•^0..-.^* 
 
LIBRARY^F^N^REsa 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
THE ROMANTIC ADVENTURE OF OLD SUN S WIFE 
 
 (SEE PAGE 25) 
 
ON CANADA'S FRONTIER 
 
 Shctcbc0 
 
 OF HISTORY, SPORT, AND ADVENTURE 
 AND OF THE INDIANS, MISSIONARIES 
 FUR-TRADERS, AND NEWER SETTLERS 
 OF WESTERN CANADA 
 
 JULIAN RALPH 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 
 
 1892 
 
Copyright, 1892, by Harper & Brothers. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 
r ^ 
 
 TO 
 
 THE PEOPLE OF CANADA 
 
 THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR 
 
 WHO, DURING MANY LONG JOURNEYS IN THE CANADIAN WEST 
 
 WAS ALWAYS AND EVERYWHERE TREATED WITH AN EXTREME 
 
 FRIENDLINESS TO WHICH HE HERE TESTIFIES 
 
 BUT WHICH HE CANNOT EASILY RETURN 
 
 IN EQUAL MEASURE 
 
PREFACE 
 
 If all those into whose hands this book may fall were as well in- 
 formed upon the Dominion of Canada as are the people of the 
 United States, there would not be needed a word of explanation of 
 the title of this volume. Yet to those who might otherwise infer 
 that what is here related applies equally to all parts of Canada, it is 
 necessary to explain that the work deals solely with scenes and 
 phases of life in the newer, and mainly the western, parts of that 
 country. The great English colony which stirs the pages of more 
 than two centuries of history has for its capitals such proud and 
 notable cities as Montreal, Quebec, Toronto, Halifax, and many oth- 
 ers, to distinguish the progressive civilization of the region east of 
 Lake Huron — the older provinces. But the Canada of the geogra- 
 phies of to-day is a land of greater area than the United States ; it 
 is, in fact, the " British America " of old. A great trans-Canadian 
 railway has joined the ambitious province of the Pacific slope to the 
 provinces of old .Canada with stitches of steel across the Plains. 
 There the same mixed surplusage of Europe that settled our own 
 West is elbowing the fur-trader and the Indian out of the way, and 
 is laying out farms far north, in the smiling Peace River district, 
 where it was only a little while ago supposed that there were but 
 two seasons, winter and late spring. It is with that new part of Can- 
 ada, between the ancient and well-populated provinces and the sturdy 
 new cities of the Pacific Coast, that this book deals. Some refer- 
 ences to the North are added in those chapters that treat of hunting 
 and fishing and fur-trading. 
 
 The chapters that compose this book originally formed a series of 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 papers which recorded journeys and studies made in Canada during 
 the past three years. The first one to be published was that which 
 describes a settler's colony in which a few titled foreigners took the 
 lead ; the others were written so recently that they should possess 
 the same interest and value as if they here first met the public eye. 
 What that interest and value amount to is for the reader to judge, 
 the author's position being such that he may only call attention to 
 the fact that he had access to private papers and documents when 
 he prepared the sketches of the Hudson Bay Company, and that, in 
 pursuing information about the great province of British Columbia, 
 he was not able to learn that a serious and extended study of its re- 
 sources had ever been made. The principal studies and sketches 
 were prepared for and published in Harper's Magazine. The spirit 
 in which they were written was solely that of one who loves the open 
 air and his fellow-men of every condition and color, and who has had 
 the good-fortune to witness in newer Canada something of the old 
 and almost departed life of the plainsmen and woodsmen, and of the 
 newer forces of nation-building on our continent. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Titled Pioneers i 
 
 II. Chartering a Nation ii 
 
 III. A Famous Missionary . 53 
 
 IV, Antoine's Moose- yard 66 
 
 V. Big Fishing 115 
 
 VI. "A Skin for a Skin" 134 
 
 VII. "Talking Musquash" 190 
 
 VIII. Canada's El Dorado 244 
 
 IX. Dan Dunn's Outfit 290 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Romantic Ad'naitiirc of Old Sun's IVife .... Frontispiece 
 
 Dr. Rudolph Meyer's Place on the Pipestone 2 
 
 Settler s Sod Cabin 3 
 
 Whitewood, a Settlement on the Prairie 4 
 
 Interior of Sod Cabin on the Frontier 5 
 
 Prairie Sod Stable 7 
 
 Trained Ox Team 9 
 
 Indian Boys Running a Foot-race 31 
 
 htdiatt Mother and Boy 36 
 
 Opening of the Soldier Clan Dance 39 
 
 Sketch in the Soldier Clan Dance 43 
 
 A Fantasy from the Pony War-dance 47 
 
 Thro'uing the Snoiu Snake 51 
 
 Father Lacombe Heading the Indians 61 
 
 The Hotel — Last Sign of Civilization 69 
 
 "Give me a light" 73 
 
 Antoine,from Life 79 
 
 The Portage Sleigh on a Luniber Road 83 
 
 The Track in the Winter Forest 87 
 
 Pierre, from Life 91 
 
 Antoine's Cabin 93 
 
 The Camp at Night 97 
 
 A Moose Bull Fight loi 
 
 On the Moose Trail 103 
 
 In Sight of the Game — "Now Shoot" 105 
 
 Success 109 
 
 Hunting the Caribou — "Shoot! Shoot/" iii 
 
 Indians Hauling lYets on Lake Nepigon 119 
 
 Trout-fishing Through the Ice 127 
 
 Rival Traders Racing to the Indian Camp 1 37 
 
 The Bear-trap 143 
 
X ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Huskie Dogs FigJiiing 147 
 
 Painting the Robe 151 
 
 Coureur dii Bois 159 
 
 A Fur-trader in the Council Tepee 163 
 
 Buffalo Meat for the Post 167 
 
 The Indian Hunter of ly^o 171 
 
 Indian Hunter Hafiging Deer Out of the Reach of Wolves . 173 
 
 Making the Snow-shoe 177 
 
 A Hudson Bay Man {Quarter-breed) 181 
 
 The Coureur du Bois atid the Savage 185 
 
 Talking Musquash 1 93 
 
 Indian Hunters Moving Camp 198 
 
 Setting a Mink-trap 201 
 
 Wood Indians Come to Trade 205 
 
 A Voyageur, or Canoe-man, of Great Slave Lake 209 
 
 ht a Stiff Current 211 
 
 Voyageur with Tumpline 217 
 
 Voyageur s in Camp for the Night 221 
 
 " Huskie " Dogs on the Frozen Highway 227 
 
 The Factor s Fancy Toboggan 233 
 
 Halt of a York Boat Brigade for the Night 239 
 
 An Impression of Shuswap Lake, British Columbia . . . . 251 
 
 The Tschummurn, or Tool Used in Making Canoes . . . . 257 
 
 The First of the Salmon Run, Fraser River 261 
 
 Indian Salmoji-fishing in the Thrasher . 266 
 
 Going to the Potlatch — Big Canoe, North-west Coast .... 269 
 
 The Salmon Cache 275 
 
 An Ideal of the Coast 279 
 
 The Potlatch 283 
 
 An Indian Ca?ioe on the Columbia 293 
 
 " Yoicre setting your nerves to stand it" 297 
 
 Jack Kirkup, the Mountain Sheriff 299 
 
 Engineer on the Preliminary Survey 303 
 
 Falling Monarchs 308 
 
 Da)i Dimn on His Works 311 
 
 The Supply Train Over the Mountain 313 
 
 A Sketch on the Work 317 
 
 The Mess Tent at Alight . 319 
 
 "They Gained Erectness by Slow Jolts" 322 
 
ON CANADA'S FRONTIER 
 
 TITLED PIONEERS 
 
 THERE is a very remarkable bit of this conti- 
 nent just north of our State of North Dakota, 
 in what the Canadians call Assiniboia, one of the 
 North-west Provinces. Here the plains reach away 
 in an almost level, unbroken, brown ocean of grass. 
 Here are some wonderful and some very peculiar 
 phases of immigration and of human endeavor. 
 Here is Major Bell's farm of nearly one hundred 
 square miles, famous as the Bell Farm. Here Lady 
 Cathcart, of England, has mercifully established a 
 colony of crofters, rescued from poverty and oppres- 
 sion. Here Count Esterhazy has been experiment- 
 ing with a large number of Hungarians, who form a 
 colony which would do better if those foreigners were 
 not all together, with only each other to imitate — 
 and to commiserate. But, stranger than all these, 
 here is a little band of distinguished Europeans, 
 partly noble and pardy scholarly, gathered together 
 in as lonely a spot as can be found short of the 
 Rockies or the far northern regions of this continent. 
 
DR. RUDOLPH MEYER S PLACE 
 PIPESTONE 
 
 These gentlemen are Dr. Rudolph Meyer, of Berlin, 
 the Comte de Cazes and the Comte de Raffignac, of 
 France, and M. le Bidau de St. Mars, of that country 
 also. They form, in all probability, the most dis- 
 tinguished and aristocratic little band of immigrants 
 and farmers in the New World. 
 
 Seventeen hundred miles west of Montreal, in a 
 vast prairie where settlers every year go mad from 
 loneliness, these polished Europeans till the soil, 
 strive for prizes at the provincial fairs, fish, hunt, 
 read the current literature of two continents, and are 
 happy. The soil in that region is of remarkable 
 depth and richness, and is so black that the roads 
 and cattle-trails look like ink lines on brown paper. 
 It is part of a vast territory of uniform appearance, 
 in one portion of which are the richest wheat-lands 
 
TITLED PIONEERS 3 
 
 -of the continent. The Canadian Pacific Raihvay 
 •crosses Assiniboia, with stops about five miles apart 
 — some mere stations and some small settlements. 
 Here the best houses are little frame dwellings ; but 
 very many of the settlers live in shanties made of 
 sods, with such thick walls and tight roofs, all of sod, 
 that the awful winters, when the mercury falls to for- 
 ty degrees below zero, are endured in them better 
 than in the more costly frame dwellings. 
 
 I stopped off the cars at Whitewood, picking that 
 four-year-old village out at hap-hazard as a likely 
 point at which to see how the immigrants live in a 
 brand-new country. I had no idea of the existence 
 of any of the persons I found there. The most per- 
 fect hospitality is offered to strangers in such infant 
 communities, and while enjoying the shelter of a mer- 
 chant's house I obtained news of the distinouished 
 
 SETTI.KR S SOD CABIN 
 
4 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 settlers, all of whom live away from the railroad in 
 solitude not to be conceived by those who think their 
 homes the most isolated in the older parts of the 
 country. I had only time to visit Dr. Rudolph 
 Meyer, five miles from Whitewood, in the valle}^ of 
 the Pipestone. 
 
 
 WHITEWOOD, A SETTLEMENT ON THE PRAIRIE 
 
 The way was across a level prairie, with here and 
 there a bunch of young wolf- willows to break the 
 monotonous scene, with tens of thousands of gophers 
 sitting boldly on their haunches within reach of the 
 wagon whip, with a sod house in sight in one direc- 
 tion at one time and a frame house in view at an- 
 other. The talk of the driver was spiced with news 
 of abundant wild-fowl, fewer deer, and marvellously 
 numerous small quadrupeds, from wolves and foxes 
 down. He talked of bachelors living here and there 
 alone on that sea of grass, for all the world like men 
 
TITLED PIONEERS 
 
 5 
 
 in small boats on the ocean ; and I saw, contrariwise, 
 a man and wife who blessed Heaven for an unheard- 
 of number of children, especially prized because each 
 new-comer lessened the loneliness. I heard of the 
 long and dreadful winters when the snowfall is so 
 light that horses and mules may always paw down 
 to grass, though cattle stand and starve and freeze 
 to death. I heard, too, of the way the snow comes 
 in flurried squalls, in which men are lost within pis- 
 tol-shot of their homes. In time the waoon came to 
 
 INTERIOR OF SOD CAHIN ON TMK FRONTIER 
 
6 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 a sort of coulee or hollow, in which some mechanics- 
 imported from Paris were putting up a fine cottage 
 for the Comte de RafiBgnac. Ten paces farther, and 
 I stood on the edge of the valley of the Pipestone, 
 looking at a scene so poetic, pastoral, and beautiful 
 that in the whole transcontinental journey there 
 were few views to compare with it. 
 
 Reaching away far below the level of the prairie 
 was a bowl-like valley, a mile long and half as wide, 
 with a crystal stream lying like a ribbon of silver 
 midway between its sloping walls. Another valley,, 
 longer yet, served as an extension to this. On the 
 one side the high grassy walls were broken with fre- 
 quent gullies, while on the other side was a park-like 
 growth of forest trees. Meadows and fields lav be- 
 tween, and nestling against the eastern or grassy 
 wall was the quaint, old-fashioned German house of 
 the learned doctor. Its , windows looked out on 
 those beautiful little valleys, the property of the doc- 
 tor — a little world far below the great prairie out of 
 which sportive and patient Time had hollowed it. 
 Externally the long, low, steep-roofed house was Ger- 
 man, ancient, and picturesque in appearance. Its 
 main floor was all enclosed in the sash and glass 
 frame of a covered porch, and outside of the walls of 
 glass were heavy curtains of straw, to keep out the 
 sun in summer and the cold in winter. In-doors the 
 house is as comfortable as any in the world. Its 
 framework is filled with brick, and its trimmings are 
 all of pine, oiled and varnished. In the heart of the 
 house is a great Russian stove — a huge box of brick- 
 work, which is filled full of wood to make a fire that 
 
A '\ 
 
 ^V.V. 
 
 PRAIRIE SOD STABLE 
 
 is made fresh every day, and that 
 heats the house for twenty -four 
 hours. A well-filled wine-cellar, a 
 well-equipped library, where Har- 
 per's Weekly, and Uder Land 
 2ind Mer, Punch, Puck, and Die Fliegende Blatter 
 lie side by side, a kindly wife, and a stumbling baby, 
 tell of a combination of domestic joys that no man is 
 too rich to envy. The library is the doctor's work- 
 shop He is now engaged in compiling a digest of 
 the economic laws of nations. He is already well 
 known as the author of a History of Socialism (in 
 Germany, the United States, Scandinavia, Russia, 
 France, Belgium, and elsewhere), and also for his 
 History of Socialism in Germany. He writes in 
 French and German, and his works are published in 
 Germany. 
 
8 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 Dr. Meyer is fift3^-three years old. He is a politi- 
 cal exile, having been forced from Prussia for con- 
 nection with an unsuccessful opposition to Bismarck. 
 It is because he is a scholar seeking rest from the 
 turmoil of politics that one is able to comprehend his 
 living in this overlooked corner of the world. Yet 
 when that is understood, and one knows what an Ar- 
 cadia his little valley is, and how complete are his 
 comforts within-doors, the placidity with which he 
 smokes his pipe, drinks his beer, and is waited upon 
 by servants imported from Paris, becomes less a mat- 
 ter for wonder than for congratulation. He has 
 shared part of one valley with the Comte de Raffig- 
 nac, who thinks there is nothing to compare with it 
 on earth. The count has had his house built near 
 the abruptly-broken edge of the prairie, so that he 
 may look down upon the calm and beautiful valley 
 and enjoy it, as he could not had he built in the 
 valley itself. He is a youth of very old French fam- 
 ily, who loves hunting and horses. He was contem- 
 plating the raising of horses for a business when I 
 was there. But the count mars the romance of his 
 membership in this little band by going to Paris 
 now and then, as a young man would be likely to. 
 
 Out-of-doors one saw what untold good it does to 
 the present and future settlers to have such men 
 among them. The hot-houses, glazed vegetable beds, 
 the plots of cultivated ground, the nurseries of young 
 trees — all show at what cost of money and patience 
 the Herr Doctor is experimenting with every tree 
 and flower and vegetable and cereal to discover what 
 can be grown with profit in that region of rich soil 
 
TITLED PIONEERS 9 
 
 and short summers, and what cannot. He is in com- 
 munication with the seedsmen, to say nothing of the 
 savants, of Europe and this country, and whatever he 
 plants is of the best. Near his quaint chvelHng he 
 has a house for his gardener, a smithy, a tool-house, 
 a barn, and a cheese-factory, for he makes gruyere 
 cheese in great quantities. He also raises horses 
 and cattle. 
 
 The Comte de Cazes has a sheltered, favored claim 
 a few miles to the northward, near the Ou' Appele 
 River. He lives in great comfort, and is so success- 
 ful a farmer that he carries off nearly all the prizes 
 for the province, especially those given for prime 
 vegetables. He has his wife and daughter and one 
 of his sons with him, and an abundance of means, 
 as, indeed, these distinguished settlers all appear to 
 have. 
 
 
 ^^4M 
 
 - > 
 
 tbjvixed ox team 
 
lO ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 These men have that faculty, developed in all edu- 
 cated and thinking souls, which enables them to ban- 
 ish loneliness and entertain themselves. Still, though 
 Dr. Meyer laughs at the idea of danger, it must have 
 been a little disquieting to live as he does during the 
 Riel rebellion, especially as an Indian reservation is 
 close by, and wandering red men are seen every day 
 upon the prairie. Indeed, the Government thought 
 fit to send men of the North-west Mounted Police to 
 visit the doctor twice a week as lately as a year af- 
 ter the close of the half-breed uprising. 
 
II 
 
 CHARTERING A NATION 
 
 HOW it came about that we chartered the Black- 
 foot nation for two days had better not be told 
 in straisfhtforward fashion. There is more that is in- 
 teresting in going around about the subject, just as in 
 reality we did go around and about the neighborhood 
 of the Indians before we determined to visit them. 
 
 In the first place, the most interesting Indian I 
 ever saw — among many kinds and many thousands 
 — was the late Chief Crowfoot, of the Blackfoot peo- 
 ple. More like a king than a chief he looked, as he 
 strode upon the plains, in a magnificent robe of 
 white bead-work as rich as ermine, with a gorgeous 
 pattern illuminating its edges, a glorious sun worked 
 into the front of it, and many artistic and chromatic 
 figures sewed in gaudy beads upon its back. He 
 wore an old white chimney-pot hat, bound around 
 with eagle feathers, a splendid pair of chaperajos, all 
 worked with beads at the bottoms and fringed along 
 the sides, and bead-worked moccasins, for which any 
 lover of the Indian or collector of his paraphernalia 
 would have exchanged a new Winchester rifle with- 
 out a second's hesitation. But though Crowfoot was 
 so royally clothed, it was in himself that the kingly 
 quality was most apparent. His face was extraordi- 
 narily like what portraits we have of Julius Ccesar, 
 
12 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 with the difference that Crowfoot had the complexion 
 of an Egyptian mummy. The high forehead, the 
 great aquiHne nose, the thin Hps, usually closed, the 
 small, round, protruding chin, the strong jawbones, 
 and the keen gray eyes composed a face in which 
 every feature was finely moulded, and in which the 
 warrior, the commander, and the counsellor were 
 strongly suggested. And in each of these roles he 
 played the highest part among the Indians of Canada 
 from the moment that the whites and the red men 
 contested the dominion of the plains until he died, a 
 short time ago. 
 
 He was born and lived a wild Indian, and though 
 the orood fathers of the nearest Roman Catholic mis- 
 sion believe that he died a Christian, I am constrained 
 to see in the reason for their thinking so only another 
 proof of the consummate shrewdness of Crowfoot's 
 life-long policy. The old -king lay on his death-bed 
 in his great wig-a-wam, with twenty-seven of his med- 
 icine-men around him, and never once did he pretend 
 that he despised or doubted their magic. When it 
 was evident that he was about to die, the conjurers 
 ceased their long-continued, exhausting formula of 
 howling, drumming, and all the rest, and, Indian-like, 
 left Death to take his own. Then it was that one of 
 the watchful, zealous priests, whose lives have indeed 
 been like those of fathers to the wild Indians, slipped 
 into the great tepee and administered the last sacra- 
 ment to the old pagan. 
 
 " Do you believe T' the priest inquired. 
 
 " Yes, I believe," old Crowfoot grunted. Then he 
 whispered, " But don't tell my people." 
 
CHARTERING A NATION 
 
 13 
 
 Among the last words of great men, those of Sa- 
 ponaxitaw (his Indian name) may never be recorded, 
 but to the student of the American aborigine they 
 betray more that is characteristic of the habitual atti- 
 tude of mind of the wild red man towards civilizin<r 
 influences than any words I ever knew one to utter. 
 
 As the old chief crushed the bunch-2:rass beneath 
 his gaudy moccasins at the time I saw him, and as 
 his lesser chiefs and headmen strode behind him, we 
 who looked on knew what a great part he was bear- 
 ing and had taken in Canada. He had been chief of 
 the most powerful and savage tribe in the North, and 
 of several allied tribes as well, from the time when 
 the region west of the Mississippi was terra incognita 
 to all except a few fur traders and priests. His war- 
 riors ruled the Canadian wilderness, keeping the 
 Ojibbeways and Crees in the forests to the east and 
 north, routinor the Crows, the Stonies, and the Bio-- 
 Bellies whenever they pleased, and yielding to no 
 tribe they met except the Sioux to the southward 
 in our territory. The first white man Crowfoot 
 ever knew intimately was Father Lacombe, the noble 
 old missionary, whose fame is now world-wide among 
 scholars. The peaceful priest and the warrior chief 
 became fast friends, and from the day when the white 
 men first broke down the border and swarmed upon 
 the plains, until at the last they ran what Crowfoot 
 called their "fire-wagons" (locomotives) through his 
 land, he followed the priest's counselling in most im-^ 
 portant matters. He treated with the authorities, 
 and thereafter hindered his braves from murder, 
 massacre, and warfare. Better than that, during the 
 
14 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 Riel rebellion he more than any other man, or twenty 
 men, kept the red man of the plains at peace when 
 the French half-breeds, led by their mentally irrespon- 
 sible disturber, rebelled against the Dominion author- 
 ities. 
 
 When Crowfoot talked, he made laws. While he 
 spoke, his nation listened in silence. He had killed 
 as many men as any Indian warrior alive ; he was a 
 mighty buffalo-slayer; he was torn, scarred, and man- 
 gled in skin, limb, and bone. He never would learn 
 English or pretend to discard his religion. He was 
 an Indian after the pattern of his ancestors. At 
 eighty odd years of age there lived no red -skin who 
 dared answer him back when he spoke his mind. 
 But he was a shrewd man and an archdiplomatist. 
 Because he had no quarrel with the whites, and be- 
 cause a grand old priest was his truest friend, he gave 
 orders that his body should be buried in a coffin. 
 Christian fashion, and as I rode over the plains in the 
 summer of 1890 I saw his burial-place on top of a 
 high hill, and knew that his bones were guarded 
 night and day by watchers from among his people. 
 Two or three days before he died his best horse was 
 slaughtered for burial with him. He heard of it. 
 " That was wrong," he said ; " there was no sense in 
 doing that ; and besides, the horse was worth good 
 money." But he was always at least as far as that. 
 in advance of his people, and it was natural that 
 not only his horse, but his gun and blankets, his 
 rich robes, and plenty of food to last him to the 
 happy hunting-grounds, should have been buried 
 with him. 
 
CHARTERING A NATION 1 5 
 
 There are different ways of judging which is the 
 best Indian, but from the stand-point of him who 
 would examine that distinct product of nature, the 
 Indian as the white man found him, the Canadian 
 Blackfeet are among if not quite the best. They are 
 almost as primitive and natural as any, nearly the 
 most prosperous, physically very fine, the most free 
 from white men's vices. They are the most reason- 
 able in their attitude towards the whites of any who 
 hold to the true Indian philosophy. The sum of 
 that philosophy is that civilization gets men a great 
 many comforts, but bundles them up with so many 
 rules and responsibilities and so much hard work 
 that, after all, the wild Indian has the greatest 
 amount of pleasure and the least share of care that 
 men can hope for. That man is the fairest judge of 
 the red -skins who considers them as children, gov- 
 erned mainly by emotion, and acting upon undisci- 
 plined impulse ; and I know of no more hearty, natu- 
 ral children than the careless, improvident, impulsive 
 boys and girls of from five to eighty years of age 
 whom Crowfoot turned over to the care of Three 
 Bulls, his brother. 
 
 The Blackfeet of Canada number about two thou- 
 sand men, women, and children. They dwell upon a 
 reserve of nearly five hundred square miles of plains 
 land, watered by the beautiful Bow River, and almost 
 within sight of the Rocky Mountains. It is in the 
 province of Alberta, north of our Montana. There 
 were three thousand and more of these Indians when 
 the Canadian Pacific Railway was built across their 
 hunting-ground, seven or eight years ago, but they 
 
i6 ON Canada's frontier 
 
 are losing numbers at the rate of two hundred and 
 fifty a year, roughly speaking. Their neighbors, the 
 tribes called the Bloods and the Piegans, are of the 
 same nation. The Sarcis, once a great tribe, be- 
 came weakened by disease and war, and many years 
 ago begged to be taken into the confederation. 
 These tribes all have separate reserves near to one 
 another, but all have heretofore acknowledged each 
 Blackfoot chief as their supreme ruler. Their old 
 men can remember when they used to roam as far 
 south as Utah, and be gone twelve months on the 
 war-path and on their foraging excursions for horses. 
 They chased the Crees as far north as the Crees 
 would run, and that was close to the arctic circle. 
 They lived in their war-paint and by the chase. Now 
 they are caged. They live unnaturally and die as 
 unnaturally, precisely like other wild animals shut up 
 in our parks. Within their park each gets a pound 
 of meat with half a pound of flour every day. Not 
 much comes to them besides, except now and then a 
 little game, tobacco, and new blankets. They are so 
 poorly lodged and so scantily fed that they are not 
 fit to confront a Canadian winter, and lung troubles 
 prey among them. 
 
 It is a harsh way to put it (but it is true of our own 
 government also) to say that one who has looked the 
 subject over is apt to decide that the policy of the 
 Canadian Government has been to make treaties with 
 the dangerous tribes, and to let the peaceful ones 
 starve. The latter do not need to starve in Canada, 
 fortunately; they trust to the Hudson Bay Company 
 for food and care, and not in vain. Having treated 
 
CHARTERING A NATION I7 
 
 with the wilder Indians, the rest of the policy is to 
 send the brightest of their boys to trade-schools, and 
 to try to induce the men to till the soil. Those who 
 do so are then treated more generously than the 
 others. I have my own ideas with which to meet 
 those who find nothing admirable in any except a 
 dead Indian, and with which to discuss the treatment 
 and policy the live Indian endures, but this is not the 
 place for the discussion. Sufiice it that it is not to 
 be denied that between one hundred and fifty and 
 two hundred Blackfeet are learning to maintain sev- 
 eral plots of farming land planted with oats and po- 
 tatoes. This they are doing with success, and with 
 the further result of setting a good example to the 
 rest. But most of the bucks are either sullenly or 
 stupidly clinging to the shadow and the memory of 
 the life that is gone. 
 
 It was a recollection of that life which they por- 
 trayed for us. And they did so with a fervor, an 
 abundance of detail and memento, and with a splen- 
 dor few men have seen equalled in recent years — or 
 ever may hope to witness again. 
 
 We left the cars at Gleichen, a little border town 
 which depends almost wholly upon the Blackfeet and 
 their visitors for its maintenance. It has two stores 
 — one where the Indians get credit and high prices 
 (and at which the red men deal), and one at which 
 they may buy at low rates for cash, wherefore they 
 seldom go there. It has two hotels and a half-dozen 
 railway men's dwellings, and, finally, it boasts a tiny 
 little station or barracks of the North-west Mounted 
 Police, wherein the lower of the two rooms is fitted 
 
1 8 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 with a desk, and hung with pistols, guns, handcuffs, 
 and cartridge belts, while the upper room contains the 
 cots for the men at night. 
 
 We went to the store that the Indians favor — just 
 such a store as you see at any cross-roads you drive 
 past in a summer's outing in the country — and there 
 were half a dozen Indians beautifying the door-way 
 and the interior, like magnified majolica-ware in a 
 crockery-shop. They were standing or sitting about 
 with thoughtful expressions, as Indians always do 
 when they go shopping; for your true Indian gener- 
 ates such a contemplative mood when he is about to 
 spend a quarter that one would fancy he must be the 
 most prudent and deliberate of men, instead of what 
 he really is — the greatest prodigal alive except the 
 negro. These bucks might easily have been mistaken 
 for waxworks. Unnaturally erect, with arms folded 
 beneath their blankets, they stood or sat without 
 moving a limb or muscle. Only when a new-comer 
 entered did they stir. Then they turned their heads 
 deliberately and looked at the visitor fixedly, as eagles 
 look at you from out their cages. They were strap- 
 ping fine fellows, each bundled up in a colored blank- 
 et, flapping cloth leg-gear, and yellow moccasins. 
 Each had the front locks of his hair tied in an up- 
 right bunch, like a natural plume, and several wore 
 little brass rings, like baby finger-rings, around certain 
 side locks down beside their ears. 
 
