Etext of Janey Canuck in The West
by Emily Ferguson

 
Janey Canuck in the West
BY EMILY FERGUSON
Cassell and Company, Limited
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
1910
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Author of "Impressions of Janey Canuck Abroad"

TO ANNIE J. FERGUSON-BURKE

CONTENTS

Chapter 1. WESTWARD HO!  
Chapter 2. OUT WEST  
Chapter 3. ACROSS THE LAND  
Chapter 4. VILLAGE LIFE  
Chapter 5. MORTUARY MUSINGS  
Chapter 6. AUTUMN DAYS  
Chapter 7. PICKINGS ABOUT PIE  
Chapter 8. IN THE STING OF THE NORTH WIND  
Chapter 9. WITH THE DUKHOBORS  
Chapter 10. IN SASKATCHEWAN  
Chapter 11. POLAR PENCILLINGS  
Chapter 12. IN CAMP  
Chapter 13. "ALL UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE"  
Chapter 14. PATHFINDERS  
Chapter 15. HOMEWARD BOUND  
Chapter 16. WINTER NIGHTS  
Chapter 17. SHUT IN  
Chapter 18. APRIL DAYS  
Chapter 19. BLOSSOM PROPHECIES  
Chapter 20. A MAY DAY IN THE MORNING  
Chapter 21. PARADISE WAS NEVER LOST  
Chapter 22. THE WESTERN LIAR  
Chapter 23. "LONG ABOUT KNEE-DEEP IN JUNE"  
Chapter 24. MOSQUITOTIDE  
Chapter 25. DOMINION DAY  
Chapter 26. "IN THE GLORY OF THE LILIES"  
Chapter 27. FLOWER AND WEED  
Chapter 28. DUE WEST  
Chapter 29. A WESTERN HOMESTEAD  
Chapter 30. DRAMATIC EPISODES  
Chapter 31. FACTS AND REFLECTIONS
Chapter 32. THROUGH COVER  
Chapter 33. GRIMALKIN  
Chapter 34. "AN EXILE FROM HOME" 
Chapter 35. SKATING v. WALKING  
Chapter 36. A WESTERN "GENERAL"
Chapter 37. HUSKIES 
Chapter 38. "PIONEERS! O PIONEERS!"  
Chapter 39. IT IS SPRING AGAIN  
Chapter 40. STILL NORTHWARD  
Chapter 41. THROUGH SASKATCHEWAN 
Chapter 42. EDMONTON  
Chapter 43. TWO WESTERN TYPES  
Chapter 44. A RUN ACROSS COUNTRY  
Chapter 45. THE OLD FORT  

L'ENVOI  

JANEY CANUCK IN
THE WEST

Chapter I  WESTWARD HO!

I THOUGHT I was a Christian," said Gail Hamilton, "but we've
been moving." 

It seems that ever since Mother Eve got notice to leave, moving
has meant a domestic cyclone. This is what I said to the family, as
I surveyed our household penates done up in "big box, little box,
bandbox, bundle," to say nothing of crates, barrels, bales and
baskets; but the family were too busy to pay any attention to me.
They fail to appreciate the appalling fact that I shall have to locate
all my books on new shelves. When, anon, I go to the fourth shelf,
fifth book from the north side, to get "The Scarlet Letter", it will
be to find "Pearson on the Creed" or Jevons's "Logic" in that
identical spot. It means a moving of all my mental images a
changing of my geography, so to say. What a lot of knowledge
runs to waste in the world! 

In no way is your weakness of character so revealed to you as in
moving. Upstairs and downstairs, and in my lady's chamber, you
find heaps of stuff that ought to be burned, but you have not
sufficient stamina to apply the match. You dilly-dally, vacillate,
and halt between two opinions. 

"Things are expensive in the West," you argue mentally. "They
have not been kept the proverbial seven years." And so, because of
the vague possibilities of vaguer needs in a problematic future, you
cumber and incommode the present. 

To move means a review of your whole life. Inside one little hour,
you laugh, swell with pride, cry, grovel with humility and burn
with indignation as the fingers of still-born projects, dead joys, or
foolish frolics reach out and touch you from the past. 

There are compensations, though. Things get cleaned up. You lose
fifteen pounds of absolutely useless flesh. There is the secret and
blissful consciousness of removing mountains and making things
happen. 

* * * * * 

It is a big flit we are taking. The moisture in my eyes is purely the
result of smoke from the engines. 

Blessed old Toronto, the home of our love! You have been good to
us. I cannot forbear kissing my hands to your charm and beauty.
To live with you is to "be happy ever after." 

* * * * * 

At five p.m. we found ourselves the Padre, our two girls and
myself on board the Athabasca. She is a great white swan without
a neck. They tell us she is "well-found," and "handy" in a storm. I
don't know though. I never have time to look at anything but the
engines and, incidentally, the dining-table, when I am aboard ship.
The pistons, wheels, belts, and shafts that strain and sweat and
growl under the driving steam are an endless mystery to me. The
greedy, glittering jaws and ponderous limbs of the weird monster
hold me in an awesome but delightful spell. 

The Padre says I show a "residual taint of the original state,"
whatever he means by that. I do not answer him, for all the while I
am singing the song o' steam: 

        "The tail-rods mark the time. 

The crank-throws give the double bass, the feed-pump sobs an'
heaves, 

An' now the main eccentrics start and quarrel with the sheaves; 

Her time, her own appointed time, the rocking link-head bides, 

Till hear that note the red return whings glimmerin' through the
guides. 

They're all awa'! True beat, full power, the clangin' chorus goes." 

As the sea-gulls swirled around our ship to-day in looping flight, I
heard a little girl say they were really angels. 

Some poet has thought this already: 

"A gull nay rather 

A spirit on eternity's wide sea 

Calling: 'Come thou where all we 

Glad souls be.'" 

 As we watch them rise, quivering, falling, poising, and soaring
like living fountains of wings, we wot that an angel could assume
many forms less suitable and beautiful than that of a snow-white
bird. 

There is a Scotsman aboard whose chief aim seems to be the
tabulation of all kinds of facts relating to Canada. Under the
caption "Street Lamps of the Waterways," he has the number of
light-houses, fog-stations and fog-horns in the Dominion; also their
cost of maintenance. He has noted that in the years 1870 to 1902
the deaths on Canadian and British sea-going vessels, in our
waters, have been 5,247. We have been trying to figure out the
chances against our landing safely. They are, we conclude, about
100,000 to 1. 

The woman who sits by me at the table is a person of varied
interests and many pursuits. She is short-breathed and
long-winded. She has "a voice." I mean one of those talking voices
that continue to go through you long after the speaker has
disappeared. She wants to know my age, my income, and how
much I paid for my steamer-rug. She has a passion for "getting at
the heart of things."

At nightfall a stiff wind blew up. There is nothing in the lake line
superior to Lake Superior in a blow. I thought of certain characters
in a song who "went to sea in a sieve they did, in a sieve they went
to sea." 

I am a most penitent traveller. Seasickness is an attitude which no
amount of "new thought" can render graceful or dignified. 

The Padre is one of those hateful people who are always well, even
in a storm. He seems to think the malady amusing, and made
himeslf objectionable by explaining to me the co-relation between
she-sickness and nau-she-a. 

On the second day we arrived at Port Arthur, at the head of
navigation. My impressions? A green sea, a white ship, yellow
sunlight, a city built on seven terraces! 

A visit to the Canadian Northern Railway elevator at this port
gives one, more than any other place, an idea of the enormous
output of the Western wheatfields. In a glib way we talk of
"millions of wheat," but it is only when we look at the space it
takes to hold a million bushels that we begin, in any measure, to
comprehend the meaning of the words. I had to climb eighteen
flights of stairs to look down the bins. I tried to explain to my
guide that this was a magazine of cereal stories, but my little joke
was quite lost. 

The storage capacity of the building makes the enormous total of
seven million bushels. The grain is held in huge circular towers or
bins, each being eighty-five feet deep. It is an almost fearsome
experience to look down their black cavernous depths. It gives one
a nightmare at noonday. These giant bins are made of fireproof
tiles which are set in bands of steel, embedded in cement. This
makes the grain not only immune from fire but also from heat.
Fifteen cars of grain may be run through the elevators every hour.
The process by which the wheat is elevated, cleaned, weighed, and
carried to its particular bin is a marvel of clever, but withal simple,
mechanism. 

The great bulk of grain grown in the North-West must be stored at
Port Arthur. It is here one sees Canada's answer to the world's call
for wheat. This is why elevators are of universal interest. It is not
because they tell the progress of great companies, but in that they
are chapters which mark the upward steps of our young land in
clear, monetary gain, and consequently in knowledge, science,
civilisation and all else for which wealth stands. 

It is on these great mountains of grain, too, that the federation of
the Empire will largely stand. Interdependent, the Colony shall
feed the Motherland, and in return shall receive protection against
the covetous claws of the world. 

It has been computed that the wheat grown in Canada last year was
sufficient to make a string of two-pound loaves which would pass
around the world four times. 

In China rice is life. In Canada life is wheat. We should throw
wheat on our brides. 

Who so great as to pen the song of the wheat? Who can sum up its
epic? From its sibilant swish on the wide-flung steppes to its whir
and crunch under the wheels of the mill, wheat sums up the tale of
the race. Like love, wheat rules the court, the camp, the grove. It
makes or breaks the world of men. Wheat is blood. Wheat is life.
Who can sing its song?

Chapter II OUT WEST

 T Winnipeg, the new Canadian Pacific Railway station is going
forward. We were dumped out of the train into a great block of
people and building material hundreds of the former, tons of the
latter. An hotel "tout" seized us, and seemed much grieved that we
did not care to avail ourselves of his kindly services. We took a
carriage, and our driver wanted to overcharge us, and then had no
change. No one ever saw a cabman with change. The final
argument was interesting, if not wholly edifying, but I felt like the
old woman an American essayist tells about. She witnessed with
arms akimbo a conflict between her husband and a bear. "Go it,
husband!" she said. "Go it bear! I don't care which beats."

How the sun shines here in Winnipeg! One drinks it in like wine.
And how the bells ring! It is a town of bells and light set in a blaze
of gold. Surely the West is golden the sky, flowers, wheat, hearts.

Winnipeg is changing from wood to stone. She is growing city-like
in granite and asphalt. Hitherto, banks and hotels were run up
over-night, and had to pay for themselves in the next twenty-four
hours.

Winnipeg has something western, something southern, something
quite her own. She is an up-and-doing place. She has swagger,
impelling arrogance, enterprise, and an abiding spirit of
usefulness.

"What I like," says an American to me, "is the eternal spunk of the
place."

Winnipeg is another name for opportunity. The wise men did come
from the east. They are all here. Winnipeg is a city of young men,
and youth is ambitious. It is called "the bull's-eye lantern of the
Dominion," and "the buckle of the wheat belt." If you want to
please a Winnipegger, tell him the city's growth is steady and
healthy not a bit of a boom about it. You will be telling the
absolute truth at the same time.

On the streets of Winnipeg, there are people who smile at you in
English, but speak in Russian. There are rushful, pushful people
from "the States," stiff-tongued Germans, ginger-headed
Icelanders, Galicians, Norwegians, Poles, and Frenchmen, all of
whom are rapidly becoming irreproachably Canadian. In all there
are sixty tongues in the pot.

The real Westerner is well proportioned. He is tall, deep-chested,
and lean in the flank. His body betrays, in every poise and motion,
a daily life of activity in the open air. His glances are full of wist
and warmth. There is an air of business about his off-hand way of
settling a matter that is very assuring.

Every mother's son of them is a compendium of worldly wisdom
and a marvel of human experience. What more does any country
want?

In the evening we went to church at Holy Trinity. The preacher
was a theological professor from one of the lower provinces. I
knew him once as a brilliant young student, and was pleased to see
him mount the pulpit.

But, alas! "how the devil spoils a fire God gave for other ends!"

Our friend undoubtedly feels he has a reputation to keep up as a
controversialist and dogmatist, and so turns the pulpit into a kind
of theological fortification, from whence he pours down
broadsides on the doubts and mooted questions which he imagines
are greatly troubling us.

The fact of the matter is, few of us are puzzling over the "tangled
Trinities," over these analytical, metaphysical aridities which may
be picked out from what Hume would designate as the
"speculative tenet of Theism." They are too much out of the beaten
track, and besides, most of us are kept far too busy, week days and
Sundays, fighting the world, the flesh, and the devil.

There are some of us in truth, many of us who do not care about
the wonderful something in the future; nor do we desire, in the
present, morbid self-introspection and gloom. We ask the Church
to teach us how we may live life now; how we may have it in
large, abundant measure. We want to know how to be strong,
healthy and holy (wholesome), happy, and wise. And if there are
other worlds we want the same things there.

On Monday we leave Winnipeg for Poplar Bluff, via the Canadian
Northern Railway.

The country through which we are passing is as full of flowers as
any paradise of Fra Angelico's. Mile upon mile is covered with a
pretty purple flower that I do not know. I mentally catalogue it as
the purple blossom the German prince in the fairy tale found on
the hillside, and which he used to disenchant his love who lay in
the old witches' cottage by the forest.

Millions upon millions of sunflowers, no bigger than my watch,
blossom in a continuous bed.

I never saw Madame Sunflower turn to the sun. The French have.
They call her "Tournesol." Moore must have too, for he sings,

"The sunflower turns on her god when he sets

The same look which she turn'd when he rose."

A heavy-necked "Commercial" who is sitting beside me has risked
an inconsequential remark upon the weather, that introductory
topic responsible for so much of the world's misery.

But it is always well to be civil to Commercials. They are
experienced and knowledgeable men of the world men of account.

This is one from the Land of Cakes. His speech bewrayeth him. I
change the conversation from the weather to the sunflowers.

