CHAPTER XVIII

The Bell at Fort Rae MissionThe Bell at Fort Rae Mission

The musk-ox(Ovibos moschatus)is a gregarious animal which would appear to be a Creator's after-thought,—something between an ox and a sheep. The long hair hanging down from the body foreshortens the appearance of the legs and gives a quaint look to the moving herd. The present range of the musk-ox is from Fort Rae north to the Arctic and between the meridians of 86° and 125°. As it is the most inaccessible game in the world, there would seem to be no immediate fear of its being hunted to extinction. Toothed like a sheep, footed like an ox, tailed like a bear, and maned like a horse, the musk-ox does not circle up wind as the moose and caribou do, but travels in any direction he sees fit. Each little herd of ten or fifteen bunches up, tails to the middle and horns outside, to meet a common danger. The robe of the musk-ox is a rich, dark brown streaked with grey, the hair all over the body being very long, with a coat of mouse-coloured wool at its base. According to the Indians, the single young of the musk-ox is born in April. The mother buries the calf in the snow as soon as it is born, selecting a sheltered place for the cradle. Three days after its post-natal burial it is able to frisk with its dam and begin to take up the musk-calf's burden.

The Musk-oxThe Musk-ox

We are all day and all night crossing Great Slave Lake from Fort Rae to Fort Resolution. Food values and the outgoing cargo of fur are the topics of conversation. Years ago a delicate baby at Rae required milk, and with trouble and expense a cow was evolved from somewhere and deposited at the front door of the H.B. Co. Factor there—a cow but no cow-food. All animals must learn to be adaptable in the North. She was fed on fish and dried meat, lived happily, and produced milk after her kind. One of Mr. Keele's men tells of a horse on the Yukon side which ate bacon-rinds with a relish. The dogs at Smith eat raspberries, climb trees for a succulent moss, and when times are really hard become burglars, burgling bacon in the night season, and even being ghoulish enough to visit Indian cemeteries to pick a bone with the dead. A dog in the North Country is surely qualifying for some canine heaven in the asphodel meadows. I know of no created being who is undergoing a sterner probation than this creature forced by man and the exigencies of Fate to work like a horse in winter and live on air in summer.

From Great Slave Lake to Chipewyan the days are enlivened with stories from the outgoing traders. We learn that when the church was still young, some priests on the Mackenzie hungered after flesh-pots in the wilderness and wrote to the Pope, asking him whether beaver-tails were to be considered fish, or flesh. Rome evidently was not "long" on North American mammals and put itself into the class of Nature fakers forever by declaring said tails "fish" and not flesh. This is why you can discuss beaver-tails on top of the world on Fridays to this present and commit no sin.

The stories give us some idea of the difference between winter and summer travel across Great Slave Lake. Captain Mills tells of two Indian women, one old enough to have a daughter of forty, who drove a dogsled one hundred and forty-eight miles from Providence to Rae, in four days. The older one walked ahead of the dogs and made the trail while the other drove. Coming back, it took them five days, and the old woman explained, "We didn't make such good time, as we had a man with us." It was her son-in-law whom she brought back with her.

A striking picture is given us of a woman who walked alone from Hay River to Province on snowshoes, taking thirteen days to do it. She had no matches, and carried her fire with her, keeping it alight in a little copper kettle. This, of course, necessitated her guarding it very closely and stopping to renew the fire from time to time; for if the burning wood was once permitted to die down, her life in that intense cold would go out with it.

How cold does it get? Mr. Campbell Young, of our little group, says that he has been out when a thermometer—one obtained from the U.S. Meteorological Station—registered seventy-six degrees below zero, and has worked in weather like that. "I've been trapping in that temperature, when of course the weather was absolutely still, and I tell you I'd rather be out in seventy-six below than to cross Smith Portage with the mosquitoes." Mr. Christie, of the Keele Survey Party, says, "Last winter I had to go out and get a moose for the camp, and on the second day I met the Mounted Police boys who told me it had been seventy-five below. I had started out when it was quite mild, only forty-five below. You know when it is below fifty, for then your breath begins to crackle, and that's a sure sign." Mr. John Gaudet says, "I was driving last winter on Lesser Slave Lake when it was sixty-four below. Yes, it was quite cold."

