CHAPTER IX

Hudson's Bay House, Fort SimpsonHudson's Bay House, Fort Simpson

"I may observe that in addition to the specimens asked for, any mice, bats, shrew-mice, moles, lizards, snakes or other small quadrupeds or reptiles would be acceptable. They may either be skinned or placed in rum or strong spirits of any kind, a cut being first made in the side of the body to admit the spirits to the intestines."

Of all the rare humour disclosed in the old records, this entry most tickles my fancy.

I think of the little group that we had forgathered with at Chipewyan, driven even in this year of grace to lavender-water and red ink, when permits run dry. One turns back the clock to the time of the Chartists and the year of the nuptials of the young Queen in England. We see up here on the fringe of things the dour and canny but exceedingly humorous Adam McBeaths, John Lee Lewises, and George Simpsons, the outer vedette of the British Empire; and, seeing them, get some half-way adequate conception of what a modicum of rum or "strong spirits of any kind" meant in the way of cheer at old Fort Simpson in those days. When we try to get a picture of one of these Hudson's Bay men gravely opening a shrew-mouse, mole, or "other small quadruped," while his chum pours in theaqua vitaeor precious conversation water, we declare that science asks too much.

An outer stairway leading to the second story of a big building invites us. Opening the door, we find ourselves in the midst of an old library, and moth and rust, too, here corrupt. We close the door softly behind us and try to realise what it meant to bring a library from England to Fort Simpson a generation ago. First, there arose the desire in the mind of some man for something beyond dried meat and bales of fur. He had to persuade the authorities in England to send out the books. Leather-covered books cost something six or seven decades ago, and the London shareholders liked better to get money than to spend it. We see the precious volumes finally coming across the Atlantic in wooden sailing-ships to Hudson Bay, follow them on the long portages, watch them shoot rapids and make journeys by winter dog-sled, to reach Simpson at last on the backs of men. The old journals reveal stories of the discussion evoked by the reading of these books afterward as, along with the dried fish, deer-meat, and other inter-fort courtesies, they passed from post to post. Was never a circulating library like this one. And now the old books, broken-backed and disembowelled, lie under foot, and none so poor to do them reverence. Everything is so old in this North that there is no veneration for old things.

It is but a few years since the founder of this library died, and his son now sits in his saddle at Fort Simpson. If you were to wander across the court, as I did to-day, and look into the Sales Shop, you would see the presentation sword of this last-generation Carnegie, ignobly slicing bacon for an Indian customer.Sic transit gloria mundi!

What are the books which this sub-Arctic library sent out? We get down on the floor and gently touch the historic old things. Isn't it Johnson who says, "I love to browse in a library"? Judging by the dust and cobwebs, there hasn't been much browsing done among these volumes for years. Present-day Simpson has seldom "fed on the dainties that are bred in a book." Here is a first edition ofThe Spectator, and next it aLife of Garrick, with copies ofVirgil, and allVoltaireandCorneillein the original. A set of Shakespeare with exquisite line drawings by Howard shows signs of hard reading, and so does theApology for the Life of Mr. Colly Cibber. One wonders how a man embedded in Fort Simpson, as a fly in amber, would ever think of sending to theGrand PaysforBurton's Anatomy of Melancholy, yet we find it here, cheek by jowl withThe Philosophy of Living or the Way to Enjoy Life and Its Comforts. The Annual Register of History, Politics, and Literature of the Year 1764looks plummy, but we have to forego it. The lengthy titles of the books of this vintage, as for instance,Death-Bed Triumphs of Eminent Christians, Exemplifying the Power of Religion in a Dying Hour, bring to mind the small boy's definition of porridge—"fillin', but not satis-fyin'." Two more little books with big titles areActors' Budget of Wit and Merriment, Consisting of Monologues, Prologues and Epilogues, andThe London Prisons, with an Account of the More Distinguished Persons Who Have Been Confined in Them.

But the book that most tempts our cupidity isMemoirs of Miss A—— n, Who Was Educated For a Nun, with Many Interesting Particulars. We want that book, we want to take it on with us and read it when we reach the Land of the Eskimo, where the Mackenzie slips into the Arctic by all its silver mouths. We lift the volume up, and put it down again, and we hunger to steal it. Jekyll struggles with Hyde. At last the Shorter Catechism and the Westminster Confession of Faith triumph; we put it down and softly close the door behind us. And ever since we have regretted our Presbyterian training.

At Fort Simpson, it is like walking across a churchyard or through an old cathedral. Here men lived and wrought and hoped, cut off from their kind, and did it all with no thought of being heroic. We walk along the shore to watch Indian women busied in making a birchbark canoe and in washing clothes with washboards—the old order and the new. A little dive into the mosquito-ridden woods discloses a wonderful patch of Pyrola and a nest of Traills' flycatcher, and makes us wish that the minutes were longer and the mosquitoes fewer. What a beautiful tiling this Pyrola is, with its inverted anthers and the cobwebby margins of its capsule! Its bracted, nodding flowers run through all shades of white, pale yellow, and dark yellow.