 He is a canny chiel, this Scotsman, and tells me how the
sunflowers may be utilised. The seeds, if roasted, will make a
drink almost as tasty as cocoa, and, if ground into flour, make
excellent cakes. Just before the flowers bloom, if well boiled, they
will make a dish with a taste between the cauliflower and
artichoke. Blotting-paper may be manufactured out of the
seed-pods. The fibre of the stalk is useful for quite half a dozen
things, and, when dry, is as hard as maple wood. The seedheads,
with the seeds in, burn better than the best hard coal. The leaves
can be used as tobacco. If planted in a malarial district, they are a
protection against fever.

I bow in homage to you, Madame Sunflower!

The wild roses have fruited, and cover the low bushes like elfin
bonfires.

The Commercial informs me that the flower of the prairie rose is a
thermometer by which the knowing "agriculturalist" (he means
"farmer") can tell whether the land has an exposure to the early
summer and late autumn frosts. It appears the tiny, crimson point
of the bud which protrudes from the calyx is very sensitive, and
more easily blighted by frost than any other bud.

It is a pity prospecting emigrants from the East are not aware that
Nature has placed so cheap and convenient a weather-glass to their
hand.

I think the reason prairie flowers are more beautiful than their city
cousins is because they are loosely ordered and simply grow out of
the grass. Their setting is quite inimitable by art, in spite of all its
cunning. The green world they live in sets them off.

To look long at this blaze of purple and gold is to be filled with a
desire, in some way, to make it a part of one, to feel it in one's
pulses, and live it out in the world. This must have been what
Tennyson experienced when he said, "The soul of the rose went
into my blood."

The architecture here is early Western style and possesses the high
art of simplicity. The people are in such haste to get to work they
have no time for building houses, and so are content with shells
"shacks" they call them. They are such houses as Thoreau
described as a tool-box with a few auger holes bored in it to admit
light, and a hook to fasten down the lid at night.

The stoutly-built Galician homes, while by no means
arts-and-crafts mansions, are not so inartistic as the tool-boxes in
that they seem to grow out of, or fit into, the landscape.

The life on these isolated steadings must fit Gogol's description of
the sleepy life at Ostankino, "where each door had a separate
sound as it turned on its hinges, conveying a distinct articulation to
those who could comprehend it."

Here and there, we come to a field fat with growing crops. There is
actually room for myriads of emigrants in this district. In the words
of the good old Sunday school hymn, 

"Thousands now are safely landed 

On this golden shore;Thousands more are on their journey, 

Yet there's room for thousands more."

There are only three trains a week up this line, and, as yet, there
are no Pullmans or dining-cars. At Portage la Prairie and Dauphin
the conductor accommodatingly waited while we had dinner and
tea. The meals were substantial enough in all conscience, but when
they were served it was almost time to get back to the train, and so
we ate as if our lives depended on it "one feeding like forty."

We reached "Poplar Bluff" 1 at midnight after two wretched days
and two equally wretched nights of travelling. Our trunks were
missing. We were assured they would come on the next train, three
days hence. The sidewalk at Poplar Bluff is full of holes. The
Scotch Commercial fell into one of them on his way to the hotel.
He must have hurt himself for I heard one of the denizens of the
place say,

"Well? Are you ever going to come out of that   place   ?"

If you are in search of dirty hotels you can scarcely go amiss here.
Whichever one you go to you will wish you had gone to the other.

Our room had a sad-coloured carpet, the smallest washstand ever
seen outside a doll's house, and a looking-glass that distorted our
faces.

We slept with some pestilent insects, unchristian in temper and
carnivorous in habit. They made me think of the ants mentioned by
Pliny and Herodotus which were not so large as a dog, but bigger
than a fox.

Nor was the table d'h“te more to our taste. When the lumber-jacks
have finished feeding, the table-cloth looks like a map of the world
done with washes of yellow, brown, and blue. If you are of an
inquiring turn of mind, you may satisfy yourself as to what each
man ate by the stains around his plate.

The maid apologised for the drinking-water, saying the
"microbats" made it dark coloured. The tea is a copperas-tasting
decoction. The steak chews like the pneumatic tyre of a bicycle,
and I expect to see the boarders die on their chairs by my side.
There is nothing viler than "good, plain Canadian fare." No,
nothing!

The discussion at our table at dinner concerned apple-growing in
Manitoba. To hear these men talk, one would believe apples were
the staple product of the province. These Manitobans would die
rather than acknowledge that their province has been slighted by
Pomona, and yet apples are as much a forbidden fruit here as in
Eden.

A farmer in this district planted some young trees and took
ninety-nine precautions to save them. He lost his nurslings on the
hundredth, for the field-mice burrowed beneath and cut the roots. 

The wiseacres say the stupid fellow should have beaten a hard path
in the snow around each tree.

Indeed, the Manitobans will acknowledge no province as their
equal.

Manitoba is a corruption of two Indian words Manitou napa, "the
land of the great Spirit." The Manitobans translate it more freely as
"God's Country."

IIIACROSS THE LAND

"Let the plough therefore be going and not cease." LATIMER.

 E drove to a neighbouring village to-day. On account of the
stumps in the middle of the trails, it is almost the universal habit in
this district to travel with two horses. Our devious route lay most
of the way through forests of poppies.

These trails wander free as the wind and lead to regions rather than
places. They do not seem to have had any surveying, but to have
been made after the manner the little maid's mother cut her frock
"by presume."

Sometimes, we came to a clearing with a little shack of logs, a
cow-byre, and perhaps a herd of full-fed cattle, with calves frisking
about in a series of grotesque and ungainly gambols.

In one blessed spot, a ginger-headed Icelandic giant was turning
over his first furrow. The great oxen strained as they pulled the
share through the sod and brush. Behind, in the furrow, walked the
mother and three little children. They were partners in this
undertaking. It was a supreme moment for them. The turning of
civic sod was never half so vital. They had crossed a hemisphere to
turn this furrow. The steading was holy ground, and,
metaphorically, I took off my shoes. These folk are of the "few
elect." Thoreau was right when he said, "We want great peasants
more than great heroes."

 

Along the trails the autumn flowers are mostly yellow. The land is
a field of cloth-of-gold, such as any knight might have tilted upon.
Gold is the note of my life to-day.

"All golden is the sunshine, 

And golden are the flowers. 

The golden wing makes music 

In the long golden hours. 

And dull gold are the marshes 

And red-gold are the dunes; 

And gold the pollen dust is 

Moting the quiet moons."



The country hereabouts is alive with rabbits. Hitchy, twitchy,
munchy things they are. The Indians call them wahboos, which
means "the little white chaps."

They are not so wild as Mistress Molly Cottontail down in Ontario.
Indeed, they dawdle around, and take you in with a half-curious
stare, as much as to say, "Well, Woman Creature, what do you
want?" Then they scuttle off to their warren sanctuary. One of the
most delightful excursions in the world must have been that which
Alice in Wonderland made into the rabbit-burrow.

 This is "plague year" with the rabbits. It comes one year in seven.
The plague is a bot which infests the intestines of the animals and
kills them off in thousands. It also has a disastrous effect on the
wolves who eat the diseased rabbits.

Being in no hurry we put up at a village hotel. Allah be praised for
a leisurely life! The party ordered milk and biscuits, but I had wine
and biscuits. It was a sweet drink, full and heady a ruddy port that
harboured a kiss and reflected a glance. I drank one glass one glass
and a spoonful and enjoyed to the full the unusual delight of
feeling wicked that is only experienced by innocent people.

The hostess was a Frenchwoman. She related how, five years ago,
she had walked two hundred miles to this place with her family,
for then there were no railways or trails. It was delightful to hear
her babble away in soft vowels accompanied by the shrug of her
race, which means all things from total ignorance to infinite
understanding. Her face is an elusive suggestion of a boy's and a
woman's. She is a healthful-bodied, healthful-minded woman, with
a fine way of hitting the nail on the head. Finally, her hospitality
was as free as it was hearty. Angels could have done no more.

Coming home we were drenched. The rain had killed the "fatted
cloud" for us. The trees were as quiet as whipped children, for the
rain was scolding them. And when it stopped raining a miasmic
mist chilled us to the very heart. A white mist in the north is a
veritable death-sheet. Dante had proper insight when he made the
Inferno foggy, and Tennyson, too, in "Guinevere", when he wished
to presage unutterable sadness, told how

"The white mist, like a face-cloth to the face,

Clung to the dead earth, and the land was still."

IV

VILLAGE LIFE

 HE sword of Damocles, which has been hanging over these
golden harvest days, has fallen. We had frost last night, and all the
wheat in the valley has suffered. A German from whom we
purchased some lime to-day says, "De Lord am trying to kill off de
tam farmers, I can see dot." There! Somebody had to say it.

Being the first day of September, it is the time of paradise for dogs
and sportsmen! Duck-shooting opened to-day. One cannot but feel
a pity for those feathered creatures who are subjected at once to
Nature, "red in tooth and claw," and to the Lords of Creation who
carry guns. I have been shooting at a mark this last few days. The
Padre says I keep my eyes shut, but he assures me it is not well to
worry about it as this fact makes no appreciable difference to my
aim.

Here in this little Western village one suffers for want of fruit, and
must, perforce, substitute vegetables. I climbed a fence to-day to
pull a yellow turnip. There were some geese in the field. I am
always afraid of geese. They honk, and squawk, and quack, and
hiss, and the more I "shoo" them with my skirts, the worse they
are.

Inadvertently I stirred up the animosity of a wasp, too, and had to
run with an impetuosity seldom seen outside a race-course. The
Padre cut short the insect's ill-mannered career with his hat.
Christopher North was inspired when he said that of all God's
creatures the wasp was the only one eternally out of temper.

The turnip was good. All the wild blessings of the country are
bottled up in the turnip. It has a more distinctive flavour than
anything else we grow, and yet it is a flavour not easily described.
Pungent, acid, and sweet are all applicable terms, yet none is
wholly correct. As a complexion beautifier it is unrivalled. It acts
on the skin like magic. When any one declines to eat a raw turnip,
it is a sure sign that he or she has grown old.

We also bought a yoke of oxen to-day. There are more oxen
hereabout than horses. Our yoke cost one hundred and fifty dollars,
but we had the worth of them in fun during the purchase.

The owner, a queer codger with a red, bibulous face, was anxious
to place the good traits of the animals before us in the most
favourable light, but in putting the oxen through their paces would
burst into purple patches of vituperation.

"Go on, you blankety-blank, knock-kneed, cloven-hoofed chewer
of cuds!

"Now, ma'am, can't they walk some?

"Get out of the mud there, you stall-fed, lounging lump of
wickedness!

"Yes, siree, Boss! You needn't laugh. Them's the finest beasts in
the valley. They're slick as shootin'."

I suspect it is true what they say out here: "No one can serve God
and drive oxen."

This hamlet of Poplar Bluff, which is to be our home for at least
two years, is not famous in history. Of course, it will be some day,
the same as all other Western places. At present, it is only one of
the many small villages with big names like Kitchener, Durban,
Emerson, Mafeking, Roosevelt, Gladstone, and Cartier. Indeed, we
are no longer in swaddling clothes, for our chemist has laid in a
supply of blue and gold glassware decorated with the picture of
our barber's shop, hotel, and butcher's stall. They are "Souvenirs of
Poplar Bluff."

They doubtless serve a purpose. Travellers who buy them will
remember they were here.

You can get anything in the stores except the thing you want at the
identical moment.

Each store is a departmental repository, a multifarious bazaar,
where one may purchase blizzard-caps, hip-boots, blankets, guns,
gloves, grain-bags, laces and larrigans, molasses and moccasins,
shoes and steel traps, tea and tump-lines, tacks and thread. The
prices are not extravagant either. Perhaps the biggest "beat" is our
daily bread. It costs ten cents a small loaf. I have altered the Lord's
Prayer to cover this item.

Everybody literally everybody in Poplar Bluff is in real estate. One
would naturally think the supply of real estate would run out, but
such is far from being the case. The villagers sell to immigrants,
they sell to each other, and, now and then, the loan companies
swoop down on the fold and give a helping-hand.

I do not know whether any are growing rich, but they say it keeps
money in circulation. This seems an end greatly to be desired.

The clergy in Poplar Bluff are numerous enough to preach the
Gospel to every creature. There are five, not counting the students
from theological colleges who are here for the summer. The
population is about three hundred. Still, this cannot be helped, for
our mission boards must really make an endeavour to spend the
money contributed by the very generous people "back East."

It is both costly and difficult to be clean in our burg.
Circumstances are not calculated to encourage "the great
unwashed." The only soft water available is caught in rain-barrels.
About every fifth family has a well, and about every fifth well is
usable.

Some of the households drink the water that drips from their
refrigerators. This is considered the best No. I Hard, so to speak.

On account of the cold winters, the water is not pumped but is
dipped up in buckets. When the worst comes to the worst, a hole
can always be made in the ice on the river, and water secured from
thence.



The houses in our village are built without the slightest reference
to taste. They are stiff and ugly enough to serve as object-lessons
for the crude. They are great wooden sarcophagi built solely to
furnish shelter.

The Presbyterian pastor and his family of seven have been living in
a one-roomed shack, but they have lately moved into more
commodious, although hardly more beautiful, quarters.

The Baptist preacher's family is domiciled in one room with a
"lean-to."

The Episcopal clergyman, a wide-awake young bachelor, has a
two-roomed house and "boards around."

The Disciples' preacher is a carpenter, and so has a commodious
house with clapboard exterior and gingerbreadesque ornaments.

Our own house is undergoing renovation. It is a hideous,
card-board box that looks like a toy in which if you lifted the roof,
you would find jellies, fruits, or chocolates. I must not forget to
mention that it is decorated on the gable with a blue and crimson
sunset.