 There they stood, motionless and speechless, wait- 
 ing until the impulse should move them to buy what 
 they wanted, with the same deliberation with which 
 they had waited for the original impulse w^hich sent 
 
CHARTERING A NATION I9 
 
 them to the store. If Mr. Frenchman, who kept the 
 store, had come from behind his counter, EngHsh 
 fashion, and had said : " Come, come ; what d'you 
 want ? Speak up now, and be quick about it. No 
 lounging here. Buy or get out." If he had said 
 that, or anything hke it, those Indians would have 
 stalked out of his place, not to enter it again for a 
 very long time, if ever. Bartering is a serious and 
 complex performance to an Indian, and you might as 
 well try to hurry an elephant up a gang-plank as try 
 to quicken an Indian's procedure in trading. 
 
 We purchased of the Frenchman a chest of tea, a 
 great bag of lump sugar, and a small case of plug to- 
 bacco for orifts to the chief. Then we hired a buck- 
 board wagon, and made ready for the journey to the 
 reserve. 
 
 The road to the reserve lay several miles over the 
 plains, and commanded a view of rolling grass land, 
 like a brown sea whose waves were petrified, with 
 here and there a group of sickly wind-blown trees to 
 break the resemblance. The road was a mere wagon 
 track and horse-trail through the grass, but it was 
 criss-crossed with the once deep ruts that had been 
 worn by countless herds of buffalo seeking water. 
 
 Presently, as we journeyed, a little line of sand-hills 
 came into view. They formed the Blackfoot ceme- i/ 
 tery. We saw the " tepees of the dead " here and 
 there on the knolls, some new and perfect, some old 
 and weather-stained, some showing mere tatters of 
 cotton flapping on the poles, and still others only 
 skeleton tents, the poles remaining and the cotton 
 covering gone completely. We knew what we would 
 
20 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 see if we looked into those " dead tepees " (being care- 
 ful to approach from the windward side). We would 
 see, lying on the ground or raised upon a framework, 
 a bundle that would be narrow at top and bottom, 
 and broad in the middle — an Indian's body rolled up 
 in a sheet of cotton, with his best bead-work and 
 blanket and gun in the bundle, and near by a kettle 
 and some dried meat and corn-meal against his feel- 
 ing hungry on his long journey to the hereafter. As 
 one or two of the tepees were new, we expected to 
 see some family in mourning ; and, sure enough, when 
 we reached the great sheer-sided gutter which the 
 Bow River has dug for its course through the plains, 
 we halted our horse and looked down upon a lonely 
 trio of tepees, with children playing around them and 
 women squatted by the entrances. Three families 
 had lost members, and were sequestered there in ab- 
 ject surrender to grief. 
 
 Those tents of the mourners were at our feet as we 
 rode southward, down in the river gully, where the 
 grass was green and the trees were leafy and thriv- 
 ing; but when we turned our faces to the eastward, 
 where the river bent around a great promontory, 
 what a sight met our gaze ! There stood a city of 
 tepees, hundreds of them, showing white and yellow 
 and brown and red against the clear blue sky. A si- 
 lent and lifeless city it seemed, for we were too far 
 off to see the people or to hear their noises. The 
 great huddle of little pyramids rose abruptly from the 
 level bare grass against the flawless sky, not like one 
 of those melancholy new treeless towns that white 
 men are building all over the prairie, but rather like 
 
CHARTERING A NATION 21 
 
 a mosquito fleet becalmed at sea. There are two 
 camps on the Blackfoot Reserve, the North Camp 
 and the South Camp, and this town of tents was be- 
 tween the two, and was composed of more households 
 than both together; for this was the assembling for 
 the sun-dance, their greatest religious festival, and 
 hither had come Bloods, Piegans, and Sarcis as well 
 as Blackfeet. Only the mourners kept away ; for 
 here were to be echoed the greatest ceremonials of 
 that dead past, wherein lives dedicated to war and to 
 the chase inspired the deeds of valor which each 
 would now celebrate anew in speech or song. This 
 was to be the anniversary of the festival at which the 
 young men fastened themselves by a strip of flesh in 
 their chests to a sort of Maypole rope, and tore their 
 flesh apart to demonstrate their fitness to be con- 
 sidered braves. At this feast husbands had the right 
 to confess their women, and to cut their noses off if 
 they had been untrue, and if they yet preferred life to 
 the death they richly merited. At this gala-time 
 sacrifices of fingers were made by brave men to the 
 sun. Then every warrior boasted of his prowess, and 
 the young beaus feasted their eyes on gayly-clad 
 maidens the while they calculated for what number 
 of horses they could be purchased of their parents. 
 And at each recurrence of this wonderful holiday- 
 time every night was spent in feasting, gorging, and 
 gambling. In short, it was the great event of the 
 Indian year, and so it remains. Even now you may 
 see the young braves undergo the torture ; and if you 
 may not see the faithless wives disciplined, you may 
 at least perceive a score who have been, as well as 
 
22 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 hear the mighty boasting, and witness the dancing, 
 garni ngi and carousing. 
 
 We turned our backs towards the tented field, for 
 we had not vet introduced ourselves to Mr. Masrnus 
 Begg, the Indian agent in charge of the reserve. We 
 were soon within his of^cial enclosure, where a pretty 
 frame house, an of^ce no bigger than a freight car, 
 and a roomy barn and stable were all overtopped by 
 a central fiag-staff, and shaded by flourishing trees. 
 Mr. Begg was at home, and, with his accomplished 
 wife, welcomed us in such a hearty manner as one 
 could hardly have expected, even where white folks 
 were so "mighty unsartin " to appear as they are on 
 the plains. The agent's house without is like any 
 pretty village home in the East ; and within, the 
 only distinctive features are a number of ornamental 
 mounted wild-beast's heads and a room whose walls 
 are lined about with rare' and beautiful Blackfoot 
 curios in skin and stone and bead-work. But, to our 
 joy, we found seated in that room the famous chief 
 Old Sun. He is the husband of the most remarkable 
 Indian squaw in America, and he would have been 
 Crowfoot's successor were it not that he was eighty- 
 seven years of age when the Blackfoot Caesar died. 
 As chief of the North Blackfeet, Old Sun boasts the 
 largest personal following on the Canadian plains, 
 having earned his popularity by his fighting record, 
 his commanding manner, his eloquence, and by that 
 generosity which leads him to give away his rations 
 and his presents. No man north of Mexico can 
 dress more gorgeously than he upon occasion, for 
 he still owns a buckskin outfit beaded to the value 
 
CHARTERING A NATION 23 
 
 of a Worth gown. Moreover, he owns a red coat, 
 such as the Government used to give only to great 
 chiefs. The old fellow had lost his vigor when we 
 saw him, and as he sat wrapped in his blanket he 
 looked like a half-emptied meal bag flung on a chair. 
 He despises English, but in that marvellous VolapUk 
 of the plains called the sign language he told us 
 that his teeth were gone, his hearing was bad, his 
 eyes were weak, and his flesh was spare. He told 
 his age also, and much else besides, and there is no 
 one who reads this but could have readily under- 
 stood his every statement and sentiment, conveyed 
 solely by means of his hands and fingers. I noticed 
 that he looked like an old woman, and it is a fact 
 that old Indian men frequently look so. Yet no one 
 ever saw a young brave whose face suggested a 
 woman's, though their beardless countenances and 
 long hair might easily create that appearance. 
 
 Mr. Remington was anxious to paint Old Sun and 
 his squaw, particularly the latter, and he easily ob- 
 tained permission, although when the time for the 
 mysterious ordeal arrived next day the old chief was 
 greatly troubled in his superstitious old brain lest 
 some mischief would befall him through the medium 
 of the painting. To the Indian mind the sun, which 
 they worship, has magical, even devilish, powers, and 
 Old Sun developed a fear that the orb of day might 
 " work on his picture " and cause him to die. Fort- 
 unately I found in Mr. L'Hereux, the interpreter, a 
 person who had undergone the process without dire 
 consequences, was willing to undergo it again, and 
 who added that his father and mother had submitted 
 
24 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 to the operation, and yet had lived to a yellow old 
 age. When Old Sun brought his wife to sit for her 
 portrait I put all etiquette to shame in staring at her, 
 as you will all the more readily believe when you 
 know something of her history. 
 
 Old Sun's wife sits in the council of her nation — 
 the only woman, white, red, or black, of whom I have 
 ever heard who enjoys such a prerogative on this 
 continent. She earned her peculiar privileges, if any 
 one ever earned anything. Forty or more years ago 
 she was a Piegan maiden known only in her tribe, 
 and there for nothing more than her good origin, her 
 comeliness, and her consequent value in horses. She 
 met with outrageous fortune, but she turned it to 
 such good account that she was speedily ennobled. 
 She was at home in a little camp on the plains one 
 day, and had wandered away from the tents, when 
 she was kidnapped. It was in this wise : other 
 camps were scattered near there. On the night 
 before the day of her adventure a band of Crows 
 stole a number of horses from a camp of the Gros 
 Ventres, and very artfully trailed their plunder tow- 
 ards and close to the Piegan camp before they turned 
 and made their way to their own lodges. When the 
 Gros Ventres discovered their loss, and followed the 
 trail that seemed to lead to the Piegan camp, the girl 
 and her father, an aged chief, were at a distance from 
 their tepees, unarmed and unsuspecting. Down 
 swooped the Gros Ventres. They killed and scalped 
 the old man, and then their chief swung the young 
 girl upon his horse behind him, and binding her to 
 him with thongs of buckskin, dashed off triumphantly 
 
CHARTERING A NATION 2$ 
 
 for his own village. That has happened to many 
 another Indian maiden, most of whom have behaved 
 as would a plaster image, saving a few days of weep- 
 ing. Not such was Old Sun's wife. When she and 
 her captor were in sight of the Gros Ventre village, 
 she reached forward and stole the chief's scalping- 
 knife out of its sheath at his side. With it, still wet 
 with her father's blood, she cut him in the back 
 through to the heart. Then she freed his body from 
 hers, and tossed him from the horse's back. Leaping 
 to the ground beside his body, she not only scalped 
 him, but cut off his right arm and picked up his gun, 
 and rode madly back to her people, chased most of 
 the way, but bringing safely with her the three great- 
 est trophies a warrior can wrest from a vanquished 
 enemy. Two of them would have distinguished any 
 brave, but this mere village maiden came with all 
 three. From that day she has boasted the right to 
 wear three eagle feathers. 
 
 Old Sun was a young man then, and when he 
 heard of this feat he came and hitched the requisite 
 number of horses to her mother's travois poles 
 beside her tent. I do not recall how many steeds 
 she was valued at, but I have heard of very high- 
 priced Indian girls who had nothing except their 
 feminine qualities to recommend them. In one case 
 I knew that a young man, who had been casting 
 what are called " sheep's eyes " at a maiden, went one 
 day and tied four horses to her father's tent. Then 
 he stood around and waited, but there was no sign 
 from the tent. Next day he took four more, and so 
 he went on until he had tied sixteen horses to the 
 
26 ON Canada's frontier 
 
 tepee. At the least they were worth $20, perhaps 
 $30, apiece. At that the maiden and her people 
 came out, and received the young man so graciously 
 that he knew he was " the young woman's choice," 
 as we say in civilized circles, sometimes under very 
 similar circumstances. 
 
 At all events. Old Sun was rich and powerful, and 
 easily got the savage heroine for his wife. She was 
 admitted to the Blackfoot council without a protest, 
 and has since proven that her valor was not sporadic, 
 for she has taken the war-path upon occasion, and 
 other scalps have gone to her credit. 
 
 After a while we drove over to where the field lay 
 littered with tepees. There seemed to be no order in 
 the arrangement of the tents as we looked at the 
 scene from a distance. Gradually the symptoms of a 
 great stir and activity were observable, and we saw 
 men and horses running about at one side of the 
 nomad settlement, as well as hundreds of human 
 figures moving in the camp. Then a nearer view 
 brought out the fact that the tepees, which were of 
 many sizes, were apt to be white at the base, reddish 
 half-way up, and dark brown at the top. The smoke 
 of the fires within, and the rain and sun without, 
 paint all the cotton or canvas tepees like that, and 
 very pretty is the effect. When closer still, we saw 
 that each tepee was capped with a rude crown 
 formed of pole ends — the ends of the ribs of each 
 structure ; that some of the tents were gayly orna- 
 mented with great geometric patterns in red, black, 
 and yellow around the bottoms; and that others bore 
 upon their sides rude but highly colored figures of 
 
CHARTERING A NATION 2/ 
 
 animals — the clan sign of the family within. Against 
 very many of the frail dwellings leaned a travois, the 
 triangle of poles which forms the wagon of the Ind- 
 ians. There were three or four very large tents, 
 the headquarters of the chiefs of the soldier bands 
 and of the head chief of the nation ; and there was 
 one spotless new tent, with a pretty border painted 
 around its base, and the figure of an animal on cither 
 side. It was the new establishment of a bride and 
 groom. A hubbub filled the air as we drew still 
 nearer; not any noise occasioned by our approach, 
 but the ordinary uproar of the camp— the barking of 
 dogs, the shouts of frolicking children, the yells of 
 young men racing on horseback and of others driv- 
 ing in their ponies. When we drove between the 
 first two tents we saw that the camp had been sys- 
 tematically arranged in the form of a rude circle, 
 with the tents in bunches around a great central 
 space, as large as Madison Square if its corners were 
 rounded off. 
 
 We were ushered into the presence of Three Bulls, 
 in the biggest of all the tents. By common consent 
 he was presiding as chief and successor to Crowfoot, 
 pending the formal election, which was to take place 
 at the feast of the sun -dance. European royalty 
 could scarcely have managed to invest itself with 
 more dignity or access to its presence with more 
 formality than hedged about this blanketed king. 
 He had assembled his chiefs and headmen to greet 
 us, for we possessed the eminence of persons bearing 
 gifts. He was in mourning for Crowfoot, who was his 
 brother, and for a daughter besides, and the form of 
 
28 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 expression he gave to his grief caused him to wear 
 nothing but a flannel shirt and a breech -cloth, in 
 which he sat with his big brown legs bare and 
 crossed beneath him. He is a powerful man, with 
 an uncommonly large head, and his facial features, all 
 generously moulded, indicate amiability, liberality, 
 and considerable intelligence. Of middle age, smooth- 
 skinned, and plump, there was little of the savage in 
 his looks beyond what came of his long black hair. 
 It was purposely wore unkempt and hanging in his 
 eyes, and two locks of it were bound with many 
 brass rings. When we came upon him our gifts had 
 already been received and distributed, mainly to 
 three or four relatives. But though the others sat 
 about portionless, all were alike stolid and statuesque, 
 and whatever feelings agitated their breasts, whether 
 of satisfaction or disappointment, were equally hid- 
 den by all. 
 
 When we entered the big tepee we saw twenty- 
 one men seated in a circle against the wall and facing 
 the open centre, where the ground was blackened by 
 the ashes of former fires. Three Bulls sat exactly 
 opposite the queer door, a horseshoe -shaped hole 
 reaching two feet above the ground, and extended 
 by the partly loosened lacing that held the edges of 
 the tent-covering together. Mr. L'Hereux, the in- 
 terpreter, made a long speech in introducing each of 
 us. We stood in the middle of the ring, and the 
 chief punctuated the interpreter's remarks with that 
 queer Indian grunt which it has ever been the cus- 
 tom to spell " ugh," but which you may imitate ex- 
 actly if- you will try to say " Ha " through your nose 
 
CHARTERING A NATION 29 
 
 while your mouth is closed. As Mr. L'Hereux is a 
 great talker, and is of a poetic nature, there is no 
 telling what wild fancy of his active brain he in 
 vented concerning us, but he made a friendly talk, 
 and that was what we wanted. As each speech 
 closed, Three Bulls lurched forward just enough to 
 make the putting out of his hand a gracious act, yet 
 not enough to disturb his dignity. After each salu- 
 tation he pointed out a seat for the one with whom 
 he had shaken hands. He announced to the council 
 in their language that we were good men, whereat 
 the council uttered a sino;le " Ha" throusfh its twentv- 
 one noses. If you had seen the rigid stateliness of 
 Three Bulls, and had felt the frigid self-possession of 
 the twenty-one ramrod-mannered under-chiefs, as well 
 as the deference which was in the tones of the other 
 white men in our company, you would comprehend 
 that we were made to feel at once honored and sub- 
 ordinate. Altogether we made an odd picture : a 
 circle of men seated tailor fashion, and my own and 
 Mr. Remington's black shoes marring the gaudy ring 
 of yellow moccasins in front of the savages, as they 
 sat in their colored blankets and fringed and be- 
 feathered gear, each with the calf of one leg crossed 
 before the shin of the other. 
 
 But L'Hereux's next act after introducing us was 
 one that seemed to indicate perfect indifference to the 
 feelings of this august body. No one but he, who 
 had spent a quarter of a century with them in closest 
 intimacy, could have acted as he proceeded to do. 
 He cast his eyes on the ground, and saw the mounds 
 of sugar, tobacco, and tea heaped before only a cer- 
 
30 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 tain few Indians. " Now who has done dose t'ing?" 
 he inquired. " Oh, dat vill nevaire do 'tall. You 
 haf done dose t'ing, Mistaire Begg.'* No.-^ Who 
 den .f* Chief .f* Nevaire mind. I make him all rount 
 again, vaire deeferent. You shall see somet'ing." 
 With that, and yet without ceasing to talk for an 
 instant, now in Indian and now in his English, he 
 began to dump the tea back again into the chest, 
 the sugar into the bag, and the plug tobacco in a 
 heap by itself. Not an Indian moved a muscle — 
 unless I was right in my suspicion that the corners 
 of Three Bulls' mouth curved upward slightly, as if 
 he were about to smile, " Vot kind of wa-a-y to do-o 
 somet'ing is dat.'*" the interpreter continued, in his 
 sing-song tone. "You moos' haf one maje-dome 
 [major-domo] if you shall try satisfy dose Engine." 
 He always called the Indians " dose Engine." " Dat 
 chief gif all dose present to his broders und cousins, 
 vhich are in his famille. Now you shall see me, vot 
 I shall do." Taking his hat, he began filling it, now 
 with sugar and now with tea, and emptying it before 
 some six or seven chiefs. Finally, when a double 
 share was left, he gave both bag and chest to Three 
 Bulls, to whom he also gave all the tobacco. " Such 
 tam-fool peezness," he went on, " I do not see in all 
 my life. I make visitation to de free soljier chief 
 vhich shall make one grand darnce for dose gentle- 
 men, und here is for dose soljier chief not anyt'ing 
 'tall, vhile everything was going to one lot of beggaire 
 relation of T'ree Bull. Dat is what I call one tam- 
 fool way to do somet'ing." 
 
 The redistribution accomplished. Three Bulls wore 
 
CHARTERING A NATION 
 
 33 
 
 a grin of satisfaction, and one chief who had lost a 
 great pile of presents, and who got nothing at all by 
 the second division, stalked solemnly out of the tent, 
 through not until Three Bulls had tossed the plugs 
 of tobacco to all the men around the circle, precisely 
 as he might have thrown bones to dogs, but always 
 observing a certain order in making each round with 
 the plugs. All were thus served according to their 
 rank. Then Three Bulls rummaged with one hand 
 behind him in the grass, and fetched forward a great 
 pipe with a stone bowl and wooden handle — a sort 
 of chopping-block of wood — and a large long-bladed 
 knife. Taking a plug of tobacco in one hand and the 
 knife in the other, he pared off enough tobacco to fill 
 the pipe. Then he filled it, and passed it, stem fore- 
 most, to a young man on the left-hand side of the tepee. 
 The superior chiefs all sat on the right-hand side. 
 The young man knew that he had been chosen to 
 perform the menial act of lighting the pipe, and he 
 lighted it, pulling two or three w^hiffs of smoke to 
 insure a good coal of fire in it before passing it back 
 — through why it was not considered a more menial 
 task to cut the tobacco and fill the pipe than to light 
 it I don't know. 
 
 Three Bulls puffed the pipe for a moment, and 
 then turning the stem from him, pointed it at the 
 chief next in importance, and to that personage the 
 symbol of peace was passed from hand to hand. 
 When that chief had drawn a few whiffs, he sent the 
 pipe back to Three Bulls, who then indicated to 
 whom it should go next. Thus it went dodging 
 about the circle like a marble on a bagatelle board. 
 
34 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 When it came to me, I hesitated a moment whether 
 or not to smoke it, but the desire to be polite out- 
 weighed any other prompting, and I sucked the pipe 
 until some of the Indians cried out that I was " a 
 good fellow." 
 
 While all smoked and many talked, I noticed that 
 Three Bulls sat upon a soft seat formed of his 
 blanket, at one end of which was one of those wicker- 
 work contrivances, like a chair back, upon which In- 
 dians lean when seated upon the ground. I noticed 
 also that one harsh criticism passed upon Three 
 Bulls was just; that was that when he spoke, others 
 might interrupt him. It was said that even women 
 "talked back" to him at times when he was harang- 
 uing his people. Since no one spoke when Crowfoot 
 talked, the comparison between him and his prede- 
 cessor was injurious to him ; but it was Crowfoot 
 who named Three Bulls for the chieftainship. Be- 
 sides, Three Bulls had the largest following (under 
 that of the too aged Old Sun), and was the most 
 generous chief and ablest politician of all. Then, 
 again, the Government supported him with whatever 
 its influence amounted to. This was because Three 
 Bulls favored agricultural employment for the tribe, 
 and was himself cultivating a patch of potatoes. He 
 was in many other ways the man to lead in the new 
 era, as Crowfoot had been for the era that was past. 
 
 When we retired from the presence of the chief, I 
 asked Mr. L'Hereu.^ how he had dared to take back 
 the presents made to the Indians and then distribute 
 them differently. The queer Frenchman said, in his 
 indescribably confident, jaunty way : 
 
CHARTERING A NATION 35 
 
 " Why, dat is how you mus' do \Vid dose Engine. 
 Nevaire ask one of dose Engine anyt'ing, but do 
 dose t'ing which are right, and at de same time make 
 explanashion what you are doing. Den dose Engine 
 can say no t'ing 'tall. But if you first make explana- 
 shion and den try to do somet'ng, you will find one 
 grand trouble. Can you explain dis and dat to one 
 hive of de bees ? Well, de hive of de bee is like 
 dose Engine if you shall talk widout de promp' 
 action." 
 
 He said, later on, " Dose Engine are children, and 
 mus' not haf consideration like mans and women." 
 
 The news of our generosity ran from tent to tent, 
 and the Black Soldier band sent out a herald to cry 
 the news that a war-dance was to be held immedi- 
 ately. As immediately means to the Indian mind 
 an indefinite and very enduring period, I amused my- 
 self by poking about the village, in tents and among 
 groups of men or women, wherever chance led me. 
 The herald rode from side to side of the enclosure, 
 yelling like a New York fruit peddler. He was 
 mounted on a bay pony, and was fantastically cos- 
 tumed with feathers and war-paint. Of course every 
 man, woman, and child who had been in-doors, so to 
 speak, now came out of the tepees, and a mighty 
 bustle enlivened the scene. The worst thinor about 
 
 O 
 
 the camp was the abundance of snarling cur-dogs. 
 It was not safe to walk about the camp without a 
 cane or whip, on account of these dogs. 
 
 The Blackfeet are poor enough, in all conscience, 
 from nearly every stand-point from which we judge 
 civilized communities, but their tribal possessions in- 
 
INDIAN MOTHER AND BOY 
 
 elude several horses to each head of a family ; and 
 though the majority of their ponies would fetch no 
 more than $20 apiece out there, even this gives them 
 more wealth per capita than many civilized peoples 
 can boast. They have managed, also, to keep much 
 of the savage paraphernalia of other days in the form 
 of buckskin clothes, elaborate bead-work, eagle head- 
 dresses, good guns, and the outlandish adornments of 
 their chiefs and medicine-men. Hundreds of miles 
 from any except such small and distant towns as Cal- 
 gary and Medicine Hat, and kept on the reserve as 
 much as possible, there has come to them less damage 
 by whiskey and white men's vices than perhaps most 
 other tribes have suffered. Therefore it was still 
 possible for me to see in some tents the squaws at 
 work painting the clan signs on stretched skins, and 
 making bead-work for moccasins, pouches, " chaps," 
 and the rest. And in one tepee I found a young 
 and rather pretty girl wearing a suit of buckskin, 
 
CHARTERING A NATION 
 
 37 
 
 such as Cooper and all the past historians of the Ind- 
 ian knew as the conventional every-day attire of the 
 red-skin. I say I saw the girl in a tent, but, as a mat- 
 ter of fact, she passed me out-of-doors, and with true 
 feminine art managed to allow her blanket to fall 
 open for just the instant it took to disclose the pre- 
 cious dress beneath it. I asked to be taken into the 
 tent to which she went, and there, at the interpreter's 
 request, she threw off her blanket, and stood, with a 
 little display of honest coyness, dressed like the tra- 
 ditional and the theatrical belle of the wilderness. 
 The soft yellowish leather, the heavy fringe upon 
 the arms, seams, and edges of the garment, her beau- 
 tiful beaded leggings and moccasins, formed so many 
 parts of a very charming picture. For herself, her 
 face was comely, but her figure was — an Indian's. 
 The figure of the typical Indian woman shows few 
 graceful curves. 
 
 The reader will inquire whether there was any 
 real beauty, as we judge it, among these Indians. 
 Yes, there was ; at least there were good looks if 
 there was not beauty. I saw perhaps a dozen fine- 
 looking men, half a dozen attractive girls, and some- 
 thing like a hundred children of varying degrees of 
 comeliness — pleasing, pretty, or beautiful. I had 
 some jolly romps with the children, and so came to 
 know that their faces and arms met my touch with 
 the smoothness and softness of the flesh of our own 
 little ones at home. I was surprised at this ; indeed, 
 the skin of the boys was of the texture of velvet. 
 The madcap urchins, what riotous fun they were 
 having ! They flung arrows and darts, ran races and 
 
38 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 wrestled, and in some of their play they fairly swarmed 
 all over one another, until at times one lad would be 
 buried in the thick of a writhinor mass of le^s and 
 arms several feet in depth. Some of the boys wore 
 only " G-strings " (as, for some reason, the breech- 
 clout is commonly called on the prairie), but others 
 were wrapped in old blankets, and the larger ones 
 were already wearing the Blackfoot plume-lock, or 
 tuft of hair tied and trained to stand erect above the 
 forehead. The babies within the tepees were clad 
 only in their complexions. 
 
 The result of an hour of waiting on our part and 
 of yelling on the part of the herald resulted in a war- 
 dance, not very different in itself from the dances we 
 have most of us seen at Wild West shows. An im- 
 mense tomtom as big as the largest-sized bass-drum 
 was set up between four poles, around which colored 
 cloths were wrapped, and from the tops of which 
 the same gay stuff floated on the wind in bunches 
 of party-colored ribbons. Around this squatted 
 four young braves, who pounded the drum-head 
 and chanted a tune, which rose and fell between 
 the shrillest and the deepest notes, but which con- 
 sisted of simple monosyllabic sounds repeated thou- 
 sands of times. The interpreter said that originally 
 the Indians had words to their songs, but these were 
 forgotten no man knows when, and only the so-called 
 tunes (and the tradition that there once were words 
 for them) are perpetuated. At all events, the four 
 braves beat the drum and chanted, until presently a 
 young warrior, hideous with war-paint, and carrying a 
 shield and a tomahawk, came out of a tepee and be- 
 
'"/{^i'tiJC /^v//yc;o//' 
 
 OPENING OF THE SOLDIER CLAN UAN'CE 
 
CHARTERING A NATION 
 
 41 
 
 gan the dancing. It was the stiff -legged hopping, first 
 on one foot and then on the other, which all savao-es 
 appeal* to deem the highest form the terpsichorean 
 art can take. In the course of a few circles around 
 the tomtom he began shouting of valorous deeds he 
 never had performed, for he was too young to have 
 ridden after buffalo or into battle. Presently he pre- 
 tended to see upon the ground something at once 
 fascinating and awesome. It was the trail of the 
 enemy. Then he danced furiously and more lim- 
 berly, tossing his head back, shaking his hatchet and 
 many-tailed shield high aloft, and yelling that he was 
 following the foe, and would not rest while a skull 
 and a scalp-lock remained in conjunction among 
 them. He was joined by three others, and all danced 
 and yelled like madmen. At the last the leader came 
 to a sort of standard made of a stick and some cloth, 
 tore it out from where it had been thrust in the 
 ground, and holding it far above his head, pranced 
 once around the circle, and thus ended the dance. 
 