Down on the beach we chat with a prospector and his son, a lad of fifteen, who are building a skiff in which to ascend the Liard, hunting gold. Yesterday a Mr. and Mrs. Carl and a Mr. and Mrs. Hall passed us on the river. Outfitted for two years, they will prospect for gold in the Nahanni Mountains and toward the headwaters of the Liard. One of the couples has just come out from Glasgow and this is their honeymoon. We half envy them their journey. Can anything compare with the dear delights of travelling when you do not know and nobody knows just what lies round the next corner?

A Slavi Family at Fort SimpsonA Slavi Family at Fort Simpson

The dogs at Simpson are "wicked." Picking our way among them, I particularly approve this term of the natives, attributing as it does a human conception and malice aforethought to these long-legged wraiths. The first articulate sound an Indian child of the Mackenzie learns to make is "Mash!" an evident corruption of the French "Marche." This is what Shakespeare meant when he speaks of "a word to throw at a dog." A brown baby just emerged from the cocoon stage of the moss-bag toddles with uplifted pole into a bunch of these hungry mongrels and disperses them with a whack of the stick and the lordly "Mash!" of the superior animal. For our own part we are "scared stiff," but follow along in the wake of our infant protector to a wee wooden church which staggers under the official title, "The Cathedral of St. David."

A Slavi Type from Fort SimpsonA Slavi Type from Fort Simpson

We have had occasion to speak of the splendid service rendered to Northern and Western Canada by the Hudson's Bay Company and by the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. A third factor through the years has been building Empire with these. Are we not as a people too prone to minimise the great nation-building work performed by the scattered missionaries in the lone lands beyond the railway? Ostensibly engaged in the work of saving souls, Canadian missionaries, both Roman and English, have opened the gates of commerce, prosecuted geographical discovery, tried to correct social evils, and added materially to our store of exact science. Through their influence, orphanages have been founded, schools established, and hospitals opened. Creeds take a secondary place to deeds in this land, and when you discuss a man, be he cleric or layman, the last thing you ask is, "To what church does he belong?" Incidentally, it does seem rather odd that with Scottish blood running through the veins of nine-tenths of the people of this North as yet no Presbyterian missionary has penetrated beyond the latitude of Edmonton. The great Churches of England and Rome, north of the Athabasca, divide the field between them.

The records of the whole missionary world show no more striking figure than that of Bishop Bompas of the Anglican Church. We have already had two glimpses of this young Cockney curate; once, hoisting his homemade Union Jack on the ox-cart at St. Cloud, and, again, passing north as the wild-fowl flew south in October, 1865, chronicled by the Chipewyan scribe merely as "a Protestant missionary coming in a canoe from the Portage." In the forty years of missionary life which intervened between his coming into the North and his death in the Yukon just two years ago, only twice did the Bishop emerge from these Northern fastnesses. It is literal truth to state that no one on any part of the world's map has ever made so many long and toilsome journeys as did this man. With his sheep scattered over a country a million square miles in extent, we might compare a parochial visit of this parson to a barge-journey from London to Constantinople, replacing the European capitals by Hudson's Bay forts, and substituting for Europe's vineyards and pleasant vales an unbroken line of jack-pine and muskeg.

We are told that Bishop Bompas's father was Dicken's prototype for Sergeant Buzfuz. A new vista would open up to the counsel for Mrs. Bardell could he turn from his chops and tomato-sauce to follow the forty-years' wandering in the wilderness of this splendid man of God, who succeeded, if ever man succeeds, in following Paul's advice of keeping his body under.

Bishops Bompas was one of the greatest linguists the Mother Country ever produced. Steeped in Hebrew and the classics when he entered the Northland, he immediately set himself to studying the various native languages, becoming thoroughly master of the Slavi, Beaver, Dog-Rib, and Tukudk dialects. When Mrs. Bompas sent him a Syriac testament and lexicon, he threw himself with characteristic energy into the study of that tongue. There is something in the picture of this devoted man writing Gospels in Slavi, primers in Dog-Rib, and a Prayer Book in syllabic Chipewyan, which brings to mind the figure of Caxton bending his silvered head over the blocks of the first printing-press in the old Almonry so many years before. What were the "libraries" in which this Arctic Apostle did his work? The floor of a scow on the Peace, a hole in the snow, a fetid corner of an Eskimo hut. His "Bishop's Palace," when he was not afloat, consisted of a bare room twelve feet by eight, in which he studied, cooked, slept, and taught the Indians.