At Resolution we see once more our old friend Dr. Sussex, happy and busied among his Indians. It is just hail and farewell. The little "red lemonade" kiddies are the first to greet us as we come into Fort Smith, and here everybody goes visiting. Mrs. (Archdeacon) Macdonald tells us that her grandfather had two wives, and was the father of twenty-two children. She says she and her brother are glad of this, as it gives them so many friends in all parts of the country; and we notice that at every port where we stop Mrs. MacDonald has friends to visit—a cousin here, and an auntie there. The fancy bag in which you carry your calling cards and little friendly gifts up here is a "musky-moot"; the more formidable receptacle, which gives your friends warning that you may stay a day or two, is a "skin-ichi-mun."Visiting a little on our own account, we note that we have penetrated to a latitude into which the gaudy calendars of the advertiser have not yet made their way. Each man, foolish enough here to want a calendar, marks out his own on pencilled paper. We come across an H.B. Journal of the vintage of 1826 where the reckless scribe introduces two Thursdays into one week, acknowledging his error in a footnote with the remark, "It is not likely that the eye of man will ever read this record."

At Fort Smith we leave the steamerMackenzie Riverto take passage in theGrahamefrom Smith's Landing, and once more essay the Mosquito Portage. We find our winged friends in fine fettle. Their eyes are not dimmed, their strength not abated. For miles we notice blackened and dead stems of young spruce, cut off as if by machinery, at a uniform height of two and a half feet from the ground. The top of the dead stem shows the depth of the snow when the rabbits, running along the surface, had nibbled off and eaten the growing spruce. A fur-trader at our side says, "While at Fort Macpherson I noticed that the ice always melted in the spring in Peel's River before it did in the Mackenzie. It would break up in the Peel about the Queen's Birthday and begin to go out. Reaching the Mackenzie, it came up against a solid mass of unbroken ice which sent it back to flood the whole country. It was a curious experience to paddle round in a canoe for miles and miles where one had set rabbit snares but a few weeks before. The poor rabbits themselves were at a loss, for no kind monition apprised them of the coming flood. We could see whole colonies of them,—each a shipwrecked sailor on his own little raft of bark, buffeted here and there with the stream and peering out across the swollen waters, like Noah's dove, seeking some green thing."

"Think o' the stories round the camp, the yarns along the track—

O' Lesser Slave an' Herschel's Isle an' Flynn at Fond du Lac;

Of fur an' gun, an' ranch an' run, an' moose and caribou,

An' bull-dogs eatin' us to death! Good-bye—good luck to you!"

Our arrival at Chipewyan is opportune. Honorine Daniels, unceremoniously known as 'Norine among her friends (and they are legion), is about to join hand and fortune with one of the Mercredi boys. 'Norine owns a cottage in her own right, and to-night under her roof-tree there is to be a wedding-dance. We wait round, hungering for an invitation, finally to be told largely, "You don't need no invitation, everybody goes."

We go with the crowd. The room is full to overflowing. Babies are deposited on the benches along the wall, dogs look in at the window. The air is heavy with mosquitoes and tobacco-smoke. But joy reigns. Nobody is too old or too obese to dance. Old Mr. Loutit and lame Jimmy Flett each secures a sonsy partner. There are three fiddlers, and these relieve each other in turn, for fiddling, beating time with your moccasin on the earthen floor, and "calling out" is hard work for one man. There are but two kinds of dances,—the Red River jig, and a square dance which probably had for honourable ancestors the lancers on the father's side and a quadrille on the mother's.

Endurance is a sign of merit in the Red River jig. A man or woman steps into the limelight and commences to jig, a dark form in moccasins slips up in front of the dancer, and one jigs the other down, amid plaudits for the survivor and jeers for the quitter.

It is the square dance that interests us, our attention being divided between watching the deft forms in the half light and listening to the caller-off.Louie-the-Moosefirst officiates. His eyes look dreamy but there is a general's stern tone of command in his words:

"Ladeez, join de lily-white han's,

Gents, your black-and-tan!

Ladeez, bow! Gents, bow-wow!

Swing 'em as hard's ye can.

"Swing your corner Lady,

Then the one you love!

Then your corner Lady,

Then your Turtle Dove!"

Over and over again Louie reiterates his injunction, to the accompaniment of pattering moccasins and a humming chorus from door and windows. There are phrases of variation, too. We catch the words, "Address your pardner," "Adaman left," "Show your steps," "Gents walk round, and all run away to the west."

Then Michel Manvil takes hold of the situation. He stands up to it, and we hear

"Ladies round ladies, and gents all so!

Ladies round gents, and gents don't go!"

Why should they, we wonder!

The third fiddler is a full-blooded Chipewyan. In some dancing academy in the woods he has learnt a "call-off" all his own, and proud indeed is he of his stunt. We manage to copy it down in its entirety, fighting mosquitoes the while and dodging out into the open now and again for a little air.

"'Slute your ladies! All together!

Ladies opposite, the same—

Hit the lumber with yer leathers,

Balance all, and swing yer dame!

Bunch the moose-cows in the middle!

Circle, stags, and do-si-do—

Pay attention to the fiddle!

Swing her round, an' off you go!

"First four forward! Back to places!

Second foller—shuffle back!

Now you've got it down to cases—

Swing 'em till their back-teeth crack!