 The novelty and interest in the celebration rested 
 in the surroundings — the great circle of tepees; the 
 braves in their blankets stalking hither and thither ; 
 the dogs, the horses, the intrepid riders, dashing 
 across the view. More strange still was the solemn 
 line of the medicine-men, who, for some reason not 
 explained to me, sat in a row with their backs to the 
 dancers a city block away, and crooned a low gut- 
 tural accompaniment to the tomtom. But still mor-e 
 interesting were the boys, of all grades of childhood, 
 who looked on, while not a woman remained in sight. 
 The larger boys stood about in groups, w^atching the 
 
42 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 spectacle with eyes afire with admiration, but the 
 little fellows had flung themselves on their stomachs 
 in a row, and were supporting their chubby faces 
 upon their little brown hands, while their elbows 
 rested on the grass, forming a sort of orchestra row 
 of Lilliputian spectators. 
 
 We arranged for a great spectacle to be gotten up 
 on the next afternoon, and were promised that it 
 should be as notable for the numbers participating 
 in it and for the trappings to be displayed as any the 
 Blackfeet had ever given upon their reserve. The 
 Indians spent the entire night in carousing over the 
 gift of tea, and we knew that if they were true to 
 most precedents they would brew and drink every 
 drop of it. Possibly some took it with an admixture 
 of tobacco and wild currant to make them drunk, or, 
 in reality, very sick — which is much the same thing 
 to a reservation Indian. The compounds which the 
 average Indian will swallow in the hope of imitating 
 the effects of whiskey are such as to tax the credulity 
 of those who hear of them. A certain patent "pain- 
 killer" ranks almost as high as whiskey in their esti- 
 mation; but Worcestershire sauce and gunpowder, 
 or tea, tobacco, and wild currant, are not at all to be 
 despised when alcohol, or the money to get it with, 
 is wanting. I heard a characteristic story about these 
 red men while I was visiting them. All who are 
 familiar with them know that if medicine is given 
 them to take in small portions at certain intervals 
 they are morally sure to swallow it all at once, and 
 that the sicker it makes them, the more they will 
 value it. On the Blackfoot Reserve, only a short time 
 
SKETCII IN THE SOLDIER CLAN DANCE 
 
 ago, our gentle and insinuating Sedlitz-powders were 
 classed as children's stuff, but now they have leaped 
 to the front rank as powerful medicines. This is be- 
 cause some white man showed the Indian how to 
 take the soda and magnesia first, and then swallow 
 the tartaric acid. They do this, and when the ex- 
 plosion follows, and the gases burst from their mouths 
 and noses, they pull themselves together and remark, 
 " Ugh ! him heap good." 
 
 On the morning of the day of the great spectacle I 
 rode with Mr. Begg over to the ration-house to see the 
 meat distributed. The dust rose in clouds above all 
 the trails as the cavalcade of men, women, children, 
 travoises and dogs, approached the station. Men 
 were few in the disjointed lines; most of them sent 
 
44 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 their women or children. All rode astraddle, some 
 on saddles and some bareback. As all urged their 
 horses in the Indian fashion, which is to whip them 
 unceasingly, and prod them constantly with spurless 
 heels, the bobbing movement of the riders' heads and 
 the gymnastics of their legs produced a queer scene. 
 Here and there a travels was trailed along by a horse 
 or a dog, but the majority of the pensioners were 
 content to carry their meat in bags or otherwise upon 
 their horses. While the slaus^hterinsf went on, and 
 after that, when the beef was being chopped up into 
 junks, I sat in the meat-contractor's office, and saw 
 the bucks, squaws, and children come, one after 
 another, to beg. I could not help noticing that all 
 were treated with marked and uniform kindness, and 
 I learned that no one ever struck one of the Indians, 
 or suffered himself to lose his temper with them. A 
 few of the men asked for blankets, but the squaws 
 and the children wanted soap. It was said that when 
 they first made their acquaintance with this symbol 
 of civilization they mistook it for an article of diet, 
 but that now they use it properly and prize it. When 
 it was announced that the meat was ready, the butch- 
 ers threw open an aperture in the wall of the ration- 
 house, and the Indians huddled before it as if they 
 had flung themselves against the house in a mass. 
 I have seen boys do the same thing at the opening 
 of a ticket window for the sale of gallery seats in a 
 theatre. There was no fighting or quarrelling, but 
 every Indian pushed steadily and silently with all his 
 or her might. When one got his share he tore him- 
 self away from the crowd as briers are pulled out of 
 
CHARTERING A NATION 45 
 
 hairy cloth. They are a hungry and an economical 
 people. They bring pails for the beef blood, and 
 they carry home the hoofs for jelly. After a steer 
 has been butchered and distributed, 'only his horns 
 and his paunch remain. 
 
 The sun blazed down on the great camp that af- 
 ternoon and glorified the place so that it looked like 
 a miniature Switzerland of snowy peaks. But it was 
 hot, and blankets were stretched from the tent tops, 
 and the women sat under them to catch the air and 
 escape the heat. The salaried native policeman of 
 the reserve, wearing a white stove-pipe hat with 
 feathers, and a ridiculous blue coat, and Heaven 
 alone knows what other absurdities, rode around, 
 boasting of deeds he never performed, while a white 
 cur made him all the more ridiculous by chasing him 
 and yelping at his horse's tail. 
 
 And then came the grand spectacle. The vast 
 plain was forgotten, and the great campus within the 
 circle of tents was transformed into a theatre. The 
 scene was a setting of white and red tents that threw 
 their clear-cut outlines against a matchless blue sky. 
 The audience was composed of four white men and 
 the Indian boys, who were flung about by the startled 
 horses they were holding for us. The players were 
 the gorgeous cavalrymen of nature, circling before 
 their women and old men and children, themselves 
 plumed like unheard-of tropical birds, the others 
 displaying the minor splendor of the kaleidoscope. 
 The play was " The Pony War -dance, or the De- 
 parture for Battle." The acting was fierce; not like 
 the conduct of a mimic battle on our stage, but per- 
 
46 ON Canada's frontier 
 
 formed with the desperate zest of men who hope for 
 distinction in war, and may not trifle about it It 
 had the earnestness of a challenged man who tries 
 the foils with a tutor. It was impressive, inspiring, 
 at times wildly exciting. 
 
 There were threescore young men in the brilliant 
 cavalcade. They rode horses that were as wild as 
 themselves. Their evolutions were rude, but mag- 
 nificent. Now they dashed past us in single file, and 
 next they came helter-skelter, like cattle stampeding. 
 For a while they rode around and around, as on a 
 race-course, but at times they deserted the enclosure, 
 parted into small bands, and were hidden behind the 
 curtains of their own dust, presently to reappear with 
 a mad rush, yelling like maniacs, firing their pieces, 
 and brandishing their arms and their finery wildly on 
 high. The orchestra was composed of seven tom- 
 toms that had been dried taut before a camp fire. 
 The old men and the chiefs sat in a semicircle be- 
 hind the drummers on the ground. 
 
 All the tribal heirlooms were in the display, the 
 cherished gewgaws, trinkets, arms, apparel, and finery 
 they had saved from the fate of which they will not 
 admit they are themselves the victims. I never saw 
 an old-time picture of a type of savage red man or of 
 an extravaQ:ance of their costumins: that was not re- 
 vived in this spectacle. It was as if the plates in my 
 old school-books and novels and tales of adventure 
 were all animated and passing before me. The tra- 
 ditional Indian with the eagle plumes from crown to 
 heels was there; so was he with the buffalo horns 
 growing out of his skull ; so were the idyllic braves 
 
. ^i.;. ,^\\a,». ' \ .Sj\s v\vv>\*M4l,v.\v»r.UIIH 
 
CHARTERING A NATION 
 
 49 
 
 in yellow buckskin fringed at every point. The shin- 
 ing bodies of men, bare naked, and frescoed like a 
 Bowery bar-room, were not lacking; neither were 
 those who wore masses of splendid embroidery with 
 colored beads. But there were as many peculiar 
 costumes which I never had seen pictured. And 
 not any two men or any two horses were alike. As 
 barber poles are covered with paint, so were many of 
 these choice steeds of the nation. Some were spotted 
 all over with daubs of white, and some with every 
 color obtainable. Some were branded fifty times 
 with the white hand, the symbol of peace, but others 
 bore the red hand and the white hand in alternate 
 prints. There w^ere horses painted with the figures 
 of horses and of serpents and of foxes. To some 
 saddles were affixed colored blankets or cloths that 
 fell upon the ground or lashed the air, according as 
 the horse cantered or raced. One horse was hung 
 all round with great soft woolly tails of some white 
 material. Sleigh-bells were upon several. 
 
 Only half a dozen men wore hats — mainly cowboy 
 hats decked with feathers. Many carried rifles, which 
 they used with one hand. Others brought out bows 
 and arrows, lances decked with feathers or ribbons, 
 poles hung with colored cloths, great shields brill- 
 iantly painted and fringed. Every visible inch of 
 each warrior was painted, the naked ones being 
 ringed, streaked, and striped from head to foot. I 
 would have to catalogue the possessions of tfie whole 
 nation to tell all that they wore between the brass 
 rings in their hair and the cartridge-belts at their 
 waists, and thus down to their beautiful moccasins. 
 
 4 
 
50 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 Two strange features further distinguished their 
 pageant. One was the appearance of two negro 
 minstrels upon one horse. Both had blackened their 
 faces and hands ; both wore old stove-pipe hats and 
 queer long- tailed white men's coats. One wore a 
 huge false white mustache, and the other carried a 
 coal-scuttle. The women and children roared with 
 laughter at the si2:ht. The two comedians s^ot down 
 from their horse, and began to make grimaces, and 
 to pose this way and that, very comically. Such a 
 performance had never been seen on the reserve be- 
 fore. No one there could explain where the men had 
 seen negro minstrels. The other unexpected feature 
 required time for development. At first we noticed 
 that two little Indian boys kept getting in the way of 
 the riders. As we were not able to find any fixed 
 place of safety from the excited horsemen, we mar- 
 velled that these children were permitted to risk their 
 necks. 
 
 Suddenly a hideously -painted naked man on 
 horseback chased the little boys, leaving the caval- 
 cade, and circling around the children. He rode 
 back into the ranks, and still they loitered in the 
 way. Then around swept the horsemen once more, 
 and this time the naked rider flung himself from his 
 horse, and seizing one boy and then the other, bore 
 each to the ground, and made as if he would brain 
 them with his hatchet and lift their scalps with his 
 knife. The sight was one to paralyze an on-looker. 
 But it was only a theatrical performance arranged for 
 the occasion. The man was acting over again the 
 proudest of his achievements. The boys played the 
 
•s:N,'tf 
 
 
 THROWIiN'G THE SNOW SNAKE 
 
 parts of two white men whose scalps now grace his 
 tepee and gladden his memory. 
 
 For ninety minutes we watched the glorious rid- 
 ing, the splendid horses, the brilliant trappings, 
 and the paroxysmal fervor of the excited Indians. 
 The earth trembled beneath the dashing of the 
 riders; the air palpitated with the noise of their 
 war-cries and bells. We could have stood the day 
 out, but we knew the players were tired, and yet 
 
52 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 would not cease till we withdrew. Therefore we 
 came away. 
 
 We had enjoyed a never-to-be-forgotten privilege. 
 It was as if we had seen the ghosts of a dead people 
 ride back to parody scenes in an era that had van- 
 ished. It was like the rising of the curtain, in re- 
 sponse to an " encore," upon a drama that has been 
 played. It was as if the sudden up- flashing of a 
 smouldering fire lighted, once again and for an in- 
 stant, the scene it had ceased to illumine. 
 
Ill 
 
 A FAMOUS MISSIONARY 
 
 THE former chief of the Blackfeet — Crowfoot — 
 and Father Lacombe, the Roman Cathohc 
 missionary to the tribe, were the most interesting 
 and among the most influential public characters in 
 the newer part of Canada. They had much to do 
 with controlling the peace of a territory the size of a 
 great empire. 
 
 The chief was more than eighty years old ; the 
 priest is a dozen years younger ; and yet they repre- 
 sented in their experiences the two great epochs of 
 life on this continent — the barbaric and the progress- 
 ive. In the chief's boyhood the red man held undis- 
 puted sway from the Lakes to the Rockies. In the 
 priest's youth he led, like a scout, beyond the advanc- 
 ing hosts from Europe. But Father Lacombe came 
 bearing the olive branch of religion, and he and the 
 barbarian became fast friends, intimates in a compan- 
 ionship as picturesque and out of the common as any 
 the world could produce. 
 
 There is something very strange about the rela- 
 tions of the French and the French half-breeds with 
 the wild men of the plains. It is not altogether nec- 
 essary that the Frenchman should be a priest, for I 
 have heard of French half-breeds in our Territories 
 who showed again and again that they could make 
 
54 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 their way through bands of hostiles in perfect safety, 
 though knowing nothing of the language of the tribes 
 there in war-paint. It is most Hkely that their swarthy 
 skins and black hair, and their knowledge of savage 
 ways aided them. But when not even a French half- 
 breed has dared to risk his life among angry Indians, 
 the French missionaries went about their duty fear- 
 lessly and unscathed. There was one, just after the 
 dreadful massacre of the Little Big Horn, who built 
 a cross of rough wood, painted it white, fastened it to 
 his buck-board, and drove through a country in which 
 a white man with a pale face and blond hair would 
 not have lived two hours. 
 
 It must be remembered that in a vast region of 
 country the French priest and voyageur and co7trair 
 des bois were the first white men the Indians saw, and 
 while the explorers and traders seldom quarrelled 
 with the red men or offered violence to them, the 
 priests never did. They went about like women or 
 children, or, rather, like nothing else than priests. 
 They quickly learned the tongues of the savages, 
 treated them fairly, showed the sublimest courage, 
 and acted as counsellors, physicians, and friends. 
 There is at least one brave Indian fighter in our 
 army who will state it as his belief that if all the 
 white men had done thus we would have had but lit- 
 tle trouble with our Indians. 
 
 Father Lacombe was one of the priests who thread- 
 ed the trails of the North-western timber land and the 
 Far Western prairie when white men were very few 
 indeed in that country, and the only settlements were 
 those that had grown around the frontier forts and 
 
A FAMOUS MISSIONARY 55 
 
 the still earlier mission chapels. For instance, in 
 1849, at twenty-two years of age, he slept a night or 
 two where St. Paul now weights the earth. It was 
 then a village of twenty-five log-huts, and where the 
 great building of the St. Paul Pioneer Press now 
 stands, then stood the village chapel. For two years 
 he worked at his calling on either side of the Ameri- 
 can frontier, and then was sent to what is now Ed- 
 monton, in that magical region of long summers and 
 great agricultural capacity known as the Peace River 
 District, hundreds of miles north of Dakota and 
 Idaho. There the Rockies are broken and lowered, 
 and the warm Pacific winds have rendered the reQ:ion 
 warmer than the land far to the south of it. But 
 Father Lacombe went farther — 400 miles north to 
 Lake Labiche. There he found what he calls a fine 
 colony of half-breeds. These were dependants of the 
 Hudson Bay Company — white men from England, 
 France, and the Orkney Islands, and Indians and 
 half-breeds and their children. The visits of priests 
 were so infrequent that in the intervals between them 
 the white men and Indian women married one an- 
 other, not without formality and the sanction of the 
 colony, but without waiting for the ceremony of the 
 Church. Father Lacombe was called upon to bless 
 and solemnize many such matches, to baptize many 
 children, and to teach and preach what scores knew 
 but vaguely or not at all. 
 
 In time he was sent to Calgary, in the province of 
 Alberta. It is one of the most bustling towns in the 
 Dominion, and the biggest place west of Winnipeg. 
 Alberta is north of our Montana, and is all prairie- 
 
56 ON Canada's frontier 
 
 land; but from Father Lacombe's parsonage one sees 
 the snow-capped Rockies, sixty miles away, lying 
 above the horizon like a line of clouds tinged with 
 the delicate hues of mother-of-pearl in the sunshine. 
 Calgary was a mere post in the wilderness for years 
 after the priest went there. The buffaloes roamed 
 the prairie in fabulous numbers, the Indians used the 
 bow and arrow in the chase, and the maps we studied 
 at the time showed the whole region enclosed in a 
 loop, and marked " Blackfoot Indians." But the other 
 Indians were loath to accept this disposition of the 
 territory as final, and the country thereabouts was an 
 almost constant battle-ground .between the Blackfoot 
 nation of allied tribes and the Sioux, Crows, Flat- 
 heads, Crees, and others. 
 
 The good priest — for if ever there was a good man 
 Father Lacombe is one — saw fighting enough, as he 
 roamed with one tribe and the other, or journeyed 
 from tribe to tribe. His mission led him to ignore 
 tribal differences, and to preach to all the Indians of 
 the plains. He knew the chiefs and headmen among 
 them all, and so justly did he deal with them that he 
 was not only able to minister to all without attract- 
 ing the enmity of any, but he came to wield, as he 
 does to-day, a formidable power over all of them. 
 
 He knew old Crowfoot in his prime, and as I saw 
 them together they were like bosom friends. To- 
 gether they had shared dreadful privation and sur- 
 vived frightful winters and storms. They had gone 
 side by side through savage battles, and each respect- 
 ed and loved the other. I think I make no mistake 
 in saying that all through his reign Crowfoot was the 
 
A FAMOUS MISSIONARY 
 
 57 
 
 greatest Indian monarch in Canada ; possibly no 
 tribe in this country was stronger in numbers during 
 the last decade or two. I have never seen a nobler- 
 looking Indian or a more king-like man. He was tall 
 and straight, as slim as a girl, and he had the face of 
 an eagle or of an ancient Roman. He never troubled 
 himself to learn the English language ; he had little 
 use for his own. His grunt or his "No "ran all 
 through his tribe. He never shared his honors with 
 a squaw. He died an old bachelor, saying, wittily, 
 that no woman would take him. 
 
 It must be remembered that the deoradation of 
 the Canadian Indian began a dozen or fifteen years 
 later than that of our own red men. In both coun- 
 tries the railroads were indirectly the destructive 
 agents, and Canada's great transcontinental line is a 
 new institution. Until it belted the prairie the other 
 day the Blackfoot Indians led very much the life of 
 their fathers, hunting and trading for the whites, to 
 be sure, but living like Indians, fighting like Indians, 
 and dying like them. Now they don't fight, and they 
 live and die like dogs. Amid the old conditions 
 lived Crowfoot — ^a haughty, picturesque, grand old 
 savage. He never rode or walked without his head- 
 men in his retinue, and when he wished to exert his 
 authority, his apparel was royal indeed. His coat 
 of gaudy bead -work was a splendid garment, and 
 weighed a dozen pounds. His leg-gear was just as 
 fine; his m.occasins would fetch fifty dollars in any 
 city to-day. Doubtless he thought his hat was quite 
 as impressive and king-like, but to a mere scion of 
 effeminate civilization it looked remarkably like an 
 
58 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 extra tall plug hat, with no crown in the top and a 
 lot of crows' plumes in the band. You may be sure 
 his successor wears that same hat to-day, for the Ind- 
 ians revere the " state hat " of a brave chief, and look 
 at it through superstitious eyes, so that those queer 
 hats (older tiles than ever see the light of St. Patrick's 
 Day) descend from chief to chief, and are hallowed. 
 
 But Crowfoot died none too soon. The history of 
 the conquest of the wilderness contains no more pa- 
 thetic story than that of how the kind old priest. 
 Father Lacombe, warned the chief and his lieuten- 
 ants against the coming of the pale-faces. He went 
 to the reservation and assembled the leaders before 
 him in council. He told them that the white men 
 were building a great railroad, and in a month their 
 workmen would be in that virgin country. He told 
 the wondering red men that among these laborers 
 would be found many bad men seeking to sell whis- 
 key, offering money for the ruin of the squaws. 
 Reaching the greatest eloquence possible for him, 
 because he loved the Indians and doubted their 
 strength, he assured them that contact with these 
 white men would result in death, in the destruction 
 of the Indians, and by the most horrible processes of 
 disease and misery. He thundered and he pleaded. 
 The Indians smoked and reflected. Then they 
 spoke through old Crowfoot : 
 
 " We have listened. We will keep upon our res- 
 ervation. We will not go to see the railroad." 
 
 But Father Lacombe doubted still, and yet more 
 profoundly was he convinced of the ruin of the tribe 
 should the " children," as he sagely calls all Indians, 
 
A FAMOUS MISSIONARY 59 
 
 disobey him. So once again he went to the reserve, 
 and gathered the chief and the headmen, and warned 
 them of the soulless, diabolical, selfish instincts of 
 the white men. Again the grave warriors promised 
 to obey him. 
 
 The railroad laborers came with camps and money 
 and liquors and numbers, and the prairie thundered 
 the echoes of their sledge-hammer strokes. And one 
 morning the old priest looked out of the window of 
 his bare bedroom and saw curling wisps of gray 
 smoke ascending from a score of tepees on the hill 
 beside Calgary.* Angry, amazed, he went to his 
 doorway and opened it, and there upon the ground 
 sat some of the headmen and the old men, with bow- 
 ed heads, ashamed. Fancy the priest's wrath and his 
 questions ! Note how wisely he chose the name of 
 children for them, when I tell you that their spokes- 
 man at last answered with the excuse that the buffa- 
 loes were gone, and food was hard to get, and the 
 white men brought money which the squaws could 
 get. And what is the end ? There are always te- 
 pees on the hills now beside every settlement near 
 the Blackfoot reservation. And one old missionary 
 lifted his trembling forefinger towards the sk3% when 
 I was there, and said : " Mark me. In fifteen years 
 there will not be a full-blooded Indian alive on the 
 Canadian prairie — not one." 
 
 Through all that revolutionary railroad building 
 and the rush of new settlers, Father Lacombe and 
 
 * Since this was written Feather Lacombe's work has been con- 
 tinued at Fort McLcod in the same province as Calgary. In this 
 smaller place he finds more time for his literary pursuits. 
 
6o ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 Crowfoot kept the Indians from war, and even from 
 depredations and from murder. Wlien the half- 
 breeds arose under Riel, and every Indian looked to 
 his rifle and his knife, and when the mutterings that 
 preface the war-cry sounded in every lodge, Father 
 Lacombe made Crowfoot pledge his word that the 
 Indians should not rise. The priest represented the 
 Government on these occasions. The Canadian 
 statesmen recognize the value of his services. He 
 is the great authority on Indian matters beyond our 
 border; the ambassador to and spokesman for the 
 Indians. 
 
 But Father Lacombe is more than that. He is 
 the deepest student of the Indian languages that 
 Canada possesses. The revised edition of Bishop 
 Barager's Grammar of the Ochipzve Language bears 
 these words upon its title-page: " Revised by the Rev. 
 Father Lacombe, Oblate Mary Immaculate, 1878." 
 He is the author of the authoritative Dictionnaire et 
 Grammaire de la Langiie Crise, the dictionary of the 
 Cree dialect published in 1874. He has compiled 
 just such another monument to the Blackfoot lan- 
 guage, and will soon publish it, if he has not done so 
 already. He is in constant correspondence with our 
 Smithsonian Institution ; he is famous to all who 
 study the Indian ; he is beloved or admired through- 
 out Canada. 
 
 His work in these lines is labor of love. He is a 
 student by nature. He began the study of the Algon- 
 quin language as a youth in older Canada, and the 
 tongues of many of these tribes from Labrador to 
 Athabasca are but dialects of the language of the 
 
A FAMOUS MISSIONARY 63 
 
 great Algonquin nation — the Algic family. He told 
 me that the white man's handling of Indian words in 
 the nomenclature of our cities, provinces, and States 
 is as brutal as anything charged against the savages. 
 Saskatchewan, for instance, means nothing. " Kis- 
 Siskatchewan " is the word that was intended. It 
 means " rapid current." Manitoba is senseless, but 
 "Manitowapa" (the mysterious strait) would have 
 been full of local import. However, there is no need 
 to sadden ourselves with this expert knowledge. 
 Rather let us be grateful for every Indian name with 
 which we have stamped individuality upon the map 
 of the world, be it rightly or wrongly set forth. 
 
 It is strange to think of a scholar and a priest 
 amid the scenes that Father Lacombe has witnessed. 
 It was one of the most fortunate happenings of my 
 hfe that I chanced to be in Calgary and in the little 
 mission beside the chapel when Chief Crowfoot came 
 to pay his respects to his old black-habited friend. 
 Anxious to pay the chief such a compliment as should 
 present the old warrior to me in the light in which he 
 would be most proud to be viewed. Father Lacombe 
 remarked that he had known Crowfoot when he was 
 a young man and a mighty warrior. The old cop- 
 per-plated Roman smiled and swelled his chest when 
 this was translated. He was so pleased that the 
 priest was led to ask him if he remembered one night 
 when a certain trouble about some horses, or a chance 
 duel between the Blackfoot tribe and a band of its 
 enemies, led to a midnight attack. If my memory 
 serves me, it was the Bloods (an allied part of the 
 Blackfoot nation) who picked this quarrel. The chief 
 
64 ON Canada's frontier 
 
 grinned and grunted wonderfully as the priest spoke. 
 The priest asked if he remembered how the Bloods 
 were routed. The chief grunted even more emphat- 
 ically. Then the priest asked if the chief recalled 
 what a pickle he, the priest, was in when he found 
 himself in the thick of the fight. At that* old Crow- 
 foot actually laughed. 
 
 After that Father Lacombe, in a few bold sen- 
 tences, drew a picture of the quiet, sleep- enfolded 
 camp of the Blackfoot band, of the silence and the 
 darkness. Then he told of a sudden musket-shot; 
 then, of the screaming of the squaws, and the bark- 
 ing of the dogs, and the yelling of the children, of 
 the general hubbub and confusion of the startled 
 camp. The cry was everywhere " The Bloods ! the 
 Bloods !" The enemy shot a fusillade at close quar- 
 ters into the Blackfoot camp, and the priest ran out 
 towards the blazing muskets, crying that they must 
 stop, for he, their priest, was in the camp. He shout- 
 ed his own name, for he stood towards the Bloods 
 precisely as he did towards the Blackfoot nation. 
 But whether the Bloods heard him or not, they did 
 not heed him. The blaze of their guns grew strong- 
 er and crept nearer. The bullets whistled by. It 
 grew exceedingly unpleasant to be there. It was 
 dansrerous as well. Father Lacombe said that he did 
 all he could to stop the fight, but when it was evi- 
 dent that his behavior would simply result in the mas- 
 sacre of his hosts and of himself in the bargain, he 
 altered his cries into military commands. " Give it 
 to 'em !" he screamed. He urged Crowfoot's braves 
 to return two shots for every one from the enemy. 
 
A FAMOUS MISSIONARY 65 
 
 He took command, and inspired the bucks with 
 double valor. They drove the Bloods out of reach 
 and hearino-. 
 
 All this was translated to Crowfoot — or Saponaxi- 
 taw, for that was his Indian name — and he chuckled 
 and grinned, and poked the priest in the side with 
 his knuckles. And good Father Lacombe felt the 
 magnetism of his own words and memory, and clapped 
 the chief on the shoulder, while both laughed heartily 
 at the climax, with the accompanying mental picture 
 of the discomfited Bloods running away, and the cler- 
 gyman ordering their instant destruction. 
 
 There may not be such another meeting and re- 
 hearsal on this continent again. Those two men 
 represented the passing and the dominant races of 
 America ; and yet, in my view, the learned and brave 
 and kindly missionary is as much a part of the dead 
 past as is the royalty that Crowfoot was the last to 
 represent. 
 