They tell you stories up here of seeing the good Bishop come back from a distant journey to some isolated tribe, followed at heel by a dozen little Indian babies, his disciples for the days to come. Bishop Bompas lived in one continent, but manifested in two, keeping himself closely in touch with the religious and Church growth of the Old World. When the British press had been given over to any particular religious-controversial subject, and the savants had finally disposed of the matter to their own satisfaction, travelling out by summer traverse or winter dog-sled would come a convincing pamphlet by Bishop Bompas, to upset altogether the conclusions of the wranglers.

There is one tale of this man which only those can appreciate who travel his trail. An Indian lad confides to us, "Yes, my name is William Carpenter—Bishop Bompas gave me my name, he was a good man. He wouldn't hurt anybody, he never hit a dog, he wouldn't kill a mosquito. He had not much hair on his head, and when it wasmeetsu, when the Bishop eat his fish, he shoo that mosquito away and he say, 'Room for you, my little friend, and room for me, but this is not your place: go.'"

We call upon the present incumbents of the little church of St. David. They are young people, the Rev. and Mrs. Day, putting in their first year in this Northern charge. Their home with its spotless floors and walls papered with old copies ofThe GraphicandIllustrated London Newsis restful and attractive. The garden of the parsonage shows an amount of patient work on the part of some one. Potatoes eighteen inches high and peas twice the height of this, with turnips and cabbages and cauliflower are good to look at. There are records to show that, years ago, Fort Simpson produced tomatoes and decent crops of barley.

Interior of St. David's CathedralInterior of St. David's Cathedral

Entering the little church we see the neat font sent here by Mrs. Bompas, "In dear memory of Lucy May Owindia, baptised in this Church, January, 1879." Owindia was one of the many red waifs that the good Bishop and Mrs. Bompas took into their big hearts. Her story is a sad one. Along the beach at Simpson,Friday, an Indian, in a burst of ungovernable temper murdered his wife and fled, leaving their one baby to perish. It was not until next day that the little one was found, unconscious and dying. The Bishop and Mrs. Bompas took the child into their loving care. To the name Owindia, which meansThe Weeping One, was added the modern Lucy May, and the little girlie twined herself closely round the hearts of her protectors. When the time seemed ripe, Owindia was taken back to England to school, but the wee red plant would not flourish in that soil. She sickened and died. Hence the memorial and the inscription we read this July day. Much history of militant energy, much of endurance, and countless chapters of benevolence did the good Bishop write into the history of the North before, off on the Yukon side in 1906, "God's finger touched him and he slept."

Missionaries of the present day are not without their troubles. Mrs. Day tells of potato-whiskey making in some illicit still back in the mosquito-woods, the results of which she fears; and, even as we speak, an Indian lunatic pokes his head through the palings of the potato-patch. From far back in Fort Nelson, British Columbia, and from Fort Liard, the Hudson's Bay men have come to make their reports to Mr. Brabant at Simpson. They brought their wives and babies with them, brought also a quantity of beautiful porcupine-quill work, Fort Liard being one of the few places in the North where this art flourishes. Tomorrow they will start back, tacking against the stream, as the imported brides are doing before them.

To dive into the journals of the past, of which the loft above the offices here at Simpson is full, is even more interesting than talking with the people of the present. We take 1837, the year which saw the accession in England of the young and well-beloved Queen, and from these musty books unearth a running commentary of what is doing in Fort Simpson in that year.

"1837, January 1. The people were brought into the Hall, and enjoyed their meal with great appetites, being also treated to a glass of wine and a fathom of tobacco and a pipe. Wind East."

"1837, February 11. Rabbits are numerous, but the ladies of the Establishment make no great effort in snaring them."

"1837, February 14. Late last night arrived a woman,Thawyase, and a boy, the family of the lateThoesty. They have all come to take refuge here as they are starving. The woman at dusk decoyed old Jack away to camp in the woods—and the old fellow has found a mate."

One wonders if eitherThawyase, the decoyed Jack, or the old chronicler was conscious of the fact that this was St. Valentine's Day.

"1837, March 27. Two geese have been seen to-day, the first this season."

"1837, May 2.Marcelsowed some oats. Mosquitoes begin to become annoying."

"1837, May 5. Wild fowl are beginning to frequent the small lakes of the neighbourhood. The willows and young trees are now budding forth beautifully."

"1837, May 18.Hopebegan to plough this morning with the bull, but as this is the first time he has been yoked, the day's work is found to be but poor."

"1837, May 19. Felix and Roderick McLeod made twelve bags of pemmican to-day."

1837, May 21. The Mackenzie River broke up to-day, and continued drifting pretty thick till evening."

"1837, June 18. Some of the Indians killed a bear before the door and it supplied us with a little fresh meat."

"1837, June 19. Flies so numerous that we are under the necessity of putting our cattle into the stable, otherwise they will fall victims to the cruel insects."