When we came to move in, we found there were no laths or plaster
on the walls, because, forsooth, there are no plasterers here. The
paper is put on over stretched cheese-cloth, and every time you
lean against it, you go through and see daylight in the chinks of the
outer shell.

The men are at work doing better things for us. We shall have
three bedrooms, a dressing-room, parlour, study, dining-room,
kitchen, and servant's room. We have no furnace, bathroom, cellar,
or woodshed. Perhaps we shall have these later, for the rule here
seems to be to build from the top. The stone foundation is usually
built after the house has been standing a year; later a cellar is dug
out, and finally, as the family increases in wealth, or as they get
leisure, a drain is added.

The hotels and shops are finished inside and outside with
embossed and painted tin. The finish is as ugly as it sounds. This, I
am told, is in deference to the underwriters. Besides, lumber is
expensive, planed spruce-boards selling at $26 per thousand feet. 

Some of the houses have car-roofs. The name is exactly
descriptive.

V

MORTUARY MUSINGS

"When the earth was sick and the skies were gray, 

And the woods were rolled with rain, 

The dead man rode through the autumn day 

To visit his love again."

                                          OLD BALLAD.

 HE Padre bought some graves to-day, and is having them levelled.
I argue that he could spend his money to better advantage. He
flatly contradicts me, and claims that the first use of money, as far
as we know, was for a burial, and the first sale of land was for a
cemetery.

These graves were made here before the village cemetery was
purchased. They are desolate-looking hillocks, but Pokagon stops
digging to ask me,

"Wat de odds, Missus? One grave be comferable as anoder."

The graveyard here is hard to find. It lies some distance off the
trail, and its "shadowed swells" might almost be trodden over by
the pedestrian were it not for a barbed-wire fence that belts one
grave and a galvanised iron cross that heads another. The cross
bears a type-written inscription, and is erected in memory of a
Swedish woman who died only a month ago. The inscription,
which is the composition of her husband, reads:

"No more thou are, and no one here are so to me in kindness. Such
hearted breast, such lovely voice no more on earth be found."

I think, perhaps, this means something more than the epitaphic
literature we Canadians are wont to select out of the stock-book
belonging to the monument builders.

As I push back the undergrowth and read the inscription on the
wooden "stones," I am filled with a throbbing pity, for all the ages
indicate that strong, young lives are throttled at their flood-tide.

The fascination of a cemetery is irresistible to me. The cemetery is
populated with people who are always "at home." I ask them
foolish things. Are they really dead? Do they live again? Or is it we
in the flesh who are dead? We who weep. We who sin. Is it we
who are dead?

This graveyard is in a state of absolute neglect, and consequently is
evidence of our low civilisation. The village cemetery, I take it,
marks the degree of the village culture.

Our dear ones go from the home circle to the open congregation,
and their remains are a solemn deposit entrusted to our honour.

But, somehow or other, they are very, very dead, and the living are
hungry, tired, impatient, and make many calls on us.

A shabby graveyard has its uses, though. It humbles us. We think
we are of the utmost importance to our little circle of kin, and in
truth we are, but it is astonishing how quickly the waters close
over the spot where we went down. Our dearest will even say it
was "a happy release," that we are "better off," or use some equally
empty expression as a mere covering for a lack of sensibility.

VI

AUTUMN DAYS

 ESTERDAY was brimful of liquid sunshine. It was as good as
gold indeed much better than gold.

Since coming here, I have lost my old habit of insomnia, and am
beginning to like the place better. It reminds one of Winthrop's
description of Acadia "a land where sunshine never scorches and
yet shade is sweet; where simple pleasures please; where the sky is
bright, and green fields satisfy for ever."

Every one who writes from the East sympathises with me in this
"Ultima dim Thule." I cannot say that I think as much of Thule as
the people in it, but I am beginning to learn how much I can drop
out of life without being unhappy. I find almost as much joy in
losing my knowledge as I did in acquiring it. The 'ologies and
'osophies, the big causes, cultures, and cants are not so sweet to my
taste as

"The lore o' men that ha' dwelt with men, 

In new and naked lands."

Yesterday, the vicar drove me to his two appointments. Our way
lay for the most part through a forest with a prodigal luxuriance of
undergrowth, but now and then we emerged into a stumpy clearing
where the land looked smooth and fat. It is what they call in
Manitoba "mellow" clay. That is, it turns over without sticking to
the spade.

Walt Whitman apostrophised this country as "thou lucky Mistress
of the tranquil barns." It will be many a day before this vicinity can
be thus addressed. At best, the barns are 12 by 14 shacks,
log-roofed, thatch-roofed, sod-roofed, roofed anyhow. Indeed,
there is but little occasion for barns. The farmer stacks and
threshes his grain in the field, and at once takes it to market.

At some of the bachelor shacks the men were hanging out their
Sunday washing, and the garments disported themselves in the
wind with an utter abandonment of decency.

The vicar thinks quite badly of the village girls because they refuse
to marry the bachelors and live in these shacks. On the contrary, I
contend that it speaks well for them. Any girl who was not wholly
insane would prefer a brick-clad house with lace curtains, and
perhaps a piano and a carpet-sweeper.

Matrimony is the only game of chance the clergy favour.

Besides, there are not sufficient village girls to go round. The
unequal distribution of trousers and skirts in Canada makes
countless thousands mourn and so, perforce, the Eastern spinster
and Western bachelor sigh vainly for each other like the pine and
palm.

 We stopped to examine a rat colony which was situated in the
centre of a green, sluggish pond. Their houses, which are
dome-shaped, are made of grass, moss, reeds, and sticks. The
musquash travels with a queer, wriggling motion, has webbed feet,
a flat tail, and a clay-coloured body.

The Indians trap thousands of them every year. It cannot be called
a slaughter, though, for these rodents multiply at a most surprising
rate. Besides, as Miss Laut has already pointed out, linings for
coats do more to save life than all the Humane Societies in the
world.

That I might live out of doors these autumn days, the Padre bought
me a pony. It is a half-breed perhaps only a quarter-breed at any
rate, a mongrel Indian pony. I have christened him "Shawna,"
which is Indian for "Sweet Thing."

His conduct leads me to believe that he is no more likely to
measure up to his name than the youthful George Washingtons,
Wesleys, or Albert Edwards we meet in all quarters of the world.

A more characteristic cognomen would have been "Paul," because
he suffers not a woman to have authority. He fairly bowls along
with the Padre, but once I mount he stands stock-still.

He has all the traits the vendor claimed for him backbone and
stamina, perseverance, grit, pluck, staying powers, and "sand."
Indeed he has!

The Padre casts aspersions on my equestrianism but this is because
he does not like to acknowledge he was sold with the pony.

Peter Paulson, one of our workmen, is having trouble, too, with the
oxen. They have been jerking him whither they would. He hitched
them on the wrong side, got them astride a stump, or tangled up
the lines. Peter did not like to dig on the canal we are making from
the river to the sleugh where the logs from our timber-limit are to
be boomed, so the Padre gave him a job as driver. He was a
goldsmith in Copenhagen, but recently lived in Greenland. He has
been in this country six months, and speaks our language well
enough for all ordinary uses. I heard him call one of the men
"Rubber" the other day!

This afternoon he has been arrested for taking whisky to the
Indians. One of the squaws imbibed freely, and this morning was
found, burned to death, by the camp fire. She was Henry Brass's
mother-in-law. Henry is digging on the canal. He came at noon to
the house and asked me for a spade with which to dig his
mother-in-law's grave. He was one of the revellers too, and will
probably have to explain to the coroner.

Another of our men, Michael Peck, is in trouble. His "wife," who
is also my scrub-woman, has been arrested and goes to jail at
Portage la Prairie to-night, for trial. She tried to kill Michael last
night with a razor. It should be seen that since the initial error of
Eve a certain amount of "devil" has been apportioned to all flesh.

Three bears entered the village last night and partly demolished
the carcass of a horse. They escaped without a shot being aimed at
them.

Bears, moose, and other large animals are plentiful in this district.
Over one hundred years ago, Daniel Harmon, a factor of the North
West Fur Company, wrote that in this vicinity the animals were
"moose, red deer, a species of antelope, grey, black, brown,
chocolate-coloured and yellowish bears, two species of wolves,
wolverines, polecats or skunks, lynxes, kitts, beavers, otters,
fishers, martins, minks, badgers, musk-rats, and black, silver, cross
and red foxes."

All these autumn nights the sky is aglow with northern lights. The
youngsters assure me they are glory gleams from the angel
children as they dance about the Pole. There have been other and
less beautiful explanations.

'Tis a pity one cannot even approximately describe the aurora.
Words stop short at form. They cannot translate colour. The aurora
may best be described as "an intermediate, somewhat between a
thought and a thing."

During the occurrence of this phenomenon, the telegraphic system
is deranged, showing the intimate connection between these lights
and the magnetism of the earth. The magnetic needle also deviates
several degrees from its normal position, and it is most affected
when the aurora is brightest.

I think the proximity of the magnetic pole has something to do
with the superiority of the Northmen. The best peoples of the
world have come out of the north, and the longer they are away
from boreal regions in such proportion do they degenerate.

VII

PICKINGS ABOUT PIE

 AM devoting my days and my nights to pie.

I heartily agree with Mr. Crosland, the English essayist, that,
properly considered, the pie is one of the finest things humanity is
capable of producing.

It has been my lifelong ambition to perform this culinary feat, and
now I can make a pie such a pie that, on tasting it, you will, as
Brillat-Savarin says, "see wonders."

My recipe? I just take a pinch o' this, and a handful o' that, and a
squeeze of lemon juice that most delicate acid Nature has ever
distilled and then you have it. 

Stand back and look! It is the colour of the morning sunlight.
Come near and smell. It is the distracting odour of the forbidden
fruit. Shut your eyes! It is a dream.

Up to date, I have been president of thirteen women's societies or
clubs, but it required infinitely more boldness, more accurate
calculation, greater finesse, and deeper insight to tackle the pie art.

Like Gail Hamilton, all I knew about a pie hitherto, was to know it
when I saw it. But now!

My first crust was not a success. The same applies to several
succeeding ones. But it was not my fault. The recipe did not say
the water must be cold, and so, naturally I used hot. It was tough
enough (I mean the pie) to sew buttons on. Then followed a series
with boggy foundations. The family called them "muskegs."

How hateful the family were! They would persist in tracing the
origin of the word "pie," and would conclude that it comes from
the Latin pica, from whose black and white aspects come "pied"
and "piebald," and is the same pie by which printers describe type
that is all jumbled up.

The word "tart" they traced back to the Latin tortus, meaning
twisted. The twisting, they argue, refers rather to the effects of the
tart than to its shape.

They gave it as their opinion that I had proved the falsity of the
dictum that it was not possible to eat your pie and have it. And one
day the Padre told a story of a philosopher who said:

"Tell me what people read, and I will tell you what they are."

"Well, there's my wife," rejoined the dyspeptic party. "She's for
ever reading cookery books. Now, what is she?"

"Why, a cook, of course," replied the philosophy dispenser.

"That's where the spokes rattle in your wheels," said the other.
"She only thinks she is."

My greatest difficulty has been to know how to decorate the edges.
Sometimes I use a fork, and sometimes I scallop them with a
spoon, but the impress of the latter looks too much like a thumb
mark. I asked the milkman about it the other day. He is my most
sympathetic friend and counsellor. He did not offer his opinion,
but he told me a story of a certain mistress who, for the
amusement of her company, wished to rally her servant upon the
fantastic ornament of a huge pie.

"Why, Bridget," she said. "Did you do this? You are an artist. How
did you do it?"

"Indade it was meself that did it," replied Bridget, "Isn't it pretty,
mum? I did it with your false teeth, mum."

I have best luck with my Sunday pies. Once the Padre lectured me
about it, but I got rid of him by putting flour on his coat. 

He is quite wrong about Sunday pies. They are pious acts. It is
quite possible for a pie to comfort the soul. I have proved it over
and over, and so great an authority as Leach holds this view too.
He says that the small boy who interrupted a description of heaven
to ask, "Do they have a good cook there?" had his finger on the
foundation-stone of human happiness.

VIII

IN THE STING OF THE NORTH WIND

 STARTED out with the Padre this morning for the timber-limit.

The thermometer stood at 48° below zero. It was a clear,
shining day of pitiless cold a day on which it is not difficult to
understand the idea of sun worship.

They made me a bed in the sleigh. It consisted of a heap of hay,
rugs, furs and pillows. In sooth, it was "a couch more soft than
sleep."

Sometimes our way lay along the beaten trails, and sometimes we
crossed fluffy snow-fields of dead white, where the wind had
brushed up drifts of fantastic sculpturing.

The supple undulations and exquisite curves of these waves of
snow, held in the lethal grasp of winter, are always a joy to the
eyes. They are wraith forms that never repeat themselves, and so
prove a never-ending source of wonder and novelty.

Ahead of us drove a man in a Russian sled. His horses were rimey
with frozen breath. The sled was infinitely more artistic than our
Canadian cutters. It was painted black, with a horse rampant in
white and some queer, unconventional designs. The Canadian
cutter, besides being ugly, is uncomfortable. It has not enough
back or side support, and there is not sufficient room to stretch
your legs. The seat is too big for one, and not large enough for two.
It is provocative of rheumatism and kidney disease. 

We passed a quaint, pleasing log house of octagon shape. It is not
often the settlers care to take the time to attempt anything like
elegance in their homes.

Here and there we were greeted by snarling, yellow curs, for all the
settlers keep dogs.

Lapland snow-birds, in rustling bunches, rose up from almost
under our horses' hoofs. These feathered sprites are white in
colour, and belong to the family of finches. They build their nests
on the ground because trees are not common in their homeland.
They utter tiny chirps like weak fifes.