IV 
 
 ANTOINE S MOOSE-YARD 
 
 I 
 
 T was the night of a great din- 
 ner at the ckib. Whenever 
 the door of the banqueting hall 
 was opened, a burst of laughter or 
 of applause disturbed the quiet talk 
 of a few men who had gathered in 
 the readinor-room — men of the sort 
 that extract the best enjoyment 
 from a club by escaping its func- 
 tions, or attending them only to draw to one side 
 its choicest spirits for never-to-be-forgotten talks be- 
 fore an open fire, and over wine and cigars used 
 sparingly. 
 
 "I'm tired," an artist was saying — "so tired that I 
 have a horror of my studio. My wife understands 
 my condition, and bids me go away and rest." 
 
 " That is astonishing," said I ; " for, as a rule, 
 neither women nor men can comprehend the fatigue 
 that seizes an artist or writer. At most of our 
 homes there comes to be a reluctant recognition of 
 the fact that we say we are tired, and that we persist 
 in the assumption by knocking off work. But hu- 
 man fatiorue is measured bv the mile of walkino^, 
 or the cords of firewood that have been cut, and 
 the world will always hold that if we have not hewn 
 
ANTOINE S MOOSE-YARD 67 
 
 wood or tramped all day, it is absurd for us to talk 
 of feeling tired. We cannot alter this ; we are too 
 few." 
 
 " Yes," said another of the little party. " The 
 world shares the feeling of the Irishman who saw a 
 very large, stout man at work at reporting in a court- 
 room. 'Faith!' said he, 'will ye look at the size of 
 that man — to be aiming his living wid a little pincil?' 
 The world would acknowledge our right to feel tired 
 if we used crow-bars to write or draw with ; but pen- 
 cils ! pshaw! a hundred weigh less than a pound." 
 
 " Well," said I, " all the same, I am so tired that my 
 head feels like cork ; so tired that for two days I 
 have not been able to summon an idea or turn a sen- 
 tence neatly. I have been sitting at my desk writ- 
 ing wretched stuff and tearing it up, or staring 
 blankly out of the window." 
 
 " Glorious !" said the artist, startling us all with 
 his vehemence and inapt exclamation. " Why, it is 
 providential that I came here to-night. If that's the 
 way you feel, we are a pair, and you will go with me 
 and rest. Do you hunt.'^ Are you fond of it.^" 
 
 " I know all about it," said I, "but I have not defi- 
 nitely determined whether I am fond of it or not. 
 I have been hunting only once. It was years ago, 
 when I was a mere boy. I went after deer with a 
 poet, an editor, and a railroad conductor. We jour- 
 neyed to a lovely valley in Mififlin County, Pennsyl- 
 vania, and put ourselves in the hands of a man seven 
 feet high, who had a flintlock musket a foot taller 
 than himself, and a wife who gave us saleratus bread 
 and a bowl of pork fat for supper and breakfast. We 
 
68 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 were not there at dinner. The man stationed us a 
 mile apart on what he said were the paths, or " run- 
 ways," the deer would take. Then he went to stir 
 the game up with his dogs. There he left us from 
 sunrise till supper, or would have left us had we not 
 with great difficulty found one' another, and enjoyed 
 the exquisite woodland quiet and light and shade 
 together, mainly flat on our backs, with the white 
 sails of the sky floating in an azure sea above the 
 reaching fingers of the tree-tops. The editor marred 
 the occasion with an unworthy suspicion that our 
 hunter was at the village tavern picturing to his 
 cronies what simple donkeys we were, standing a 
 mile apart in the forsaken woods. But the poet said 
 something so pregnant with philosophy that it always 
 comes back to me with the mention of hunting. 
 ' Where is your gun ?' he was asked, when we came 
 upon him, pacing the forest path, hands in pockets, 
 and no weapon in sight. ' Oh, my gun ?' he repeated. 
 ' I don't know. Somewhere in among those trees. 
 I covered it with leaves so as not to see it. After 
 this, if I go hunting again, I shall not take a gun. 
 It is very cold and heavy, and more or less danger- 
 ous in the bargain. You never use it, you know. 
 I go hunting every few years, but I never yet have 
 had to fire my gun, and I begin to see that it is only 
 brought along in deference to a tradition descending 
 from an era when men got something more than 
 fresh air and scenery on a hunting trip.' " 
 
 The others laughed at my story, but the artist 
 regarded me with an expression of pity. He is a 
 famous hunter — a genuine, devoted hunter — and one 
 
THE HOTEL — LAST SIGN OF CIVILIZATION 
 
 might almost as safely speak a light word of his rela- 
 tions as of his favorite mode of recreation. 
 
 " Fresh air!" said he ; "scenery! Humph! Your 
 poet would not know which end of a gun to aim 
 with. I see that you know nothing at all about 
 hunting, but I will pay you the high compliment of 
 saying that I can make a hunter of you. I have 
 always insisted heretofore that a hunter must begin 
 in boyhood ; but never mind, I'll make a hunter of 
 you at thirty-six. We will start to-morrow morning 
 for Montreal, and in twenty-four hours you shall be 
 in the greatest sporting region in America, incom- 
 parably the greatest hunting district. It is great 
 because Americans do not know of it, and because 
 it has all of British America to keep it supplied with 
 game. Think of it! In twenty-four hours we shall 
 be tracking moose near Hudson Bay, for Hudson 
 Bay is not much farther from New York than Chi- 
 cago — another fact that few persons are aware of." 
 
 Environment is a positive force. \Vc could feel 
 
70 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 that we were disturbing what the artist would call 
 " the local tone," by rushing through the city's streets 
 next morning with our guns slung upon our backs. 
 It was just at the hour when the factory hands and 
 the shop-girls were out in force, and the juxtaposi- 
 tion of those elements of society with two portly 
 men bearing guns created a positive sensation. In 
 the cars the artist held forth upon the terrors of the 
 life upon which I was about to venture. He left 
 upon my mind a blurred impression of sleeping out- 
 of-doors, like human cocoons, done up in blankets, 
 while the savage mercury lurked in unknown depths 
 below the zero mark. He said the camp-fire would 
 have to be fed every two hours of each night, and he 
 added, without contradiction from me, that he sup- 
 posed he would have to perform this duty, as he was 
 accustomed to it. Lest his forecast should raise my 
 anticipation of pleasure extravagantly, he added ^hat 
 those hunters were fortunate who had fires to feed ; 
 for his part he had once walked around a tree stump 
 a whole night to keep from freezing. He supposed 
 that we would perform our main journeying on snow- 
 shoes, but how we should enjoy that he could not 
 say, as his knowledge of snow-shoeing was limited. 
 
 At this point the inevitable offspring of fate, who 
 is always at a travellers elbow with a fund of alarm- 
 ing information, cleared his throat as he sat opposite 
 us, and inquired whether he had overheard that we 
 did not know much about snow-shoes. An interest- 
 ing fact concerning them, he said, was that they 
 seemed easy to walk with at first, but if the learner 
 fell down with them on it usually needed a consider- 
 
ANTOINES MOOSE-YARD 71 
 
 able portion of a tribe of Indians to put him back on 
 his feet. Beginners only fell down, however, in at- 
 tempting to cross a log or stump, but the forest 
 where we were going was literally floored with such 
 obstructions. The first day's effort to navigate with 
 snow-shoes, he remarked, is usually accompanied by 
 a terrible malady called mal de raquettc, in which the 
 cords of one's legs become knotted in great and ex- 
 cruciatingly painful bunches. The cure for this is to 
 " walk it off the next day, when the agony is yet 
 more intense than at first." As the stranger had 
 reached his destination, he had little more than time 
 to remark that the moose is an exceedingly vicious 
 animal, invariably attacking all hunters who fail to 
 kill him with the first shot. As the stranger stepped 
 upon the car platform he let fall a simple but touch- 
 ing eulogy upon a dear friend who had recently lost 
 his life by being literally cut in two, lengthwise, by a 
 moose that struck him on the chest with its rigidly 
 stiffened fore -legs. The artist protested that the 
 stranger was a sensationalist, unsupported by either 
 the camp-fire gossip or the literature of hunters. 
 Yet one man that night found his slumber tangled 
 with what the garrulous alarmist had been saying. 
 
 In Montreal one may buy clothing not to be had 
 in the United States : woollens thick as boards, ho- 
 siery that wards off the cold as armor resists missiles, 
 gloves as heavy as shoes, yet soft as kid, fur caps and 
 coats at prices and in a variety that interest poor and 
 rich alike, blanket suits that are more picturesque 
 than any other masculine garment worn north of the 
 city of Mexico, tuques, and moccasins, and, indeed, so 
 
72 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 many sorts of clothing we Yankees know very little 
 of (though many of us need them) that at a glance 
 we say the Montrealers are foreigners. Montreal is 
 the gayest city on this continent, and I have often 
 thought that the clothing there is largely responsible 
 for that condition. 
 
 A New Yorker disembarking in Montreal in mid- 
 winter finds the place inhospitably cold, and wonders 
 how, as well as why, any one lives there. I well re- 
 member standing years ago beside a toboggan-slide, 
 with my teeth chattering and my very marrow slowly 
 congealing, when my attention was called to the fact 
 that a dozen ruddy-cheeked, bright- eyed, laughing 
 girls were grouped in snow that reached their knees. 
 I asked a Canadian lady how that could be possible, 
 and she answered with a list of the principal gar- 
 ments those girls were wearing. They had two pairs 
 of stockings under their shoes, and a pair of stockings 
 over their shoes, with moccasins over them. They 
 had so many woollen skirts that an American girl 
 would not believe me if I gave the number. They 
 wore heavy dresses and buckskin jackets, and blanket 
 suits over all this. They had mittens over their 
 gloves, and fur caps over their knitted hoods. It no 
 longer seemed wonderful that they should not heed 
 the cold; indeed, it occurred to me that their bravery 
 amid the terrors of tobogganing was no bravery at 
 all, since a girl buried deep in the heart of such a 
 mass of woollens could scarcely expect damage if she 
 fell from a steeple. When next I appeared out-of- 
 doors I too was swathed in flannel, like a jewel in a 
 box of plush, and from that time out Montreal seemed, 
 
m\\\\\'\\\\\\\\\\\\\\-^^^^^^^ 
 
 "give me a light" 
 
ANTOINES MOOSE -YARD 75 
 
 what it really is, the merriest of American capitals. 
 And there I had come again, and was filling my trunk 
 with this wonderful armor of civilization, while the 
 artist sought advice as to which point to enter the 
 wilderness in order to secure the biggest game most 
 quickly. 
 
 Mr. W. C. Van Home, the President of the Cana- 
 dian Pacific Railroad, proved a friend in need. He 
 dictated a few telegrams that agitated the people of a 
 vast section of country between Ottawa and the Great 
 Lakes. And in the afternoon the answers came fly- 
 ing back. These were from various points where 
 Hudson Bay posts are situated. At one or two the 
 Indian trappers and hunters were all away on their 
 winter expeditions ; from another a famous white 
 hunter had just departed with a party of gentlemen. 
 At Mattawa, in Ontario, moose were close at hand 
 and plentiful, and two skilled Indian hunters were 
 just in from a trapping expedition ; but the post 
 factor, Mr. Rankin, was sick in bed, and the Indians 
 were on a spree. To Mattawa we decided to go. It 
 is a twelve-hour journey from New York to Montreal, 
 and an eleven-hour journey from Montreal to the 
 heart of this hunters' paradise; so that, had we known 
 at just what point to enter the forest, we could have 
 taken the trail in twenty-four hours from the metrop- 
 olis, as the artist had predicted. 
 
 Our first taste of the frontier, at Peter O'Farrall's 
 Ottawa Hotel, in Mattawa, was delicious in the ex- 
 treme. O'Farrall used to be game- keeper to the 
 Marquis of Waterford, and thus got " a taste of the 
 quality" that promj^ted him to assume the position he 
 
76 ON Canada's frontier 
 
 has chosen as the most lordly hotel-keeper in Canada. 
 We do not know what sort of men own our great 
 New York and Chicago and San Francisco hotels, 
 but certainly they cannot lead more leisurely, com- 
 placent lives than Mr. O'Farrall. He has a bar- 
 tender to look after the male visitors and the bar, 
 and a matronly relative to see to the women and the 
 kitchen, so that the landlord arises when he likes to 
 enjoy each succeeding day of ease and prosperity. 
 He has been known to exert himself, as when he 
 chased a man who spoke slightingly of his liquor. 
 And he was momentarily ruffled at the trying con- 
 duct of the artist on this hunting trip. The artist 
 could not find his overcoat, and had the temerity to 
 refer the matter to Mr. O'Farrall. 
 
 " Sir," said the artist, " what do you suppose has 
 become of my overcoat ? I cannot find it anywhere." 
 
 " I don't know anything about your botheration 
 overcoat," said Mr. O'Farrall. " Sure, I've throuble 
 enough kaping thrack of me own." 
 
 The reader may be sure that O'Farrall's was rightly 
 recommended to us, and that it is a well-managed and 
 popular place, with good beds and excellent fare, and 
 with no extra charge for the delightful addition of the 
 host himself, who is very tall and dignified and hu- 
 morous, and who is the oddest and yet most pictu- 
 resque-looking public character in the Dominion. 
 Such an oddity is certain to attract queer characters 
 to his side, and Mr. O'Farrall is no exception to the 
 rule. One of the waiter-girls in the dining-room was 
 found never by any chance to know anything that she 
 was asked about. For instance, she had never heard 
 
ANTOINES MOOSE-VARD yy 
 
 of Mr. Rankin, the chief man of the place. To every 
 question she made answer, "Sure, there does be a 
 great dale goin' on here and I know nothin' of it." 
 Of her the artist ventured the theory that " she could 
 not know everything on a waiter-girl's salary." John, 
 the bar-tender, was a delightful study. No matter 
 what a visitor laid down in the smoking-room, John 
 picked it up and carried it behind the bar. Every 
 one was continually losing something and searching 
 for it, always to observe that John was able to pro- 
 duce it with a smile and the wise remark that he had 
 taken the lost article and put it away " for fear some 
 one would pick it up." Finally, there was Mr. O'Far- 
 rall's dog — a ragged, time-worn, petulant terrier, no 
 bigger than a pint-pot. Mr. O'Farrall nevertheless 
 called him " Fairy," and said he kept him " to protect 
 the village children against wild bears." 
 
 I shall never be able to think of Mattawa as it is — 
 a plain little lumbering town on the Ottawa River, 
 with the wreck and ruin of once grand scenery hem- 
 ming it in on all sides, in the form of ragged mount- 
 ains literally ravaged by fire and the axe. Hints of 
 it come back to me in dismembered bits that prove 
 it to have been interesting: vignettes of little school- 
 boys in blanket suits and moccasins, of great-spirited 
 horses forever racing ahead of fur-laden sleighs, and 
 of troops of olive -skinned French - Canadian girls, 
 bundled up from their feet to those mischievous feat- 
 ures which shot roguish glances at' the artist — the 
 biggest man, the people said, who had ever been seen 
 in Mattawa. But the place will ever yield back to 
 my mind the impression I got of the wonderful prep- 
 
78 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 arations that were made for our adventure — prepara- 
 tions that seemed to busy or to interest nearly every 
 one in the village. Our Indians had come in from 
 the Indian village thre6 miles away, and had said they 
 had had enough drink. Mr. John De Sousa, account- 
 ant at the post, took charge of them and of us, and 
 the work of loading a great portage sleigh went on 
 apace. The men of sporting tastes came out and 
 lounged in front of the post, and gave helpful advice; 
 the Indians and clerks went to and from the sleigh 
 laden with bags of necessaries ; the harness - maker 
 made for us belts such as the lumbermen use to pre- 
 clude the possibility of incurable strains in the rough 
 life in the wilderness. The help at O'Farrall's as- 
 sisted in repacking what we needed, so that our 
 trunks and town clothing could be stored. Mr. De 
 Sousa sent messengers hither and thither for essen- 
 tials not in stock at the post. Some women, even, 
 were set at work to make " neaps " for us, a neap be- 
 ing a sort of slipper or unlaced shoe made of heavy 
 blanketing and worn outside one's stockings, to give 
 added warmth to the feet. 
 
 " You see, this is no casual rabbit-hunt," said the 
 artist. The remark will live in Mattawa many a year. 
 
 The Hudson Bay Company's posts differ. In the 
 wilderness they are forts surrounded by stockades, 
 but within the boundaries of civilization they are 
 stores. That at Winnipeg is a splendid emporium, 
 while that at Mattawa is like a village store in the 
 United States, except that the top story is laden with 
 guns, traps, snow-shoes, and the skins of wild beasts ; 
 while an out-building in the rear is the repository of 
 
ANTOINE S MOOSE-YARD 
 
 79 
 
 scores of birch-bark canoes — the carriages of British 
 America. Mr. Rankin, the factor there, lay in a bed 
 of sufferins: and could not see us. Yet it seemed 
 difficult to believe that we could be made the recipi- 
 ents of greater or more kindly attentions than were 
 lavished upon us by his accountant, Mr. De Sousa. 
 He ordered our tobacco 
 ground for us ready for 
 our pipes ; selected the 
 finest from among those 
 extraordinary blankets 
 that have been made ex- 
 clusively for this com- 
 pany for hundreds of 
 years ; picked out the 
 largest snow-shoes in 
 his stock ; bade us lay 
 aside the gloves we had 
 brought, and take mit- 
 tens such as he produced, and for which we thanked 
 him in our hearts many times afterwards ; planned 
 our outfit of food with the wisdom of an old cam- 
 paigner; bethought himself to send for baker's 
 bread ; ordered high legs sewed on our moccasins — 
 in a word, he made it possible for us to say after- 
 wards that absolutely nothing had been overlooked 
 or slighted in fitting out our expedition. 
 
 As I sat in the sleigh, tucked in under heavy skins 
 and leaning at royal ease against other furs that cov- 
 ered a bale of hay, it seemed to me that I had become 
 part of one of such pictures as we all have seen, por- 
 traying historic expeditions in Russia or Siberia. We 
 
 x-^; 
 
 ANTOINE, FROM IJFE 
 
8o ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 carried fifteen hundred pounds of traps and provi- 
 sions for camping, stabling, and food for men and 
 beasts. We were five in all — two hunters, two Ind- 
 ians, and a teamster.' We set out with the two huge 
 mettlesome horses ahead, the driver on a high seat 
 formed of a second bale of hay, ourselves lolling back 
 under our furs, and the two Indians striding along 
 over the resonant cold snow behind us. It was be- 
 mnnino^ to be evident that a orreat deal of effort and 
 machinery was needed to " make a hunter " of a city 
 man, and that it was going to be done thoroughly — 
 two thoughts of a highly flattering nature. 
 
 We were now clad for arctic weather, and perhaps 
 nothing except a mummy was ever "so dressed up" 
 as we were. We each wore two pairs of the heaviest 
 woollen stockings I ever saw, and over them ribbed 
 bicycle stockings that came to our knees. Over these 
 in turn were our " neaps," and then our moccasins, 
 laced tightly around our ankles. We had on two 
 suits of flannels of extra thickness, flannel shirts, 
 reefing jackets, and "capeaux," as they call their long- 
 hooded blanket coats, longer than snow-shoe coats. 
 On our heads we had knitted tuques, and on our 
 hands mittens and gloves. We were bound for An- 
 toine's moose-yard, near Crooked Lake. 
 
 The explanation of the term "moose-yard" made 
 moose-hunting appear a simple operation (once we 
 were started), for a moose-yard is the feeding-ground 
 of a herd of moose, and our head Indian, Alexandre 
 Antoine, knew where there was one. Each herd or 
 family of these great wild cattle has two such feeding- 
 grounds, and they are said to go alternately from one 
 
ANTOINES MOOSE-YARD 8l 
 
 to the Other, never herding in one place two years in 
 succession. In this region of Canada they weigh be- 
 tween 600 and 1200 pounds, and the reader will help 
 his comprehension of those figures by recalling the 
 fact that a 1200-pound horse is a very large one. 
 Whether they desert a yard for twelve months be- 
 cause of the damage they do to the supply of food it 
 offers to them, or whether it is instinctive caution 
 that directs their movements, no one can more than 
 conjecture. 
 
 Their yards are always where soft wood is plenti- 
 ful and water is near, and during a winter they will 
 feed over a region from half a mile to a mile square. 
 The prospect of going directly to the fixed home of 
 a herd of moose almost robbed the trip of that specu- 
 lative element that gives the greatest zest to hunting. 
 But we knew not what the future held for us. Not 
 even the artist, with all his experience, conjectured 
 what was in store for us. And what was to come be- 
 gan coming almost immediately. 
 
 The journey began upon a good highway, over 
 which we slid along as comfortably as any ladies in 
 their carriages, and with the sleigh - bells flinging 
 their cheery music out over a desolate valley, with 
 a leaden river at the bottom, and with small mount- 
 ains rollinor all about. The timber was cut off them, 
 except here and there a few red or white pines that 
 reared their green, brush -like tops against the gen- 
 eral blanket of snow. The dull sky hung sullenly 
 above, and now and then a raven flew by, croaking 
 hoarse disapproval of our intrusion. To warn us of 
 what we were to expect, Antoine had made a shy 
 
 6 
 
82 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 Indian joke, one of the few I ever heard: " In small 
 little while," said he, "we come to all sorts ot a road. 
 Me call it that 'cause you get every sort riding, then 
 you sure be suited." 
 
 At five miles out we came to this remarkable hioh- 
 wa}'. It can no more be adequately described here 
 than could the experiences of a man who goes over 
 Niagara Falls in a barrel. The reader must try to 
 imagine the most primitive sort of a highway con- 
 ceivable — one that has been made by merely felling 
 trees through a forest in a path wide enough for a 
 team and wagon. All the tree stumps were left in 
 their places, and every here and there were rocks ; 
 some no larger than a bale of cotton, and some as 
 small as a bushel basket. To add to the other allur- 
 ing qualities of the road, there were tree trunks now 
 and then directly across it, and, as a further induce- 
 ment to traffic, the highway was frequently interrupt- 
 ed by " pitch holes." Some of these would be called 
 pitch holes anywhere. They were at points where 
 a rill crossed the road, or the road crossed the corner 
 of a marsh. But there were other pitch holes that 
 any intelligent New Yorker would call ravines or 
 gullies. These were at points where one hill ran 
 down to the water-level and another immediately rose 
 precipitately, there being a watercourse between the 
 two. In all such places there was deep black mud 
 and broken ice. However, these were mere features 
 of the character of this road — a character too pro- 
 found for me to hope to portray it. When the road 
 was not inclined either straight down or straight up, 
 it coursed along the slanting side of a steep hill, so 
 
ANTOINES MOOSE-YARD 
 
 83 
 
 that a vehicle could keep to it only by falling against 
 the forest at the under side and carromino; alono: 
 from tree to tree. 
 
 Such was the road. The manner of travelling it 
 was quite as astounding. For nothing short of what 
 Alphonse, the teamster, did would I destroy a man's 
 character; but Alphonse was the next thing to an 
 idiot. He made 
 that dreadful 
 journey at a gal- 
 lop! The first 
 
 THE PORTAGE SLEIGH ON A 
 LUMBER ROAD 
 
 time he upset 
 the sleigh and 
 threw me with 
 one leg thigh-deep be- 
 tween a stone and a 
 tree trunk, besides 
 sending the artist fly- 
 ing over my head like a shot from a sling, he reseat- 
 ed himself and remarked: "That makes tree time I 
 upset in dat place. Hi, there! Get up!" It never 
 occurred to him to stop because a giant tree had 
 fallen across the trail. "Look out! Hold tight!" he 
 would call out, and then he would take the obstruc- 
 
84 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 tion at a jump. The horses were mammoth beasts, 
 in the best fettle, and the sleigh was of the solidest, 
 strongest pattern. There were places where even 
 Alphonse was anxious to drive with caution. Such 
 were the ravines and unbridged waterways. But one 
 of the horses had cut himself badly in such a place a 
 year before, and both now made it a rule to take all 
 such places flying. Fancy the result! The leap in 
 air, and then the crash of the sled as it landed, the 
 snap of the harness chains, the snorts of the winded 
 beasts, the yells of the driver, the anxiety and nerv- 
 ousness of the passengers ! 
 
 At one point we had an exciting adventure of a 
 far different sort. There was a moderately good 
 stretch of road ahead, and we invited the Indians to 
 jump in and ride a while. We noticed that they took 
 occasional draughts from a bottle. They finished a 
 full pint, and presently Alexandre produced another 
 and larger phial. Every one knows what a drunken 
 Indian is, and so did we. We ordered the sleigh 
 stopped and all hands out for "a talk." Firmly, but 
 with both power and reason on our side, we demand- 
 ed a promise that not another drink should be taken, 
 or that the horses be turned towards Mattawa at 
 once. The promise was freely given. 
 
 " But what is that stuff ? Let me see it," one of 
 the hunters asked. 
 
 " It is de 'igh wine," said Alexandre. 
 
 "High winc^* Alcohol.''" exclaimed the hunter, 
 and, impulse being quicker than reason sometimes, 
 fluns the bottle hi2:h in air into the bush. It was an 
 injudicious action, but both of us at once prepared to 
 
ANTOINE S MOOSE -YARD 85 
 
 defend and re-enforce it, of course. As it happened, 
 the Indians saw that no unkindness or unfairness 
 was intended, and neither sulked nor made trouble 
 afterwards. 
 
 We were now deep in the bush. Occasionally we 
 passed "a brule," or tract denuded of trees, and lit- 
 tered with trunks and tops of trunks rejected by the 
 lumbermen. But every mile took us nearer to the 
 undisturbed primeval forest, where the trees shoot 
 up forty feet before the branches begin. There were 
 no houses, teams, or men. In a week in the bush 
 we saw no other sign of civilization than what we 
 brought or made. All around us rose the motion- 
 less regiments of the forest, with the snow beneath 
 them, and their branches and twigs printing lace- 
 work on the sky. The signs of game were numerous, 
 and varied to an extent that I never heard of before. 
 There were few spaces of the length of twenty- five 
 feet in which the track of some wild beast or bird 
 did not cross the road. The Indians read this writ- 
 ing in the snow, so that the forest was to them as a 
 book would be to us. " What is that ?" "And that ?" 
 "And that ?" I kept inquiring. The answers told 
 more eloquently than any man can describe it the 
 story of the abundance of game in that easily acces- 
 sible wilderness. " Dat red deer," Antoine replied. 
 " Him fox." " Dat bear track ; dat squirrel ; dat rab- 
 bit." " Dat moose track ; pass las' week." " Dat pa'- 
 tridge; dat wolf." Or perhaps it was the trail of a 
 marten, or a beaver, or a weasel, or a fisher, mink, 
 lynx, or otter that he pointed out, for all these "signs" 
 were there, and nearly all were repeated again and 
 
 6* 
 
86 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 again. Of the birds that are plentiful there the 
 principal kinds are partridge, woodcock, crane, geese, 
 duck, gull, loon, and owl. 
 