Gents, all right, a heel and toeing!

Swing 'em, kiss 'em if you kin—

On to next, and keep a-goin'

Till you hit your pards ag'in!

"Gents to centre; ladies round 'em,

Form a basket; balance all!

Whirl yer gals to where you found 'em!

Promenade around the hall!

Balance to yer pards and trot 'em

Round the circle, double quick!

Grab and kiss 'em while you've got 'em—

Hold 'em to it; they won't kick!"

The perspiring musician pushes his instrument into the hands ofRunning Antelopeand turns to us with, "There's another verse, but I don't always give it." We ask him to repeat it for us, but he seems a little at a loss. "It's hard to call it out without the fiddle. When yer playin' you just spit it out—the words come to you."

It is August 6th at Chipewyan, and once again we are at the parting of the ways. Every one we know is heading for "Outside" by way of the steamerGrahameand the Athabasca scows. Our own ambition is to make a traverse of the great Peace River Country before the snows. We have had no mail since last May, and the temptation to follow the multitude as far as McMurray in the hope of finding letters there is too strong to be resisted. We will then return and try to perfect arrangements for the Peace.

The outgoers are a cosmopolitan and happy "bunch,"—Major Jarvis, R.N.W.M.P., fur-traders galore, three Grey Nuns and a priest, Mr. Wyllie and his family bound for the Orkney Islands, fifty-four souls in all, without counting the miscellaneous and interesting fraternity down on the lower deck among the fur-bundles.

It is essentially avoyage de luxe. When Mr. Keele imagines a place is good, the steamer stops and we all gather fossils. When lame James, the steward, our erstwhile jig-expert, is about to serve coffee, he pokes his head over the side and orders the engines stopped that we may drink the beverage without spillage. The beardless prospector buys tinned peaches from the commissariat, opens them with a jack-knife and passes them round the deck with impartiality and a to-hell-with-the-man-that-works smile. Who would envy kings?

We arrive at McMurray in time for treaty-payment. Tethered horses at the tepee-poles, store-dolls for the babies, and unmistakable "Outside" millinery prove the prosperity of these Crees, and proves also their proximity to Edmonton. One little group looks tattered, out-at-heel, and hungry,—a Cree widow presenting her four offspring that they may receive the annual payment. The officials within the treaty tent declare the youngest baby an illegitimate child and will pay it no treaty,—it "has no name." I catch the anxious look in the mother's eye. Five dollars goes a long way when baby bodies have to be fed and clothed. The situation is crucial. Without a sponsor, the priest will not name the baby. With no name, it cannot draw treaty. I conclude to father the child, as its own (un)lawful father will not. My offer to give my name to the girlie, after due deliberation of Church and State, is accepted. Under the name of Agnes Deans Cameron the Cree kiddie is received into the Mother Church and finds her place on the list of treaty-receiving Indians—No. 53 in the McMurray Band. May she follow pleasant trails!

A Meadow at McMurrayA Meadow at McMurray

Back of McMurray lies a lush land. We tread a path a full mile in length leading to meadows where, belly-high, the horses graze. Every yard of our way is lined with raspberry bushes bent with their rich, red burden.

While the furs are being transferred from theGrahameto the scows, the working of our typewriter is a matter of much wonderment. Old Paul Fontaine, a half-breed who thinks he is a white man, first looks through the door, then comes into the dining hall where we are, takes his hat off, and watches respectfully. Then, with an air of great conviction, "This is the first time I ever see that. It is wonderful what man can do—wonderful. There is only one thing left to be done now—and that is to put the breath of life into a dead body." Solemnly putting on his hat, he turns and walks out.

Mrs. Loutit, another fellow-passenger attracted by the click of the machine, comes in and recounts her arts, wild and tame. In winter she goes off in dog-cariole, traps cross-foxes off her own bat, shoots moose, and smokes the hide according to the ancient accepted mode. Coming home, she takes the smoked hide and works upon it silk embroidery of a fineness which would be the envy of any young ladies' seminary in Europe or America. She weaves fantastic belts of beads and sets the fashion for the whole North inchef d'oeuvresof the quills of the porcupine. She is a most observant "old wife." Watching, fascinated, the lightning play of the machine, "Much hard that, I think, harder than bead-work, eh?" Conquering her timidity, she at last glides across to find out how the dickens when you strike capital "A" at one end of the keyboard, it finds itself in the writing next to small "o" at the other end. There is something uncanny about it, and our stock goes up.

