but the words were an insult to the innocent eyes, the little unsullied feet, the lips pure as thought of God, which the mother's eyes called up.
"Very soon, you will go also," added Taopi, but it bewildered Ermi the more to know that the little piece of ground on which she stood was crumbling too.
Another moon waned and yet she served the household. In her brain the fire still burned on. Without, on the plains, the wind made a black discord like the sobbing cry of a starved wolf, and, sometimes, it was most like the whine of a whip-thong. Manitou walked about the earth and the leaves faded and fell from the trees. Manitou blew with his breath, and the river became like flint. At the wave of his arms the animals hid away in the ground and the birds forsook their nests in the wild rice and flew far off to the south-land.
But all the days the baby called to Ermi, and often it wailed. One day the voice wooed her unto the snow, out into the sheeted storm that turned the air into a white darkness. Streaks of bitter wind screamed across the prairie. The snow cut her face with stinging lash and the cowering cold cut into her very bones. But still, without ceasing, the baby called to her. Now and then, she almost clasped it, and her soul swooned, but something intangible, impalpable ever waved her back.
And then Ermi understood that the night was closing in and that she had come a long, long way. She would go back to Wasi, for she had forgotten about the other woman. The fire would be low, he would need her and she must find him, however weary the trail.
But even as she resolved, the woman sank limply to where one finds dreams and soft reveries and where church bells toll the vesper hour. Her hands clasped her rosary, but she did not pray. She only maundered softly the foolish song of the hunters from the southland—
"'Twas odour fledAs soon as shed;'Twas morning's winged dream;'Twas a light——"
Once at school, she could not solve a problem and so she broke the slate. She remembered it quite well; it was a question in the rule of three. "How foolish!" she mused, and Ermi smiled as she remembered.
The morning dawned brightly in the coulee where a stone covered a little grave. There was nothing to be seen, nor anything to suggest that it was here Ermi had lain down to dreams. The snow had hidden her well in its white bosom, but somewhere, somehow, Ermi, the Indian woman, was working out the pitiful problem of life on another slate.
"I'll tell the tale of a northern trail,And so help me God, it's true."
I dreamed three times that I was taking this trip, and here it has come to pass.
Our party consists of an editor from Vancouver; an editor from Edmonton; a Member of Parliament, a chauffeur, and myself. I feel guiltily feminine.
The road is one hundred miles long and connects Edmonton with the North. Over it are hauled all the supplies for the settlements and trading posts clear down to the Arctic. Once arrived at Athabasca Landing, the supplies are loaded on to scows or, in the winter, to sleighs, and from thence carried to their destination. I secretly call this the Trail of Sighs, for to the freighter it is a long and weary way, especially in these later days when editors, M.P.'s and graceless witty bodies whirl past him at forty miles the hour in motors that are quite mad. Some day a teamster will kill a chauffeur for sheer spite. Even now the fuse is fizzing round the magazine, or whatever you call the gasoline receptacle under the seat.
It would be hard to declare how long this trail has been used, but I would say for a century at least. From Edmonton for a few miles out, it is called the Fort Trail because—allowing for a slight divergence—it goes to Fort Saskatchewan, the head-quarters of the Mounted Police in this district. From thence, it is called the Landing Trail.
But soon this whole country will be shod with steel, for, even now, you may see navvies building grades as you pass along the trail, and next week the first railway to the Landing will be opened for traffic. I tell you, these railways are creating a new heavens and a new earth however much the freighters may object. It is true, the trail will lose in interest once the lumbering stage coaches and heavily laden "tote" wagons have disappeared. When there are no long whips that crack like pistol shots; no night encampments around blazing fires, and no browsing cattle with tinkling bells, much of its picturesqueness will have been surrendered to the implacable cause of civilization.
From this time forth, the men who travel the trail will work for a wage. They will forget the feel of frozen bread in the teeth; the hard earth underneath them and the rough blanket against their chins. Yes! and they will also forget the fine elemental thrill that comes from hitting a running moose at long range, or a slithering wolf that lurks privily in a covert of kinikinnic. The pity of it!