 When the sun set we prepared to camp, selecting a 
 spot near a tiny rill. The horses .were tethered to a 
 tree, with their harness still on, and blankets thrown 
 over them. We cleared a little space by the road- 
 side, using our snow-shoes for shovels. The Indians, 
 with their axes, turned up the moss and leaves, and 
 levelled the small shoots and brushwood. Then one 
 went off to cut balsam boughs for bedding, while the 
 other set up two crotched sticks, with a pole upon 
 them resting in the crotches, and throwing the can- 
 vas of an "A" tent over the frame, he looped the bot- 
 tom of the tent to small pegs, and banked snow 
 lightly all around it. The little aromatic branches 
 of balsam were laid evenly upon the ground, a fur 
 robe was thrown upon the leaves, our enormous 
 blankets were spread half open side by side, and two 
 coats were rolled up and thrown down for pillows. 
 Pierre, the second Indian, made tiny slivers of some 
 soft wood, and tried to start a fire. He failed. Then 
 Alexandre Antoine brought two handfuls of bark, 
 and lighting a small piece with a match, proceeded 
 to build a fire in the most painstaking manner, and 
 with an ingenuity that was most interesting. First 
 he made a fire that could have been started in a tea- 
 cup ; then he built above and around it a skeleton 
 tent of bits of soft wood, six to nine inches in length. 
 This gave him a fire of the dimensions of a high hat. 
 Next, he threw down two great bits of timber, one 
 on either side of the fire, and a still larger back log, 
 

 THE TRACK IN THE WTNIER FOREST 
 
ANTOINE S MOOSE-YARD 89 
 
 and upon these he heaped split soft wood. While 
 this was being done, Pierre assailed one great tree 
 after another, and brought them crashing down with 
 noises that startled the forest quiet. Alphonse had 
 opened the provision bags, and presently two tin pails 
 filled with water swung from saplings over the fire, 
 and a pan of fat salt pork was frizzling upon the blaz. 
 ing wood. The darkness grew dead black, and the 
 dancing frames peopled the near forest with dodging 
 shadows. Almost in the time it has taken me to 
 write it, we were squatting on our heels around the 
 fire, each with a massive cutting of bread, a slice of 
 fried pork in a tin plate, and half a pint of tea, pre- 
 cisely as hot as molten lead, in a tin cup. Supper 
 was a necessity, not a luxury, and was hurried out of 
 the way accordingly. Then the men built their camp 
 beside ours in front of the fire, and followed that by 
 felling three or more monarchs of the bush. Noth- 
 ing surprised me so much as the amount of wood 
 consumed in these open-air fires. In five days at 
 our permanent camp we made a great hole in the 
 forest. 
 
 But that first night in the open air, abed with nat- 
 ure, with British America for a bedroom ! Only I 
 can tell of it, for the others slept. The stillness was 
 intense. There was no wind, and not an animal or 
 bird uttered a cry. The logs cracked and sputtered 
 and popped, the horses shook their chains, the men 
 all snored — white and red alike. The horses pounded 
 the hollow earth ; the logs broke and fell upon the 
 cinders ; one of the men talked in his sleep. But 
 over and through it all the stillness grew. Then the 
 
90 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 fire sank low, the cold became intense, the light was 
 lost, and the darkness swallowed everything. Some 
 one got up awkwardly, with muttering, and flung 
 wood upon the red ashes, and presently all that had 
 passed was re-experienced. 
 
 The ride next day was more exciting than the 
 first stage. It was like the journey of a gun-carriage 
 across country in a hot retreat. The sled was actu- 
 ally upset only once, but to prevent that happening 
 fifty times the Indians kept springing at the upper- 
 most side of the flying vehicle, and hanging to the 
 side poles to pull the toppling construction down 
 upon both runners. Often we were advised to leap 
 out for safety's sake ; at other times we wished we 
 had leaped out. For seven hours we were flung 
 about like cotton spools that are being polished in 
 a revolving cylinder. And yet we were obliged to 
 run long distances after the hurtling sleigh — long 
 enough to tire us. The artist, who had spent years 
 in rude scenes among rough men, said nothing at the 
 time. What was the use } But afterwards, in New 
 York, he remarked that this was the roughest travel- 
 ling he had ever experienced. 
 
 The signs of game increased. Deer and bear and 
 wolf and fox and moose were evidently numerous 
 around us. Once we stopped, and the Indians be- 
 came excited. What they had taken for old moose 
 tracks were the week-old footprints of a man. It 
 seems strange, but they felt obliged to know what a 
 man had gone into the bush for a week ago. They 
 followed the signs, and came back smiling. He had 
 gone in to cut hemlock boughs; we would find traces 
 
ANTOINES MOOSE-YARD 
 
 91 
 
 of a camp near by. We 
 did. In a country where 
 men are so few, they busy 
 themselves about one an- 
 other. Four or five days 
 later, while we were hunt- 
 ing, these Indians came 
 to the road and stopped 
 suddenly, as horses do 
 when lassoed. With a 
 glance they read that 
 two teams had passed 
 during the night, go- 
 ing towards our camp. 
 When we returned to 
 camp the teams had 
 been there, and our 
 teamster had talked with 
 the drivers. Therefore 
 
 that load was lifted from the minds of our Indians. 
 But their knowledge of the bush was marvellous. 
 One point in the woods was precisely like another 
 to us, yet the Indians would leap off the sleigh now 
 and then and dive into the forest, to return with a 
 trap hidden there months before, or to find a great 
 iron kettle. 
 
 " Do you never get lost }'' I asked Alexandre. 
 
 " Me get los'.? No, no get los'." 
 
 " But how do you find your way }'' 
 
 " Me fin' way easy. Me know way me come, or 
 me follow my tracks, or me know by de sun. If no 
 sun, me look at trees. Trees grow more branches 
 
 PIERRE, FROM LIFE 
 
92 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 on side toward sun, and got rough bark on north 
 side. At night me know by see de stars." 
 
 We camped in a log-hut Alexandre had built for 
 a hunting camp. It was very picturesque and sub- 
 stantial, built of huge logs, and caulked with moss. 
 It had a great earthen bank in the middle for a fire- 
 place, with an equally large opening in the roof, 
 boarded several feet high at the sides to form a 
 chimney. At one corner of the fire bank was an in- 
 genious crane, capable of being raised and lowered, 
 and projecting from a pivoted post, so that the long 
 arm could be swung over or away from the fire. At 
 one end of the single apartment were two roomy 
 bunks built against the wall. With extraordinary 
 skill and quickness the Indians whittled a spade out 
 of a board, performing the task with an axe, an im- 
 plement they can use as white men use a penknife, 
 an implement they value more highly than a gun. 
 They made a broom of balsam boughs, and dug 
 and swept the dirt off the floor and walls, speedily 
 makinof the cabin neat and clean. Two new bunks 
 were put up for us, and bedded with balsam boughs 
 and skins. Shelves were already up, and spread 
 with pails and bottles, tin cups and plates, knives and 
 forks, canned goods, etc. On them and on the floor 
 were our stores. 
 
 We had a week's outfit, and we needed it, because 
 for five days we could not hunt on account of the 
 crust on the snow, which made such a noise when 
 a human foot broke through it that we could not 
 have approached any wild animal within half a mile. 
 On the third day it rained, but without melting the 
 
ANTOINE S CABIN 
 
ANTOINES MOOSE-YARD 95 
 
 crust. On the fourth clay it snowed furiously, bury- 
 ing the crust under two inches of snow. On the 
 fifth day we got our moose. 
 
 In the mean time the log -cabin was our home. 
 Alexandre and Pierre cut down trees every day for 
 the fire, and Pierre disappeared for hours every now 
 and then to look after traps set for otter, beaver, and 
 marten. Alphonse attended his horses and served 
 as cook. He could produce hotter tea than any 
 other man in the world. I took mine for a walk in 
 the arctic cold three times a day, the artist learned 
 to pour his from one cup to another with amazing 
 dexterity, and the Indians (who drank a quart each 
 of ofreen tea at each meal because it was stronger 
 than our black tea) lifted their pans and threw the 
 liquid fire down throats that had been inured to 
 high wines. Whenever the fire was low, the cold 
 was intense. Whenever it was heaped with logs, all 
 the heat flew directly through the roof, and spiral 
 blasts of cold air were sucked through every crack 
 between logs in the cabin walls. Whenever the 
 door opened, the cabin filled with smoke. Smoke 
 clung to all we ate or wore. At night the fire kept 
 burning out, and we arose with chattering teeth to 
 build it anew. The Indians were then to be seen 
 with their blankets pushed down to their knees, 
 asleep in their shirts and trousers. At meal-times 
 we had bacon or pork, speckled or lake trout, bread- 
 and-butter, stewed tomatoes, and tea. There were 
 two stools for the five men, but they only compli- 
 cated the discomfort of those who got them ; for it 
 was found that if we put our tin plates on our knees. 
 
96 
 
 ON CANADA'S FRONTIER 
 
 they fell off ; if we held them in one hand, we could 
 not cut the pork and hold the bread with the other 
 hand ; while if we put the plates on the floor be- 
 side the tea, we could not reach them. In a month 
 we might have solved the problem. Life in that log 
 shanty was precisely the life of the early settlers of 
 this country. It was bound to produce great char- 
 acters or early death. There could be no middle 
 course with such an existence. 
 
 Partridge fed in the brush impudently before us. 
 Rabbits bobbed about in the clearing before the 
 door. Squirrels sat upon the logs near by and gor- 
 mandized and chattered. Great saucy birds, like 
 mouse-colored robins, and known to the Indians as 
 " meat-birds," stole our provender if we left it out-of- 
 doors half an hour, and one day we saw a red deer 
 jump in the bush a hundred yards away. Yet we got 
 no game, because we knew there was a moose-yard 
 within two miles on one side and within three miles 
 on the other, and we dared not shoot our rifles lest 
 we frishten the moose. Moose was all we were 
 after. There was a lake near by, and the trout in 
 those lakes up there attain remarkable size and 
 numbers. We heard of 35-pound speckled trout, of 
 lake trout twice as large, and of enormous muskal- 
 longe. The most reliable persons told of lakes far- 
 ther in the wilderness where the trout are thick as 
 salmon in the British Columbia streams — so thick as 
 to seem to fill the water. We were near a lake that 
 was supposed to have been fished out by lumbermen 
 a year before, yet it was no sport at all to fish there. 
 With a short stick and two yards of line and a bass 
 
ANTOIXES MOOSE-VARD 99 
 
 hook baited with pork, we brought up four -pound 
 and five-pound beauties faster than we wanted them 
 for food. Truly we were in a splendid hunting 
 countr}^ like the Adirondacks eighty years ago, but 
 thousands of times as extensive. 
 
 Finally we started for moose. Our Indians asked 
 if they might take their guns. We gave the permis- 
 sion. Alexandre, a thin, wiry man of forty years, car- 
 ried an old Henry rifle in a woollen case open at one 
 end like a stocking. He wore a short blanket coat 
 and tuque, and trousers tied tight below the knee, 
 and let into his moccasin-tops. He and his brother 
 Fran9ois are famous Hudson Bay Company trappers, 
 and are two-thirds Algonquin and one-third French. 
 He has a typical swarthy, angular Indian face and a 
 French mustache and goatee. Naturally, if not by 
 rank, a leader among his men, his manner is com- 
 manding and his appearance grave. He talks bad 
 French fluently, and makes wTetched headway in 
 English. Pierre is a short, thickset, walnut- stained 
 man of thirty-five, almost pure Indian, and almost a 
 perfect specimen of physical development. He sel- 
 dom spoke while on this trip, but he impressed us 
 with his strength, endurance, quickness, and knowl- 
 edge of woodcraft. Poor fellow ! he had only a shot- 
 gun, which he loaded with buckshot. It had no 
 case, and both men carried their pieces grasped by 
 the barrels and shouldered, with the butts behind 
 them. 
 
 We set out in Indian-file, plunging at once into 
 the bush. Never was forest scener}'^ more exqui- 
 sitely beautiful than on that morning as the day 
 
lOO ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 broke, for we breakfasted at four o'clock, and started 
 immediately afterwards. Everywhere the view was 
 fairy -like. There was not snow enough for snow- 
 shoeing. But the fresh fall of snow was immacu- 
 lately white, and flecked the scene apparently from 
 earth to sky, for there was not a branch or twig or 
 limb or spray of evergreen, or wart or fungous growth 
 upon any tree that did not bear its separate burden 
 of snow. It was a bridal dress, not a winding-sheet, 
 that Dame Nature was trying on that morning. And 
 in the bright fresh green of the firs and pines we saw 
 her complexion peeping out above her spotless gown, 
 as one sees the rosy cheeks or black eyes of a girl 
 wrapped in ermine. 
 
 Mile after mile we walked, up mountain and down 
 dale, slapped in the faces by twigs, knocking snow 
 down the backs of our necks, slipping knee-deep in 
 bog mud, tumbling over loose stones, climbing across 
 interlaced logs, dropping to the height of one thigh 
 between tree trunks, sliding, falling, tight-rope walk- 
 ing on branches over thin ice, but forever following 
 the cat-like tread of Alexandre, with his seven-league 
 stride and long-winded persistence. Suddenly we 
 came to a queer sort of clearing dotted with protu- 
 berances like the bubbles on molasses beginning to 
 boil. It was a beaver meadow. The bumps in the 
 snow covered stumps of trees the beavers had gnawed 
 down. The Indians were looking at some trough 
 like tracks in the snow, like the trail of a tired man 
 who had dragged his heels. " Moose ; going this 
 way," said Alexandre ; and we turned and walked in 
 the tracks. Across the meadow and across a lake 
 
ANTOINE S MOOSE-YARD 
 
 103 
 
 and up another mountain they led us. Then we 
 came upon fresher prints. At each new track the 
 Indians stooped, and making a scoop of one hand, 
 brushed the new-fallen snow lightly out of the in- 
 dentations. Thus they read the time at which the 
 print was made. " Las' week," " Day 'fore yester- 
 day," they whispered. Presently they bent over 
 again, the light snow flew, and one whispered, " This 
 morning." 
 
 Stealthily Alexandre swept ahead ; very carefully 
 we followed. We dared not break a twig, or speak, 
 or slip, or stumble. As it was, the breaking of the 
 crust was still far too audible. We followed a little 
 stream, and approached a thick growth of tamarack. 
 We had no means of knowing that a herd of moose 
 was lying in that thicket, resting after feeding. We 
 knew it afterwards. Alexandre motioned to us to 
 
 ON THE MOOSE TRAIL 
 
I04 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 get our guns ready. We each threw a cartridge 
 from the cyHnder into the barrel, making a " click, 
 click " that was abominably loud. Alexandre forged 
 ahead. In five minutes we heard him call aloud : 
 " Moose gone. We los' him." We hastened to his 
 side. He pointed at some tracks in which the prints 
 were closer together than any we had seen. 
 
 "See! he trot," Alexandre explained. 
 
 In another five minutes we had all but completed 
 a circle, and were on the other side of the tamarack 
 thicket. And there were the prints of the bodies of 
 the great beasts. We could see even the imprint of 
 the hair of their coats. All around were broken 
 twigs and balsam needles. The moose had left the 
 branches ragged, and on ever}^ hand the young bark 
 was chewed or rubbed raw. Loading our rifles had 
 lost us a herd of moose. 
 
 Back once again at the beaver dam, Alexandre 
 and Pierre studied the moose -tramped snow and 
 talked earnestly. They agreed that a desperate bat- 
 tle had been fousfht there between two bull moose a 
 week before, and that those bulls were not in the 
 " yard " where we had blundered. They examined 
 the tracks over an acre or more, and then strode off 
 at an obtuse angle from our former trail. Pierre, ap- 
 parently not quite satisfied, kept dropping behind or 
 disappearing in the bush at one side of us. So mag- 
 nificent was his skill at his work that I missed him 
 at times, and at other times found him putting his 
 feet down where mine were lifted up without ever 
 hearing a sound of his step or of his contact with 
 the undergrowth. Alexandre presently motioned us 
 
ANTOINES MOOSE-YARD I07 
 
 with a warning gesture. He slowed his pace to 
 short steps, with long pauses between. He saw 
 everything that moved, heard every sound ; only a 
 deer could throw more and keener faculties into play 
 than this born hunter. He heard a twig snap. We 
 heard nothing. Pierre was away on a side search. 
 Alexandre motioned us to be ready. We crept close 
 together, and I scarcely breathed. We moved cau- 
 tiously, a step at a time, like chessmen. It was im- 
 possible to get an unobstructed view a hundred feet 
 ahead, so thick was the soft-wood growth. It seemed 
 out of the question to try to shoot that distance. 
 We were descending a hill-side into marshy ground. 
 We crossed a corner of a grove of young alders, and 
 saw before us a gentle slope thickly grown with 
 evergreen — tamarack, the artist called it. Suddenly 
 Alexandre bent forward and raised his gun. Two 
 steps forward gave us his view. Five moose were 
 fifty yards away, alarmed and ready to run. ■ A big 
 bull in the front of the group had already thrown 
 back his antlers. By impulse rather than through 
 reason I took aim at a second bull. He was half a 
 height lower down the slope, and to be seen through 
 a web of thin foliage. Alexandre and the artist fired 
 as with a single pull at one trigger. The foremost 
 bull staggered and fell forward, as if his knees had 
 been broken. He was hit twice — in the heart and 
 in the neck. The second bull and two cows and a 
 calf plunged into the bush and disappeared. Pierre 
 found that bull a mile away, shot through the lungs. 
 It had taken us a week to kill our moose in a 
 country where they were common game. That was 
 
I08 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 " hunter's luck " with a vengeance. But at another 
 season such a delay could scarcely occur. The time 
 to visit that district is in the autumn, before snow 
 falls. Then in a week one ought to be able to bag 
 a moose, and move into the region where caribou 
 are plenty. 
 
 Mr. Remington, in the picture called " Hunting the 
 Caribou," depicts a scene at a critical moment in the 
 experience of any man who has journeyed on west- 
 ward of where we found our moose, to hunt the cari- 
 bou. There is a precise moment for shooting in the 
 chase of all animals of the deer kind, and when that 
 moment has been allowed to pass, the chance of se- 
 curing the animal diminishes with astonishing rapid- 
 ity — with more than the rapidity with which the then 
 startled animal is making his flight, because to his 
 flight you must add the increasing ambush of the 
 forest. What is true of caribou in this respect is true 
 of moose and red deer, elk and musk-ox in America, 
 and of all the horned animals of the forests of the 
 other great hemisphere. Every hunter who sees Mr. 
 Remington's realistic picture knows at a glance that 
 the two men have stolen noiselessly to within easy 
 rifle-shot of a caribou, and that suddenly, at the last 
 moment, the animal has heard them. 
 
 Perhaps he has seen them, and is standing — still 
 as a Barye bronze — with his great, soft, wondering 
 eyes riveted upon theirs. That is a situation famil- 
 iar to every hunter. His prey has been browsing in 
 fancied security, and yet with that nervous prudence 
 that causes these timid beasts to keep forever rais- 
 ing their heads, and sweeping the view around them 
 
with their exquisite sight, and analyzing the atmos- 
 phere with their magical sense of smell. In one of 
 these cautious pauses the caribou has seen the hunt- 
 ers. Both hunters and hunted seem instantly to 
 turn to stone. Neither moves a muscle or a hair. If 
 the knee or the foot of one of the men presses too 
 hard upon a twig and it snaps, the caribou is as cer- 
 tain to throw his head high up and dart into the in- 
 gulfing net-work of the forest trunks and brush as 
 day is certain to follow night. But when no move- 
 ment has been made and no mishap has alarmed the 
 beast, it has often happened that the two or more 
 parties to this strangely thrilling situation have held 
 their places for minutes at a stretch — minutes that 
 seemed like quarters of an hour. In such cases the 
 deer or caribou has been known to lower his head 
 and feed again, assured in its mind that the suspect- 
 
no ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 ed hunter is inanimate and harmless. Nine times in- 
 ten, though, the first to move is the beast, which 
 tosses up its head, and " Shoot ! shoot !" is the in- 
 stant command, for the upward throwing of the head 
 is a movement made to put the beast's great antlers 
 into position for flight through the forest. 
 
 The caribou has very wide, heavy horns, and they 
 are almost always circular — that is, the main part or 
 trunk of each horn curves outward from the skull 
 and then inward towards the point, in an almost true 
 semicircle. They are more or less branched, but 
 both the general shape of the whole horns and of the 
 branches is such that when the head is thrown up 
 and back they aid the animal's flight by presenting 
 what may be called the point of a wedge towards the 
 saplings and limbs and small forest growths through 
 which the beast runs, parting and spreading every 
 pair of obstacles to either side, and bending every 
 single one out of the way of his flying body. The 
 caribou of North America is the reindeer of Green- 
 land ; the differences between the two are very slight. 
 The animal's home is the arctic circle, but in Amer- 
 ica it feeds and roams farther south than in Europe 
 and Asia. It is a large and clumsy -looking beast, 
 with thick and rather short legs and bulky body, and, 
 seen in repose, gives no hint of its capacity for flight. 
 Yet the caribou can run " like a streak of wind," and 
 makes its way through leaves and brush and brittle, 
 sapless vegetation with a modicum of noise so slight 
 as to seem inexplicable. Nature has ingeniously 
 added to its armament, always one, and usually two, 
 palmated spurs at the root of its horns, and these 
 
ANTOINES MOOSE- YARD II3 
 
 grow at an obtuse angle with the head, upward and 
 outward towards the nose. With these spurs — Hke 
 shovels used sideways — the caribou roots up the 
 snow, or breaks its crust and disperses it, to get at 
 his food on the ground. The caribou are very large 
 deer, and their strength is attested by the weight of 
 their horns. I have handled caribou horns in Can- 
 ada that I could not hold out with both hands when 
 seated in a chair. It seemed hard to believe that an 
 animal of the size of a caribou could carry a burden 
 apparently so disproportioned to his head and neck. 
 But it is still more difficult to believe, as all the 
 woodsmen say, that these horns are dropped and 
 new ones grown every year. 
 
 It is not the especial beauty of Frederic Reming- 
 ton's drawings and paintings that they are absolutely 
 accurate in every detail, but it is one of their beau- 
 ties, and gives them especial value apart from their 
 artistic excellence. He draws what he knows, and 
 he knows w^hat he draws. This scene of the electri- 
 cally exquisite moment in a hunter's life, when great 
 game is before him, and the instant has come for 
 claiming it as his own with a steadily held and wise- 
 ly chosen aim, will give the reader a perfect knowl- 
 edge of how the Indians and hunters dress and equip 
 themselves beyond the Canadian border. The scene 
 is in the wilderness north of the Great Lakes. The 
 Indian is of one of those tribes that are offshoots of 
 the great Algonquin nation. He carries in that load 
 he bears that which the plainsmen call " the grub 
 stake," or quota of provisions for himself and his em- 
 ployer, as well as blankets to sleep in, pots, pans, 
 
114 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 sugar, the inevitable tea of those latitudes, and much 
 else besides. Those Indians are not as lazy or as 
 physically degenerate as many of the tribes in our 
 country. They turn themselves into wonderful beasts 
 of burden, and go forever equipped with a long, broad 
 strap that they call a " tomp line," and which they 
 pass around their foreheads and around their packs, 
 the latter resting high up on their backs. It seems 
 incredible, but they can carry one hundred to one 
 hundred and fifty pounds of necessaries all day long 
 in the roughest regions. The Hudson Bay Company 
 made their ancestors its wards and dependents two 
 centuries ago, and taught them to work and to earn 
 their livelihood. 
 
BIG FISHING 
 
 IN October every year there are apt to be more 
 fish upon the land in the Nepigon country than 
 one would suppose could find life in the waters. 
 Most families have laid in their full winter supply, 
 the main exceptions being those semi-savage families 
 which leave their fish out — in preference to laying 
 them in — upon racks whereon they are to be seen in 
 rows and by the thousands. 
 
 Nepigon, the old Hudson Bay post which is the 
 outfitting place for this region, is 928 miles west 
 of Montreal, on the Canadian Pacific Railway, and 
 on an arm of Lake Superior. The Nepigon River, 
 which connects the greatest of lakes with Lake Ne- 
 pigon, is the only roadway in all that country, and 
 therefore its mouth, in an arm of the great lake, is 
 the front door to that wonderful region. In travel- 
 ling through British Columbia I found one district 
 that is going to prove of greater interest to gentle- 
 men sportsmen with the rod, but I know of no great- 
 er fishing country than the Nepigon. No single 
 waterway or system of navigable inland waters in 
 North America is likely to wrest the palm from this 
 Nepigon district as the haunt of fish in the greatest 
 plenty, unless we term the salmon a fresh-water fish, 
 and thus call the Fraser, Columbia, and Skeena riv- 
 
ii6 ON Canada's frontier 
 
 ers into the rivaliy. There is incessant fishing in 
 this wilderness north of Lake Superior from New- 
 year's Day, when the ice has to be cut to get at the 
 water, all through the succeeding seasons, until again 
 the ice fails to protect the game. And there is ev- 
 ery sort of fishing between that which engages a 
 navv of sailinor vessels and men, down throus^h all 
 the methods of fish-taking — by nets, by spearing, 
 still fishing, and fly-fishing. A half a dozen sorts of 
 finny game succumb to these methods, and though 
 the region has been famous and therefore much vis- 
 ited for nearly a dozen years, the field is so extensive, 
 so well stocked, and so difficult of access except to 
 persons of means, that even to-day almost the very 
 largest known specimens of each class of fish are to 
 be had there. 
 
 If we could put on wings early in October, and 
 could fly down from James's Bay over the dense for- 
 ests and countless lakes and streams of western On- 
 tario, we would see now and then an Indian or hunt- 
 er in a canoe, here and there a lonely huddle of small 
 houses forming a Hudson Bay post, and at even 
 greater distances apart small bunches of the cotton 
 or birch-bark tepees of pitiful little Cree or Ojibaway 
 bands. But with the first glance at the majestic ex- 
 panse of Lake Superior there would burst upon the 
 view scores upon scores of white sails upon the wa- 
 ter, and near by, upon the shore, a tent for nearly 
 every sail. That is the time for the annual gather- 
 ing for catching the big, chunky, red-fleshed fish they 
 call the salmon-trout. They catch those that weigh 
 from a dozen to twenty-five or thirty pounds, and at 
 
RIG FISHING 
 
 117 
 
 this time of the year their flesh is comparatively 
 hard. 
 
 Engaged in making this great catch are the boats 
 of the Indians from far up the Nepigon and the 
 neighboring streams ; of the chance white men of 
 the region, who depend upon nature for their suste- 
 nance ; and of Finns, Norwegians, Swedes, and oth- 
 ers who come from the United States side, or south- 
 ern shore, to fish for their home markets. These 
 fish come at this season to spawn, seeking the reefs, 
 which are plentiful off the shore in this part of the 
 lake. Gill nets are used to catch them, and are set 
 within five fathoms of the surface by setting the in- 
 ner buoy in w^ater of that depth, and then paying the 
 net out into deeper water and anchoring it. The 
 run and the fishing continue throughout October. 
 As a rule, among the Canadians and Canada Ind- 
 ians a family goes with each boat — the boats being 
 sloops of twenty-seven to thirty feet in length, and 
 capable of carrying fifteen pork barrels, which are at 
 the outset filled wath rock-salt. Sometimes the heads 
 of two families are partners in the ownership of one 
 of these sloops, but, however that may be, the cus- 
 tom is for the women and children to camp in tents 
 along-shore, while the men (usually two men and a 
 boy for each boat) work the nets. It is a stormy 
 season of the year, and the work is rough and haz- 
 ardous, especially for the nets, which are frequently 
 lost. 
 
 Whenever a haul is made the fish are split down 
 the back and cleaned. Then they are washed, rolled 
 in salt, and packed in the barrels. Three days later. 
 
Il8 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 when the bodies of the fish have thoroughly purged 
 themselves, they are taken out, washed again, and 
 are once more rolled in fresh salt and put back in 
 the barrels, which are then filled to the top with wa- 
 ter. The Indians subsist all winter upon this Octo- 
 ber catch, and, in addition, manage to exchange a 
 few barrels for other provisions and for clothing. 
 They demand an equivalent of six dollars a barrel 
 in whatever they get in exchange, but do not sell 
 for money, because, as I understand it, they are not 
 obliged to pay the provincial license fee as fishermen, 
 and therefore may not fish for the market. Even 
 sportsmen who throw a fly for one day in the Nepi- 
 gon country must pay the Government for the privi- 
 lege. The Indians told me that eight barrels of 
 these fish will last a family of six persons an entire 
 winter. Such a demonstration of prudence and fore- 
 thought as this, of a month's fishing at the threshold 
 of winter, amounts to is a rare one for an Indian to 
 make, and I imagine there is a strong admixture of 
 white blood in most of those who make it. The full- 
 bloods will not take the trouble. They trust to their 
 guns and their traps against the coming of that wolf 
 which they are not unused to facing. 
 
 Up along the shores of Lake Nepigon, which is 
 thirty miles by an air line north of Lake Superior, 
 many of the Indians lay up white-fish for winter. 
 They catch them in nets and cure them by frost. 
 They do not clean them. They simply make a hole 
 in the tail end of each fish, and string them, as 
 if they were beads, upon sticks, which they set up 
 into racks. They usually hang the fishes in rows 
 
3^(f||fl,T,H - 
 
 INDIANS HAULING NETS ON LAKE NEPIGON 
 
 of ten, and frequently store up thousands while they 
 are at it. The Reverend Mr. Renison, who has had 
 much to do with bettering the condition of these 
 Indians, told me that he had caught 1020 pounds 
 of white-fish in two nights with two gill nets in 
 Lake Nepigon. It is unnecessary to add that he 
 cleaned his. 
 