A snowy owl, perched on a dead tree, made a striking picture. By
popular prejudice this bird is connected with night and black
deeds, but I am told this species seeks its prey in daytime, its
victims being rabbits, birds, mice and mink. Minerva sat on her
perch with an odd air of gravity, and when the Padre raised his gun
she assumed a grotesque attitude, finally flying off with a
half-wheeze, half-croak.

The Padre said he did not shoot out of deference for her. He
believes there is something half human about an owl. I think,
maybe, he is right. It is the only bird that has an external ear. A
certain loresman declares that the owl was a baker's daughter. She
sat up all night to make loaves for the workmen, who found her
every morning blinking with sleep. By and by she actually turned
into an owl.

The rabbits are ubiquitous. Their numbers recall the story of a
little girl who explained that when God made babies He made
them one by one, but when He came to make rabbits He said, "Let
there be rabbits!" and there were rabbits. They do not bother to
hide as we pass by.

The chief enemy of these little rodents is the wolf. In one place we
saw where Brer Rabbit had been killed and eaten. They themselves
dine off poplar boughs. Wherever a limb falls they nibble off every
vestige of bark.

I got out of my nest to hold the horses while the Padre shot at and
missed a coyote. This "four-footed friar in orders grey" had
histrionic ability. Sometimes he slunk along in devious loop-like
curves, and again he leaped into the air and stood stock-still. He is
a regular Joey Bagstock of animals. "Sly, sir, devilish sly, is old
Joe." One tries hard to think why this lurking, cowardly,
complaining, white-toothed brute should have been sacred to the
stalwart Mars.

No one seems to have understood the coyote so well as Bret Harte,
who has described him as 

"A shade on the stubble, a ghost by the wall, 

Now leaping, now limping, now risking a fall.

Lop-eared and large-jointed, but ever alway 

A thoroughly vagabond outcast in gray."

We stopped at Tibble's clearing to get warmed. They have thirteen
children and a home-made furnace. The registers are the cracks in
the floor. We exchanged courtesies. Mrs. Tibble gave me a tatted
collar, and I have promised to send her a package of literature
monthly.

We met a Mr. Bowles there. He came out from England last year.
He told me that while hitching his horses to the sleigh this
morning, the coyotes were so thick about him that he was afraid to
turn his back lest they should jump on him. The Padre says his
fears are wholly groundless, for the coyotes are cowardly and will
not attack a man.

As we faced north-west, we saw Thunder Hill, a wooded mountain
of indigo-blue aligning the horizon. At long intervals we passed
bachelor shacks. The lives of these men must be as lonely as that
of Robinson Crusoe. They must possess a queer mental crotchet to
thus isolate themselves. Fishes go in shoals, bees in swarms, cattle
in herds, and the normal man is gregarious. Bacon has said,
"Whoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god."

I asked the Padre what he thought about it. He did not say, but told
me that once a barber asked Webster how he liked to be shaved.
The great man replied, "In silence." 

I am still wondering if he meant the story to apply to the bachelors
or to me. 

Of a sudden, we saw a hurtling, quick-moving compact mass on
the trail some hundreds of yards ahead.

"Moose!" hissed the Padre.



I felt swift thrills up and down my spine, and a sudden tightness of
the throat. It was a sight to see milord the Moose in his natural
setting. 

The Padre was too late with his deadly barrel, and glad I was, for
the moose are "God's own horses." Their lives are more interesting
than their deaths. The Padre said I get moral when the grapes are
sour. I retorted by telling him that a man with a gun is a savage.
When we both calmed down, undeterred by his story anent
Webster, I asked him a string of questions. He did not answer me
till I reminded him that Archimedes was slain because he did not
answer a question that was asked him. Here is the summary of his
replies: 

The moose was probably attracted by the sound of our bells.
Above all else the bull is curious. The Indians have a "long call"
which they make with a birch-bark horn. It is in simulation of the
cow's call for her mate, but the Padre says it is not a good imitation
and any unusual sound will "fetch him." This method of luring the
buck seems treacherous. What odds that the buck is often brutal, a
coward, or selfish? It is not sport, and does violence to our social
sentiments. Wherever an Indian kills a moose, he moves his camp
thither. The moose "yard-up" for winter. Their chief food is the
branches of the moose-willow. Indeed, their name is derived from
the Indian word mouswah, meaning wood-eater. (N.B. I am not
sure of this. Perhaps the Padre coined the word to impress me with
his knowledge.) The Padre says the moose also browses on the
shoots of young spruce-trees. I am not sure of this either, for I have
heard tell that the squirrel is the only animal that likes turpentine.
Nature or evolution has endowed the moose with a wonderful
nose, not only in size, but in acuteness of scent. This is why he is
called the "Hebrew of the Woods." He has remarkable ears too,
and hunters say that if you can feel his ears and nose you can put
salt on his tail.

Further on, the Padre shot a huge timber-wolf. It whirled round and
round, and then, with a half-keyed shriek suggesting the
lamentation of a lost soul, angled off into the brush, leaving a trail
of blood. The Padre followed a short distance but returned
empty-armed, for the snow was almost hip-deep.

The timber-wolves are the only animals the Indians are afraid of.
Their mode of attack is effective. They hamstring their man that is,
they cut the sinews of his legs and so he falls a helpless prey.

IX

WITH THE DUKHOBORS

"Of course I am interested in my neighbour. Why shouldn't I be?
That fence between us only whets my appetite."

 T was seven o'clock when we sighted the Dukhobor village of
Vosnesenia. It is built on rising ground, and the site has been well
chosen. The drainage is perfect. Ditches on either side of the
village carry the water to a small creek that winds through the
lowland.

Arriving at Vosnesenia, we went to Eli's house. He has frequently
worked for us, and the Padre says his house is one of the cleanest
and most comfortable in the village.

The houses are arranged on both sides of a wide street, and are
foreign in every line. They are one-storied, and of unsawn lumber
plastered with clay. They are whitewashed, and frescoed with
vivid dadoes. Sometimes the roofs project into verandas, which are
ornamented with carving. The blinds are on the outside, and
consist of several thicknesses of hemp. These have a superlative
advantage. Early callers know whether the inmates are ready or not
to receive them.

The Padre went into the house to know if we might spend the night
with them. I was presently surrounded by men, women and
children, and borne triumphantly indoors, all the while feeling that
I was being examined with a directness that was disconcerting.

 They took off my headgear, fur coat, and golf-jacket, and finally
tackled my footgear. Then they all laughed at the great heap of
dry-goods I had shed. My hatpins afforded them especial
amusement. They pushed them in and out of my cap many times.

When our "grub" box was brought in, I sallied to the kitchen to get
tea ready. The stove was made of baked clay. It was what Mr.
Arnold Haultain has described as "an ungainly but highly
satisfactory stove." I put a handful of tea in the pot, and gave it to
one of the women to steep. She poured half a cupful of water on,
and then proceeded to pour it off. I was afraid of losing my brew,
but unnecessarily, for this was only to free the leaves of dust and
other impurities surely a laudable and sanitary precaution.

I cooked bacon in my own pan, and fried some potatoes. One of
the little girls held her nose during the cooking process. Eli told
me she did not like "the stank."

 The Dukhobors are vegetarians, and urge with their kind that we
"make graveyards of our stomachs." I explained to Eli that the
Israelites ate angels' food in the wilderness, and remained
stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart.

"Me no understand," said Eli. He is a sly fellow, this Eli, and does
not like to be drawn out.

The table off which the Dukhobors eat is small. With them, dining
is clearly not a function. They spread a white cloth over the table
in our honour. They also set down a plate of their bread. In colour
it resembled New Orleans treacle, and had we no fine stomachic
sensibilities I am sure we should have found it highly nutritive. I
do not know what they put in it, but should say its component parts
are similar to those of bread I once ate in Germany, consisting of
three parts specially prepared sawdust and one part rye-flour.

The women of the household washed my dishes. How many
women were there? I do not know. There were four generations of
them. Some of the houses have five.

The news had spread that we were in the village, and soon all the
young men and maidens gathered to see us. They were taking us
in, and it would doubtless have been a thorn in our pride if we
knew what they thought of us.

The girls entered, and made a stately bow, which I must practise. It
is beautiful. The women wear short postillion-like jackets of black
sateen. Their skirts are short, and made without gores, being
gathered in evenly all round the waist-line. They nearly all wore
aprons, the bottom of which had knitted woollen bands edged with
scallops. They affected every colour, and even succeeded in
blending purple, red and green in a happy triple alliance.

 The unmarried women even the baby girls wear white kerchiefs
on their heads, and the married women coloured ones. These
kerchiefs are never doffed. I do not know why, but in likelihood to
show they are unquestionably worshipful of their lords.

On the whole, their dress spells comfort. Their arm-holes are easy;
their skirts do not drag; their bodies are not jails of bones and
steels, and they wear no cotton-batting contrivances. "Jennie June"
was right when she said the great art of life is to eliminate.

Most of the Dukhobors can speak a few words of English, and all
are anxious to become proficient so that they may go to our
villages to work. On this occasion, John, a young Dukhobor who
had worked in a Canadian store, and who speaks English fluently,
acted as interpreter.

I asked them to sing for us. Their music is not of the "popular"
variety, and in volume would suffice for a marching regiment. All
the sounds seem to come from their head and throat. They do not
move their lips, or very slightly, so that I found it difficult to know
who was singing. The airs are weird and vagrant. It is astonishing
how long they can hold one note. The Dukhobors never use
musical instruments. They sang the 77th Psalm, lullabies, and
songs of freedom.

Perhaps Tolstoy described the motive of the peasant's song better
than any one else. He says it is "an accessory coming of itself,
without effort, and seeming solely to mark cadence."

When I expressed a wish to retire, the guests bowed themselves
out, and one of the women made our bed. It consisted of a feather
mattress as soft as marshmallows, and a heap of pillows and
blankets. The mattress was very short, being calculated to
accommodate only the body and not the legs. It was laid on a
wooden bench which was about five feet wide, and ran nearly all
the way round the room.

The men retired to one apartment, the women to another, and Eli
and his wife to a third. A woman and baby lay at our feet, and a
boy opposite. The baby was placed in a square bed or box which
was suspended from the ceiling, something like a bird-cage.

While I was undressing, the women returned and examined my
clothing with apparent interest. My golf-skirt, with brilliant plaid
lining, and my underskirts were handed round, rubbed between the
fingers and commented upon. They seemed much pleased with the
ribbons running through my underwear, but were shocked and, at
the same instant, amused by my corsets. They nudged each other,
grinned, and shrugged their shoulders. These corsets were of the
long-hipped style, had two pairs of yellow suspenders, and carried
a patent busk-protector.

Then they showed me what they wore. Taking all things into
consideration, I wouldn't exchange.

After we lay down, the women returned once more with articles
for sale. We bought some socks and woollen mittens. The mittens
were white, and had white fleece knitted inside, making them as
warm as fur.

Heavens! but the heat was awful. No Pullman car was ever
comparable, nor baker's oven for that matter. The women kept
piling on dry tamarack wood at intervals all night. I gasped and
suffocated, and thought longingly of the dress mentioned by
Rabelais as "nothing before, nothing behind, with sleeves of the
same."

And the cat walked over me most of the night, for in an ill-guided
moment I had fed it with meat, and so it was showing me some
cupboard love.

The men were having breakfast when I awoke. They were dipping
soup out of a bowl with wooden spoons. Each man had a huge
chunk of bread. A plate of sliced turnips and a dish of baked
potatoes completed their "halesome farin'." As I watched them eat,
I thought of Bronson Alcott, "the tiresome archangel," who kept
only "a chaste supply of water and vegetables for his bodily
needs."

Tea was the last course, and was served separately. The men stood
with bowed heads, and returned thanks with profound and
unaffected devotion before leaving the table. Even our unhallowed
presence did not disturb them.

I had some of the soup for my breakfast. It was made of cabbages,
onions, potatoes, and butter. The matter with it was that the onion
was at its very worst moment. A raw onion is palatable, a cooked
onion is toothsome, but an onion that has merely undergone a heat
change is devastating in its effects upon the feeder.

They also gave me some eggs to cook, and a jug of milk. I gave
them a peach pie in return. They threw away the crust because
there was lard in it. After eating the fruit they pronounced it "no
good." Almost every Dukhobor can say these two words.

The interiors of the houses are plastered and whitewashed, and
decorated with dadoes of brown and yellow. Coloured pictures and
calendars are much in evidence. The floor was of clay mixed with
mud, and seemed almost as hard as asphalt. The window sills were
deep and flower-filled. 

The system being communistic, the houses have only one door. It
was Pat Kelly who said to the Liverpool detective, when the latter
was looking for Fenians in his saloon:

"The back door was it your honour was looking for? Sure, the only
back door is in the front." 

One of the women was making a frock for herself. She used no
thimble. I indicated to her with signs that might be useful to the
Meisterschaft System that she ought to have one. She produced
one from a cupboard and placed it on her first finger. I showed her
that I wore it on the second, but she only laughed, and doubtless
thought me very stupid and illogical. She seemed to be a nice girl,
and bubbling over with what certain superior men describe as
"womanly instinct." These thrifty women sew without machines,
spin, knit, and make their own baskets and linen. They reap in the
harvest fields too, and, if need be, can take a hand at the plough.

By unfriendly critics, much has been made of the fact that the
Dukhobor women perform the arduous work of harnessing
themselves to the plough, but this is entirely at their own
suggestion.

At first the women were greatly in the majority, as their fathers,
sons, and husbands were in Siberian exile, and much of the work
had, therefore, to be done by the womenfolk. It was when only a
few draught horses were available, and these were needed to haul
logs from a distance so that homes might be built before the
rigours of winter set in, that the women volunteered, with true
Spartan fortitude, to break up the land.

May Agnes Fitzgibbon, in her bright letters to the Toronto Globe,
speaking of these immigrants, has well said:

"In the days to come one of the Russian artists in their midst will
paint a picture which will be a source of pride to the descendants
of these women who shouldered this burden with the same
steadfast courage with which they have borne many others."