No longer will our trail know the tired huskies, and still more tired runners, who each year, come February, make this homestretch to the old fur-market. The enormous bundles of fur that each spring sell for a million dollars to the bidders from Vienna, St. Petersburg, London and Chicago, will, for the future, figure as only so many untanned hides, as per bill of lading, instead of precious peltry or—supposing you to have sight and insight—"the lives o' men."
Our first stopping place is Battenberg, by the Sturgeon River. The place is not named for the lace as you might conjecture, but in honour of the son-in-law of her late Majesty, Queen Victoria. It is here the rural telephone wire comes to an end but if you are inclined to be finicky, it is not well to telephone. I tried it and had a conversation with Central in the which she expressed her opinion of me. I cannot complain that it was not informing.
The motor in which we travel has a record, not for speed, but as having made the farthest north trip on its own power. Last winter, Jack Kydd, our chauffeur, took it down the Athabasca River, on the ice, as far as the Pelican Rapids—that is to say, 225 miles north of Edmonton. "The make of the car?" you ask. I would tell you straight off and, later on, would endeavour to collect a bonus from the manufacturers were it not for the uncompromising prejudice of the publishers and their editors. Men are like that.
But I was telling you about Jack Kydd! His talent as a chauffeur is one that trails no feathers and he is a fine, likely looking lad. This day, I saw him pull the remains of a stump out of the road without breaking the axle. Such a performance should be rated as a religious act like the planting of the pipal tree in India.
All the way along, our road is contested by farmers' dogs who surge out from the shacks in a vain endeavour to regulate our speed. The dog is an incurable motophobe who says everything profane about motors that can be said.
Here is a morose young bull contesting the high way with us, refusing to budge an inch, and facing the motor with a menace. He is a grim-visaged brute and built for battle like an ironclad. His challenge to combat is a very dagger stroke of sound. Although the M.P. wagers fifty dollars on the motor, we do not try conclusions, but discreetly take to the side of the road at an angle that is truly appalling.
Even the calves are not afraid of the car and make their perilous bed in the middle of the road, thus causing us to reduce our pace to a legal one. Indeed, the only animals frightened of it are the horses. Its huge black snout and great goggle-eyes must make it seem to them like some monstrous, unthinkable brute. And, all considered, the horses are the wisest of the animals—-wiser even than men—for the yellow peril—is as nothing to the black one.
Still, we are having a mighty good time. When the road is clear, the car spreads her wings and flies. Her gentle pliancy seems incompatible with her hurtling force. Each moment, she accumulates momentum so that we feel a sensation of tremendous power without pity. For the nonce, we are potential murderers and pigmy men had better have a care how they lounge across our paths. This mad car doesn't know a hill when she comes to it and even sings a long-metre song on the ascent. She might fairly be considered to have conquered gravitation. On! On! with bird-like swoop she goes, fairly skimming the ground and taking the corners just as if she knew what was there.
You can never believe how stretched out the world is till you motor this way north and see the long ribbons of road that unfold at every turn, the silver illimitable distances that suggest both a mystery and an invitation. I love these open trails, and to be of the earth earthy is not so wicked after all.
Gur—r—r—umph! Our 50 H.P. had dwindled to less than one-pony power and we haven't a leg to stand on. I will never say we burst a tyre: we cast a shoe.
"It is neither, Madam," said the Vancouver editor who was helping to prise up the wheel. "It is a valvular disease. Our viary accident is the result of a vicious valve that, of its own volition, has put a veto on our volacious voyage."
"Avant!" retorts the editor from Edmonton. "I will vouch that the accident to the vitals of our vehicle was a voidable one and arose from violent vibrations and vulgar velocity."
"Your verbose verdicts will never make the vamp or fill the vacuum," says the more practical M.P. "Bring me the vade-mecum this instant, you vacillating vagabonds."
I cannot think of any assonant words so I am content with fining each man a "V" or "vifty" days. I told you I was guiltily feminine.