Starting up the AthabascaStarting up the Athabasca

We confess to being a little homesick as we wave farewell to the half hundred passengers in the familiar scows embarked for their two hundred and thirty-eight mile journey up the Athabasca. It will be a tiresome enough trip, though, for every foot of the way the big boats will have to be tracked (towed) by teams of half-breeds scrambling along the shore, now on land, now splashing in the water. The party will have the mosquito as companion on the sorrowful way and it will take them four weeks to make Athabasca Landing, the distance which in the spring we dropped down in little over a week. We send letters home, and with hand-shaking all round bid farewell to Mr. Wyllie, the Grey Nuns, and the rest.

On the ClearwaterOn the Clearwater

Our way back on theGrahameto Chipewyan is not without adventure. At three o'clock in the afternoon we run up hard and fast on a batture! There is no swearing, no shouting of orders. The deck-hands from long experience know exactly what to do. The engines are reversed and, in their efforts, seem to speak Cree, for we catch the sound of the familiar "Wuh! Wey!" But it is no go. The sun sinks behind the bank, over the tops of the poplars floats a faint rosy glow which fades into purple and then into black, and we are still there hard and fast. The drifting sand piles up against us, and, in scows, the whole cargo is removed. The captain throws out a kedge-anchor, and in a mysterious way we pull ourselves off by hawsers, as a man lifts himself by his own boot-straps.

We have head-winds all the way. At four o'clock on the morning of August 14th, stress of weather causes us to run in under the lee of an island. We tie up at the base of some splendid timber. Spruce here will give three feet in diameter twenty feet from the ground. With an improvised tape-line I go ashore and measure the base-girth of three nearby big poplars (rough-backed). The first ran seven feet three inches, the second exactly eight feet, and the third eight feet four inches. Within view were fifty of these trees which would run the same average, and interspersed with them were spruce with a base-girth scarcely less.

Arrived at Chipewyan, we are able to arrange to be taken up the Peace in the same little tugPrimrosewhich had before carried us so safely to Fond du Lac.

"What lies ahead no human mind can know,

To-morrow may bring happiness or woe.

We cannot carry charts, save the hope that's in our hearts

As along the unknown trail we blithely go."

When we leave Chipewyan August 17th, the fall hunt of waveys has already begun. We learn afterwards that the Loutit boys alone made a bag of sixteen hundred of these birds which, salted down, form a considerable part of the winter food of the old Fort. Mrs. William Johnson comes down to see us embark. She has overwhelmed us with generous kindness at our every visit to Chipewyan, kindness we cannot soon forget. It is a small group which now starts out in the little tug on the bosom of the mighty Peace,—Major Routledge, R.N.W.M.P., Mr. and Mrs. John Gaudet with their two olive-branches "Char-lee" and "Se-li-nah," now returning to Lesser Slave Lake from a visit to Fort Good Hope, Miss Brown and myself.

This part of the journey we are to enjoy more keenly than all that has gone before. Rising on the western side of the Rocky Mountains, the Peace River is the largest affluent of the Mackenzie, being already a splendid stream when it cuts through that range. With but one break, the Peace River affords a nine hundred mile stretch of navigation, and we can justly describe the country through which it flows as a plateau in which the river has made for itself a somewhat deep valley. Extensive grassy plains border it on both sides, and north of Fort Vermilion country of this character extends to the valley of the Hay River. Crossing the Quatre Fourches, an offshoot of the Peace at the Lake Athabasca edge, we turn our faces due west to a land of promise. The Mackenzie River and the banks of the Great Slave may some day afford homes to a busy and prosperous populace, but there are many fertile and more accessible lands to be settled first. With the Peace River Country there is no conjecture, for it is merely a question of the coming of the railway. Given a connection with the world to the south, the district watered by the Peace will at once support a vast agrarian population. The advance riders are already on the ground.

It is not our intent to go to the expense of using a steamer for our whole journey up the Peace. Scows will allow us to proceed more leisurely and to see more as we go, so the second day we turn the steamer back and transfer ourselves and our belongings into a little open craft or model-boatThe Mee-wah-sin.We have a crew of five men, one on the steering-sweep and four to track, and in this wise we make our way for three hundred miles up the great river to Fort Vermilion. One day we improvise a sail and so make fifty miles in a favourable wind, but, with this exception, every other mile of the journey is by patient towing.

Incidents are many. The first morning after we turned back the little tug, the Kid and I left the slow trackers behind and were glad to stretch ourselves in a long forenoon's tramp along the sandy beach. The mosquitoes were practically gone and for the first time all summer one could really enjoy the woods, where a tang of autumn in the air made every breath a tonic draught. Exulting in the fact that we were alive, we turned a sharp corner and came suddenly face to face with a grey wolf, loping along at a swinging pace at the water's edge, muzzle close to the ground! To make the story worth telling, one should have something to say of "yawning jaws" and "bloodshot eyes" and "haunches trembling for a spring." But this grey wolf simply refused to play that part. He took one look at us, evidently didn't approve, and turned up from his tracks quietly into the cottonwoods above. As we on our side had brought neither gun nor camera from theMee-wah-sin, we are unable to punctuate the story by either pelt or picture.Sic transit lupus!