Last season this village bought a steam plough, and the other
villages are following suit.

 Before leaving, I went into one of the houses to see the process of
making linseed oil. The flax had been chopped, and the women
were kneading the meal in troughs. The meal was heated in a
large, shallow pan, and then subjected to great pressure under a
jack-screw. The refuse, after the oil is extracted, is given to cows,
but the children, too, licked it up greedily. The Dukhobors use this
oil for various purposes, but mainly for cooking, in the place of
animal fats.

As I watch the easy, muscular movement of the women kneading
the meal, it is borne in on me that they have no special need of
dumb-bells nor any reason to yearn for physical culture.

Dr. Johnson is credited with saying that much can be done with a
Scotsman if you catch him young. The same would apply to the
Dukhobors. The children are bright, receptive, and keen for work,
and will be singing "The Maple Leaf" before another decade.

The boys are the same as other boys, in that they stare, wriggle,
snuffle, grin behind your back, and are as hard to hold as
quicksilver.

The girls are round, brown, and dimpled, and as well developed
physically as their brothers.

They are not warm-happed, cuddled, and health-fooded like our
children, and so infant mortality is not high among them.
Overlooked, almost forgotten, these little wildings gather to
themselves sap and sinew like children of the cave-dwellers. It is
the shrewd way of God.

I am convinced that these people from the shores of the Black Sea
will make excellent citizens. They do not steal or very seldom
fight, drink intoxicants, smoke, or swear. Their lives are saturated
with ideas of thrift and small economies. They hold themselves
slaves of neither priest nor landlord, and their history is a story of
sturdy struggling for independence.

People who are jealous, or misinformed detractors, have made
much ado over their unfitness as settlers, and have evidenced their
pilgrimages to find Christ as a proof.

Only twenty per cent of the Dukhobors took part in this
pilgrimage, and these were the dupes of a religious fanatic who
posed as a prophet. But, as their kindly chronicler, John Elkington,
has pointed out, they are not the first people to be made the
victims of false teaching through their ignorance of the Bible. At
any rate, we may safely say that any shortcomings these simple
folk betray are mental rather than moral.

Elbert Hubbard, who visited them at the time of their pilgrimage,
declared they were not fanatics, but merely Baptists gone to seed.
In principle they are Quakers, but style themselves "The Christian
Community of United Brotherhood," and are banded together with
the primary object of maintaining the principles of peace and love
to all men.

 Their system is communistic. The crops and money are all stored
in one fund. This practice cannot be set aside as entirely visionary
and unworkable when the whole Christian Church kept it without
violation for more than two hundred years. Besides, it is something
very akin to this system that is advocated to-day by leading
Socialists in all parts of the world.

There are some very apparent benefits in this Dukhobor method,
too. The people are not isolated on lonely steadings miles and
miles from any one. This loneliness is undoubtedly the greatest
trial our settlers have to endure. He was a wise statesman who said
it was not a parish council the country needed so much as a parish
circus.

In these Dukhobor villages, the people practically constitute one
large family, and know each other's outgoings and incomings,
fortunes and misfortunes. It is their habit to visit each other in the
evenings, to sew, gossip, sing, or while away the time as wisdom
may dictate or fancy lead.

Their system has another superlative advantage. The wolf is never
at the door. Their storehouses have superfluities for none, but an
abundance for all.

It looks, though, as if the iron of worldly ambition has at last got a
wedge in their souls. The land which the Government allotted to
them is about to be thrown open to settlers. The Government is
wholly justified in this action. It is neither wise nor fair to leave a
large area of country fallow and unproductive while other people
need it.

But the forfeiture will probably prove too severe a strain on the
principles of the community, and the likelihood is that the people
will make entries for homesteads.

Their beautiful ideals will be whittled down by the jack-knife of
all-pervading expediency. Their little Arcadias will be broken up,
and presently their women, too, will be affecting hatpins, corsets,
and yellow garters. The pity of it!

Hitherto the sciences and arts have been a quality unfelt, because
unknown. They lost some few things; but in losing they gained
more. They were wise with the supreme wisdom of simplicity.

X

IN SASKATCHEWAN

"An' the silence, the shine, an' the size

Of the 'igh, inexpressible skies."

                                          KIPLING.

 T was growing dusk when we left Vosnesenia for the Dukhobor
saw-mill, our next stage on the journey northward.

We were now in the territory of Saskatchewan. Our road, at first,
ran through a country of park-like character. This road has been
cut by the Dukhobors, and is an excellent one. It is also marked out
by mile posts. At six miles we came to a half-way house which has
been erected for shelter, but we did not stop.

Further on, the road entered a forest. The picture was one of scant
lighting and low values. All colour seemed to be bleached out of
the earth.

Now and then the snow cried out in sharp resistance as the sleigh
passed over it.

It was quite dark. The cold was cowing. I cuddled deeper into my
blankets.

"The wood," says Tennyson, "is full of echoes, owls, elfs, ghosts o'
the mist, wills-o'-the-wisp. Only they that be bred in it can find
their way o' nights in it."

Soon we had nothing to talk of. The Padre dropped into poetry and
said, somewhat mournfully:

"With how sad steps, O Moon! thou climbst the skies. How
silently, and with how wan a face."

I accused him of pretending this apostrophe was a quotation. He
assured me it was from an old sonnet which read "moone" and
"wanne."

He was not to be set aside on the subject, and went on, telling me
that Emerson said a man who has seen the rising moon break out
of the clouds at midnight has been present, like an archangel, at
the creation of light.

Then we spoke of Shelley's address to "the orbed maiden with
white fire laden," eventually swinging off to a hot discussion of
Bacon's theory that all life is larger and more vigorous upon the
full of the moon.

Our conversation soon took a lighter tone. The Padre said the man
in the moon was there because he broke the Sabbath by picking up
chips.

Now the Padre is always dwelling offensively on the matter of
Sunday observance, because he disapproves of my making pies on
that day instead of teaching Sunday school, and so I contended that
the man in the moon ought to be let down again, for it was just
possible he lived in the North-West and couldn't help himself.
Besides, he probably had an exacting kind of wife who would not
go cold, just as husbands won't go hungry. This nettled His
Infallible Highness, and he said the man in the moon was a woman
because of her changeability, and because she gets reduced to her
last quarter every month.

My theory is that he stays there because he is a manufacturer of
counterfeit silver, for he takes in no end of young couples every
year. Besides, Mr. Zangwill is on my side. He gives it as his
opinion that the moon has "a blank, idiot face," and that it should
have been made a chronometer, with hands on it, instead of being
left to stare at us so uselessly.

Before we knew it, the black forest recesses were echoing with
laughter and jeers.

"Night steeped the passing of the day

   In quiet, peace, and love,

 While Dian in her tranquil way   Kicked up a shine above."

We reached the Dukhobor saw-mill at eight o'clock. It is situated
on the edge of the timber-limits given to them by the Government.

On our arrival, our horses were taken from us and we made our
way into a long barn-like structure, lighted only by a small,
guttering lamp and the glare of the red-hot iron stove.

 The men made way for us. I did not know I was cold till I got into
the heat. Had any one touched me, I would have broken in two. I
could have cried out with misery and weariness. Of a surety,
"women and gouty legs are best at home." Any fool can travel, but
it takes a wise woman not to.

A Dukhobor who could speak some English tried to comfort me by
telling me how that day he had frozen the heel of his nose.

The Boss of the mill brought us two cups and a kettle of hot water
for tea. It is only recently that china-ware has been used by these
refugees from the land of the Tsar.

The Padre put the food on the table, for I was dazed and stupid. I
ate it reclining in true Oriental fashion. There were no chairs, and
the table, which was fixed, was situated next one of the bunks.

This was the sleeping camp, and it is never used for eating except
by our own men.

The mill was not cutting then, owing to the extreme cold. The men
were there loading their sleighs with lumber for the churches
which were being erected in each village.

I made my bed on the big bench, which was eight feet wide and
about fifty feet long. The men slept at the far end. The Padre was
complaining that we had no wash-basin, and before he "turned in"
told me we were like a German couple he heard about. They were
giving evidence in a trial, and the man was asked by the lawyer:

"How old are you?"

"I am dirty."

"And what is your wife?"

"My wife is dirty-two."

"Then, sir, you are a very nasty couple, and I wish to have nothing
further to say to either of you."

Shortly after I lay down, the Boss awoke me to say he had a bed
made for us in his house, but I declined with thanks. Why should I
bestir myself? A warrior taking her rest with her fur coat wrapped
around her! Soft rugs, softer cushions, a leaping fire! How nice it
was to be warm and sleepy.

It was four o'clock when I awoke. The men were talking. They talk
always; that is unless they are putting wood on the fire, and,
generally, they do both together.

I slipped on my moccasins, mittens, and cap, and stole out into the
night.

Rabbits and prairie chickens were gambolling about the yard in a
risky, frisky fashion. The Dukhobors do not take life, and so these
furtive wood-folk have become domesticated.

I saw a light in a building. It was a building about a hundred feet
long, and was quaintly ornamented like the others. I was curious. I
peeped in. It was the stable. I opened the door, and slipped in. A
lantern was suspended in the middle of it. How warm and clean it
was! The carefully groomed hides of the horses shone like satin in
the half-light. They are big, solid, careful-looking animals. The
Dukhobors have the best horses in the country, and take great care
of them, sometimes killing them with kindness another name for
overfeeding. In the villages it is the custom to keep a fire in the
stable where all the horses are stalled, and they are fed at night as
well as day.

Outside, the spruce trees stood up tall and stiff, like sentinel
grenadiers. The sky was bright with stars. Alone in this great
vastness one begins to doubt even so frivolous a one as I whether,
after all, you are a little lower than the angels. You are possessed
with a yearning to be nobler than you hold yourself to be. It is
given you to hear "the still, small voice." Life, with its hurry and
fever dreams, falls away, and you feel it is not possible the world
can harm you.

I did not wake again till after eight o'clock. It was a man turning a
grindstone that awoke me. He said something in Russian. "Good
morning," I suppose; "have you slept well?" But there was no
thread of language relation between us. We were both human, that
was all, and so we both smiled.

After breakfast, the Boss, who spoke a little English, took me to
see the sights the cook's camp, with its huge, clay oven and brick
stove, the eating camp, the engine room, the blacksmith's shop,
and his own quarters. I was sorry I had not accepted his offer of a
bed. He had prepared one for us in a tiny room with a tiny stove
and such furniture. The cupboard was of curious design and
painted in vivid red and blue. The legs of the bench, too, combined
art with utility, and there was a Russian chair which I coveted.
Canadian manufacturers might aptly copy it.

"After all," said Richard Le Gallienne, "if one has anything to say,
one might as well put it in a chair."

I was much interested in the bath-house. Every village has one. It
has two apartments. In the first is a huge copper to heat the water.
It is similar to the English household coppers, only larger. The
second room contains a heap of stones under which is an aperture
for fire. When these stones are heated, hot water is thrown on
them, and the result is a cloud of steam that will wash away
everything but original sin, and I am not so sure about even this.
Tiers of benches are built up the walls, giving the apartment
somewhat the appearance of a hospital theatre. The walls are
mud-plastered. The plaster is laid on laths, which are arranged in
diamond shape instead of horizontally.

I have heard people talk about "the dirty Dukhobors," but it is only
the large cities in Canada that have public baths. Of course it has
been argued that, as we all sprung from clay-mould, dirt, mud,
garden-soil, or a compost of the same sort, it is the base
impudence of pride to try to rub or scrub away the original clod.
The most natural man is the dirtiest man, and there is really some
holiness in what is illogically called filth. Besides, St. Jerome, one
of the Fathers of the Church, said "I entirely forbid a young lady to
bathe."

In old times, saints used to soothe their bodies by prayer and
fasting. The Dukhobor method is by prayer and bathing.

In the summer, I am told both sexes bathe out of doors, just as they
came into the world. This is not because of wickedness, but by
reason of their morality and simplicity. After all, it is doubtless
true that morality is a matter of geography, of religion, of
circumstances.

The Padre took me to see his hay, which is here awaiting
transportation to the limit. The Dukhobors have the contract of
hauling it in. They are steady workers, but very slow. It does not
pay to hire them except by contract.

Some few of them, too, are given to small duplicities, just the
same as Canadians. I must always watch Simon, or he will cut the
stove wood too long. He has a way, also, of piling it so that
three-quarters of a cord will measure a whole cord.

Then there is Nikolai; we frequently recover a rope, a
decking-chain, or an axe from among his "belongings." And one
day, at the beginning of the winter, I had two boys cleaning the
stoves. I was going out, and paid them. The liquid had not yet
dried, nevertheless they at once decamped without giving the stove
a single rub.

Now, these are only exceptions, and do not prove that all these
people are dishonest. On the contrary, we have found them, as a
whole, scrupulously honest and trustworthy.

 The merest midge of a boy helped me into my wraps preparatory
for the final stage of our journey. The Padre thought he would say
something very absurd, so he asked the boy if he were married.
Judge of our amazement when he owned up to being a father. He
did not look over fourteen, but he was seventeen, and had been
married a year. His wife is sixteen. You see we did not know how
very, very old he felt. I told him Canadian boys were too poor to
marry early, but he said:

"Me live my fader."

Man has been defined as a woman-caressing animal, and the
definition is so absolutely correct that it is beyond controversy.
This being the case, there is a deal to be said in favour of a system
that permits early marriages without the fear of poverty.
Immorality is wholly unknown among this people.

The marriage service, as this youth explained it to me, is not
complicated, being wholly without the benefit of bell, book, or
candle. The couple simply make a declaration before their elders,
respective families, and often the assembled village. These
marriages are duly recorded in the registrar's office, although
friction arose over this matter shortly after the colony was made.