"1837, June 20. Weather very suffocating, thermometer 85 above at three p.m., not as much as a cloud to be seen in the firmament and not the least air to afford any refreshment; this along with the solitude of the time is enough to make people dull. No Indian from any quarter: well supplied with ammunition last spring, they forget us when they can get their own mouths satisfied. Ashley grinding barley in the steel mill."

"1837, June 21.Le Marihas just brought in some fish and a little bearskin in order to get a chemise, he says he is not able to hunt without a chemise, as there are so many flies just now. I have taken it upon myself to give him the shirt on credit."

Here a new hand writes the records, untrammelled by any orthographic rules.

"1837, June 24. Flys very numerus and trublsome to the Cattel."

"1837, July 11. Starvan Indians going and coming ourly."

"1837, July 13. Six squas arrived with plenty Bearrys—that's all they subsist on in this part of the River."

"1837, July 26. Barley is getting ripe. But small birds nip off the ends of the stalks as fast as it ripens."

"1837, August 23. Last night the bull broke into one of the gardens where oats was sown and eat the whole up."

"1837, September 18. An Express arrived from Fort Norman with despatches from the Gentlemen of the Arctic Discovery Expedition, and it is most satisfying to learn that the first object of the Expedition was successfully accomplished: on the 4th August the Company's flag was planted on Point Barrow."

"1837, September 19th.Lousonput parchment in the window-frames."

"1837, October 11. Ice is forming since yesterday along the beach."

"1837, November 1. This being the holiday for All Saints, the men though no saints celebrated it off duty. The weather cold but fine."

"1837, November 2. I have been these two days occupied with the blacksmith in making an oven, and this evening it being finished we give it a fair trial by placing a large trout in it for supper and it is found to answer most excellently."

"1837, November 3. Strong northwest wind with drift and cold. About one o'clock of last night the Aurora had a most unusual appearance, seemingly black in place of the white commonly observed and forming an arch from east to west, consisting of five streaks, here and there broken off."

"1827, November 5. Blacksmith making iron runners for our traineaux from old gun-barrels."

"1837, November 30. This being the anniversary of the Tutelar Saint of Scotland, we had in addition to our usual dinner a roasted swan and a moose-nose, a rice pudding, a cranberry tart, and a glass of wine."

"1837, December 1. I was obliged to give four pounds of dried meat to the dogs for there are some that are almost dead and they et all the windows of the Forge."

"1837, December 2. Three of the Fort women fell into a fit of insanity and kept all of the men at the Fort to hold them and prevent them devouring themselves."

December 25. Thermometer 35 below the cypher this morning, this being Christmas no labour done. Wind N.W."

"1838, January 1. The morning was ushered in by a salute fired by our people at the windows and doors, after which they came to wish us a Happy New Year—and in return, in conformity to the custom of the country they were treated, the men with half a glass of brandy each, and the women with a kiss, and the whole of them with as many cakes as they choose to take and some raisins. One of our gentlemen who had a bottle of shrub treated them to a glass, and after some chit-chat conversation they retired, firing a salute on going out. In the evening they played at Blind-man's-buff, concluding the fête by a supper in the Hall. I also gave each of the men a fathom of twist tobacco and a clay pipe."

"With souls grown clear

In this sweet atmosphere,

With influences serene,

Our blood and brain washed clean,

We've idled down the breast

Of broadening tides."

—Chas. G.D. Roberts.

About ten o'clock on the evening of July loth, in broad daylight, we push out from Fort Simpson, with the whole population, white, red, and parti-coloured, on the banks to bid us good-bye. We have seen present-day Simpson and opened for a little way the volume of the past. We try to imagine what it is like in winter-time, and a picture pushed into our hands at parting gives us another viewpoint, showing the hamlet photographed by the light of the Aurora. As we leave Fort Simpson, the Mackenzie's channel is a mile wide and it increases in width as we proceed. For about seventy-five miles the course of the river is due northwest, running four miles an hour. The banks look low, but when the pilot takes us close in to shore, we see that it is the size of the river which has cheated our eyes, and the cliffs that seemed so low-lying will measure two hundred feet or over. At the Great Bend we impinge against two peaks, Mt. Camsell and Mt. Stand Alone, and here the Nahanni joins the Mackenzie. The great river takes a due north course for another thirty miles, and the Willow River flows in from the east.

Fort Simpson by the Light of the AuroraFort Simpson by the Light of the Aurora

At this point the Mackenzie enters the Rockies, this great spinal mountain-chain of North America breaking into parallel ranges to allow the mighty flood to flow between. We feel, as the boatman did on Lake Athabasca, that a day is as long as you can go without stopping. A ladder takes us to a seat by the side of Tenny Gouley in the pilot-house, who merely drops the window to give us an unobstructed view, and says nothing. Tenny Gouley is one of the rare people who understand. Talk of civilising these half-breeds of the North! They have that gift of repose which we know nothing of, which we may hope to attain after we have lived through automobiles and air-ships and when many incarnations will have allayed the fever of that unrest which we so blatantly dub "progress."