 Lake Nepigon is about seventy miles in length, 
 and two-thirds as wide, at the points of its greatest 
 measurement, and is a picturesque body of water, 
 surrounded by forests and dotted with islands. It is 
 
I20 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 a famous haunt for trout, and those fishermen who 
 are lucky may at times see scores of great beauties 
 lying upon the bottom ; pr, with a good guide and at 
 the right season, may be taken to places where the 
 water is fairly astir with them. Fishermen who are 
 not lucky may get their customary experience with- 
 out travelling so far, for the route is by canoe, on 
 top of nearly a thousand miles of railroading; and 
 one mode of locomotion consumes nearly as much 
 time as the other, despite the difference between 
 the respective distances travelled. The speckled 
 trout in the lake are locally reported to weigh from 
 three to nine pounds, but the average stranger will 
 lift in more of three pounds' weight than he will of 
 nine. Yet whatever they average, the catching of 
 them is prime sport as you float upon the water in 
 your picturesque birch-bark canoe, with your guide 
 paddling you noiselessly along, and your spoon or 
 artificial minnow rippling through the water or glint- 
 ing in the sunlight. You need a stout bait-rod, for 
 the gluttonous fish are game, and make a good fight 
 every time. The local fishermen catch the speckled 
 beauties with an unpoetic lump of pork. 
 
 A lively French Canadian whom I met on the 
 cars on my way to Nepigon described that region as 
 " de mos' tareeble place for de fish in all over de 
 worl'." And he added another remark which had at 
 least the same amount of truth at the bottom of it. 
 Said he: "You weel find dere dose Mees Nancy 
 feeshermans from der Unite State, vhich got dose 
 hunderd-dollar poles and dose leetle humbug flies, 
 vhich dey t'row around and pull 'em back again, like 
 
BIG FISHING 121 
 
 dey was afraid some feesh would bite it. Dat is all 
 one grand stupeedity. Dose man vhich belong dere 
 put on de hook some pork, and catch one tareeble 
 
 pile of fish. Dey don't give a about style, only 
 
 to catch dose feesh." 
 
 To be sure, every fisherman who prides himself 
 on the distance he can cast, and who owns a splen- 
 did outfit, will despise the spirit of that French Ca- 
 nadian's speech; yet up in that country many a sci- 
 entific angler has endured a failure of " bites " for a 
 long and weary time, while his guide was hauling in 
 fish a-plenty, and has come to question " science " for 
 the nonce, and follow the Indian custom. For gray 
 trout (the namaycush, or lake trout) they bait with 
 apparently anything edible that is handiest, prefer- 
 ring pork, rabbit, partridge, the meat of the trout it- 
 self, or of the sucker ; and the last they take first, if 
 possible. The suckers, by-the-way, are all too plenty, 
 and as full of bones as any old-time frigate ever was 
 with timbers. You may see the Indians eating them 
 and discarding the bones at the same time ; and they 
 make the process resemble the action of a hay-cutter 
 when the grass is going in long at one side, and 
 coming out short, but in equal quantities, at the 
 other. 
 
 The namaycush of Nepigon weigh from nine to 
 twenty-five pounds. The natives take a big hook 
 and bait it, and then run the point into a piece of 
 shiny, newly-scraped lead. They never " play " their 
 bites, but give them a tight line and steady pull. 
 These fish make a game struggle, leaping and diving 
 and thrashing the water until the gaff ends the strug- 
 
122 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 gle. In winter there is as good sport with the na- 
 maycush, and it is managed pecuHarly. The Indians 
 cut into the ice over deep water, making holes at 
 least ei2:hteen inches in diameter. Across the hole 
 they lay a stick, so that when they pull up a trout 
 the line will run along the stick, and the fish will hit 
 that obstruction instead of the resistant ice. If a 
 fish struck the ice the chances are nine to one that 
 it would tear off the hook. Havino- baited a hook 
 with pork, and stuck the customary bit of lead upon 
 it, they sound for bottom, and then measure the line 
 so that it will reach to about a foot and a half above 
 soundings — that is to say, off bottom. Then they be- 
 gin fishing, and their plan is (it is the same all over 
 the Canadian wilderness) to keep jerking the line up 
 with a single, quick, sudden bob at frequent intervals. 
 The spring is the time to catch the big Nepigon 
 jack-fish, or pike. They haunt the grassy places in 
 little bogs and coves, and are caught by trolling. A 
 jack-fish is what we call a pike, and John Watt, the 
 famous guide in that country, tells of those fish of 
 such size that when a man of ordinary height held 
 the tail of one up to his shoulder, the head of the 
 fish dragged on the ground. He must be responsi- 
 ble for the further assertion that he saw an Indian 
 squaw drag a net, with meshes seven inches square, 
 and catch two jack-fish, each of which weighed more 
 than fifty pounds when cleaned. The story another 
 local historian told of a surveyor who caught a big 
 jack-fish that felt like a sunken log, and could only 
 be dragged until its head came to the surface, when 
 he shot it and it broke away — that narrative I will 
 
BIG FISHING 123 
 
 leave for the next New Yorker who goes to Nepigon. 
 And yet it seems to me that such stories distinguish 
 a fishing resort quite as much as the fish actually 
 cauo^ht there. Men would not dare to romance like 
 that at many places I have fished in, where the trout 
 are scheduled and numbered, and where you have 
 got to go to a certain rock on a fixed day of the 
 month to catch one. 
 
 The Indians are very clever at spearing the jack- 
 fish. At niglit they use a bark torch, and slaughter 
 the big fish with comparative ease ; but their great 
 skill with the spear is shown in the daytime, when 
 the pike are sunning themselves in the grass and 
 weeds along-shore. But when I made my trip up 
 the river, I saw them usins: so man\' nets as to 
 threaten the early reduction of the stream to the 
 plane of the ordinary resort. The water was so 
 clear that we could paddle beside the nets and see 
 each one's catch — here a half-dozen suckers, there a 
 jack-fish, and next a couple of beautiful trout. Find- 
 ing a squaw attending to her net, we bought a trout 
 from her before we had cast a line. The habit of 
 buying fish under such circumstances becomes sec- 
 ond nature to a New Yorker, We are a peculiar 
 people. Our fishermen are modest away from the 
 city, but at home they assume the confident tone 
 which comes of knowing the way to Fulton fish- 
 market. 
 
 The Nepigon River is a trout's paradise, it is so 
 full of rapids and saults. It is not at all a folly to 
 fish there with a fly-rod. There are records of very 
 large trout at the Hudson Bay post; but you may 
 
124 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 actually catch four -pound trout yourself, and what 
 you catch yourself seems to me better than any one's 
 else records. I have spoken of the Nepigon River 
 as a roadway. It is one of the great trading trails to 
 and from the far North. At the mouth of the river, 
 opposite the Hudson Bay post, you will see a wreck 
 of one of its noblest vehicles — an old York boat, such 
 as carry the furs and the supplies to and fro. I 
 fancy that Wolseley used precisely such boats to 
 float his men to where he wanted them in 1S70. 
 Farther along, before you reach the first portage, you 
 will be apt to see several of the sloops used by the 
 natives for the Lake Superior fishing. They are dis- 
 tinguished for their ugliness, capacity, and strength; 
 but the last two qualities are what they are built to 
 obtain. Of course the prettiest vehicles are the 
 canoes. As the bark and the labor are easily ob- 
 tainable, these picturesque vessels are very numer- 
 ous ; but a change is coming over their shape, and 
 the historic Ojibaway canoe, in which Hiawatha is 
 supposed to have sailed into eternity, will soon be a 
 thing found only in pictures. 
 
 There is good sport with the rod wherever you 
 please to go in " the bush," or wilderness, north of 
 the Canadian Pacific Railway, in Ontario and the 
 western part of Quebec. My first venture in fishing 
 through the ice in that region was part of a hunting 
 experience, when the conditions were such that hunt- 
 ing was out of the question, and our party feasted 
 upon salt pork, tea, and tomatoes during day after day. 
 At first, fried salt pork, taken three times a day in a 
 hunter's camp, seems not to deserve the harsh things 
 
BIG FISHING 125 
 
 that have been said and written about it. The open- 
 air life, the constant and tremendous exercise of 
 hunting or chopping wood for the fire, the novel sur- 
 roundings in the forest or the camp, all tend to make 
 a man say as hearty a grace over salt pork as he 
 ever did at home before a holiday dinner. Where we 
 were, up the Ottawa in the Canadian wilderness, the 
 pork was all fat, like whale blubber. At night the 
 cook used to tilt up a pan of it, and put some twisted 
 ravellings of a towel in it, and light one end, and 
 thus produce a lamp that would have turned Alfred 
 the Great green with envy, besides smoking his 
 palace till it looked as venerable as Westminster 
 Abbey does now. I ate my share seasoned with the 
 comments of Mr. Frederic Remington, the artist, 
 who asserted that he was never without it on his 
 hunting trips, that it was pure carbonaceous food, 
 that it fastened itself to one's ribs like a true friend, 
 and that no man could freeze to death in the same 
 country with this astonishing provender. We had 
 canned tomatoes and baker's bread and plenty of tea, 
 with salt pork as \\'\^ pi'ece de 7'esistance 2i\. every meal. 
 I know now — though I would not have confessed it 
 at the time — that mixed with my admiration of salt 
 pork was a growing dread that in time, if no change 
 offered itself, I should tire of that diet. I began to 
 feel it sticking to me more like an Old Man of the 
 Sea than a brother. The woodland atmosphere be- 
 gan to taste of it. When I came in-doors it seemed 
 to me that the log shanty was gradually turning into 
 fried salt pork. I could not say that I knew how it 
 felt to eat a quail a day for thirty days. One man 
 
126 ON Canada's frontier 
 
 cannot know everything. But I felt that I was 
 learning. 
 
 One day the cook put his hat on, and took his axe, 
 and started out of the slianty door with an unwonted 
 air of business. 
 
 " Been goin' fish," said he, in broken Indian. " Good 
 job if get trout." 
 
 A good job ? Why, the thought was like a float- 
 ing spar to a sailor overboard ! I went with him. 
 It was a cold day, but I was dressed in Canadian 
 style — the style of a country where every one puts 
 on everything he owns : all his stockings at once, all 
 his flannel shirts and drawers, all his coats on top of 
 one another, and when there is nothing else left, 
 draws over it all a blanket suit, a pair of moccasins, a 
 tuque, and whatever pairs of gloves he happens to be 
 able to find or borrow. One gets a queer feeling 
 with so many clothes on. They seem to separate 
 you from yourself, and the person you feel inside 
 your clothing might easily be mistaken for another 
 individual. But you are warm, and that's the main 
 thing. 
 
 I rolled along the trail behind the Indian, through 
 the deathly stillness of the snow-choked forest, and 
 presently, from a knoll and through an opening, we 
 saw a great woodland lake. As it lay beneath its 
 unspotted quilt of snow, edged all around with bal- 
 sam, and pine and other evergreens, it looked as 
 though some mighty hand had squeezed a colossal 
 tube of white paint into a tremendous emerald bowl. 
 Never had I seen nature so perfectly unalloyed, so 
 exquisitely pure and peaceful, so irresistibly beauti- 
 
BIG FISHING 
 
 129 
 
 ful. I think I should have hesitated to print my 
 ham-Hke moccasin upon that virgin sheet had I been 
 the guide, but " Brossy," the cook, stalked ahead, mak- 
 ing the powdery flakes fly before and behind him, 
 and I followed. Our tracks were white, and quickly 
 faded from view behind us; and, moreover, we passed 
 the siarns of a fox and a deer that had crossed durino: 
 the night, so that our profanation of the scene was 
 neither serious nor exclusive. 
 
 The Indian walked to an island near the farther 
 shore, and using his axe with the light, easy freedom 
 that a white man sometimes attains with a penknife, 
 he cut two short sticks for fish-poles. He cut six 
 yards of fish- line in two in the middle of the piece, 
 and tied one end of each part to one end of each 
 stick, making rude knots, as if any sort of a fastening 
 would do. Equally clumsily he tied a bass hook to 
 each fish-line, and on each hook he speared a little 
 cube of pork fat which had gathered an envelope of 
 granulated smoking- tobacco while at rest in his 
 pocket. Next, he cut two holes in the ice, which was 
 a foot thick, and over these we stood, sticks in hand, 
 with the lines dangling through the holes. Hardly 
 had I lowered my line (which had a bullet flattened 
 around it for a sinker, by-the-way) when I felt it jerked 
 to one side, and I pulled up a three-pound trout. It 
 was a speckled trout. This surprised me, for I had no 
 idea of catching anything but lake or gray trout in 
 that water. I caught a gray trout next — a smaller 
 one than the first — and in another minute I had 
 landed another three-pound speckled beauty. I\Iy 
 pork bait was still intact, and it may be of interest to 
 
 9 
 
130 ON CANADA'S FRONTIER 
 
 fishermen to know that the original cubes of pork 
 remained on those two hooks a week, and caught us 
 many a mess of trout. 
 
 There came a lull, which gave us time to philoso- 
 phize on the contrast between this sort of fishing 
 and the fashionable sport of using the most costly 
 and delicate rods — like pieces of jewelry — and of cal- 
 culating to a nicety what sort of flies to use in match- 
 inor the chano^ins: weather or the varvinor tastes of 
 trout in waters where even all these calculations and 
 provisions would not yield a hatful of small fish in a 
 day. Here I was, armed like an urchin beside a 
 minnow brook, and catching bigger trout than I ever 
 saw outside Fulton Market — trout of the choicest 
 variety. But while I moralized my Indian grew im- 
 patient, and cut himself a new hole out over deep 
 water. He caught a couple of two-and-a-half-pound 
 brook trout and a four-pound gray trout, and I was 
 as well rewarded. But he was still discontented, and 
 moved to a strait opening into a little bay, where he 
 cut two more holes. " Eas' wind," said he, " fish no 
 bite." 
 
 I found on that occasion that no quantity of cloth- 
 ing will keep a man warm in that a-lmost arctic cli- 
 mate. First my hands became cold, and then my 
 feet, and then my ears. A thin film of ice closed up 
 the fishing holes if the water was not constantly dis- 
 turbed. The thermometer must have registered ten 
 or fifteen degrees below zero. Our lines became 
 quadrupled in thickness at the lower ends by the ice 
 that formed upon them. When they coiled for an 
 instant upon the ice at the edge of a hole, they stuck 
 
BIG FISHING 
 
 131 
 
 to it, frozen fast. By stamping my feet and putting 
 my free hand in my pocket as fast as I shifted my 
 pole from one hand to the other, I managed to per- 
 sist in fishing. I noticed many interesting things as 
 I stood there, almost alone in that almost pathless 
 wilderness. First I saw that the Indian was not 
 cold, though not half so warmly dressed as I. The 
 circulation or vitality of those scions of nature must 
 be very remarkable, for no sort of weather seemed 
 to trouble them at all. Wet feet, wet bodies, intense 
 cold, whatever came, found and left them indifferent. 
 Night after night, in camp, in the open air, or in our 
 log shanty, we white men trembled with the cold when 
 the log fire burned low, but the Indians never woke 
 to rebuild it. Indeed, I did not see one have his 
 blanket pulled over his chest at any time. Wood- 
 cocks were drumming in the forest now and then, 
 and the shrill, bird-like chatter of the squirrels fre- 
 quently rang out upon the forest quiet. My Indian 
 knew every noise, no matter how faint, yet never 
 raised his head to listen. " Dat squirrel," he would 
 say, when I asked him. Or, " Woodcock, him call- 
 ing rain," he ventured. Once I asked what a very 
 queer, distant, muffled sound was. " You hear dat 
 when you walk. Keep still, no hear dat," he said. 
 It was the noise the ice made when I moved. 
 
 As I stood there a squirrel came down upon a log 
 jutting out over the edge of the lake, and looked me 
 over. A white weasel ran about in the bushes so 
 close to me that I could have hit him with a peanut 
 shell. That morning some partridge had been seen 
 feeding in the bush close to members of our party. 
 
132 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 It was a country where small game is not hunted, 
 and does not always hide at man's approach. We 
 had left our fish lying on the ice near the various 
 holes from which we pulled them, and I thought of 
 them when a flock of ravens passed overhead, crying 
 out in their hoarse tones. They were sure to see 
 the fish dotting the snow like raisins in a bowl of 
 rice. 
 
 " Won't they steal the fish.?" I asked. 
 
 " T'ink not," said the Indian. 
 
 " I don't know anything about ravens," I said, " but 
 if they are even distantly related to a crow, they will 
 steal whatever they can lift." 
 
 We could not see our fish around the bend of the 
 lake, so the Indian dropped his rod and walked stolid- 
 ly after the birds. As soon as he passed out of sight 
 I heard him scolding the great birds as if they were 
 unruly children. 
 
 " 'Way, there !" he cried — " 'way ! Leave dat fish, 
 you. What you do dere, you t'ief .f^" 
 
 It was an outcropping of the French blood in his 
 veins that made it possible for him to do such vio- 
 lence to Indian reticence. The birds had seen our 
 fish, and were about to seize them. Only the fool- 
 ish bird tradition that renders it necessary for every- 
 thing with wings to circle precisely so many times 
 over its prey before taking it saved us our game and 
 lost them their dinner. They had not completed 
 half their quota of circles when Brossy began to yell 
 at tJiem. When he returned his brain had awakened, 
 and he began to remember that ravens were thieves. 
 He said that the lumbermen in that country pack 
 
BIG FISHING ,o. 
 
 their dinners in canvas sacks and hide them in the 
 snow. Often the ravens come, and, searching out 
 this food, tear off the sacks and steal their contents. 
 I bade good-bye to pork three times a day after that. 
 At least twice a day we feasted upon trout. 
 
VT 
 
 "A SKIN FOR A SKIn" 
 
 The motto of the Hudson Bay Fur-trading Company 
 
 THOSE who go to the newer parts of Canada to- 
 day will find that several of those places which 
 their school geographies displayed as Hudson Bay 
 posts a few years ago are now towns and cities. In 
 them they will find the trading stations of old now 
 transformed into general stores. Alongside of the Ca- 
 nadian headquarters of the great corporation, where 
 used to stand the walls of Fort Garry, they will see 
 the principal store of the city of Winnipeg, an institu- 
 tion worthy of any city, and more nearly to be likened 
 to Whiteley's Necessary Store in London than to any 
 shopping-place in New York. As in Whiteley's you 
 may buy a house, or anything belonging in or around 
 a house, so you may in this great Manitoban estab- 
 lishment. The great retail emporium of Victoria, 
 the capital of British Columbia, is the Hudson Bay 
 store ; and in Calgary, the metropolis of Alberta and 
 the Canadian plains, the principal shopping-place in 
 a territory beside which Texas dwindles to the pro- 
 portions of a park is the Hudson Bay store. 
 
 These and many other shops indicate a new de- 
 velopment ot the business of the last of England's 
 great chartered monopolies; but instead of marking 
 the manner in which civilization has forced it to aban- 
 
A SKIN FOR A SKIN 
 
 135 
 
 don its original function, this merely demonstrates 
 that the proprietors have taken advantage of new 
 conditions while still pursuing their original trade. It 
 is true that the huge corporation is becoming a great 
 retail shop-keeping company. It is also true that by 
 the surrender of its monopolistic privileges it got a 
 consolation prize of money and of twenty millions of 
 dollars' worth of land, so that its chief business may 
 yet become that of developing and selling real estate. 
 But to-day it is still, as it was two centuries ago, the 
 greatest of fur-trading corporations, and fur-trading 
 is to-day a principal source of its profits. 
 
 Reminders of their old associations as forts still 
 confront the visitor to the modern city shops of the 
 company. The great shop in Victoria, for instance, 
 which, as a fort, was the hub around which grew the 
 wheel that is now the capital of the province, has its 
 fur trade conducted in a sort of barn-like annex of 
 the bazaar; but there it is, nevertheless, and busy 
 among the great heaps of furs are men who can re- 
 member when the Hydahs and the T'linkets and the 
 other neighboring tribes came down in their war ca- 
 noes to trade their winter's catch of skins for guns 
 and beads, vermilion, blankets, and the rest. Now 
 this is the mere catch-all for the furs got at posts 
 farther up the coast and in the interior. But up- 
 stairs, above the store, where the fashionable ladies 
 are looking over laces and purchasing perfumes, you 
 will see a collection of queer old guns of a pattern 
 familiar to Daniel Boone. They are relics of the fur 
 company's stock of those famous "trade-guns" which 
 disappeared long before they had cleared the plains 
 
136 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 of buffalo, and which the Indians used to deck with 
 brass nails and bright paint, and value as no man to- 
 day values a watch. But close to the trade-guns of 
 romantic memory is something yet more highly sug- 
 gestive of the company's former position. This is a 
 heap of unclaimed trunks, " left," the employes will 
 tell you, " by travellers, hunters, and explorers who 
 never came back to inquire for them." 
 
 It was not long ago that conditions existed such 
 as in that region rendered the disappearance of a 
 traveller more than a possibility. The wretched, 
 squat, bow-legged, dirty laborers of that coast, who 
 now dress as we do, and earn good wages in the sal- 
 mon-fishing and canning industries, were not long 
 ago very numerous, and still more villanous. They 
 were not to be compared with the plains Indians as 
 warriors or as men, but they were more treacherous, 
 and wanting in high qualities. In the interior to-day 
 are some Indians such as they were who are accused 
 of cannibalism, and who have necessitated warlike 
 defences at distant trading- posts. Travellers who 
 escaped Indian treachery risked starvation, and stood 
 their chances of losing their reckoning, of freezing to 
 death, of encounters with grizzlies, of snow-slides, of 
 canoe accidents in rapids, and of all the other casual- 
 ties of life in a territory which to-day is not half ex- 
 plored. Those are not the trunks of Hudson Bay 
 men, for such would have been sent home to Eng- 
 lish and Scottish mourners ; they are the luggage of 
 chance men who happened along, and outfitted at 
 the old post before going farther. But the compa- 
 ny's men were there before them, had penetrated the 
 

 
 ,U 
 
 '<*. ./ 
 
"A SKIN FOR A SKIN " 139 
 
 region farther and earlier, and there they are to-day, 
 carrying on the fur trade under conditions strongly 
 resembling those their predecessors once encoun- 
 tered at posts that are now towns in farming regions, 
 and where now the locomotive and the steamer are 
 familiar vehicles. Moreover, the status of the com- 
 pany in British Columbia is its status all the way 
 across the North from the Pacific to the Atlantic. 
 
 To me the most interesting and picturesque life to 
 be found in North America, at least north of Mexico, 
 is that which is occasioned by this principal phase of 
 the company's operations. In and around the fur 
 trade is found the most notable relic of the white 
 man's earliest life on this continent. Our wild life 
 in this country is, happily, gone. The frontiersman 
 is more difficult to find than the frontier, the cowboy 
 has become a laborer almost like any other, our Ind- 
 ians are as the animals in our parks, and there is 
 little of our country that is not threaded by railroads 
 or wagon-ways. But in new or western Canada this 
 is not so. A vast extent of it north of the Canadian 
 Pacific Railway, which hugs our border, has been ex- 
 plored only as to its waterways, its valleys, or its open 
 plains, and where it has been traversed much of it 
 remains as Nature and her near of kin, the red men, 
 had it of old. On the streams canoes are the vehi- 
 cles of travel and of commerce ; in the forests "trails" 
 lead from trading-post to trading- post, the people 
 are Indians, half-breeds, and Esquimaux, who live by 
 hunting and fishing as their forebears did ; the Hud- 
 son Bay posts are the seats of white population; the 
 post factors are the magistrates. 
 
140 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 All this is changing with a rapidity which history 
 will liken to the sliding of scenes before the lens of 
 a magic-lantern. Miners are crushing the foot-hills 
 on either side of the Rocky Mountains, farmers and 
 cattle-men have advanced far northward on the prai- 
 rie and on the plains in narrow lines, and railroads 
 are pushing hither and thither. Soon the limits of 
 the inhospitable zone this side of the Arctic Sea, 
 and of the marshy, weakly-wooded country on either 
 side of Hudson Bay will circumscribe the fur-trader's 
 field, except in so far as there may remain equally 
 permanent hunting-grounds in Labrador and in the 
 mountains of British Columbia. Therefore now, when 
 the Hudson Bay Company is laying the foundations 
 of widely different interests, is the time for halting 
 the old original view that stood in the stereopticon 
 for centuries, that we may see what it revealed, and 
 will still show far longer than it takes for us to 
 view it. 
 
 The Hudson Bay Company's agents were not the 
 first hunters and fur-traders in British America, an- 
 cient as was their foundation. The French, from 
 the Canadas, preceded them no one knows how 
 many years, though it is said that it was as early as 
 1627 that Louis XHI. chartered a company of the 
 same sort and for the same aims as the Eno-lish com- 
 pany. Whatever came of that corporation I do not 
 know, but by the time the Englishmen established 
 themselves on Hudson Bay, individual Frenchmen 
 and half-breeds had penetrated the country still far- 
 ther west. They were of hardy, adventurous stock, 
 and they loved the free roving life of the trapper and 
 
"a skin for a skin 141 
 
 hunter. Fitted out by the merchants of Canada, 
 they would pursue the waterways which there cut up 
 the wilderness in every direction, their canoes laden 
 with goods to tempt the savages, and their guns or 
 traps forming part of their burden. They would be 
 gone the greater part of a year, and always returned 
 with a store of furs to be converted into money, 
 which was, in turn, dissipated in the cities with devil- 
 may-care jollity. These were the coureicrs du dots, 
 and theirs was the stock from which came the voy- 
 ageurs of the next era, and the half-breeds, who joined 
 the service of the rival fur companies, and who, by- 
 the-way, reddened the history of the North-west ter- 
 ritories with the little bloodshed that mars it. 
 
 Charles II. of England was made to believe that 
 wonders in the way of discovery and trade would 
 result from a grant of the Hudson Bay territory 
 to certain friends and petitioners. An experimental 
 voyage was made with good results in 1668, and in 
 1670 the King granted the charter to what he styled 
 " the Governor and Company of Adventurers of 
 England trading into Hudson's Bay, one body cor- 
 porate and politique, in deed and in name, really and 
 fully forever, for Us, Our heirs, and Successors." It 
 was indeed a royal and a wholesale charter, for the 
 King declared, " We have given, granted, and con- 
 firmed unto said Governor and Company sole trade 
 and commerce of those Seas, Streights, Bays, Rivers, 
 Lakes, Creeks, and Sounds, in whatsoever latitude they 
 shall be, that lie within the entrance of the Streights 
 commonly called Hudson's, together with all the 
 Lands, Countries, and Territories upon the coasts 
 
142 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 and confines of the Seas, etc., . . . not already actually 
 possessed by or granted to any of our subjects, or pos- 
 sessed by the subjects of any other Christian Prince 
 or State, with the fishing of all sorts of Fish, Whales, 
 Sturgeons, and all other Royal Fishes, .... together 
 with the Royalty of the Sea upon the Coasts within 
 the limits aforesaid, and all Mines Royal, as w'ell dis- 
 covered as not discovered, of Gold, Silver, Gems, and 
 Precious Stones, .... and that the said lands be 
 henceforth reckoned and reputed as one of Our 
 Plantations or Colonies in America called Rupert's 
 Land." For this gift of an empire the corporation 
 was to pay yearly to the king, his heirs and succes- 
 sors, two elks and two black beavers whenever and as 
 often as he, his heirs, or his successors " shall hap- 
 pen to enter into the said countries." The company 
 was empowered to man ships of war, to create an 
 armed force for security and defence, to make peace 
 or war with any people that were not Christians, and 
 to seize any British or other subject who traded in 
 their territory. The King named his cousin. Prince 
 Rupert, Duke of Cumberland, to be first governor, 
 and it was in his honor that the new territory got its 
 name of Rupert's Land. 
 