A week out from Chipewyan, where the Swan River makes into the Peace, we came one glorious afternoon upon a camp of Crees, the family of theSe-weep-i-gons. They had just killed two bears. We bought the skins and a large portion of meat from them, and Mrs.Se-weep-i-gonvery kindly added to the feast of fat things some high-bush cranberries "in a present." As an excuse for listening to their soft voices, before we left the camp we asked the name of every member of the little group, scratching the list down on a piece of birchbark. The Crees evidently considered this an official ceremony, for after we had paid our score and shaken hands with everybody from Grandpa to the latest baby and were well out in mid-stream, Mrs.Se-weep-i-goncame running down to the bank to call us back. Rowing to the shore we found that she had remembered one more child whose name she wanted to add to the list. She assured us that this one too had a little brass cross hanging round his neck, so we will be sure to know him if we meet him in the woods.

We lived for the next two days on bear-meat and cranberries.

Evening on the PeaceEvening on the Peace

So one wonderful day follows another as our little boat is towed first against one bank then another of this majestic stream. The forest growth is a marvel. We measure one morning three of the spruce trees to which our tent-ropes are tied, and get for base measurement six feet eight inches, five feet two inches, and five feet respectively. The trees averaged ninety feet in height and would give perhaps one thousand feet to each tree. The autumn tints on the willows and alders of the high river-banks are indescribably beautiful. We pass through one hundred miles of a veritable field of the cloth of gold. We look out of our tent-flaps at night on this living glory, and wake up to it again with each new morning sun.

One Sunday evening at dusk we slip into the Hudson's Bay post where the Little Red River makes into the Peace, the dear home of Tom Kerr, his Scottish wife, and their four bairns. Let me try to give the picture. Tom had been off all day cutting meadowgrass, and now wended his way home with a load of it in a little Old Country cart drawn by a wall-eyed mare. At her side frisked a foal, and two great stag-hounds ran back and forward between the master and his home by the riverside. Three children bounded out to greet their father. "Oh! Daddy, Daddy, the red coo broke away from the byre and is far awa on the ither side o' the burn!" Here, in a nutshell, you have the difference between the Mackenzie River of to-day and the Peace River. On the Mackenzie, swarthy forms are in evidence, Cree and French is spoken on all sides, there are no great fields of waving grain, and the dog is the only domestic animal. On the Peace is an essentially white race, cows, chickens, trustworthy old nags, porridge for breakfast, "the tongue that Shakespeare spake," rendered in an accent born far ayont the Tweed. Right across the mouth of the Little Red River, Tom Kerr has a fishing scine. We go down with him to lift it, after the cows have been brought back to the narrow path. The net yields seven fish and they are of five different species,—trout, ling, sucker, jack-fish, and something else that Tom calls a "Maria." Daily this net is set, and for three hundred and sixty-five days every year it furnishes food for the family, in summer in the flowing water, and in winter under the ice. You couldn't starve at Little Red River if you wanted to. This is one of the most beautiful spots in the whole North Countree. Long after Tom and we and Mrs. Tom are under the gowans, and the little Kerrs possess the land, there will be populous cities along the Peace, and millionaires will plant their summer villas on the beauteous spot where we now stand.

Our Lobsticks on the PeaceOur Lobsticks on the Peace

Bidding the bairns good-bye, we press onward on our way, Tom Kerr accompanying us. A great honour awaits us round the next corner, when the boatmen announce that they are going to make us each a lobstick. We land, as pleased as Punch over the suggestion. We now know what it feels like when the philanthropist of a village takes his after-dinner walk through the square and sees the sparrows drinking from the memorial fountain surmounted with his own bust, done in copper, life-size. It takes fully two hours to trim the trees into significant shape, but the beauty of this particular kind of Cook's Tour is that you go down when you like and stop when you want to. The lobsticks furnished, the men form a circle and discharge their muskets in salute, and on we go. We learn that the ethics of lobsticks is that each of these men, should Fate take him past this point again, will salute the lobstick just made and send a strong thought across the spruce-tops to us. There is a reverse to the shield. Should we, at any time before this journey ends, fail to make good, the men on the return voyage will cut the lobstick down. We are going to make no impertinent enquiries regarding the ulterior fate of these family trees. Is it not sufficient glory to say, "On the Peace River wehada lobstick"?