Sitting at the side of a road, waiting for a plaster to dry on a valve, is about as exciting an occupation as knitting. Men should see to it that women learn to smoke if only that the women may take breakdowns more placidly. I can understand smoking becoming a means of grace. Besides, the sun is very hot this day and burns my face and neck to a vivid scarlet. Each man in the party produces a talcum tin for my alleviation. "SunnyAlberta!" snorts the British Columbian, "SunnyAlberta! a place of sun, believe me, for people who would prefer shade."
This newly acquired habit of the modern man in carrying a talcum tin is one that, hitherto, has escaped print. I here set it down for your consideration.
While we are at work, three handsome boys drive up and stop to talk with us. I take their photograph while they pose for me on a stump. They are real-estate fans, so that their heads are full of "propositions," their pockets full of maps. They have imagination, unflagging industry, facility of expression, and love of country—qualities which are sure to bring them to the front in their gainful pursuit.
The illustrious financiers who come yearly to this province to deliver much kind advice and sage instruction, warn us to beware of these boys whom they are pleased to call "wildcatters," just as if we were the first to spend our money on the evidence of things hoped for, the substance of things not seen. The trouble which follows from over-investment in real-estate futures is attributable, not so much to the wildcatters, as to the unknown author of the multiplication table. Multiplying is our favourite occupation in Alberta even as it is in some other provinces I know of. Up here, every one who has a tongue talks about his "turn-over"; his "c'mission"; his "stake." Those who haven't tongues are the listeners. And it is a good thing to have a stake in this North-West Canada—very good. I have never yet met a person who regretted having one, but there are many regret they have not. I could tell you more about the real-estate situation only Jane Austen says if a woman knows anything she should strive superlatively to conceal it.
Fifty miles from Edmonton, we cross the Arctic watershed, so that from this point it is strictly proper to say down North, although the fall is only two feet to the mile. It is at this height of land that we look around and mentally spy out the country. We talk about the incomparable wheat fields of Grande Prairie; the water-powers of the Peace River; the oil-fields at Fort McMurray; the natural gas at Pelican Rapids; the timber berths and asphaltum of the Athabasca; of the coal, salt, fisheries, furs, and minerals spread all over and under this new and unrivalled Northland. And all this riches lies at our very feet—ours for the taking. "Hungry and I feed them," says the North. "Naked and I clothe them; thirsty and I give them——"
"No, it doesn't," says our chauffeur. "You can't get anything to drink beyond the Landing. The North is strictly a prohibition country."
"Dear me!" whines a person in the back seat, "and we are dreadfully out of tea."
At five o'clock, we stop at Eggie's for supper. Eggie broke land here fourteen years ago, and ever since has kept a stopping place for travellers. There is no need of his transporting eggs, butter, meat, grain, and vegetables to market, for the market comes to him. He makes hay when the sun shines, and also in the dark. As a result, he has accumulated sixty thousand dollars in money and gear. So far as I know, there is no eating-house with a record in any way comparable.
Eggie Jr. is a telegraph operator. His instrument is back of the cook stove over against a window. When he is away from home his young sister works the code. She picked it up while tending the stove. You can never tell what is up the sleeve of these pioneering women. I told her she was the sixth wise virgin. "The other five?" she queried with a glint of laughter in her eyes. There are other folk having supper at Eggie's. The man with the long slouchy stride is a land surveyor. They grow on every bush here.
That crisp-mannered youth with the honey-coloured hair is going down north to cap a gas well. In what better task can a youth engage than to conserve power, heat, and light for humanity? Dear young man!
Their driver quotes Cicero, and swears in Cree. He is a living example of what whisky can do for a Bachelor of Arts who entirely devotes himself to it.