It is an ancient something, this unmapped Mackenzie into whose silence we intrude. Before man was, these waters had cut for themselves a road to the ocean. These banks were once marked by the mammoth. Previous to the Glacial Age, prehistoric man here hunted prehistoric prey; eons passed; and when the Ice Age went out, willows and aspens occupied the silt, delicate flower-growth flourished, and birds sang in the branches.

Three thousand miles of waterway, forest-fringed and rampart-guarded, and of its treasures the world knows naught! They await man's development and acceptance—banks of pitch, wells of oil, outcroppings of coal, great masses of unmined salt, mineral wealth uncounted and unguessed. Silent forests have followed us from where we entered the Athabasca, and these woods persist to where the great river divides into its delta channels. Of the mineral wealth of the Liard, the Peace, the Nahanni, and the half hundred other waterways tributary to the Mackenzie, practically nothing is known. There remain in these streams hundreds of miles unnavigated, and channels innumerable known only to theinconnuand the Indian.

It is one hundred and twenty years since Mackenzie descended this stream to its mouth, "discovering" a river along whose shores centuries before had smoked the watch-fires and risen the tepees of an anterior race, wanderers from Asia, who here, guiltless alike of onlooker or chronicler, lived and loved and worked out their drama of life. Age follows age, a new generation is evolved in the new habitat, and in time these once-migrants from Asia are dubbed "the red men" and "the American Indian."

We watch out the night with Tenny Gouley. In the early morning, sharply turning a corner, we flush a mixed family of water-fowl—gulls in great variety, something that looks like a brant, and a loon with its uncanny laughter. Snipe are on every batture, and sand-pipers, with kingfishers and all the lesser waders. The boreal summer is short and if broods are to be raised there is no time to waste. A riot of blossoms fringes the banks—the uplifted magenta torches of the fireweed, tufts of vivid golden-rod, the pink petals of the rose, and a clustering carpet of moss dotted with the dead white of the dwarf cornel. Now and again a splash breaks the silence, as great slices of the bank, gnawed under by the swollen river, slip into the current, carrying each its cargo of upstanding spruce. So the channel of the Mackenzie is ever being modified, and no permanent chart of its course can be attempted.

Winter changes all this. With October the leaves fall and the waters begin to crisp into ice, fishes and fowl part company, the birds fly south to kinder skies, theinconnuhurry northward seeking the sea. Out of the sky comes the snow, the half-breed's "Le convert du bon Dieu," silent, soft, and all-covering. The coat of fox and rabbit and ptarmigan whitens, too. It is the coming of stern winter. Wandering Dog-Rib, Slavi, and Loucheux, lone trapper, the people of each isolated fur-post, must alike take warning. God pity man or beast who enters the six months of a Mackenzie winter unfortified by caches of food or unwitting of shelter.

According to Tenny Gouley there are but two seasons in this country: the ice season and the mosquito season. He likes winter best. As he holds the wheel in those clever hands of his, we fill and light his pipe for him, and half a dozen of his illuminating phrases give us a clear-cut etching of the winter story. From the lowest form of life to the highest it is a struggle for existence. Sinuous as a serpent, the mink in his man-envied coat winds among the willows on rapine bent, the marten preys upon the field-mouse, the lynx hunts the hare, each form of life pursues a lower while hiding from a higher, and all are the prey of the great hunter, man.

In these high latitudes it is the wind that is feared rather than the intense cold. Before the coming of the missionary, the Indian of the Mackenzie basin heard in the winter wind no monition. The storm spoke not to him of Divine wrath or an outraged Deity. The wind was the voice of God, but it assured the heathen Slavi of protection and power—the Gitchi Manitou coming out of the all-whiteness to talk with his children.

Spring up here is but a flutter of invisible garments; even when one is saying "Spring," full-blown summer is hot afoot. In high noon, in the open places, pools of water form in the ice. With glee is hailed the honk of the first wild goose, the coats of ptarmigan and rabbit thin and darken. There is water on the trail of the kit-fox. The subsidiary streams that feed the Mackenzie fill their banks and flush the rotting ice. With a crash, the drift-logs, with pan-ice and floating islands and all the gathered debris, roll headlong to the frozen ocean.

Do we wonder that Indians worship the great forces of Nature? Gloomy and wide-reaching between her banks of tamarack and spruce, now opening into a lake expansion, here narrowing between her stony ramparts, but ever hurrying on and on and on to that far ocean of ice, the Mackenzie has always been good to her own, the self-contained and silent people along her banks. In this vast land men speak not of bread as the staff of life; their unvoiced prayer is, "Give us our fish in due season." From the waters of this river, since man was, have the Indians drawn and dipped and seined their sustenance—inconnu, jack-fish, grayling, white-fish, and loche. The wide bosom of the Mackenzie, in winter's ice or summer's spate, forever has been the people's highway—a trail worn smooth by sled-runner and moccasin in the ice-season, melting its breast in the spring-time to open a way to the questing bow of the birch-bark.