The Chutes of the Peace! These will live forever with the Ramparts of the Mackenzie as the two most majestic visions which the whole North Land gave us. We had not been prepared for that wonderful spectacle which met us as we turned a sharp point in the river. The torrent roars for four or five hundred yards of rapid riverway before coming to its great drop. The rock-reef over which the cataract falls extends quite across the mighty Peace, here a river of immense width. Measured in feet and inches, the Chutes of the Peace must take second place to Niagara, yet they impress us as Niagara never did. The awesome silence of this land so pregnant with possibilities, a land which, though it echo now only the quiet foot of the Cree, is so unmistakably a White Man's Country, intensifies the sense of majesty and power which here takes possession of us. The men talk of the water-power furnished by the great falls, and hazard guesses of the future economic purposes to which it will be put. For our own part, our one wish is to get away from the noise of even these subdued voices and in silence feast our very souls on this manifestation of the power of God. The thoughts that we feel cannot be put into words. Why attempt the impossible?

The Chutes of the PeaceThe Chutes of the Peace

Our way lies beyond this, and the Chutes have to be overcome. These half-breeds know exactly what to do in every emergency which arises. Only one of the men has traversed this river before, and he gives orders. We strip our littleMee-wah-sinof her temporary masts and canvas awning and take out all our belongings. Everybody works. A purchase is obtained by throwing a pulley and rope over a nearby jack-pine, and the boat is pulled out bodily from the water. Then the crew drag her along the shore well beyond the head of the rapid, and we make camp.

Pulling out the Mee-wah-sinPulling out the Mee-wah-sin

These delicious nights within the tent are memories that will remain through all the years to come. It is cool and silent and productive of thought. We are selfishly glad that fifty people went out by Athabasca ways, leaving to us all the mighty reaches and pleasant pastures of the Peace. The midnight is flooded by a glorious moon, and the thoughts born this afternoon of that stupendous fall have driven sleep far away. Opening the tent-flap, I slip through the camp of sleeping Indians to the edge of the fast-flowing stream. The feeling is insistent here which has been ever-present since we entered this valley of the Peace—here is the home prepared and held in waiting for the people who are to follow.

"Listening there, I heard all tremulously

Footfalls of Autumn passing on her way,

And in the mellow silence every tree

Whispered and crooned of hours that are to be.

Then a soft wind like some small thing astray

Comes sighing soothingly."

"Lofty I stand from each sister land, patient and cheerily wise,

With the weight of a world of wonder in my quiet, passionless eyes,

Dreaming of men who will bless me, of women esteeming me good,

Of children born in my borders, of radiant motherhood,

Of cities leaping to stature, of fame like a flag unfurled,

As I pour the tide of my riches in the eager lap of the world."

—

Service

It is on August 27th, in the evening, that the crew, all slicked up in their Sunday-go-to-meetings, draw us up on the beach of the City in the Silences, this Past-in-the-arms-of-the-Present,—Vermilion-on-the-Peace. The first thing to meet our eye is the red roof of the flour-mill of the H.B. Co., a picture of progressiveness set in a living frame of golden wheat, the heavy heads nodding to the harvest.

Vermilion is an old post of the Old Company. Alexander Mackenzie on his way to the Pacific found people at work here far back in 1792. The Vermilion of to-day stands a living monument to the initiative faith and hard work largely of one man, Mr. Francis D. Wilson, who has had charge of H.B. Co. interests here for nineteen years. Mr. Wilson found this place a fur-post on the edge of civilisation, and he has made of it a commercial, agricultural, and manufacturing centre. And his example has been contagious, for the half-breeds around him have become farmers, the Indians who traded furs a dozen years ago now buy harness and ploughs and breach-loading guns from The Company, paying for the same with wheat of their own growing.

The Flour Mill at Vermilion-on-the-PeaceThe Flour Mill at Vermilion-on-the-Peace

Vermilion is in latitude 58° 30' N.,—that is, about four hundred miles due north of Edmonton, and on practically the same parallel as Stockholm. The flour-mill that we now inspect is the most northerly wheat-mill on this continent, and it has been running for five years. It is the roller process, with a capacity of fifty barrels a day, the motor-power being a 40 H.P. Corliss engine. The wheat which feeds these rollers is all grown in nearby fields, and the resultant flour is consumed by the people of the lone posts of the Peace and the lower Mackenzie. Two years ago the H.B. Company paid to farmers, all of whom lived within a radius of five miles from the mill, the sum of $27,000 spot cash for their wheat. An electric plant lights the mill and fort buildings, affording fifty six-candle-power lights.

Right up to the door of the mill extends the sixty-acre wheat-field of the H.B. Company, from which Mr. Wilson computes that he will this year thrash two thousand bushels. If the H.B. wheat-field were to sell the H.B. mill these two thousand bushels at $1.25 a bushel (the ruling Vermilion price), there would be a net profit of $1500, after paying all expense of culture, to the credit of one branch of Mr. Wilson's commercial institution. For thirty years, wheat, oats, barley, and vegetables have been grown in Vermilion, not as an experiment, but as regular commercial crops. Cereals are sown late in April or early in May, and the harvest is gathered in August. More than once, wheat has matured in eighty-six days from seed-sowing to seed-garnering.