By six o'clock we are again on the road, and passing through a rolling park-like country dotted with clumps of cottonwood, birch, poplar, and spruce. Sometimes, we pass lush meadow upon which graze full-fleshed cattle and comfortably rotund sheep. On one farm, a man is burning dead brushwood. There is no keener pleasure than, here and there, to thrust a core of fire into long grass or brushwood, and to watch the red tongues of flame as they greedily lap it up. As yet, no farmer has written about it, but this is only because farmers are afraid of literary critics. It is a pity the workers are so frequently inarticulate, thus leaving their joys and sorrows to be imperfectly sensed by onlookers. But, Hear, Oh Men! and rejoice with me for at this game I am not a mere onlooker, having once burnt over twenty-eight acres. In making these fires, there is a kind of madness that takes possession of you so that you pay no heed to the shrivelling of your shoes; to the scalding cinders on your hands; or the inky blackness of your face and clothes. Indeed, it would not be surprising to ultimately learn that the direful task assigned to Lucifer is not wholly without its compensations.
At long intervals, we pass fat little shacks that spread over the land instead of stretching up. At one of these, we stop to get cold water in the engine.
"Any news moving?" asks the bachelor who is overlord to the shack.
He does not wait for an answer, but proceeds to inform us that the prime knowledge a man needs for homesteading is the art of cooking in a frying pan.
His homestead is a ranch; not a rawnch. The difference, he explains, is that the former pays sometimes; the latter never.
He very kindly invites me to see his swineyard, the special pride of which is a heavy thoroughbred called "Artful Belle" ... O la! la! la!
As he upholsters his pipe with a stuffing of cut-plug, her master would have me observe that Belle's face is "dished" and that her eyes are free from wrinkles of surrounding fat. Indeed Belle is no waddling, commonplace sow; no mere animated lard keg, for she has been bred to the purple with great care.
"A bacon hog?" I ask.
"Yes, madam," he replies, "but in order that her bacon may be of the desired streakiness I feed and starve her alternately."
It makes a vast difference to a sow whether her ears stand up or lie down. Belle's ears are 'pliable' and 'silky.' Her hair doesn't comb straight either, but tends to swirls and cowlicks which are proof-positive of her blue blood in the same way that a cold nose is in a woman.
I made a grave error, too, in speaking of Belle as red. Every swine husbandman knows the technical word for her particular colour is "mahogany." She has already farrowed two litters of six, the members of which inherit their mother's fatal beauty. He tells me other things but I forget them, except that pigs can see the wind, and that they are older than history.
We take a photograph of this bachelor homesteader and promise to print it in a city paper under the caption, 'Wife Wanted.' In the North, we call a bachelor, 'an anxious one.'
The last miles of our journey are heavy going because of the hills and stones, and our motor makes a lugubrious noise internally that is wholly at variance with her velvet wheels, well lubricated machinery, and the comfortable roundness of the corner seats, as if a plump and smiling matron had suddenly started to swear.
We reach Athabasca Landing at half-past ten while daylight still lingers. Our complexions are somewhat impaired, but the man who settles the bill for the steaks and coffee says there is nothing wrong with our appetites.
Sometimes, I go a-fishing and shooting, and even then I carry a note-book, that if I lose game, I may at least bring home my pleasant thoughts!—PLINY.
I am fishing for graylings, but so far have caught none, my case being similar to that of one Chang Chi-Ho, who in the eighth century, "spent his time angling but used no bait, his object not being to catch fish."
And truth to tell, I have not even the grace of an object, unless it be to talk to the men folk who are lading the big flat scows called "Sturgeon-Heads," for the trip down the river.
By these right pleasant waters of the Athabasca, you are no longer guided by duty but throw a rein on the senses. You do things because you want to do them, and not because you ought to. This is owing to the fact that the time-table loses its thrall north of 55°. I intend stopping here a long while.
It is a sun-steeped day, and the river looks like a bed of sequins. The sun, although it is strong in Alberta, doesn't seem to ripen people like it does farther south. I can see this from the way people give me greeting and from how they tell me all that is in their hearts.
Antoine hears that far off in that place called Montreal they dig worms out of the clay for bait, and that these worms have neither shells nor fur. This must be "wan beeg lie," for how could the worms keep from freezing? It is not according to reason. These white men with trails in the middle of their hair say these things so that the Crees, who are very shrewd rivermen, will go to live in Montreal.