I do not know if the marriages are based on love as defined by the
"Encyclop‘dia Britannica" "the principle of sympathetic and
pleasurable attraction in thinking and feeling beings." But, after
all, it does not make much difference. Selection has not so much to
do with happiness in marriage, as the recognition of the necessity
for adaptation.

The Dukhobor woman is a housewife. She does not believe that
her home is a jail, and that her babies are the turnkeys. Like
Solomon's "virtuous woman," she "seeketh wool and flax, and
worketh willingly with her hands."

On the other hand, she is a housewife only. She is not expected, as
our women are, to be a combination of Mary, Martha, Magdalen,
Bridget, and the Queen of Sheba.

XI

POLAR PENCILLINGS

"Do you know the blackened timber do you know that racing
stream

With the raw right-angled log-jam at the end?"

                                            KIPLING.

 HE Padre wrapped me up snugly for the journey. I was the first
woman white, black, or red to traverse this part of Canada, and he
was anxious that I should establish a good precedent.

Our road, for the first mile or so, ran through the Dukhobor timber.
The dark spruces looked especially funereal with their streamers of
Tillandsia, better known as "hanging moss." The scene was only
brightened by the silver-barked, lichen-blotched poplars.

Lying mummied in my blankets, I looked up into the twisty twigs
of the filigree under which we were passing, "bare, ruined choirs
where late the sweet birds sang." At long intervals I espied a nest
in some gaunt tree. It only added to the loneliness of our way, for:

"There is no sadness in the world,

  No other like it here or there 

The sadness of deserted homes

  In nests or hearts or anywhere."

After two hours' travel, we found ourselves surrounded by a
ghostly and ghastly company of burnt trees. We hear much
mawkish sentiment in these days about the felling of trees, but
when one passes through such a territory as this, it seems as
though the shame lay in leaving the trees so long unused. All this
by-product might have gone to support, if not enrich, thousands of
needy homes. Here is a land that has lain idle and unproductive
since the world has known it, and bids fair so to continue to the
end of time.

I wore three pairs of stockings and moccasins of moose hide that
were lashed on with leather thongs; yet my feet were cold freezing.
Cold feet will spoil any amount of ideal enjoyment. The Padre
tried to light the lantern that I might use it as a foot-warmer, but
the oil had frozen, and the wick refused to ignite.

He was relentless. I had to get out, then and there, and walk. With
all my clothes I was as helpless as a medieval knight in armour. It
is hard to walk in the woods for the steps are uneven, and the
sharp, freshly-cut roots hurt one's feet cruelly. The horses walked
more quickly than I did. I was getting wrathier every minute
because the Padre wouldn't wait and consequently warmer.
Madame de Sta‰l was right: travelling is one of the sad pleasures
of life.

We didn't speak for quite an hour after that. I decided to be hateful
all the way. I could have bit his head off, but I suddenly forgot all
about it with the sheer joy of seeing one of my own blue streamers
fluttering on a moose-willow.

It was this way: this road, which can only be traversed in winter, is
but three months old. The line for it was struck by one Andrew, an
Indian. He and a party of "breeds" cut the road out of what has
hitherto been a howling wilderness of burnt timber, scrub, and
muskegs. A gang of Dukhobors followed and cleaned up the work.
Once more Andrew passed over it to blaze the trees and to tie
streamers in muskegs where the first fall of snow would surely
obliterate parts of the trail.

Andrew is the most intelligent Indian in all this country. He has
risen above the blanket caste. He helped me to prepare these
streamers. He said they should be all red, but I resisted, and had
them of red, white, and blue.

Andrew says he never gets lost in the woods. He always selects a
high object far ahead in the direction he wishes to go, and travels
towards it. The lack of this precaution is why men who are lost in
the forest travel in a circle.

Nothing could be more appalling than these muskegs. They are
cursed with a curse. Early in the season, before they were frozen
hard, the teams would shake the earth for twenty-five feet around.
In the summer they would swallow a form almost as light as a
bird's. There are miles and miles of them "aching leagues of
solitude," with madness in the heart of them. Once get fifty yards
off the trail, and the chances are you are lost for ever. The scene is
a picture of desolation without sublimity and barrenness without
relief. No need to spy out the nakedness of the land; it is thrust
upon you at every turn. It is a land bitter, raw, and utterly
worthless. A hundred miles of it is not worth an old glove. It is
under the Isaian malediction: "I shall lay it waste, and it shall not
be pruned or digged."

It is not until you go to the unfenced territories that you realise the
place of the fence in the eastern provinces. The territories are
beautiful in spots, but, as the story-book reviewers are wont to say,
the interest is not sustained throughout.

Our clergyman tells me that his uncle was literally absorbed by
one of these muskegs. Months afterwards, the dead man's brother
found his gun in the place where he had sunk. He stuck the barrel
of the rifle into the bog and left it standing there a grim monument
to one who had been an intrepid pathfinder.

The musk-rats fairly swarm in these muskegs. This is why they
survive. They live where man would die. We passed several
colonies of them. They look like small beavers, except that their
tails are flattened from side to side. The female produces three or
four litters of seven or eight every year.

An ermine crossed our trail, too. It covered the ground in a series
of short, quick leaps, leaving claw tracks like a bird's. The ermine,
or stoat, is a bloodthirsty little villain. He eats musk-rats, rabbits,
and partridges. The trappers, it is reported, catch him by putting a
smear of grease on a piece of iron. He puts his tongue to it, and, lo!
the frosted iron holds him fast not the first of creatures to be taken
by the unruly member.

There is a story some preachers tell illustrative of purity. They say
that if mud be placed around the ermine's nest he will die rather
than soil his coat by crossing it, and so is trapped. I used to think
this quite a pretty story, but since I have seen the ermine's habitat I
know how utterly impossible it is. Supposing you could get clay
and water here, it would freeze solid before you could spread it
out.

The Padre keeps a paper of pin-facts to prick my bubbles of
illusions, and he replied:

"Women are so illogical. Summer does come once a year. Doesn't
it?"

I confess to being wholly confounded till I remembered that the
ermine's coat turns grey in the summer, and he is never trapped
then.

Now I make it a daily indeed, an hourly habit to treat the Padre as
if he were in the right, and so I did not say anything. He would not
change his opinion anyway, and I score heavily every time by
giving him either his due or a compliment. A man likes to be head
and shoulders in advance of his wife. He likes her to wonder at his
amazing cleverness, and to brighten his spare hours with a little
comfortable adulation.

We crossed several high, narrow ridges. They reminded me of the
earthworks at Fort George, Niagara-on-the-Lake, which were
thrown up in the war of 1812. The Padre told me we were crossing
beaver dams and meadows, and that these wonderful rodents fairly
swarmed here. The Indians consider the flesh of the beaver a great
delicacy. In Germany, too, where beavers are very rare, it is
esteemed highly, and the tail is always sent to the Emperor's table.
While the Indians delight in the beaver's flesh they have a poor
idea of its brains.

"Beaver big fool," they say; "work all time same as white man."

In every direction we saw the cleft hoof-prints of moose. In some
places several had passed over the snow. I should judge there are
many hundreds of them in this north country.

Towards evening we came into heavier timber again, chiefly
poplar, with here and there a jack-pine. Our trail seemed to "fairly
dawdle." We are in "the desert and illimitable air; lone, wandering,
but not lost."

It is easy at night to people the forest with weird beings buskined
nymphs, nixes, dwarfs, demons, dryads, fawns, witches, ghosts,
and even Pan and all his merry rout. Indeed, you see moving,
shadowy forms wherever you look. The dark languor of the wood
and the soft depths of gloom have an air of mystery. The trees
seem to reach out their arms for you to come and be at rest.
Perhaps it is the delirious glamour of your own mood, for some say
we see nature through temperament.

In the Black Forest there were, and, perhaps, still are, little
wood-wives or moss-folk. Keightley tells of them in his "Fairy
Mythology." He says they are of the stature of three-year-old
children, but grey and old-looking, and covered with moss. The
women are of more amiable temper than the men, who live further
back in the woods.

These are the kindly fairies who help people with their haymaking,
churning, and cooking, and when you do them a favour they give
you a ball of yarn that is never ended, or chips that turn to yellow
gold. The cruel Wild Huntsman kills these little wood-women, but
if the good wood-cutter make three crosses on his stump, they sit
in the midst of these and are safe from their wicked enemy.

It is not strange that the northern imagination invested the forests
with awe as the haunts of Odin and Thor, and that the Teutons
should make them the home of the Erl King and his elfin court.
But groves in every land were the first temples. "The word
templum," writes Grimm, "also means wood." This is, perhaps,
why "Abraham planted a grove in Beersheba, and called there on
the name of the Lord, the everlasting God."

All day we had heard at intervals the yelps of brawling
timber-wolves, but at night the packs were in full cry. I think they
were baying the moon, as do their cultured relatives the dogs.

Thoreau says the moon is where dogs go when they die, and when
they bay the moon, they are calling to the White Pack that they are
coming soon.

Once, as a child, I heard an old pioneer tell about the wolf-demons
and how they cried at night around his house, and I shivered with
terror. It seemed an experience so dreadful as to be almost
unthinkable. Now, in the reality, I was not in the least uneasy.
Perhaps it was because an awful weariness had settled down on
me. I had spent nine hours in the open sleigh with the temperature
50° below zero. The tension of the air had made a large
draught on my vitality, and I felt I must sleep.

"This is our log-road, and these are all your own trees miles of
them. Look up, sweetheart!"

I opened the corner of one eye long enough to see we had entered a
forest of towering, spear-headed spruces, but although I have come
half across the continent to view these very trees, I cannot bear to
look at them.

Why does the Padre shake me like that? He is hateful. And now
my teeth are chattering like I am too sleepy to think of the word,
but it is the name of something the corner-man clatters in the
minstrel show.

I try to drink some brandy-wine the Padre gives me, but my lips
freeze on the metal of the flask.

"Castanets!" Yes, that is the word I want!

Only a few twists more in the road till I hear voices, and, quicker
than I can tell it, two lumber-jacks have me out of the sleigh and
into a wide, low cabin that is bright and warm, where there is an
odour of fresh, wheaten bread, and where a man moves among
pots and pans with the air of one conducting a religious ceremony.

XII

IN CAMP

"The God of Fair Beginnings 

Hath prospered here my hand."

                         KIPLING.

 SLEPT the sleep of the well-fed and woke up twice as good as
new. The sunlight poured in through a sash of window-panes that
ran across one side of the room. There were rows of shelves with
granite-ware, jam pots, pickle pails, and mysterious jars. There
were strings of red-skinned onions, too. Hams and bacon hung
pendent from the heavy rafters, and a line of dish towels and clean
shirts behind the range suggested something of the modern cosy, or
uncosy, corner. Two long tables covered with white oilcloth were
at the far end of the room. The staunch furniture was so eminently
useful, and at the same time so execrably ugly, that it could not
have failed to delight the Roycrofters. The logs of which the house
was built were chinked with moss, so that I had been actually
sleeping in a moss-lined nest.

Next to a marble mansion, there is nothing comparable to a log
house. Think of the royal extravagance of it. The trees in this
cooking camp would supply inch boards, scantlings and laths for
several town houses. The "desirable city residence" is thin
dreadfully thin and accordingly susceptible to heat and cold. It is
stiff, angular, ugly within and uglier without, but this nest of logs
in the northern wilds has a motherly suggestion about it that is
irresistible. Nature may bring all her big guns to bear upon it, but
without avail. To the earlier and later rains it is impervious. To the
frost and wind it says, "Thus far." To the lightnings, "Do your
worst; what care I for a surface scald, or a mere splinter here and
there?"

Albert laughed mightily when I inquired if it were breakfast time
yet.

"Lor', ma'am, the men had breakfast four hours ago, and they ate
right at that table. And to think you didn't hear them!"

Albert is the cook. He gave me his bunk last night and betook
himself to the sleeping camp, which bears also the opprobrious
name of "the doggery."

I sat up. The cookee, a chipper little Dane with a walk between a
run and a stumble, brought me a big bowl of steaming broth, and
bread. I began to think of Silverlocks in the woods, the big bears,
and the soup. I pinched myself like the old woman in the nursery
rhyme, and said, "This is surely none of I."

The soup was highly seasoned. It was sweet, satisfying, and
sustaining. The Cap of Fortune could grant no more.

Outside the air was full of sunshine, but it was the kind of sunshine
that hurt your eyes without in the least warming you.

The Padre was nowhere to be found. I got my saddle out of the
sleigh and proceeded to adjust it to a bronco that belonged to the
foreman. She had a calico-coloured hide, and a bad, red eye. Her
ribs were flat, her hips cat-hammed, and her tail looked like a
used-up shaving-brush. Her nose, too, was sufficiently pronounced
to declare the most stubborn propensities.

I have heard the back of a bronco spoken of in the West as "the
hurricane deck of a cayuse." The expression is inspired. It cannot
be improved upon.

It is said that a horse, at its best, is an amiable idiot; at its worst, a
dangerous maniac. The bronco combines these traits at once. It
makes no difference that it has reached the years of discretion, for
the discretion never arrives with the years. Indeed, the word
"bronco" is Spanish for "wild."

I did not know this particular "bronc," and while tightening the
girths was all the while remembering a proverb which says, "He
that would venture nothing must not get on horseback."

Proverbs are unsatisfactory. If you accept any particular one as a
guide, it will not fit all circumstances. It is best to adjust the
proverb to the circumstance. That is why I swung off to the one
which says, "Nothing venture, nothing win."

Perhaps Miss Bronco did not like the way I rode. The foreman
rides along like the armour-clad knights of old that is, with legs
straight down like tongs in the fender.