Along these banks, forgotten tepee-poles, deserted fish-stage, and lonely grave remain, a crumbling commentary of yesterday, a hint of recurring to-morrows. Son succeeds father, race replaces race, but the great Mackenzie flows on, and, as it flows, unwritten history along these banks is ever in the making. Tragedy and triumph, self-aggrandisement and self-obliteration, are here as well as in the noisy world we have left. Lessons these are for us, too, if we bring the keen eye and listening ear. Among Mackenzie tribes no Yellow-Knife, Dog-Rib, or Slavi starved while another had meat, no thievish hand despoiled the cache of another. A man's word was his bond, and a promise was kept to the death. Not all the real things of life are taught to the Cree by the Christian. Courage is better than culture, playing the game of more importance than the surface niceties of civilisation, to be a man now of more moment than to hope to be an angel hereafter.

About noon we reach Fort Wrigley, and are boarded by priests and Indians all interested in the new steamer and impressed with its size. One asks if it is a boat or an island, and another declares it is "just like a town." Fort Wrigley is an inconspicuous post with a dreary enough record of hunger and hardship. We find it rich in flowers and will always remember it as the one place in the North in which we gathered the fringed gentian (Gentiana crinata) with its lance-shaped leaves, delicately-fringed corollas, and deep violet blue. The fringed gentian is rapidly becoming a thing of the past in a great many localities, and it gives us pleased surprise to find it far up in latitude 63°. Purple asters are here, too, and the heart-shaped seed-pods of shepherd's-purse or mother's-heart. Wrigley adds to our collection the green-penciled flowers of the grass of Parnassus, with wild flax, and both pink and purple columbines already forming seed.

Below Wrigley rugged ranges border both sides of the river at a distance from the shore-line of ten or twelve miles, and we come to Roche Trempe-l'eau or "The Rock by the Riverside," an outcrop of Devonian limestone rising on the right bank a sheer fifteen hundred feet above the river. We come into view of the "boucans" or beds of lignite coal which have been continuously burning here since Mackenzie saw them in 1789 and mistook their smoke for tepee fires. At this point of his journey, had Mackenzie been a timorous man, he would have turned back, for natives came to meet him and told him with great empressment that it would require several winters to get to the sea and that old age would come upon him before the period of his return. He would also encounter monsters of gigantic stature adorned with wings. They added that there were two impossible falls in the river, and described the people of the Arctic coast as possessing the extraordinary power of killing with their eyes. These Indians told Mackenzie of "small white buffalo" which they hunted to the westward. Perhaps they meant the mountain sheep, theSass-sei-yeunehor "Foolish Bear" of the Slavis.

Indians at Fort NormanIndians at Fort Norman

It is midnight in the midst of a howling wind-storm when we come abreast of Fort Norman where Bear River, the outlet of Great Bear Lake, makes into the Mackenzie. It is not an easy thing to handle the big steamer in a swift current and in the teeth of a storm like this, and we have been in more comfortable places at midnight. However, after running with the current, backing water, and clever finesse, we come safely to anchor against the shore opposite the Fort, under the lee of Bear Rock. This is a fourteen-hundred foot peak which starts up from the angle formed by the junction of the Bear River with the Mackenzie.

The water of Bear River is clear and its current swift through the whole of its hundred-mile course. Great Bear Lake, known chiefly to the outside world from the fact that Sir John Franklin established winter-quarters here at Fort Confidence, is an immense sheet of water, probably 11,500 square miles in extent, and bigger even than Great Slave Lake. Five arms meeting in a common centre give the lake an unusual shape, the longest distance from shore to shore being one hundred and fifty miles. The south and west banks are well wooded, and we are surprised to learn that the lake remains open at the outlet until very late in the autumn and sometimes throughout the whole winter.

March sees the greatest depth of snow at Great Bear Lake, probably three feet. In mid-April the thaws begin, and by May-day arrive the earlier water-fowl. By the end of May the herbaceous plants begin to leaf, frogs are heard, and there is bright light at midnight. The end of July brings blueberries, and at this time stars are visible at midnight. September is ushered in by flurries of snow, and by the tenth of October the last of the wild-fowl depart; but it is often Christmas Day before the centre of the lake freezes over.