I heartily concur with Antoine. I have been to Montreal myself and have never seen so much as the sign of an earth-worm. They tell queer yarns, those Eastern fellows who come from down North to write books and buy land, but Antoine and I won't be fooled by them. Indeed, we won't.
Antoine caught a pike the other day without a line, but he lost it again. It was the biggest fish he ever caught, but this is only natural, and is no new thing, for ever since the first slippery fish slithered through the hands of primeval man, it has always been the biggest one that got away. Where these biggest fish foregather ultimately has always been a mystery to me. Some day, we shall discover a piscatorial paradise with millions of them in it.
Antoine presents me to Captain Shot, an Indian who has been on this river for forty-eight years. The Captain is seventy-three, and his name is really Fausennent. He is called "Shot" because he was the first man to shoot the rapids of the Athabasca. I say that Antoine "presents me" but I say it advisedly, for the North levels people, by which is meant the primitive north where they live with nature. In this environment, the man who builds boats and supplies food or fuel, is the superior of the man or woman who writes, or pronounces theories. I may be able to hoodwink the people up south as to my importance in our community, but it is different here. And this is as it should be.
Captain Shot is engaged in building a boat for the Honourable the Hudson's Bay Company, and there is even a smoking-room in it. But, Blessed Mother! it is no trouble to build a boat now—none at all, for presently the railway will be completed and the boilers and metal fixings will come in over it, but in the old days—that is to say up till now—it was different. When the Northern Navigation Co. brought in the boilers for their boats, they hauled them a hundred miles over the trail from Edmonton, and it took seventy-two horses on each boiler.
"Didn't the government help any?" I ask.
Oh yes! the late government at Ottawa tried to help transportation by sending in fifty reindeer; but the Captain has heard tell that some men swore terrible oaths at the government, and set their dogs about eating up the deer, for these men hold a kind of an idea it is railways the country hereabouts needs, but he is not quite sure as to the rights of the story.
There are four hundred men employed here at the Landing in building scows and transhipping. Only a few of the scows are brought back, for they have to be tracked up by power of man. For this reason, a new flotilla is built each year.
Captain Shot has many estimable sons, all of whom are rivermen and shipbuilders. They could hardly be expected to disgrace their name by becoming mere farmers or teamsters after the unwisdom of the white man's way. Ho! Ho! the idea of any one wishing to become a farmer.
But I was telling you about the scows. Unless you sat here catching fish, you could never believe how much stuff can be packed into a scow. As I watch the men at work, I think of Mark Twain's ambitious blue-jay who tried to fill a house with acorns. Still the men do not seem lacking in confidence, and keep wading backward and forward through the water with sacks of flour, slabs of bacon, chests of tea, crates of hardware, tins of stuff, and treasures in boxes that can only be guessed at. I am hoping the biggest box contains dolls, ribbons, work-bags, picture books, peppermint bull's eyes, and things like that, for a mission school Christmas-tree somewhere down near the Arctic. I am almost praying that it does.
The smaller boxes are called permits, and each contain six bottles of whisky. These are for the pioneering gentlemen at the different posts who are delicate, and who honestly desire to get strong.
Each permit is signed by a doctor so that the liquor must be considered strictly as medicine. Irritating people who fail to understand that there are only two licensed hotels between Edmonton and the North Pole, sneer about there being a thousand delicate men on the rivers; but, for my part, I am inclined to stand by the doctors, although I have always held the clinical thermometer to be the only thing about the medical profession with an integrity beyond question.
If any one should glean from reading these lines that all there is to loading a scow is to load it, he or she is a much misled person. The last bale is hardly stowed away till two of the men have disappeared. No one saw them go, least of all the Boss, but any one can see they are not here now. The Boss is a creature of steel who seems to forget there is much to be done in the last hour or two before a boatman leaves the Landing for the stretched out journey beyond. Various purchases are to be made; people are to be seen; drinks are to be had against a long, long thirst, to mention nothing of new vows to Marie, Babette, and Josephine.