She curved her back up in the middle like a one-humped camel,
plunged down behind and reared in front, at the same time keeping
her legs as stiff as stilts. She appeared to be three parts rubber and
the rest iron. I was not exactly prepared for this impromptu
rough-riding, or what the Padre would probably describe as my
"pyrotechnic repertory of feats," and so my hair fell down my back
and in my face, thus adding vastly to my confusion.

I tried to hold my aplomb between forces centripetal and
centrifugal, but 

When my own horse "bucks" I hit him hard between the ears with
the butt of my whip. It has the settling effect of a nursery "spank." I
tried it on this flying bunch of sinews, and before I knew what had
happened I had once more illustrated the laws of gravitation and
dynamics. Fortunately, we had backed into comparatively soft
snow, and I was only hurt enough to be indignant.

Yes, I would do it; else where is the use of belonging to the pick of
the Scots who fought their way to Canada by the north of Ireland?
Besides, I was a thousand miles from a Red Cross Society, or a
Society for the Prevention, etc., etc., "and there's never a law of
man or God runs north of 53°." I would do it deliberately and
thoroughly. I would endeavour to teach her ladyship that my
principal object in mounting was to stay there at my convenience.

I took time to regather my hairpins and re-arrange my hair. I
secured a stout rope halter, and tied her Roman nose close to a
tree. I procured a long whip with a rawhide lash, and had only cut
her once or twice when I found myself whipping her, "whaling"
her, "basting" her, with all the fury of a woman scorned. I lathered
her with all my might, and she kicked with all her main.

The cookee ran out and stood wringing his hands in an ecstasy of
woe.

"She keel you," he wailed. "I know she weel. The Padre, he keel
me. He keel me dade."

How the itch to fight lies close under the skin of every woman
with Irish blood! I wanted to turn on the cookee too, but wisely
confined myself to mine enemy. I whipped her again and again
with all the vindictive menace of my soul, and until I was entirely
satisfied that the punishment fitted the crime.

Then the cookee helped me into the saddle and unloosed her
halter, but that lump of Western wickedness refused to budge
herself one inch. The blacksmith had come out of his camp, and he
led her off by the head till she started of her own accord.

It was an ignominious defeat, but she did not, however, try to
unseat me again. As matters stand, I am afraid of that mare, but I
have doubts as to the feeling being reciprocated. I also have
emphatic orders to desist from further attempts to ride her. "She is
not broken to skirts," I am informed. Her name is "Dinah" short for
dynamite, I suppose.

There is a marvellous stillness in a spruce forest. There is no
rustling in the branches. No breath of wind is muttered or
unexpressed through the close-matted jungle of big trees and little
trees. The needles on the conifers all point upwards. If they leaned
out of the perpendicular they would not be able to resist the weight
of snow which lies in broad masses like white quartz on the
branches, bending them in exquisite curves.

This aerial electricity must have wonderful curative properties for
certain disorders, and I wonder that physicians do not more often
advise for nerve-shaken, over-civilised people a sojourn in these
regions. Here, too, you may weave a bit of poetry into the warp of
your days. All the way one's heart is singing, "Dark, and true and
tender is the north."

It is a great pleasure to a city woman when she is able to discern
the survey lines, and to tell by the Roman numerals from the iron
post in the surveyor's mound what township, section, and range she
is in. It gives her a sense of superiority over other women, and of
satisfaction with herself. She may have trouble mounting her
bronco again, but, likely as not, a teamster will be going campward
at that very moment and will see her once more safely on the
"hurricane deck."

The teamsters are called "skinners." I met them all on the log road.
Some I know and some are strangers, but all are polite to "the
Missus."

They are proud of their teams, and like to be questioned about
them. I ask Frank Wark about his big greys, and he tells me they
are "game as pebbles and gritty as bulldogs." William York thinks
his team can "bet" (Western for past-participle of "beat") any two
teams on the haul, and Tibble's are "clean grit all through." Every
man has a similar song, except one who complained that the loader
was "no tarnal use" and was killing the horses with big loads.

The log road was made after winter had set in, and already the
snow had fallen on the thick, soft needle mould. This made the
hauling heavy. It all had to be cleaned off to the ground, and fresh
snow piled on to secure a hard road-bed.

The choppers, sawyers, skidders, and swampers had lit a fire and
were having their midday lunch. They invited me to join. True,
they had no dietetical elegancies only fried pork, bread, butter, tea,
and syrup, but my appetite was keen enough to be generously
uncritical. I imbibed unknown quantities of tea. The men called
the sugar and milk "the trimmings." The condensed milk,
considered separately, is correctly known as "tin cow." The food
was good, and I ate and ate and was glad that nature had endowed
me with so marvellous an appetite and such a well-balanced
capability of digestion.

I get transcendent delight from eating. There are some very
excellent people who stigmatise the delights we get from the
senses as unseemly and vulgar. This is a mistake which even the
Romans made. They portrayed the beautiful goddess Voluptas as
having Virtue under her feet. There is no reason why the intellect
should be unduly deified by "keeping the body under" no reason
why the stomach and all its works should be denounced as "a
diabolic machine." It is true that Daniel thrived on pulse and
looked fairer than those who ate the king's meat, but I have a poor
opinion of such gastronomical idiosyncrasies. And, when you
come to think of it, Jacob's mess of pottage is the most expensive
dish on record.

An inquisitive, cheeky little bird walked among us and picked up
the crumbs, arguing like a politician. He was a
hail-fellow-well-met. His colour was a dirty grey, and he had a
black head. This was the Whisky Jack of which I had heard so
much. He is a cross between the shrikes and jays. He has several
names, such as Hudson's Bay bird, Oregon jay, and moose bird. He
gets the latter because he is an alarmist and warns the moose when
the hunters approach.

The Indians call him whiskachan, or wis-kat-jan. Our name is
supposed to be a corruption of this, but it seems to me the Indians
have corrupted our word. His scientific name is Perisoreus
Canadensis, which, loosely translated, means "the Canadian bird
which chases around the wine-cup." This is probably why he is
called "Whisky Jack." It is an unfair name, and it would be more in
keeping with the character of both parties if he traded with the
lumber-jacks.

A fire gives to the forest a sense of at-hometiveness. And wood is
a-plenty. The men say we may have all we want for the mere
"axing" of it. There is no way you can waste time more pleasantly
than by poking the big logs and watching the fire-effects. Dead
trees are said to love the fire. Sitting alone, when the men have
gone away, it is not difficult to comprehend the ideals and habits
of the fire-worshippers and Vestal Virgins. One falls into futile,
but none the less pleasant, musings about the flame that kept the
way of the tree of life; the tongues of fire that came down on the
Day of Pentecost; the burning bush, the flame that fell on the altar
at Carmel, and the fiery pillar that gleamed on Israel's track.

I am told the Indians make different camp fires from the whites.
The latter set the fire so that the logs burn in the middle first, but
the Indians place the flames to the ends of the logs. The Indians
say the white man makes a fire so hot he cannot get near it to
warm himself.

I follow the sound of chopping and soon come to the "bunch" of
timber where the men are working. The foreman blazes the trees
they are to cut, and then the men, in pairs, chop them. When the
tree falls, the swampers lop off its branches and the sawyers divide
it into logs. There are from two to five logs in a tree.

A rivalry has sprung up among the gangs, so that the beat o' axe is
incessant. So far this season, each pair of men has averaged
seventy logs a day. This is considered good cutting, as the trees are
large.

I measured myself against one log. It was almost as thick through
as I am tall. Of course, I am not a giantess, but still, this was a
fairly good stick. It measured twelve feet in length and scaled 552
feet of lumber. This was above the average. Usually the scale is
about eight logs to the thousand feet.

As I watched these men at work I was struck by their
well-developed physiques, their flexibility of limb and undeniable
grace of movement. The attack movement throws the weight of the
figure on the hips, and half of the body moves alternately with
each stroke, with a turn of the shoulders to correspond.

In these days of patent "exercisers," elaborate systems of physical
culture and of scientifically equipped gymnasia, it might not come
amiss if some specialist in the art turned his attentions to the
benefits that might be derived from following the craft of
woodman. I know several ‘sthetic feeblings of the pictorial stamp
who would be developed and loosened out by a season's work in
the spruce. They would get swarthy, weary, perhaps ragged. The
palms of their hands would thicken and their cheeks would
resemble the tan of the tree bark, but they would get muscles of
iron in frameworks of steel, and they would walk like men. And it
is not a menial work either. The Psalmist tells us that, in his time,
a man was famous "according as he lifted up axes upon the thick
trees."

Nikolai can drop a big spruce as deftly as a fly is cast. It falls just
in the spot he says it will. I tried him twice.

As he sinks his blade through its bronzed cuirass and hits into its
heart, he seems almost vindictive. I have no doubt he makes
believe the tree is the Tsar, or a captain of Cossacks.

Further on the skidders were at work. They roll the logs up a
spiked incline by means of canthooks. It looks dangerous work,
and I suppose it is, but most of the men are strong, supple, and
active as cats. One of them, in particular, was such a quick,
handy-looking chap that, had he been a boxer, I would have
backed him for all I was worth or could borrow to beat anything
his weight.

Tutti and Frutti, the ox team, are skidding with the horses. A
Galician named Olaf is driving. This is his first experience. He
tells me he had to take them because "dem oxes got sassy and
mostly killed Scotty." Olaf is doing well. He keeps the oxen
moving, never stopping them for a second, which is one of the first
essentials of their management.

The sleighs used in the woods are very heavy and have three-inch
runners. The logs are piled up on them like loads of hay. Such
loads are never, by any chance, seen in the lower provinces.

The men at "the dump" were piling the logs on huge skidways
thirty feet high. Each log is stamped with a rough hall-mark before
it is unloaded. In the spring, when the ice breaks up, these logs will
be rolled into the river to start on their troublesome career
southward. I was more impressed by these skidways than anything
I had seen since I came up. They are hurtling and portentous, and
weigh on you with a crushing sense of domination. They represent
so vast an amount of work, money, and yes anxiety and pain, to say
nothing of the conserved energies of nature that for centuries have
been stored in them.

In the twilight the scene becomes dim, and objects stand back in
uncertain silhouette. It is a goblin country. There is a strange
fusion of earth and sky. The river, trees, and snow seem to stretch
in long, straight lines across the world.

* * * * * 

The glory of the aurora is unapproachable by language. These
"merry dancers" of the nor'land turn earth into heaven before our
very eyes. The whole dome of the sky is a huge garnet, quivering
in celestial fire. All is a wild welter of palpitating light an
opalescent fantasia of amber, crimson, and violet. Its transcendent
beauty is, at once, the artist's inspiration and despair.

Far away, to-night, in the land of clocks and chimes, they are
wearied because of the play, and frown by reason of song. Here, in
the lonely sub-arctics, our whole beings so thrill with the heavenly
vision that we well-nigh sink beneath its awesome grandeur. We
are glad and sorrowful, as if we had come too near to God. We are
heart to heart with the Infinite "exiled from earth and yet not
winged for heaven."

XIII

ALL UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE

 N Indian came into the limits to-day with a pony laden with pelts.
He was a "woods Indian," and wore his hair long and tied with a
band. His coat was of tanned moose hide, fringed around the
edges, and he wore a parti-coloured sash. This was Maganinais,
the mightiest hunter in all these parts. Last season he killed thirty
moose and four bears. He says the bears are getting scarce. He has
been trapping since the first snowfall, and has brought me the
mink skins I ordered for a coat. Henri, a "breed" belonging to the
camp, acted as interpreter.

Maganinais' face is exactly like that of the tobacco Indian in
Yonge Street, Toronto. It reminded me of something I once read of
a mummy it cannot smile, nod, or wink, but it can look superior.

The mink skins are dark, well covered, and silky. Henri wants to
tan them for me, but I have been warned by fur buyers that the
Indian work is greatly inferior to the furrier's, although the contrary
opinion is generally held.

Canada produces nearly half a million mink skins for the annual
sale of the Hudson Bay Company, in March, in London. The
merchants attend this sale, and through them the skins are
distributed in Europe. The skins have recently become more
valuable, partly because they are not so plentiful as formerly, and
partly by reason of their present vogue in the smart world. An
attempt has been made to establish minkeries, but it was proved
that the pelt of the tame mink had so deteriorated as to become
almost as soft as a mole's.

I laid violent hands on the van and the cook's supplies, for trading
purposes.

For his pay, Maganinais selected tea, sugar, tobacco, rice, beans, a
jack-knife, a pair of blankets, ammunition, a rope, matches,
pain-killer, a red handkerchief, a pocket mirror, a frying-pan, some
flour, dried apples, and a pipe.

I was dubious as to his ability to carry away all this stuff, till I saw
him pack it. With the bundle on his back, the pony looked like an
enormous one-humped camel. Then the Indian threw a rope about
it, and twisted and looped the rope with manipulations like those
of a professional thaumaturgist. When he had finished tightening
in, there was almost no bundle. It was emphatically multum in
parvo. He dexterously finished off with what Henri told me was a
"good, tight, diamond hitch."

The proper way of packing an Indian pony is said to be a feat only
accomplished after years of practice. The same probably applies to
all pack animals, for Rudyard Kipling makes a commissariat
camel to sing thus:

"Can't! Don't! Shan't! Won't! 

Pass it along the line; 

Somebody's pack has slid from his back, 

Wish it were only mine. 

Somebody's load has tipped off on the road, 

Cheer for a halt and a row, 

Urr! Yarrh! Grrh! Arrh! 

Somebody's catching it now."

One hardly knows whether to take an Indian as a problem, a
nuisance, or a possibility. He may be considered from a
picturesque, philanthropic, or pestiferous standpoint, according to
your tastes or opportunities. You may idealise him, or realise him.
As a general thing, he seems to be ranked as the nux vomica of
Canada. Oliver Wendell Holmes calls the Indians one of the
provisional races, "red crayon sketches of humanity, laid on the
canvas before the colours for the real humanity are ready." Their
lives are stigmatised as "poor, nasty, brutish, short."