When we awake it is Sunday, July 12th, Orangeman's Day, with no one going round with a chip on his shoulder, and nobody to whistle "Boyne Water." The wind falling, the steamer is turned and we bear away across the river to Fort Norman, leaving the shelter of Bear Rock, the "Nest of the Wind" of the Indian. Tradition and superstition hang round this great butte, with its heart of coloured gypsum several hundred feet in thickness, and on its face we plainly see the three beaver-skins that the Great Spirit, "in the beginning," spread out there to dry. We find Fort Norman a beautiful place in the sunshine of this Sunday morning, the souls of its scanty populace well looked after by Roman and Protestant missionary. Bishop Breynat is expected on the mission boat coming up the river, and all is excitement among the sheep belonging to his particular flock. The parson of the other fold is in his library, and, visiting him, we duly admire his neat garden of potatoes and peas, beets and turnips. The reverend gentleman owns up to finding Norman lonely in winter and recalls with appreciation his last charge in the outports of Newfoundland, where the tedium was relieved by tennis and pink-teas.

Roman Catholic Church at Fort NormanRoman Catholic Church at Fort Norman

The Ramparts of the MackenzieThe Ramparts of the Mackenzie

Seldom have we seen a more beautiful vista than the up-climbing path leading from the shore to the Roman chapel at the head of the hill. It is bordered by flaming fireweed and lined with the eager faces of children dressed in their Sunday best, ready for morning mass and awaiting the blessing of their Bishop. Wherever the willow-herb flourishes there a Guadet is serving The Company. One was in charge at lonely Wrigley, and we find his brother here.

Leaving Norman before church-time, we travel on, the glory of the peerless day reflected in the face of every one on board. We float between two spurs of the Rockies, and about eight in the evening pass Roche Carcajou, looking in vain for the wolverine the name calls for. The Indians would seem to be strangely inconsistent in this connection. If there is one animal they fear it is the carcajou, and with him they have an old, old pact: the Indian on his side promises never to shoot a wolverine, and that cunning thief agrees to leave unmolested the cache of the Red man. While this bargain still holds, since the day when ammunition first came into the country no Indian has passed this rocky replica of the carcajou without firing a shot at the face of the cliff.

It is an hour before midnight when we reach one of the two greatest spectaculars of our whole six months' journeying,—the Ramparts. The great river which has been running at a width of several miles, here narrows to five hundred yards, and for a distance of five or six miles forces its flow between perpendicular walls of limestone three hundred feet high. Between the cliffs, scarped by Nature into turrets, towers, and castellated summits, the great Mackenzie, "turned on edge," flows, maintaining a steady rate of four or five miles an hour. The depth of the water equals the visible height of the palisaded walls. In spring, the ice jams the stupendous current. The dammed-up water once lifted a skiff bodily, leaving it, when the flood subsided, a derelict on the cliffs above.

As we pass in silence we can but look and feel. One day a Canadian artist will travel north and paint the Ramparts, some poet, gifted with the inevitable word, here write the Canadian Epic. Awed and uplifted, our one wish is to be alone; the vision that is ours for one hour of this Arctic night repays the whole summer's travel. The setting of the picture is that ineffable light, clear yet mellow, which without dawn and without twilight rises from flowing river to starless heavens, and envelopes the earth as with a garment,—the light that never was on sea or land. We could not have chosen a more impressive hour in which to pass the portal into the Arctic World.

Rampart House on the Porcupine near the Mackenzie MouthRampart House on the Porcupine near the Mackenzie Mouth

A hundred yards from the entrance to the Ramparts, a group of Indians has found foothold at the base of the escarpment. They have been waiting for three days to signal our arrival, and as they catch sight of the big steamer they cry out their greeting and fire a volley from their old-fashioned rifles. The sound reverberates from rock to rock, ricochets, and is carried on to waiting Indians on the other side lower down. They repeat the salute, and others take it up. Signals are flashed from each little camp, the lights being repeated in the dancing river; and so it is by salvos of musketry and answering watch-fires that, at midnight in broad daylight, we reach Fort Good Hope under the Arctic Circle.

The Arctic Circle! When we used to sit on uneasy school-benches and say our "joggafy" lesson, what did that term spell for us? Icebergs, polar bears, and the snows of eternal winter. Nine-tenths of the people in America to-day share the same idea, and so far as they think of the Arctic Circle at all, think of it as a forbidding place, a frozen silence where human beings seldom penetrate. What did we find there? Approaching the shore, we stand in the bow with the pilot and his daughter, whose name suggests the Stone Age,—Mrs. Pierre la Hache. Tenny wears his "other clothes" and a resplendent l'Assumption belt, for this is his home. "It looks like a swan on the water," he says, when the first white houses come into view. "You like it, do you not?" "Like it? Good Hope is God's Country!" There is no place like home, even when it is the Arctic Circle!