After awhile, the voyageurs are all rounded up with the exception of Luke. The best the Boss can say for Luke is that he has been given a Christian name. Jake is sent to fetch him. Luke turns up, but Scotty must find Jake. Luke isn't drunk either—not he. It's the scow that's drunk. Who said Luke was "fuller'n a goat," I'd like to know. Ultimately, the Boss starts off to get Scotty and Jake. He gets them, and he sits them down in a highly decisive manner, only to find that Bill, and Jean Baptiste, and One-eyed Pete have gone up town for a dunnage bag they left at the Grand Union Hotel.... The Boss looks eight feet tall when he is angry, but, otherwise, to the unseeing eye, he is only a young factor, or maybe an independent trader, intent on his work like scores of other ordinary, unaccounted workmen. Contrawise, the eye of imagination may see in him an adventuring gentleman launching a craft that is to traverse for hundreds of miles through many and diverse waterways, carrying with it a veritable cargo of blessings to the far and lonely outposts of the North which, as yet, are little else than names.
The rivermen push off from shore with their oars till, in the centre of the stream, the current catches them and carries them along. This is their only method of locomotion, to float and float with the stream. They have a steering-pole in the scow similar to that which may be seen in pictures of old Roman galleys, and when, because of darkness, the voyageurs wish to stay their course, they make to shore by its aid, even as the Romans did more than two thousand years ago. To make the simile complete, I stand on the bank and repeat the invocation of the Roman poet: "Oh ship that conveyest Virgil to Greece, duly deliver up the precious life entrusted to thy care."...
If I hadn't jerked the crown of an old hat out of the river under the impression that it was a fish, Justine would not have laughed out loud and I would not have had an excuse to get acquainted with her. She has been sitting nearby this half-hour. Her name isn't really Justine and I forget what it is. She is the prettiest breed-girl in the country and, by the same token, the frailest. "Believe me, Madam," explained an old officer of the Mounted Police, the other day, "those eyes were never given her for the good of her soul. She is a little worth-nothing person like all the other breed-girls."
This man despises breed-women and he has made a sufficiently intimate study of them to form an opinion. He wishes they were all dead. "For an absolute truth, Madam, listen to me. For years, these women have paddled their canoes up this river with kegs of contraband liquor a-swing from ropes beneath and none of the force ever suspected. They were so monstrously civil, they would even give us 'a lift' if we desired it. I was highly surprised when we found them out, and so disgusted with myself that, for a time, I thought of becoming a type-setter. By Jove! you know; a fellow doesn't expect to find a keg outside a canoe. Now does he?"
But I am not one of those who believe there are good women and bad women. Some are elemental and others are not; that is the only difference. I will maintain this to the very day my tongue wears out.
Justine's white father must have had a head and shoulders of the most perfect classical type. As she sits on the beach with a light shawl drawn down over her head, this girl resembles greatly the Madonna of Bouguereau. I tell her this, and we talk for a long while. She thinks my suggestion that she marry a riverman, or a trapper, and have quite a large family, a wholly foolish suggestion. It causes her to think little of both my discernment and my knowledge of men. Rivermen, she would have me understand, hardly ever come home, and when they do, only to get drunk and beat their wives. A white man won't marry a breed girl, nowadays, and if he should give her his heart, he expects it to be returned sometime. Still, Justine considers his transient affections to be preferable to those of the breed's, in that a white man seldom strikes his girl. Justine gives me a short lesson in Cree, and, among other words, I learn thatsaky hagenis the equivalent of "one I love," and thatnichimoosmeans "sweetheart." The former is usually applied to a child, the latter to an adult.
When I ask Justine to tell me a story about the North, she complies because she has been educated in a mission school and speaks English well. And then she is not in the least afraid of me since I showed so lamentable a lack of insight about marriage. Now listen to the story.
Once a mallard who was sick of love asked a blackbird to marry him. "Marry me," he said, "and I will give you fish to eat and wild rice. And when the sun is hot, I will hide you in the rushes and keep you under my wings."
And so they lived together as man and wife and the blackbird bore her husband three sons, but soon he tired of her and made believe he was dead so that she went away and left him in peace.
And then the mallard went in search of another wife.... It was a story I craved of Justine, and lo! she has told me a parable.