 In the company were the Duke of Albemarle, 
 Earl Craven, Lords Arlington and Ashley, and sev- 
 eral knights and baronets. Sir Philip Carteret among 
 them. There were also five esquires, or gentlemen, 
 and John Portman, " citizen and goldsmith." They 
 adopted the witty sentence, ''Pro pelle cukin'" {A 
 skin for a skin), as their motto, and established as 
 their coat of arms a fox sejant as the crest, and a 
 
THE BEAR TRAP 
 
 shield showing four beavers in the quarters, and the 
 cross of St. George, the whole upheld by two stags. 
 
 The " adventurers " quickly established forts on the 
 shores of Hudson Bay, and began trading with the 
 Indians, with such success that it was rumored they 
 made from twenty-five to fifty per cent, profit every 
 year. But they exhibited all of that timidity which 
 capital is ever said to possess. They were nothing 
 like as enterprising as the French coureurs die bois. 
 In a hundred years they were no deeper in the 
 
144 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 country than at first, excepting as they extended 
 their httle system of forts or " factories " up and down 
 and on either side of Hudson and James bays. In 
 view of their profits, pei'haps this lack of enterprise 
 is not to be wondered at. On the other hand, their 
 charter was given as a reward for the efforts they 
 had made, and were to make, to find " the Northwest 
 passage to the Southern seas." In this quest they 
 made less of a trial than in the getting of furs ; how 
 much less we shall see. But the company had no 
 lack of brave and hardy followers. At first many 
 of the men at the factories were from the Orkney 
 Islands, and those islands remained until recent times 
 the recruiting- source for this service. This was be- 
 cause the Orkney men were inured to a rigorous cli- 
 mate, and to a diet largely composed of fish. They 
 were subject to less of a change in the company's serv- 
 ice than must have been endured by men from almost 
 any part of England. 
 
 I am going, later, to ask the reader to visit Rupert's 
 Land when the company had shaken off its timidity, 
 overcome its obstacles, and dotted all British Amer- 
 ica with its posts and forts. Then we shall see the 
 interiors of the forts, view the strange yet not always 
 hard or uncouth life of the company's factors and 
 clerks,- and glance along the trails and watercourses, 
 mainly unchanged to-day, to note the work and sur- 
 roundings of the Indians, the voyageurs, and the rest 
 who inhabit that region. But, fortunately, I can first 
 show, at least roughly, much that is interesting about 
 the company's growth and methods a century and a 
 half ago. The information is gotten from some 
 
"a skin for a skin 145 
 
 English Parliamentary paptM's forming a report of a 
 committee of the House of Commons in 1749. 
 
 Arthur Dobbs and others petitioned Parliament 
 to give them either the rights of the Hudson Bay 
 Company or a similar charter. It seems that Eng- 
 land had offered ^20,000 reward to whosoever should 
 find the bothersome passage to the Southern seas 
 via this northern route, and that these petitioners had 
 sent out two ships for that purpose. They said that 
 when others had done no more than this in Charles 
 n.'s time, that monarch had given them " the greatest 
 privileges as lords proprietors " of the Hudson Bay 
 territory, and that those recipients of royal favor 
 were bounden to attempt the discovery of the de- 
 sired passage. Instead of this, they not only failed 
 to search effectually or in earnest for the passage, 
 but they had rather endeavored to conceal the same, 
 and to obstruct the discovery thereof by others. 
 They had not possessed or occupied any of the lands 
 granted to them, or extended their trade, or made any 
 plantations or settlements, or permitted other British 
 subjects to plant, settle, or trade there. They had 
 established only four factories and one small trading- 
 house ; yet they had connived at or allowed the 
 French to encroach, settle, and trade within their 
 limits, to the great detriment and loss of Great 
 Britain. The petitioners argued that the Hudson 
 Bay charter was monopolistic, and therefore \'oid, 
 and at any rate it had been forfeited " by non-user or 
 abuser." . 
 
 In the course of the hearing upon both sides, the 
 " voyages upon discovery," according to the com- 
 
146 ON Canada's frontier 
 
 pany's own showing, were not undertaken until the 
 corporation had been in existence nearly fifty years, 
 and then the search had only been prosecuted during 
 eighteen years, and with only ten expeditions. Two 
 ships sent out from England never reached the bay, 
 but those which succeeded, and were then ready for 
 adventurous cruising, made exploratory voyages that 
 lasted only between one month and ten weeks, so 
 that, as we are accustomed to judge such expeditions, 
 they seem farcical and mere pretences. Yet their 
 largest ship was only of 190 tons burden, and the 
 others were a third smaller — vessels like our small 
 coasting schooners. The most particular instruc- 
 tions to the captains were to trade with all natives, 
 and persuade them to kill whales, sea-horses, and 
 seals ; and, subordinately and incidentally, " by God's 
 permission,'^ to find out the Strait of Annian, a fanci- 
 ful sheet of water, with tales of which that irresponsi- 
 ble Greek sea-tramp, Juan de Fuca, had disturbed all 
 Christendom, saying that it led between a great isl- 
 and in the Pacific (Vancouver) and the mainland 
 into the inland lakes. To the factors at their forts 
 the company sent such lukewarm messages as, " and 
 if you can by any means find out any discovery or 
 matter to the northward or elsewhere in the com- 
 pany's interest or advantage, do not fail to let us 
 know every year." 
 
 The attitude of the company towards discovery 
 suggests a Dogberry at its head, bidding his serv- 
 ants to "comprehend" the North-west passage, but 
 should they fail, to thank God they were rid of a 
 villain. In truth, they were traders pure and simple. 
 
"a skin for a skin " 
 
 147 
 
 and were making great profits with little trouble and 
 expense. 
 
 They brought from England about ^"4000 worth 
 of powder, shot, guns, fire-steels, flints, gun-worms, 
 powder-horns, pistols, hatchets, sword blades, awl 
 blades, ice- chisels, files, kettles, fish-hooks, net -lines, 
 burning-glasses, looking-glasses, tobacco, brandy, gog- 
 gles, gloves, hats, lace, needles, thread, thimbles, 
 breeches, vermilion, worsted sashes, blankets, flannels, 
 red feathers, buttons, beads, and " shirts, shoes, and 
 stockens." They spent, in keeping up their posts 
 
 
 HUSKIE DOGS riGHTIN'G 
 
148 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 and ships, about ^15,000, and in return they brought 
 to England castorum, whale-fins, whale-oil, deer-horns, 
 goose-quills, bed-feathers, and skins — in all of a value 
 of about ^26,000 per annum. I have taken the 
 average for several years in that period of the com- 
 pany's history, and it is in our money as if they spent 
 ^90,000 and got back $130,000, and this is their own 
 showins: under such circumstances as to make it the 
 course of wisdom not to boast of their profits. They 
 had three times trebled their stock and otherwise in- 
 creased it, so that having been 10,500 shares at the 
 outset, it was now 103,950 shares. 
 
 And now that we have seen how natural it was 
 that they should not then bother with exploration 
 and discovery, in view of the remuneration that came 
 for simply sitting in their forts and buying furs, let 
 me pause to repeat what one of their wisest men said 
 casually, between the whiffs of a meditative cigar, last 
 summer: "The search for the north pole must soon 
 be taken up in earnest," said he. " Man has paused 
 in the undertaking because other fields where his 
 needs were more pressing, and where effort was more 
 certain to be rewarded with success, had been neg- 
 lected. This is no longer the fact, and geographers 
 and other students of the subject all agree that the 
 north pole must next be sought and found. Speak- 
 ing only on ni}^ own account and from my knowl- 
 edge, I assert that whenever any government is in 
 earnest in this desire, it will employ the men of this 
 fur service, and they will find the pole. The com- 
 pany has posts far within the arctic circle, and they 
 are manned by men peculiarly and exactly fitted for 
 
A SKIN FOR A SKIN 
 
 149 
 
 the adventure. They are hardy, acutely intelligent, 
 self-reliant, accustomed to the climate, and all that it 
 engenders and demands. They are on the spot 
 ready to start at the earliest moment in the season, 
 and they have with them all that they will need on 
 the expedition. They would do nothing hurriedly 
 or rashly ; they would know what they were about as 
 no other white men would — and they would get 
 there." 
 
 I mention this not merely for the novelty of the 
 suggestion and the interest it may excite, but because 
 it contributes to the reader's understandinof of the 
 
 O 
 
 scope and character of the work of the company. It 
 is not merely Western and among Indians, it is hy- 
 perborean and among Esquimaux. But would it not 
 be passing strange if, beyond all that England has 
 gained from the careless gift of an empire to a few 
 favorites by Charles II,, she should yet possess the 
 honor and glory of a grand discovery due to the nat- 
 ural results of that action ? 
 
 To return to the Parliamentary inquiry into the 
 company's affairs 140 years ago. If it served no 
 other purpose, it drew for us of this day an outline 
 picture of the first forts and their inmates and cus- 
 toms. Being printed in the form our language took 
 in that day, when a gun was a " musquet " and a 
 stockade was a " palisadoe," we fancy we can see the 
 bumptious governors — as they then called the fac- 
 tors or agents — swelling about in knee-breeches 
 and cocked hats and colored waistcoats, and relying, 
 through their fear of the savages, upon the little 
 putty-pipe cannon that they speak of as " swivels." 
 
150 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 These were ostentatiously planted before their quar- 
 ters, and in front of these again were massive double 
 doors, such as we still make of steel for our bank 
 safes, but, when made of wood, use only for our re- 
 frigerators. The views we get of the company's 
 " servants " — which is to say, mechanics and laborers 
 — are all of trembling varlets, and the testimony is 
 full of hints of petty sharp practice towards the red 
 man, suggestive of the artful ways of our own Hol- 
 landers, who bought beaver-skins by the weight of 
 their feet, and then pressed down upon the scales 
 with all their might. 
 
 The witnesses had mainly been at one time in the 
 employ of the company, and they made the point 
 against it that it imported all its bread (/. c, grain) 
 from England, and neither encouraged planting nor 
 cultivated the soil for itself. But there were several 
 who said that even in August they found the soil 
 still frozen at a depth of two and a half or three feet. 
 Not a man in the service was allowed to trade with 
 the natives outside the forts, or even to speak with 
 them. One fellow was put in irons for going into 
 an Indian's tent ; and there was a witness who had 
 " heard a Governor say he would whip a Man with- 
 out Tryal ; and that the severest Punishment is a 
 Dozen of Lashes." Of course there was no instruct- 
 ing the savages in either English or the Christian 
 religion ; and we read that, though there were twenty- 
 eight Europeans in one factory, " witness never heard 
 Sermon or Prayers there, nor ever heard of any such 
 Thing either before his Time or since." Hunters 
 who offered their services got one-half what they 
 
"A SKIN FOR A SKIN 
 
 153 
 
 shot or trapped, and the captains of vessels kept in 
 the bay were allowed "25 /. per ccnt!^ for all the 
 whalebone they got. 
 
 One witness said : " The method of trade is by a 
 standard set by the Governors. They never lower 
 it, but often double it, so that where the Standard 
 directs i Skin to be taken they generally take Two." 
 Another said he " had been ordered to shorten the 
 measure for Powder, which ought to be a Pound, and 
 that within these 10 Years had been reduced an 
 Ounce or Two." " The Indians made a Noise some- 
 times, and the Company gave them their Furs again." 
 A book-keeper lately in the service said that the com- 
 pany's measures for powder were short, and yet even 
 such measures were not filled above half full. Profits 
 thus made were distinguished as "the overplus trade," 
 and signified what skins were got more than were 
 paid for, but he could not say whether such gains 
 went to the company or to the governor. (As a 
 matter of fact, the factors or governors shared in the 
 company's profits, and were interested in swelling 
 them in every way they could.) 
 
 There was much news of how the French traders 
 got the small furs of martens, foxes, and cats, by in- 
 tercepting the Indians, and leaving them to carry 
 only the coarse furs to the company's forts. A wit- 
 ness "had seen the Indians come down in fine French 
 cloaths, with as much Lace as he ever saw upon any 
 Cloaths whatsoever. He believed if the Company 
 would give as much for the Furs as the French, the 
 Indians would bring them down ;" but the French 
 asked only thirty marten -skins for a gun, whereas 
 
154 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 the company's standard was from thirty-six to forty 
 such skins. Then, again, the company's plan (un- 
 changed to-day) was to take the Indian's furs, and 
 then, being possessed of them, to begin the barter. 
 
 This shouldering the common grief upon the 
 French was not merely the result of the chronic 
 English antipathy to their ancient and their lively 
 foes. The French were swarming all around the 
 outer limits of the company's field, taking first choice 
 of the furs, and even beginning to set up posts of 
 their own. Canada was French soil, and peopled by 
 as hardy and adventurous a class as inhabited any 
 part of America. The coureurs du bois and the bois- 
 irules (half-breeds), whose success afterwards led to 
 the formation of rival companies, had begun a mos- 
 quito warfare, by canoeing the waters that led to 
 Hudson Bay, and had penetrated looo miles farther 
 west than the English. One Thomas Barnett, a 
 smith, said that the French intercepted the Indians, 
 forcing them to trade, " when they take what they 
 please, giving them Toys in Exchange ; and fright 
 them into Compliance by Tricks of Sleight of Hand; 
 from whence the Indians conclude them to be Con- 
 jurers; and if the French did not compel the Indians 
 to trade, they would certainly bring all the Goods to 
 the Englishr 
 
 This must have seemed to the direct, practical 
 English trading mind a wretched business, and wor- 
 thy only of Johnny Crapeau, to worst the noble Brit- 
 on by monkeyish acts 6f conjuring. It stirred the 
 soul of one witness, who said that the way to meet it 
 was " by sending some English with a little Brandy." 
 
"A SKIN FOR A SKIN ' 1 55 
 
 A gallon to certain cliicfs and a c^allon and a half 
 to others would certainly induce the natives to come 
 down and trade, he thought. 
 
 But while the testimony of the English was valu- 
 able as far as it went, which was mainly concerning 
 trade, it was as nothing regarding the life of the na- 
 tives compared with that of one Joseph La France, 
 of Missili-Mackinack (Mackinaw), a traveller, hunter, 
 and trader. He had been sent as a child to Quebec 
 to learn French, and in later years had been from 
 Lake Nipissing to Lake Champlain and the Great 
 Lakes, the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Ouinipigue 
 (Winnipeg) or Red River, and to Hudson Bay. He 
 told his tales to Arthur Dobbs, who made a book of 
 them, and part of that became an appendix to the 
 committee s report. La France said : 
 
 "That the high price on Eu7-opea7i Goods discourages the Natives 
 so much, that if it were not that they are under a Necessity of hav- 
 ing Guns, Powder, Shot, Hatchets, and other Iron Tools for their 
 Hunting, and Tobacco, Brandy, and some Paint for Luxury, they 
 would not go down to the Factory with what they now carry. They 
 leave great numbers of Furs and Skins behind them. A good Hunt- 
 er among the Indians can kill 600 Beavers in a season, and carry 
 down but 100" (because their canoes were small); " the rest he uses 
 at home, or hangs them upon Branches of Trees upon the Death of 
 their Children, as an Offering to them ; or use them for Bedding and 
 Coverings : they sometimes burn off the Fur, and roast the Beavers, 
 like Pigs, upon any Entertainments ; and they often let them rot, 
 having no further Use of them. The Beavers, he says, are of Three 
 Colours — the Brown-reddish Colour, the Black, and the White. The 
 Black is most valued by the Company, and in E/ii^land ; the White, 
 though most valued in Canada, is blown upon by the Company's 
 Factors at the Bay, they not allowing so much for these as for the 
 others ; and therefore the Indians use them at home, or burn off the 
 Hair, when they roast the Beavers, like Pigs, at an Entertainment 
 when they feast together. The Beavers are delicious Food, but the 
 
156 ON Canada's frontier 
 
 Tongue and Tail the most delicious Parts of the whole. They mul- 
 tiply very fast, and if they can pmpty a Pond, and take the whole 
 Lodge, they generally leave a Pair to breed, so that they are fully 
 stocked again in Two or Three Years. The American Oxen, or 
 Beeves, he says, have a large Bunch upon their backs, which is by 
 far the most delicious Part of them for Food, it being all as sweet as 
 Marrow, juicy and rich, and weighs several Pounds. 
 
 " The Natives are so discouraged in their Trade with the Com- 
 pany that no Peltry is worth the Carriage; and the finest Furs are 
 sold for very little. They gave but a Pound of Gunpowder for 4 
 Beavers, a Fathom of Tobacco for 7 Beavers, a Pound of Shot for i, 
 an Ell of coarse Cloth for 15, a Blanket for 12, Two Fish-hooks or 
 Three Flints for i ; a Gun for 25, a Pistol for 10, a common Hat with 
 white Lace, 7; an Ax, 4; a Billhook, i ; a Gallon of Brandy, 4; a 
 chequer'd Shirt, 7 ; all of which are sold at a monstrous Profit, even 
 to 2000 per Cent. Notwithstanding this discouragement, he com- 
 puted that there were brought to the Factory in 1742, in all, 50,000 
 Beavers and above 9000 Martens. 
 
 " The smaller Game, got by Traps or Snares, are generally the 
 Employment of the Women and Children ; such as the Martens, 
 Squirrels, Cats, Ermines, &c. The Elks, Stags, Rein - Deer, Bears, 
 Tygers, wild Beeves, Wolves, Foxes, Beavers, Otters, Corcajeu, &c., 
 are the employment of the Men. The Indiaiis, when they kill any 
 Game for Food, leave it where they kill it, and send their wives next 
 Day to carry it home. They go home in a direct Line, never miss- 
 ing their way, by observations they make of the Course they take 
 upon their going out. The Trees all bend towards the South, and 
 the Branches on that Side are larger and stronger than on the North 
 Side ; as also the Moss upon the Trees. To let their Wives know 
 how to come at the killed Game, they from Place to Place break ofif 
 Branches and lay them in the Road, pointing them the Way they 
 should go, and sometimes Moss ; so that they never miss finding it. 
 
 " In Winter, when they go abroad, which they must do in all 
 Weathers, before they dress, they rub themselves all over with Bears 
 Greaze or Oil of Beavers, which does not freeze ; and also rub all the 
 Fur of their Beaver Coats, and then put them on ; they have also a 
 kind of Boots or Stockings of Beaver's Skin, well oiled, with the 
 Fur inwards ; and above them they have an oiled Skin laced about 
 their Feet, which keeps out the Cold, and also Water ; and by this 
 means they never freeze, nor suffer anything by Cold. In Summer, 
 also, when they go naked, they rub themselves with these Oils or 
 Grease, and expose themselves to the Sun without being scorched. 
 
"A SKIN FOR A SKIN 1 57 
 
 their Skins always being kept soft and supple by it; nor do any 
 Flies, Bugs, or Musketoes, or any noxious Insect, ever molest them. 
 When they want to get rid of it, they go into the Water, and rub 
 themselves all over with Mud or Clay, and let it dry upon them, and 
 then rub it off; but whenever they are free from the Oil, the Flies 
 and Musketoes immediately attack them, and oblige them again to 
 anoint themselves. They are much afraid of the wild Humble Bee, 
 they going naked in Summer, that they avoid them as much as they 
 can. They use no Milk from the time they are weaned, and they all 
 hate to taste Cheese, having taken up an Opinion that it is made of 
 Dead Mens Fat. They love Prunes and Raisins, and will give a 
 Beaver-skin for Twelve of them, to carry to their Children ; and also 
 for a Trump or Jew's Harp. The Women have all fine Voices, but 
 have never heard any Musical Instrument. They are very fond of all 
 Kinds of Pictures or Prints, giving a Beaver for the least Print ; and 
 all Toys are like Jewels to them." 
 
 He reported that " the Indians west of Hudson's 
 Bay Kve an erratic Life, and can have no Benefit by 
 tame Fowl or Cattle. They seldom stay above a 
 Fortnight in a Place, unless they find Plenty of 
 Game. After having built their Hut, they disperse 
 to get Game for their Food, and meet again at Night 
 after having killed enough to maintain them for that 
 Day. When they find Scarcity of Game, they remove 
 a League or Two farther; and thus they traverse 
 through woody Countries and Bogs, scarce missing 
 One Day, Winter or Summer, fair or foul, in the 
 greatest Storms of Snow." 
 
 It has been often said that the great Peace River, 
 which rises in British Columbia and flows through 
 a pass in the Rocky Mountains into the northern 
 plains, was named "the Unchaga," or Peace, "be- 
 cause "(to quote Captain W. F". Butler) "of the stub- 
 born resistance offered by the all-conquering Crees, 
 which induced that warlike tribe to make peace on 
 
158 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 the banks of the river, and leave at rest the beaver- 
 hunters " — that is, the Beaver tribe — upon the river's 
 banks. There is a sentence in La France s story 
 that intimates a more probable and lasting reason 
 for the name. He says that some Indians in the 
 southern centre of Canada sent frequently to the 
 Indians alonor some river near the mountains " with 
 presents, to confirm the peace with them." The 
 story is shadowy, of course, and yet La France, in 
 the same narrative, gave other information which 
 proved to be correct, and none which proved ridicu- 
 lous. We know that there were "all-conquering" 
 Crees, but there were also inferior ones called the 
 Swampies, and there were others of only intermediate 
 valor. As for the Beavers, Captain Butler himself 
 offers other proof of their mettle besides their " stub- 
 born resistance." He says that on one occasion a 
 young Beaver chief shot the dog of another brave in 
 the Beaver camp. A hundred bows were instantly 
 drawn, and ere night eighty of the best men of the 
 tribe lay dead. There was a parley, and it was re- 
 solved that the chief who slew the dog should leave 
 the tribe, and take his friends with him. A century 
 later a Beaver Indian, travelling with a white man, 
 heard his own tongue spoken by men among the 
 Blackfeet near our border. They were the Sarcis, 
 descendants of the exiled band of Beavers. They 
 had become the most reckless and valorous members 
 of the warlike Blackfeet confederacy. 
 
 La France said that the nations who " go up the 
 river " with presents, to confirm the peace with cer- 
 tain Indians, were three months in going, and that 
 
COUREUR DU BOIS 
 
 the Indians in question live beyond a range of 
 mountains beyond the Assiniboins (a plains tribe). 
 Then he goes on to say that still farther beyond those 
 Indians " are nations who have not the use of fire- 
 arms, by which many of them are made slaves and 
 sold " — to the Assiniboins and others. These are 
 plainly the Pacific coast Indians. And even so long 
 ago as that (about 1 740), half a century before Mac- 
 
i6o ON Canada's frontier 
 
 kenzie and Vancouver ;net on the Pacific coast, La 
 France had told the story of an Indian who had gone 
 at the head of a band of thirty braves and their fam- 
 ihes to make war on the Flatheads " on the Western 
 Ocean of America." They were from autumn until 
 the next April in making the journey, and they "saw 
 many Black Fish spouting up in the sea." It was a 
 case of what the Irish call " spoiling for a fight," for 
 they had to journey 1500 miles to meet "enemies" 
 whom they never had seen, and who were peaceful, 
 and inhabited more or less permanent villages. The 
 plainsmen got more than they sought. They attacked 
 a village, were outnumbered, and lost half their force, 
 besides having several of their men wounded. On 
 the way back all except the m.an who told the story 
 died of fatiorue and famine. 
 
 The journeys which Indians made in their wildest 
 period were tremendous. Far up in the wilderness 
 of British America there are legends of visits by the 
 Iroquois. The Blackfeet believe that their progen- 
 itors roamed as far south as Mexico for horses, and 
 the Crees of the plains evinced a correct knov/ledge 
 of the country that lay beyond the Rocky Mountains 
 in their conversations with the first whites who traded 
 with them. Yet those white men, the founders of an 
 organized fur trade, clunq- to the scene of their first 
 operations for more than one hundred years, while 
 the bravest of their more enterprising rivals in the 
 Northwest Company only reached the Pacific, with 
 the aid of eight Iroquois braves, 120 years after the 
 English king chartered the senior company ! The 
 French were the true Yankees of that country. 
 
"a skin for a skin i6r 
 
 They and their half-breeds were always in the van as 
 explorers and traders, and as early as 1731 M. Va- 
 rennes de la Verandrye, licensed by the Canadian 
 Government as a trader, penetrated the West as far 
 as the Rockies, leading Sir Alexander Mackenzie to 
 that extent by more than sixty years. 
 
 But to return to the first serious trouble the Hud- 
 son Bay Company met. The investigation of its 
 affairs by Parliament produced nothing more than 
 the picture I have presented. The committee re- 
 ported that if the original charter bred a monopoly, 
 it would not help matters to give the same privileges 
 to others. As the questioned legality of the charter 
 was not competently adjudicated upon, they would 
 not allow another company to invade the premises of 
 the older one. 
 
 At this time the great company still hugged the 
 shores of the bay, fearing the Indians, the half-breeds, 
 and the French. Their posts were only six in all, 
 and were mainly fortified with palisaded enclosures, 
 with howitzers and swivels, and with men trained to 
 the use of guns. Moose Fort and the East Main 
 factory were on either side of James Bay, Forts Al- 
 bany, York, and Prince of Wales followed up the 
 west coast, and Henley was the southernmost and 
 most inland of all, being on Moose River, a tributary 
 of James Bay. The French at first traded beyond 
 the field of Hudson Bay operations, and their castles 
 were their canoes. But when their great profits and 
 familiarity with the trade tempted the thrifty French 
 capitalists and enterprising Scotch merchants of 
 Montreal into the formation of the rv^jfil Northwest 
 
i62 ON Canada's frontier 
 
 Trading Company in 1783, fixed trading-posts be- 
 gan to be established all over the Prince Rupert's 
 Land, and even beyond the Rocky Mountains in 
 British Columbia. By 18 18 there were about forty 
 Northwest posts as against about two dozen Hudson 
 Bay factories. The new company not only disputed 
 but ignored the chartered rights of the old company, 
 holding that the charter had not been sanctioned by 
 Parliament, and was in every way unconstitutional as 
 creative of a monopoly. Their French partners and 
 engages shared this feeling, especially as the French 
 crown had been first in the field with a royal charter. 
 Growing bolder and bolder, the Northwest Company 
 resolved to drive the Hudson Bay Company to a 
 legal test of their rights, and so in 1803-4 they es- 
 tablished a Northwest fort under the eyes of the old 
 company on the shores of Hudson Bay, and fitted 
 out ships to trade with the natives in the strait. But 
 the Englishmen did not accept the challenge; for the 
 truth was they had their own doubts of the strength 
 of their charter. 
 
 They pursued a different and for them an equally 
 bold course. That hard-headed old nobleman the 
 fifth Earl of Selkirk came uppermost in the company 
 as the engineer of a plan of colonization. There was 
 plenty of land, and some wholesale evictions of High- 
 landers in Sutherlandshire, Scotland, had rendered a 
 great force of hardy men homeless. Selkirk saw in 
 this situation a chance to play a long but certainly 
 triumphant game with his rivals. His plan was to 
 plant a colony which should produce grain and 
 horses and men for the old company, saving the im- 
 
"a skin for a skin" 165 
 
 portation of all three, and building up not only a 
 nursery for men to match the coureurs du bois, but a 
 stronghold and a seat of a future government in the 
 Hudson Bay interest. Thus was ushered in a new 
 and important era in Canadian history. It was the 
 opening of that part of Canada; by a loop-hole rather 
 than a door, to be sure. 
 