Vermilion farmers boast sulkies and gang-ploughs and the latest geared McCormick, Massey-Harris, and Deering farm implements,—self-binders and seeders. Everything is up-to-date. We ourselves counted fifteen self-binders at work. And grain is not the whole story. The farmers own thoroughbred Ayrshire stock and splendid horses. I happened to be at the garden of the Church of England Mission when the potato-crop was being harvested, and found that seven bags of seed planted in the middle of May produced one hundred bags by the end of August. Five potatoes that I gathered haphazard from one heap weighed exactly five and one-half pounds. I photographed and weighed a collection of vegetables grown by Robert Jones on the Dominion Experimental Farm.

Articles Made by IndiansArticles Made by Indians

A—Wall-pocket of white deerskin, embroidered in silk-work, and bordered with ermine—the work of a Cree woman at Vermilion-on-the-Peace.B—Gloves of white deerskin embroidered in silk, the work of a Slavi woman on the Liard River (a branch of the Mackenzie).C, D, E, F, G, H, I—Moccasins as worn respectively by the Crees, Chipewyans, Slavis, Dog-Ribs, Yellow-Knives, Loucheux—all the work of the women.J.—Flour bag from the mill at Vermilion-on-the-Peace, the most northerly flour-mill in America.K—Sinew, from close to the spine of the moose—used by the women of the North instead of thread.L—Very valuable net of willow-bark made by an old squaw at Fort Resolution. This is almost a lost art, and harks back to the pre-string days.M—The "crooked knife" or knife of the country.N—Match-box made from a copper kettle by an old Beaver Indian at Fort Vermilion-on-the-Peace.O—Babiche, or rawhide of the moose or caribou—"the iron of the country."

A—Wall-pocket of white deerskin, embroidered in silk-work, and bordered with ermine—the work of a Cree woman at Vermilion-on-the-Peace.

B—Gloves of white deerskin embroidered in silk, the work of a Slavi woman on the Liard River (a branch of the Mackenzie).

C, D, E, F, G, H, I—Moccasins as worn respectively by the Crees, Chipewyans, Slavis, Dog-Ribs, Yellow-Knives, Loucheux—all the work of the women.

J.—Flour bag from the mill at Vermilion-on-the-Peace, the most northerly flour-mill in America.

K—Sinew, from close to the spine of the moose—used by the women of the North instead of thread.

L—Very valuable net of willow-bark made by an old squaw at Fort Resolution. This is almost a lost art, and harks back to the pre-string days.

M—The "crooked knife" or knife of the country.

N—Match-box made from a copper kettle by an old Beaver Indian at Fort Vermilion-on-the-Peace.

O—Babiche, or rawhide of the moose or caribou—"the iron of the country."

One cauliflower weighed eight pounds, half a dozen turnips weighed nine pounds each, and twenty table beets would easily average six pounds each. The carrots and onions were sown in the open in mid-May and were as inviting specimens as I have ever seen. Tomatoes ripened in the open air on this farm on July 13th. Peas, sown on May 23rd and gathered on August 12th, weighed sixty-four pounds to the bushel. Experimental plots of turnips gave sixteen tons to the acre, and white carrots twelve tons. Apple-trees and roses we found flourishing on this farm, with twenty-five varieties of red, black, and white currants. The wheat story is of compelling interest. Preston wheat, sown on May 6th and cut on August 22nd, weighed sixty-four pounds to the bushel; Ladoga wheat, sown on the last day of April and cut on September 5th, ran sixty-four pounds to the bushel also, and early Riga weighed sixty-three pounds. In the garden of the R.C. Mission we were presented with splendid specimens of ripened corn and with three cucumbers grown in the open air, which weighed over a pound each.

The Hudson's Bay StoreThe Hudson's Bay Store

Vermilion is the centre of prairie and rolling timber-land greater in extent than the whole of Belgium. There are probably a million acres of land immediately tributary to the place, all capable of producing crops like those cited. Within a radius of ten miles of the H.B. post there are living now five hundred people of whom perhaps fifty are white. They all to some extent cultivate the soil, varying their farm operations by hunting, trapping, and freighting. The settlement boasts two churches, two mission schools, and two trading stores,—a happy, prosperous, and very progressive community. Everything in the place points to this conclusion.

The H.B. Company here, in addition to buying beaver-skins and growing $1.25 wheat and grinding flour and importing big red binders, breaks the monotony by running a sawmill and building modern steamboats. This sawmill turned out all the lumber for the new steamerPeace River, built here four years ago of native timber. She is a hundred and ten-foot stern-wheeler with twenty-two-foot beam, drawing two and a half feet and carrying forty tons burden. She can accommodate thirty passengers in comfortable cabins, and when going with the current, makes fifteen knots an hour. The sawmill which turned out the timbers for this boat has a capacity of fifteen thousand feet a day.