The populace look down upon us from the high bank, every wiggle of the dogs' tails indicating the general impatience at the time it takes the big boat to make a landing. Down the steps comes a stately figure, Mr. C.P. Gaudet, the head and brains of Good Hope. Of the two thousand servants of the Hudson's Bay Company, this is the man who has the greatest number of years of active service to his credit. Mr. Gaudet has continuously served The Company for fifty-seven years, and his ambition is to put in three years more. The Company gives its employés a pension after thirty years' service, and this veteran of Good Hope surely deserves two pensions. The steps are almost precipitous, but the old gentleman insists upon coming down to present in person his report to his superior officer. Then the two climb up the bank together, the younger man giving a strong arm to the older. We follow, and half-way up the two figures stop, ostensibly for Mr. Gaudet to point out to Mr. Brabant the view up river. We suspect the halt is to allow the Fort Hope Factor to get breath, for the sky-line stairway is hard on asthma.

Reaching the top, we find the air heavy with the perfume of wild roses, and we can scarcely make our way through the sea of welcoming Indians. Old people grasp our hands as if we were life-time friends just back from a far journey. Young men greet us as long-lost chums, the women call to the children, and there seems to be a reception committee to rout out the old beldames, little children, and the bed-ridden: it is hand-shaking gone mad. We shake hands with every soul on the voting-list of Good Hope, to say nothing of minors, suffragettes, and the unfranchised proletariat, before at last we are rescued by smiling Miss Gaudet and dragged in to one of the sweetest homes in all the wide world.

We meet Mrs. Gaudet, a dear old lady with a black cap, the pinkest of pink cheeks, and the kind of smile that brings a choky feeling into your throat and makes you think of your mother. She gives us home-made wine andgalettes, and as we smell the mignonette flowering in the window-ledge and look around the walls of the "homey" room we wonder if this really can be the "Arctic Circle, 23-1/2° from the North Pole, which marks the distance that the sun's rays," etc., etc., as the little geographies so blithely used to state. On the walls are the Sunday School tickets that the young Gaudets, now grey-haired men and women, earned by reciting the Catechism when they were little boys and girls—the same old tickets that flourish in the latitudes below. Here a pink Prodigal feeds sky-blue swine in a saffron landscape, and off there a little old lady in a basque leads a boy in gaiters and a bell-crowned hat down a shiny road. They seem to be going on a picnic, and the legend runs,—"Hagar and Ishmael her son into the desert led, with water in a bottle and a little loaf of bread."

Thirty years ago when Miss Gaudet was a little girl she got her first Scripture lesson from an R.C. Sister, the story of our old Mother in the first garden. One Sunday was review day, and this question arose: "And how did God punish Adam and Eve for their disobedience?" Quick came the girlie's reply, "They had to leave The Company's service!"

Mrs. Gaudet thinks people rush very much nowadays. "We get a mail every year without fail, and sometimes there is a second mail." This is to her the height of modernism. That second mail is an interesting one. A letter written in Montreal in winter and addressed to Fort Good Hope crosses Canada by the C.P.R. to Vancouver, by coastwise steamer it travels north and reaches the Yukon. Then some plucky constable of the Mounted Police makes a winter patrol and takes the precious mail-bags by dog-sled across an unmarked map to Fort Macpherson on Peel River. Thence the Montreal-written letter is carried by Indian runner south to Good Hope on the Arctic Circle.

We love to talk with Mrs. Gaudet, she is so dear. Mother-love and devotion to The Company,—these are the two key-notes of her character. Looking back through the years, she tells of a visit she made "outside" to Montreal when she was a young mother—it was just fifty years ago,—measles attacked her three babies and within a week they all died, "Le bon Dieu prit les tous, mes trois jolis enfants!" Some years after this at Macpherson an Eskimo woman stole another of her babies, snatching it from a swing in the fort yard, and not yielding it up until it was torn from her by force.

We wander out into the midnight daylight where with dogs and Indians the whole settlement is still a stirred-up ant-hill. Splendid vegetable gardens are in evidence here,—potatoes, turnips, carrots, cabbages. Should we reach the North Pole itself we would expect there a Hudson's Bay fort, its Old World courtesy and its potato-patch. As we pass the store of the "free-trader," he says, "Yes, Mrs. Gaudet is a sweet woman, kindly, and dear, but she doesn't approve of me. She makes a point of not seeing me as she passes here twice a day on her way to church."

"Why?" we ask, much surprised.

"Oh," with a laugh, "you see, I sort of trade in opposition to the H.B. Company, and a fellow who would do this comes mighty near having horns and a tail!"

We step into the "Little Church of the Open Door," and sit down and think. The quaint altar and pictures, the hand-carved chairs, and the mural decorations all point to the patient work of priests. We see across the lane the home of the R.C. clergy, looking like a transplanted Swiss chalet and carrying on each door-lintel the name of a saint,—St. Matthew, St. Bartholomew, St. John. From the shrubbery outside wafts in the sweet old-world perfume of wild-roses. Our thoughts will often drift back to this restful little sanctuary, "Our Lady of Good Hope," the mission founded here in the year 1859 by M. Henri Grollier, R.C. missionary priest of Montpelier.

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