Some few hold a diverse opinion. They believe that while the
Indian has a red skin, he is, to use the expressive Western term,
"white right through."

It is a mistake to either vilify or deify him. The truth probably lies
between the extremes.

There are three characteristics in which he is generally conceded
to be superior to the paleface his ability to slur silently over
difficult or dangerous ground; his genius for trailing or tracking;
and his "homing" instinct.

Regarding his future, we may give ourselves little uneasiness. This
question is solving itself. A few years hence there will be no
Indians. They will exist for posterity only in waxwork figures and
in a few scant pages of history. However brave and game they may
be, there is nothing for them in the end but death. They have to
reckon with invincibility.

The Indians hereabout are Crees and Chippewas, with a few
Tuscaroras. Henri, who interpreted to-day, is the son of a
French-Canadian trapper and a Sioux squaw. He has inherited the
worst traits of both races. It must be remembered, though, that he
has never seen the better ones. Sometimes I think he is brother to
the coyote.

 His family live in a tent near our home. They exist on the offal
from the village abattoir. All is fish that comes to their net, and
most things come sooner or later. I brought Henri an owl one day,
telling him I wanted the claws and the skin of the head. He ate the
rest of the bird, thus conclusively proving that the term, "a boiled
owl," is no empty, fanciful expression.

When we need Henri to act as a guide he is invariably drunk, but
sobers quickly if given a meal of sour pickles.

 He does not like to be bored with energy. He holds wonderfully
optimistic views of the possibilities of next week. There will be
golden opportunities, smooth sailing, open doors, horseshoes,
rainbows, roses, silver spoons, and four-leaved clover next week.
Next week is the week of jubilee. This being the case, it is quite
obvious that he should take life easily. Why should he comply with
the white man's unjust and hateful paradox to kill oneself to live?
Why should he trouble about his children either? Destiny will look
after them. He recently gave his consent to let them go to an Indian
boarding-school. It was so quickly and generously given that my
suspicions were aroused. I had the children medically examined,
and found their little bodies to be entirely scrofulous. He has
buried five children already. Balzac, in "Le PŠre Goriot," refers to
dramas that go on and on. This is one of them.

The Indians hereabout sometimes come to the camp offering to
sell moose meat. They are always refused. This is not because the
men do not relish the meat, or because they have scruples about
keeping the game laws holy, but for fear of the Indians
"squealing." The Indians are allowed to kill game at any season,
but may never sell it. On an evil day, one of them sold a quarter of
venison to a lumber camp, and then reported to the game-warden.
He got half the fine, but the bottom has fallen out of the trade.

Since coming into camp I have been much impressed by the
clothing of the lumber-jack. It is a model of utility, being
calculated to keep him warm without being burdensome. He fully
believes in the meteorological maxim that waves of cold are waves
of death. At the same time his clothing is not unpicturesque. In the
early part of the season, when the snow is dry, he wears
moose-hide moccasins the shoes of silence. He keeps a pair of
larigans for a change. They are brothers to the moccasin, and are
made of oil-tanned cowhide, with flexible soles.

In soft weather he dons a thick shoe of snag-proof rubber with a
lining of red eiderdown. This is not used in the winter because of
the tendency of rubber to draw the frost. The cook and cookee
wear dolges, a style of shoe almost universally worn in these
sub-arctics. The dolge is made of an excellent quality of soft felt,
with a woollen fleece lining. They are easy to walk in, and are free
from the jar that accompanies leather foot-gear.

The lumberman's stocking is known as the "Lombard sock." It
comes up to his knees, and is held by a gay cord running through
and round it. The stockings may be of any colour or combination
of colours, but are usually in good taste. To ensure warmth he
generally wears underneath these a thick pair of home-knit socks
of ordinary length.

He wears knickerbockers of brown corduroy, or trousers of
mackinaw, that wonderful material which bids defiance to rain,
snow or cold. His under-shirt is of wool and his shirt of blue or
grey cotton, fleece-lined. (I happen to know these private
particulars because I ordered the things in Winnipeg myself.) Over
these, he dons a sweater, or a waistcoat, and tops all with a
sheep-lined jacket of tan duck, known commercially as the Hudson
Bay coat. His cap is of blue felt, and has a flap behind which is
fur-lined. This flap may be tucked inside as lining, when not
required. He wears two pairs of mittens one of wool and the other
of unlined moose-hide. He does not object to paying a good, round
price for his clothing, but it must be of the very best quality. He
will not tolerate any deception on this score.

He will not tolerate poor food either. Indeed, you must go into a
lumber camp to get something to eat. The "jacks" do not dine on
half a pasteboard package of chips, all the force and vim of which
have gone into the label. Go out into the supply camp and look at
"the grub pile" the great quarters of beef, naked and rosy turn over
the jagged vertebr‘ of a Manitoban range-ox and wonder however
it grew; poke your fingers into sacks of rolled oats for "halesome
parritch," rice, beans, and flour; poke two fingers, three if you like,
into the raisins, prunes, peaches and syrup, and then put them in
your mouth. And there are barrels of sugar, tins of coffee, chests of
tea, sacks of potatoes, crates of condensed milk, boxes of tinned
tomatoes, tubs of butter, pails of lard, and "apples and spice and all
things nice." They keep open house here, to the music of knives
and forks.

But the book-keeper gave me to understand that the cook is such a
marvel of ingenuity that he could cater if there wasn't a thing in
camp. And the book-keeper told me a story, too. It may be an old
one, but it was new to me. It was about a missionary who went up
among the Eskimos. He could not eat blubber, so existed almost
solely on canned food. After a few months, he got a gramophone
and gave his parishioners a concert. No one spoke for about an
hour, then one old man nudged another old man, and nodded his
head in the direction of the gramophone, as if it had at last solved
the mystery. What he said was: "Canned white man."

Being Saturday, the men had a dance to-night in the sleeping
camp. It is stanchly built, but rude as a house built with a child's
box of bricks. There was a smell of tobacco, spruce and well,
humanity. Through it, now and then, came a faint, piercing reek of
iodoform. A lad from Ontario cut off two of his toes this morning.
A "tote" team will take him out to the hospital to-morrow.
Although he looked as if he would faint, he did not wince while
his foot was being dressed. The camp etiquette requires that no
one shall murmur. C‘sar must not cry out "as a sick girl," lest
Cassius scorn and gibe. Besides, this youth had now won his spurs.
Most lumbermen are as proud of the loss of a finger or toe as
Christian in "The Pilgrim's Progress" was when he lost his burden.

The music for the dance was supplied by a young Englishman. He
played with an air, as if before the gallery. His performance
reminded me of the story of the Italian who taught George III. the
violin, and who, on being asked by the king as to his progress,
replied:

"Please your Majesty, there are three classes of players:

1. Those who cannot play at all.

2. Those who play badly.

3. Those who play well.

Your Majesty is just rising into the second class."

Still, to our free, easy, and democratic audience, his bow was a
wand of divination. Had his listeners all been little children and he
the Pied Piper, his command over them could not have been more
absolute.

We did not stay long, for we were conscious that the men felt
under some restraint, all except a fiery-headed little Dane who
whirled around the room something after the manner of a
decapitated hen. His movements were the effervescence of
unalloyed animal delight. Besides, the room was hot with a dull,
determined heat that seemed independent of the stove. There was a
possibility, if we stayed longer, that we would melt away to our
constituent elements.

XIV

PATHFINDERS

"Ah! lone the life they follow,

  And rough the roads they ride.

The right men, the white men,

  The men of Sunset Side."

 E had service in the camp this morning. It opened with the singing
of "Jerusalem the Golden." The Padre led off and sang the hymn
all in one key and that a wrong one, but it was a well-meant effort,
and we all joined in with a will. The lesson was from Job xxviii.
The Padre stopped reading after the sixth verse, and told us about
the great pathfinders in these Canadian woods and what they
accomplished about Pierre Radisson, Groseillers, Mackenzie,
Hudson, and Macdonald of Garth. The men were deeply interested,
because this winter they have helped to cut out wilderness roads
themselves.

Then the Padre read and commented on the seventh and eighth
verses "There is a path which no fowl knoweth and which the
vulture's eye hath not seen; the lion's whelps have not trodden it,
nor the fierce lion passed by it."

We had another hymn and then the sermon. It was not a sermon
either more of a talk about "the mother-heart of God." He
compared the comfort of God to that of a mother. A mother has (1)
a simple method of instruction. She has (2) a special capacity for
attending to hurt hearts. (3) An almost unlimited patience for the
erring. (4) A peculiar favouritism for the weaklings. (5) An unique
way of putting her child to sleep.

The Padre has not preached for months. He is resting his throat.
Perhaps this is why the subject took such a hold of him. Or perhaps
it was because he had a vision of a far-away mother, and a soft
sorrow crept across his heart. It is so easy to tear a paper along the
line in which it is folded. Be that as it may, some way or other this
little company of men seemed to move him strangely, and he, in
turn, moved them to tears.

* * * * * 

The sound of the forest? One cannot tell. To hear "the beatings of
the hearts of trees" one must be alone absolutely alone. It may be
like the swish of silken skirts on a stairway, like the wash on
far-off shingle; like the slur of stealthy footsteps. Sometimes the
whisper rises and falls till most of all it is like the fragile accent of
the grieving oboe. I think in his D minor Sonata, Schumann tried
to hold the theme of the pines. But the theme must always be a lost
chord, for 

            "to portray the forest pines,

That were to undertake the human heart;

So does it of their murmurings seem a part."

* * * * * 

The conifers have educated, formal looks They can be personified
with ease. The Brahmins saw Pan in them. The Christian calls
them "God's crops."

The pine were fitter emblem to represent Canada than the maple.
The maple is indigenous only to the southern provinces, the pine to
all. Its characteristics spell out endurance, constancy, health,
longevity.

In Japan, the coquette sends her love a leaf or branch of maple to
signify that, like it, his love has changed.

And how like us the trees are! They have lungs, blood, skin, and
pores. They breathe oxygen all day, and exhale carbonic acid gas
at night. But there is more of the latter than they can breathe out,
and so it burns up and forms carbon for the growth of the trees.
The trees become water-gorged and sweat, too. The heart-wood,
where the cells are closed up, is the bones of the trees.

Th‚ophile Trembly is an old ranger, and he tells me that when in
the spring the tree's pumps are at work, the wood formed is
generally lighter in colour, but in summer the tree needs less food
and the wood is heavier, stronger, and darker.

The hollow tree is like humanity, too. It is one in which the
sap-wood may live long after the heart-wood is dead. Secretly, and
pagan-like, I have always had a great respect for a hollow tree. I
should not be surprised if there were truth in the old jingle that
says:

"There are saints in there

That hear all people's prayers."

Yes! The trees resemble us. "I wonder if they like it?" queries a
poet like being trees 

"I suppose they do. . . . 

I guess they like to stand still in the sun, 

And just breathe out and in, and feel the cool sap run, 

And like to feel the air run through their hair 

And slide down to the roots and settle there."

Let the tree answer for itself.

"I covet not to wander,

Who hold far lands in fee,

For where I stand unmoving

The broad world comes to me."

Once, when George Herbert was troubled by the little use he was
in the world, he wrote these lines:

"I read and sigh and wish 

I were a tree, 

For then I should grow 

To fruit or shade, at least. 

Some bird would trust 

Her household to me, 

And I should be just."

I asked Th‚ophile if he believed in wood elves.

"Wat you call fairee, Madame? Oui! Oui! certainement, but ah see
dem nevaire. You see eet lak dis, Madame," he explained. "Le Bon
Dieu, he veesit notre bonne mŠre in ze beautiful gardaine. Heem
ax see de children. Wan, two, dree! Heem say to gar‡ons w'at Eve
she feex up fine. Den Heem ax for gar‡ons w'at Eve have not feex
up fine, and Eve she mak une curtsey and say, 'Dees is all, M'sieur,'
and Le Bon Dieu, zen he say, 'Dem w'at you hid from me, Ah shall
always hide from men.'

"Dees, Madame," says Th‚ophile, "ees what you call ze fairee."

In the forest it is so easy to believe mythology, and easy to think
that the lives of dryads and hamadryads beautiful woman-forms
are linked with the trees, and when the axe rings a death-knell on
them the dryads cry out in agony. This may be true after all, since
so wise a man as Henry Drummond has said that "man (wo-man)
impersonated, man crystallised, man vegetative, speaks to man
unpersonated." Why should we sneer at the Norse conception of
Yggdrasill, the great ash tree whose boughs are through all the
heavens and its roots through all the world, while we hold a belief
in the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life?

All peoples have found the woods to be natural temples. As they
pass under the spires and arches and by the pillars and through the
aisles, they are ever wont to pray.

Astarte was worshipped by the tribes of Palestine in the groves,
and the Jews were drawn away to them from the tabernacles of
Jehovah. Ezekiel bewailed this and wrote: 

"For when I had brought them into the land which I lifted up mine
hand to give unto them, then they saw every high hill and every
thick tree, and they offered there their sacrifices, and there they
presented the provocation of their offering, there also they made
their sweet savour, and they poured out there their drink
offerings." 

The Druids of Britain reverenced the oaks, and Tacitus, writing of
the ancient Germans, says where worship was performed sacred
vessels and altars stood in the forest and the heads of animals hung
on the boughs of the trees. In these places, too, were held the
assize and folk-mote. 

Ruskin has drawn attention to the fact that Milton filled his
Paradise with flowers, but no flowers are mentioned in Genesis. 

"The things," he says, "that are mentioned in the Garden of Delight
are trees."

To Th‚ophile, the snow tracks are the indexes of Nature's book. As
we walk along he stops to read them. This dainty, dot-like,
inconspicuous track belongs to the skunk, that "wee bit