Within this mill I took, at random, the record sheet of one raft of one man's logs for the spring of 1906, cut in the immediate vicinity of Vermilion and floated along the Peace to the mill. Edmond Paul's logs in one raft gave a total of two hundred and eighty-eight logs, which cut at the mill 27,029 board feet of lumber. The biggest log in this raft was a twelve-foot log with twenty-six inches diameter at the small end, which cut three hundred and sixty-three feet of lumber.

Vermilion in its soil fertility, its modernism, culture, and arrived-ness is a source of recurring marvel and pleasure. If a handful of people four hundred miles from a railway, as the crow flies, and seven hundred miles by actual practicable trails, can accomplish what has been done, into what status of producing activity will this whole country spring when it is given rail communication with the plains-people to the south?

Waiting for steamboat connection, we are for weeks in this glorious autumn weather, guests in the hospitable home of Mr. and Mrs. Wilson. Can we ever forget the generous kindness extended to us within these walls? Months of travel in open scows, sleeping on the ground, and stretching out in blankets on the decks of little tugs have prepared us to enjoy to the full the comforts of a cultured home. It is a modern house, with beds of old-fashioned pansies and sweet-Williams and rows of hollyhocks on all sides. The upper verandah affords a view of the Peace, here fully a mile in width, of incomparable beauty. To the visitor who steps over its threshold, Mr. Wilson's library indicates at once the reading man and the clever artificer. Scientific works of reference, good pictures, the latest magazines, certainly look inviting to ragged travellers who have opened no books, save those of nature and human-nature, for five long months. The office furniture, hand-made of native tamarack and birch, is Mr. Wilson's individual work in both design and execution. Admiring the outcome of hand and head, we get also a glimpse of a warm heart, for we are quick to notice that all these carefully-filed magazines and papers are available for reference to any one in the settlement, whether fort employé or not, who cares to come in here for a quiet hour to read.

Kipling says, "You couldn't pack a Broadwood half a mile," but the Wilson home gives the lie direct to this, blithe line. In a corner of the drawing-room stands an old-fashioned piano with a history. The honourable ancestress of all the modern square pianos and baby-grands of Canada, this little instrument came long years ago in the hold of a sailing ship to Hudson Bay, and by interior waterways was carried by portage and York-boat into Winnipeg, and subsequently into Edmonton. It carries on it the name of John Broadwood & Sons, London. Mrs. Wilson tells us that when she was little it was carried by the boys from house to house on the prairies to do duty wherever there was a social dance. The ghost of the old thing has much quiet here in Vermilion to think of the pretty girls in their short sleeves and muslin frocks who once trod Sir Rogers to its sweet strains.

Mrs. Wilson, the grand-daughter of Peter Warren Dease, the explorer, and the daughter of late Chief Factor Clarke of the H.B. Co., has put in a life of loving service among the people of Vermilion. Her knowledge of medicine and her devoted attention and nursing, extended in the hour of need alike to Indians and whites, has saved the life of many a mother and child; for doctors and professional nurses are unknown in Vermilion. These are the pioneer days, when interdependence breeds neighbourly kindness.

Everything on a Vermilion dinner-table is produced in the country, with the exception only of tea, coffee, sugar, and pepper. The country furnishes beef, pork, and fowl all locally matured; home-cured ham and bacon; every known variety of hardy and tender vegetables; home-made butter; bread made from flour grown and ground on the premises; pies whose four constituents—flour, lard, butter and fruit—are products of the country; home-made cheese; wild honey; home-made wines; splendid fish caught from the Peace, and a bewildering variety of wild game—moose, caribou, venison, grouse, brant, wild geese, canvas-backs, and mallards. Wild berries furnish jams and conserves of a dozen different kinds, such as raspberry, black currant, strawberry, blackberry, cranberry, blueberry, and saskatoon. The salt comes from Slave River, and sugar could very readily be produced from Vermilion beets if there should arise a market. What more would you? The Vermilionese on his fertile acres is as independent of the world outside as is the Eskimo in his Arctic igloo. The farm of Sheridan Lawrence, exhibiting its wide-stretching wheat-fields, some heads of which counted seventy-one kernels, with its patches of one-pound potatoes, twelve-foot sunflowers, and its quiverful of happy, tow-headed children, gives as sweet a picture of Canadian thrift and happiness as one would wish to see. Indeed, happiness seems to be the keynote of Vermilion, whether we seek it within the fort walls of the H.B. Co., on the fat acres of the farmers, or within the folds of Protestant or Roman Mission.

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