 Lord Selkirk's was a practical soul. On one occa- 
 sion in animadverting against the Northwest Com- 
 pany he spoke of them contemptuously as fur-traders, 
 yet he was the chief of all fur-traders, and had been 
 known to barter with an Indian himself at one of the 
 forts for a fur. He held up the opposition to the 
 scorn of the world as profiting upon the weakness of 
 the Indians by giving them alcohol, yet he ordered 
 distilleries set up in his colony afterwards, saying, 
 " We grant the trade is iniquitous, but if we don't 
 carry it on others will ; so we may as well put the 
 guineas in our own pockets." But he was the man 
 of the moment, if not for it. His scheme of coloni- 
 zation was born of desperation on one side and dis- 
 tress on the other. It was pursued amid terrible 
 hardship, and against incessant violence. It was 
 consummated through bloodshed. The story is as 
 interesting as it is important. The facts are ob- 
 tained mainly from " Papers relating to the Red 
 River Settlement, ordered to be printed by the 
 House of Commons, July 12, 18 19." Lord Selkirk 
 owned 40,000 of the ^105,000 (or shares) of the 
 Hudson Bay Company; therefore, since 25,000 were 
 held by women and children, he held half of all that 
 carried votes. He got from the cpmpany a grant of 
 
1 66 ON Canada's frontier 
 
 a large tract around what is now Winnipeg, to form 
 an agricultural settlement for supplying the com- 
 pany's posts with provisions. We have seen how 
 little disposed its officers were to open the land to 
 settlers, or to test its agricultural capacities. No one, 
 therefore, will wonder that when this grant was made 
 several members of the governing committee re- 
 signed. But a queer development of the moment 
 was a strong opposition from holders of Hudson Bay 
 stock who were also owners in that company's great 
 rival, the Northwest Company. Since the enemy 
 persisted in prospering at the expense of the old 
 company, the moneyed men of the senior corporation 
 had taken stock of their rivals. These doubly inter- 
 ested persons were also in London, so that the 
 Northwest Company was no longer purely Canadian. 
 The opponents within the Hudson Bay Company de- 
 clared civilization to be at all times unfavorable to 
 the fur trade, and the Northwest people argued that 
 the colony would form a nursery for servants of the 
 Bay Company, enabling them to oppose the North- 
 west Company more effectually, as well as affording 
 such facilities for new-comers as must destroy their 
 own monopoly. The Northwest Company denied 
 the legality of the charter rights of the Hudson Bay 
 Company because Parliament had not confirmed 
 Charles II.'s charter. 
 
 The colonists came, and were met by Miles Mc- 
 Donnell, an ex - captain of Canadian volunteers, as 
 Lord Selkirk's agent. The immigrants landed on the 
 shore of Hudson Bay, and passed a forlorn winter. 
 They met some of. the Northwest Company's people 
 
"a skin for a skin 169 
 
 under Alexander McDonnell, a cousin and brotlier-in- 
 law to Miles McDonnell. Although Captain Miles 
 read the grant to Selkirk in token of his sole right to 
 the land, the settlers were hospitably received and 
 well treated by the Northwest people. The settlers 
 reached the place of colonization in August, 181 2. 
 This place is what was known as Fort Garry until 
 Winnipeg was built. It was at first called "the 
 Forks of the Red River," because the Assiniboin 
 there joined the Red. Lord Selkirk outlined his 
 policy at the time in a letter in which he bade Miles 
 McDonnell give the Northwest people solemn warn- 
 ing that the lands were Hudson Bay property, and 
 they must remove from them ; that they must not 
 fish, and that if they did their nets were to be 
 seized, their buildings were to be destroyed, and 
 they were to be treated " as you would poachers in 
 England." 
 
 The trouble began at once. Miles accused Alex- 
 ander of trying to inveigle colonists away from him. 
 He trained his men in the use of guns, and uniformed 
 a number of them. He forbade the exportation of 
 any supplies from the country, and when some North- 
 west men came to get baffalo meat they had hung 
 on racks in the open air, according to the custom of 
 the country, he sent armed men to send the others 
 away. He intercepted a band of Northwest canoe- 
 men, stationing men with guns and with two field- 
 pieces on the river ; and he sent to a Northwest 
 post lower down the river demanding the provisions 
 stored there, which, when they were refused, were 
 taken by force, the door being smashed in. For 
 
170 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 this a Hudson Bay clerk was arrested, and Captain 
 Miles's men went to the rescue. Two armed forces 
 met, but happily slaughter was averted. Miles Mc- 
 Donnell justified his course on the ground that the 
 colonists were distressed by need of food. It tran- 
 spired at the time that one of his men while 
 making cartridges for a cannon remarked that he 
 was making them " for those Northwest ras- 
 cals. They have run too long, and shall run no 
 longer." After this Captain Miles ordered the stop- 
 page of all buffalo -hunting on horseback, as the 
 practice kept the buffalo at a distance, and drove 
 them into the Sioux country, where the local Indians 
 dared not go. 
 
 But though Captain McDonnell was aggressive 
 and vexatious, the Northwest Company's people, who 
 had begun the mischief, even in London, were not 
 now passive. They relied on setting the half-breeds 
 and Indians against the colonists. They urged that 
 the colonists had stolen Indian real estate in settling 
 on the land, and that in time every Indian would starve 
 as a consequence. At the forty-fifth annual meeting 
 of the Northwest Company's officers, August, 1814^ 
 Alexander McDonnell said, " Nothing but the com- 
 plete downfall of the colony will satisfy some, by fair 
 or foul means — a most desirable object, if it can be 
 accomplished ; so here is at it with all my heart and 
 energy." In October, 18 14, Captain McDonnell or- 
 dered the Northwest Company to remove from the 
 territory within six months. 
 
 The Indians, first and last, were the friends of 
 the colonists. They were befriended by the whites. 
 
"a skin for a skin 
 
 171 
 
 and in turn they 
 cfave them suc- 
 cor when famine 
 fell upon them. 
 Many of Cap- 
 tain Miles Mc- 
 Donnell's orders 
 were in their in- 
 terest, and they 
 knew it. Ka- 
 t a w a b e t a y, a 
 chief, was tempt- 
 ed with a big 
 prize to destroy 
 the settlement. 
 He refused. On 
 the opening of 
 navigation in 
 181 5 chiefs were 
 bidden from the 
 country around 
 to visit the 
 Northwest fac- 
 tors, and were by 
 them asked to 
 destroy the col- 
 ony. Not only 
 
 did they decline, but they hastened to Captain Miles 
 McDonnell to acquaint him with the plot. Duncan 
 Cameron now appears foremost among the North- 
 west Company's agents, being in charge of that com- 
 pany's post on the Red River, in the Selkirk grant. 
 
 THE INDIAN HUNTER OF 175O 
 
172 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 He told the chiefs that if they took the part of the 
 colonists " their camp- fires should be totally extin- 
 ofuished." When Cameron caus^ht one of his own 
 servants doing a trifling service for Captain Miles 
 McDonnell, he sent him upon a journey for which 
 every engage of the Northwest Company bound him- 
 self liable in joining the company; that was to make 
 the trip to Mo ntreal, a voyage held in terrorem over 
 €very servant of the corporation. More than that, 
 he confiscated four horses and a wagon belonging 
 to this man, and charged him on the company's books 
 with the sum of 800 livres for an Indian squaw, whom 
 the man had been told he was to have as his slave 
 for a present. 
 
 But though the Indians held aloof from the great 
 and cruel conspiracy, the half-breeds readily joined 
 in it. They treated Captain McDonnell's orders 
 with contempt, and arrested one of the Hudson Bay 
 men as a spy upon their hunting with horses. There 
 lived along the Red River, near the colony, about 
 thirty Canadians and seventy half-breeds, born of 
 Indian squaws and the servants or officers of the 
 Northwest Company. One -quarter of the number 
 of " breeds " could read and write, and were fit to 
 serve as clerks ; the rest were literally half savage, 
 and were employed as hunters, canoe-men, " packers " 
 (freighters), and guides. They were naturally inclined 
 to side with the Northwest Company, and in time 
 that corporation sowed dissension among the colo- 
 nists themselves, picturing to them exaggerated dan- 
 ger from the Indians, and offering them free pas- 
 sage to Canada. They paid at least one of the lead- 
 
INDIAN HUNTER HANGING DEER OUT OF THE REACH OK WOLVES 
 
'A SKIN FOR A SKIN 
 
 175 
 
 ing colonists ^100 for furthering discontent in the 
 settlement, and four deserters from the colony stole 
 all the Hudson Bay field-pieces, iron swivels, and the 
 howitzer. There was constant irritation and friction 
 between the factions. In an affray far up at Isle-a-la- 
 Crosse a man was killed on either side. Half-breeds 
 came past the colony singing war-songs, and notices 
 were posted around Fort Garry reading, "Peace with 
 all the world except in Red River." The Northwest 
 people demanded the surrender of Captain McDon- 
 nell that he might be tried on their charges, and on 
 June II, 1815, a band of men fired on the colonial 
 buildings. The captain afterwards surrendered him- 
 self, and the remnant of the colony, thirteen families, 
 went to the head of Lake Winnipeg. The half, 
 breeds burned the buildings, and divided the horses 
 and effects. 
 
 But in the autumn all came back with Colin Rob- 
 ertson, of the Bay Company, and twenty clerks and 
 servants. These were joined by Governor Robert 
 Semple, who brought 160 settlers from Scotland. 
 Semple was a man of consequence at home, a great 
 traveller, and the author of a book on travels in 
 Spain.* But he came in no conciliatory mood, and 
 the foment was kept up. The Northwest Company 
 
 * I am indebted to Mr. Matthew Semple, of Philadelphia, a grand- 
 nephew of the murdered Governor, for further facts about that hero. 
 He led a life of travel and adventure, spiced with almost romantic 
 happenings. He wrote ten books: records of travel and one novel. 
 His parents were passengers on an English vessel which was capt- 
 ured by the Americans in 1776, and brought to Boston, Mass., where 
 he was born on February 26, 1777. He was therefore only 39 years 
 of age when he was slain. His portrait, now in Philadelphia, shows 
 him to have been a man of striking and handsome appearance. 
 
176 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 tried to starve the colonists, and Governor Semple 
 destroyed the enemy's 'fort below Fort Garry. Then 
 came the end — a decisive battle and massacre. 
 
 Sixty -five men on horses, and with some carts, 
 were sent by Alexander McDonnell, of the North- 
 west Company, up the river towards the colony. 
 They were led by Cuthbert Grant, and included six 
 Canadians, four Indians, and fifty -four half-breeds. 
 It was afterwards said they went on innocent busi- 
 ness, but every man was armed, and the " breeds " 
 were naked, and painted all over to look like Ind- 
 ians. They got their paint of the Northwest offi- 
 cers. Moreover, there had been rumors that the col- 
 onists were to be driven away, and that " the land 
 was to be drenched with blood." It was on June 19, 
 18 1 6, that runners notified the colony that the others 
 were coming. Semple was at Fort Douglas, near 
 Fort Garry. When apprised of the close approach 
 of his assailants, the Governor seems not to have ap- 
 preciated his danger, for he said, " We must go and 
 meet those people ; let twenty men follow me." He 
 put on his cocked hat and sash, his pistols, and shoul- 
 dered his double-barrelled fowling-piece. The others 
 carried a wretched lot of guns — some with the locks 
 gone, and many that were useless. It was marshy 
 ground, and they straggled on in loose order. They 
 met an old soldier who had served in the army at 
 home, and who said the enemy was very numerous, 
 and that the Governor had better bring along his two 
 field-pieces. 
 
 " No, no," said the Governor ; " there is no occasion. 
 I am only going to speak to them." 
 
'A SKIN FOR A SKIN 
 
 177 
 
 Nevertheless, after a moment's reflection, lie did 
 send back for one of the great guns, saying it was 
 well to have it in case of need. They halted a short 
 time for the cannon, and then perceived the North- 
 west party pressing towards them on their horses. 
 By a common impulse the Governor and his follow- 
 ers began a retreat, walking backwards, and at the 
 same time spreading out a single line to present a 
 longer front. The enemy continued to advance at a 
 hand-gallop. From out among them rode a Cana- 
 dian named Boucher, the rest formino; a half-moon 
 behind him. Waving his hand in an insolent way 
 to the Governor, Boucher called out, " What do you 
 want .f*" 
 
 MAKING THE SNOW-SHOE 
 
178 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 " What do jyou want?" said Governor Semple. 
 
 " We want our forf," said Boucher, meaning the 
 fort Semple had destroyed. 
 
 " Go to your fort," said the Governor. 
 
 "Why did you destroy our fort, you rascal?" Bou- 
 cher demanded. 
 
 " Scoundrel, do you tell me so ?" the Governor re- 
 plied, and ordered the man's arrest. 
 
 Some say he caught at Boucher's gun. But Bou- 
 cher slipped off his horse, and on the instant a gun 
 was fired, and a Hudson Bay clerk fell dead. An- 
 other shot wounded Governor Semple, and he called 
 to his followers, 
 
 " Do what you can to take care of yourselves." 
 
 Then there was a volley from the Northwest force, 
 and with the clearing of the smoke it looked as 
 though all the Governor's party were killed or wound- 
 ed. Instead of taking care of themselves, they had 
 rallied around their wounded leader. Captain Rog- 
 ers, of the Governor's party, who had fallen, rose to 
 his feet, and ran towards the enemy crying for mercy 
 in English and broken French, when Thomas McKay, 
 a "breed "and Northwest clerk, shot him through the 
 head, another cutting his body open with a knife. 
 
 Cuthbert Grant (who, it was charged, had shot 
 Governor Semple) now went to the Governor, while 
 the others despatched the wounded. 
 
 Semple said, "Are you not Mr. Grant?" 
 
 " Yes," said the other. 
 
 " I am not mortally wounded," said the Governor, 
 " and if you could get me conveyed to the fort, I 
 think I should live." 
 
"a skin for a skin 179 
 
 But when Grant left his side an Indian named 
 Ma-chi-ca-taou shot him, some say through the breast, 
 and some have it that he put a pistol to the Govern- 
 or's head. Grant could not stop the savages. The 
 bloodshed had crazed them. They slaughtered all 
 the wounded, and, worse yet, they terribly maltreated 
 the bodies. Twenty-two Hudson Bay men were killed, 
 and one on the other side was wounded. 
 
 There is a story that Alexander McDonnell shout- 
 ed for joy when he heard the news of the massacre. 
 One witness, who did not hear him shout, reports 
 that he exclaimed to his friends : " Sacre noiu de 
 Dieti! Bonnes nonvellcs ; vingt-detix Anglais hies f 
 
 ( ! Good news; twenty-two English slain!) It 
 
 was afterwards alleged that the slaughter was ap- 
 proved by every oflficer of the Northwest Company 
 whose comments were recorded. 
 
 It is a saying up in that country that twenty-six 
 out of the sixty-five in the attacking party died vio- 
 lent deaths. The record is only valuable as indicat- 
 ing the nature and perils of the lives the hunters and 
 half-breeds led. First, a Frenchman dropped dead 
 while crossing the ice on the river, his son was 
 stabbed by a comrade, his wife was shot, and his 
 children were burned ; " Big Head," his brother, was 
 shot by an Indian; Coutonohais dropped dead at a 
 dance ; Battosh was mysteriously shot ; Lavigne was 
 drowned ; Fraser was run through the body by a 
 Frenchman in Paris; Baptiste Moralle, while drunk, 
 was thrown into q, fire by inebriated companions and 
 burned to death; another died drunk on a roadway; 
 another was wounded by the bursting of his gun ; 
 
iSO ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 small-pox took the eleventh ; Duplicis was empaled 
 upon a hay-fork, on which he jumped from a hay- 
 stack; Parisien was shot, by a person unknown, in a 
 buffalo-hunt; another lost his arm by carelessness; 
 Gardapie, " the brave," was scalped and shot by the 
 Sioux ; so was Vallee ; Ka-te-tee-goose was scalped 
 and cut in pieces by the Gros-Ventres ; Pe-me-can- 
 toss was thrown in a hole by his people ; and another 
 Indian and his wife and children were killed by 
 liglitning. Yet another was gored to death by a 
 buffalo. The rest of the twenty-six died by being 
 frozen, by drowning, by drunkenness, or by shameful 
 disease. 
 
 It is when things are at their worst that they be- 
 gin to mend, says a silly old proverb; but when his- 
 tory is studied these desperate situations often seem 
 part of the mending, not of themselves, but of the 
 broken cause of progress. There was a little halt 
 here in Canada, as we shall see, but the seed of settle- 
 ment had been planted, and thenceforth continued to 
 grow. Lord Selkirk came with all speed, reaching 
 Canada in 1817. It was now an English colony, 
 and when he asked for a body-guard, the Government 
 save him two sergeants and twelve soldiers of the 
 Reoiment de Meuron. He made these the nucleus 
 of a considerable force of Swiss and Germans who 
 had formerly served in that regiment, and he pursued 
 a triumphal progress to what he called his territory 
 of Assiniboin, capturing all the Northwest Company's 
 forts on the route, imprisoning the of^cers, and send- 
 ing to jail in Canada all the accessaries to the mas- 
 sacre, on charges of arson, murder, robbery, and " high 
 
A HUDSON BAY MAN (QUARTER-BREED) 
 
 misdemeanors." Such was the prejudice against the 
 Hudson Ba)' Company and the regard for the home 
 corporation that nearly all were acquitted, and suits 
 for very heavy damages were lodged against him. 
 
 Selkirk sought to treat with the Indians for his 
 land, which they said belonged to the Chippeways 
 and the Crees. Five chiefs were found whose rio^ht 
 to treat was acknowledged by all. On July iS, 1817, 
 they deeded the territory to the King, " for the bene- 
 fit of Lord Selkirk," giving him a strip two miles 
 wide on either side of the Red River from Lake 
 
1 82 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 Winnipeg to Red Lake, north of the United States 
 boundar3^ and along the' Assiniboin from Fort Garry 
 to the Muskrat River, as well as within two circles 
 of six miles radius around Fort Garry and Pembina, 
 now in Dakota. Indians do not know what miles 
 are; they measure distance by the movement of the 
 sun while on a journey. They determined two miles 
 in this case to be "as far as you can see daylight 
 under a horses belly on the level prairie." On 
 account of Selkirk's liberality they dubbed him " the 
 silver chief." He agreed to give them for the land 
 200 pounds of tobacco a year. He named his settle- 
 ment Kildonan, after that place in Helmsdale, Suther- 
 landshire, Scotland. He died in 182 1, and in 1836 
 the Hudson Bay Company bought the land back 
 from his heirs for ^84,000. The Swiss and Ger- 
 mans of his regiment remained, and many retired 
 servants of the company bought and settled there, 
 forming the aristocracy of the place — a queer aris- 
 tocracy to our minds, for many of the women were 
 Indian squaws, and the children were " breeds." 
 
 Through the perseverance and tact of the Right 
 Hon. Edward Ellice, to whom the Government had 
 appealed, all differences between the two great fur- 
 trading companies were adjusted, and in 182 1 a 
 coalition was formed. At Ellice's suggestion the 
 giant combination then got from Parliament exclu- 
 sive privileges beyond the waters that flow into 
 Hudson Bay, over the Rocky Mountains and to the 
 Pacific, for a term of twenty years. These extra 
 privileges were surrendered in 1838, and were re- 
 newed for twenty-one years longer, to be revoked, so 
 
"a skin for a skin 183 
 
 far as British Columbia (then New Caledonia) was 
 concerned, in 1858. That territory then became a 
 crown colony, and it and Vancouver Island, which 
 had taken on a colonial character at the time of the 
 California gold fever (1849), were united in 1866. The 
 extra privileges of the fur-traders were therefore not 
 again renewed. In 1868, after the establishment of 
 the Canadian union, whatever presumptive rights 
 the Hudson Bay Company got under Charles II.'s 
 charter were vacated in consideration of a payment 
 by Canada of $1,500,000 cash, one- twentieth of all 
 surveyed lands within the fertile belt, and 50,000 
 acres surrounding the company's posts. It is es- 
 timated that the land grant amounts to 7,000,000 
 of acres, worth $20,000,000, exclusive of all town 
 sites. 
 
 Thus we reach the present condition of the com- 
 pany, more than 220 years old, maintaining 200 cen- 
 tral posts and unnumbered dependent ones, and trad- 
 ing in Labrador on the Atlantic; at Massett, on Queen 
 Charlotte Island, in the Pacific ; and deep within the 
 Arctic Circle in the north. The company was new- 
 ly capitalized not long ago with 100,000 shares at 
 ^20 ($10,000,000), but, in addition to its dividends, it 
 has paid back £'] in every ^20, reducing its capital 
 to ^1,300,000. The stock, however, is quoted at its 
 original value. The supreme control of the company 
 is vested in a governor, deputy governor, and five 
 directors, elected by the stockholders in London. 
 They delegate their powers to an executive resident 
 in this country, who was until lately called the " Gov- 
 ernor of Rupert s Land," but now is styled the chief 
 
l84 ON CANADAS FRONTIER 
 
 commissioner, and is in absolute charge of the com- 
 pany and all its operations. His term of office is un- 
 limited. The present head of the corporation, or 
 governor, is Sir Donald A, Smith, one of the fore- 
 most spirits in Canada, who worked his way up 
 from a clerkship in the company. The business of 
 the company is managed on the outfit system, the 
 most old-fogyish, yet by its officers declared to be 
 the most perfect, plan in use by any corporation. 
 The method is to charge against each post all the 
 supplies that are sent to it between June ist and 
 June ist each year, and then to set against this the 
 product of each post in furs and in cash received. It 
 used to take seven years to arrive at the figures for a 
 given year, but, owing to improved means of trans- 
 portation, this is now done in two years. 
 
 Almost wherever you go in the newly settled parts 
 of the Hudson Bay territory you find at least one 
 free-trader's shop set up in rivalry with the old com- 
 pany's post. These are sometimes mere storehouses 
 for the furs, and sometimes they look like, and are 
 partly, general country stores. There can be no 
 doubt that this rivalry is very detrimental to the fur 
 trade from the stand-point of the future. The great 
 company can afford to miss a dividend, and can lose 
 at some points while gaining at others, but the free- 
 traders must profit in every district. The conse- 
 quence is such a reckless destruction of game that 
 the plan adopted by us for our seal-fisheries — the 
 leasehold system — is envied and advocated in Canada. 
 A greater proportion of trapping and an utter un- 
 concern for the destruction of the game at all ages 
 
"a skin for a skin 187 
 
 are now ravaging the wilderness. Many districts 
 return as many furs as they ever yielded, but the 
 quantity is kept up at fearful cost by the extermina- 
 tion of the game. On the other hand, the fortified 
 wall of posts that opposed the development of Can- 
 ada, and sent the surplus population of Europe to the 
 United States, is rid of its palisades and field-pieces, 
 and the main strongholds of the ancient company 
 and its rivals have become cities. The old fort on 
 Vancouver Island is now Victoria ; Fort Edmonton 
 is the seat of law and commerce in the Peace River 
 region ; old Fort William has seen Port Arthur rise 
 by its side ; Fort Garry is Winnipeg ; Calgary, the 
 chief city of Alberta, is on the site of another fort ; 
 and Sault Ste. Marie was once a Northwest post. 
 
 But civilization is still so far off from most of the 
 *' factories," as the company's posts are called, that 
 the day when they shall become cities is in no man's 
 thought or ken. And the communication between 
 the centres and outposts is, like the life of the traders, 
 more nearly like what it was in the old, old days than 
 most of my readers would imagine. My Indian 
 guides were battling with their paddles against the 
 mad current of the Nipigon, above Lake Superior, 
 one day last summer, and I was only a few hours 
 away from Factor Flanagan's post near the great 
 lake, when we came to a portage, and might have 
 imagined from what we saw that time had pushed the 
 hands back on the dial of eternity at least a century. 
 
 Some rapids in the river had to be avoided by the 
 brigade that was being sent with supplies to a post 
 far north at the head of Lake Nipigon. A cumbrous, 
 
l88 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 big-timbered little schooner, like a surf-boat with a 
 sail, and a square-cut bateau had brought the men 
 and goods to the " carry." The men were half-breeds 
 as of old, and had brought along their women and 
 children to inhabit a camp of smoky tents that we 
 espied on a bluff close by ; a typical camp, with the 
 blankets hung on the bushes, the slatternly women 
 and half-naked children squatting or running about, 
 and smudge fires smoking between the tents to drive 
 off mosquitoes and flies. The men were in groups 
 below on the trail, at the water-side end of which were 
 the boats' cargoes of shingles and flour and bacon 
 and shot and powder in kegs, wrapped, two at a time, 
 in rawhide. They were dark-skinned, short, spare 
 men, without a surplus pound of flesh in the crew, 
 and with longish coarse black hair and straggling 
 beards. Each man carried a tump-line, or long stout 
 strap, which he tied in such a way around what he 
 meant to carry that a broad part of the strap fitted 
 over the crown of his head. Thus they " packed " 
 the goods over the portage, their heads sustaining 
 the loads, and their backs merely steadying them. 
 When one had thrown his burden into place, he 
 trotted off up the trail with springing feet, though 
 the freight was packed so that lOO pounds should 
 form a load. For bravado one carried 200 pounds, 
 and then all the others tried to pack as much, and 
 most succeeded. All agreed that one, the smallest 
 and least muscular-looking one among them, could 
 pack 400 pounds. 
 
 As the men gathered around their " smudge " to 
 talk with my party, it was seen that of all the parts 
 
"a skin for a skin 189 
 
 of the picturesque costume of the voyageur or bois- 
 brtile of old — the capote, the striped shirt, the pipe- 
 tomahawk, plumed hat, gay leggins, belt, and mocca- 
 sins — only the red worsted belt and the moccasins 
 have been retained. These men could recall the 
 day when they had tallow and corn meal for rations, 
 got no tents, and were obliged to carry 200 pounds, 
 lifting one package, and then throwing a second one 
 atop of it without assistance. Now they carry only 
 100 pounds at a time, and have tents and good food 
 given to them. 
 
 We will not follow them, nor meet, as they did, the 
 York boat comins: down from the north with last 
 winter's furs. Instead, I will endeavor to lift the cur- 
 tain from before the great fur country beyond them, 
 to give a glimpse of the habits and conditions that 
 prevail throughout a majestic territory where the 
 rivers and lakes are the only roads, and canoes and 
 dog-sleds are the only vehicles. 
 
VII 
 
 "TALKING MUSQUASH" 
 
 Concluding the sketch of the history and work of the Hudson Bay Company 
 
 THE most sensational bit of " musquash talk " 
 in more than a quarter of a century among 
 the Hudson Bay Company's employe's was started 
 the other day, when Sir Donald A. Smith, the 
 governor of the great trading company, sent a 
 type -written letter to Winnipeg. If a Cree squaw 
 had gone to the trading -shop at .Moose Factory 
 and asked for a bustle and a box of face - powder 
 in exchange for a beaver -skin, the suggestion of 
 changing conditions in the fur trade would have 
 been trifling compared with the sense of instability 
 to which this appearance of machine- writing gave 
 rise. The reader may imagine for himself what a 
 wrench civilization would have gotten if the world 
 had laid down its goose-quills and taken up the type- 
 writer all in one day. And that is precisely what 
 Sir Donald Smith had done. The quill that had 
 served to convey the orders of Alexander Mackenzie 
 had satisfied Sir George Simpson ; and, in our own 
 time, while men like Lord Iddesleigh, Lord Kimber- 
 ley, and Mr. Goschen sat around the candle-lighted 
 table in the board-room of the company in London, 
 quill pens were the only ones at hand. But Sir Don- 
 ald's letter was not only the product of a machine; it 
 
"TALKING musquash" 19I 
 
 contained instructions for the use of the type-writer in 
 the ofifices at Winnipeg, and there was in the letter a 
 protest against illegible manual chirography such as 
 had been received from many factories in the wilder- 
 ness. Talking business in the fur trade has always 
 been called " talking musquash " (musk-rat), and after 
 that letter came the turn taken by that form of talk 
 suo-crested a oeneral fear that from the Arctic to our 
 border and from Labrador to Queen Charlotte's Isl- 
 ands the canvassers for competing machines will be 
 " racing " in all the posts, each to prove that his in- 
 strument can pound out more words in a minute 
 than any other — in those posts where life has hitherto 
 been taken so gently that when one day a factor 
 heard that the battle of Waterloo had been foug^ht 
 and won by the English, he deliberately loaded the 
 best trade gun in the storehouse and went out and 
 fired it into the pulseless woods, although it was two 
 years after the battle, and the disquieted Old World 
 had long known the greater news that Napoleon was 
 caged in St. Helena. The only reassuring note in 
 the "musquash talk" to-day is sounded when the 
 subject of candles is reached. The Governor and 
 committee in London still pursue their deliberations 
 by candlelight. 
 
 But rebellion against their fate is idle, and it is of 
 no avail for the old factors to make the point that 
 Sir Donald found no greater trouble in reading their 
 writing than they encountered when one of his mis- 
 sives had to be deciphered by them. The truth is 
 that the tide of immigration which their ancient mo- 
 nopoly first shunted into the United States is now 
 
192 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 sweeping over their vast territory, and altering more 
 than its face. Not only are the factors aware that 
 the new rule confining them to share in the profits 
 of the fur trade leaves to the mere stockholders far 
 greater returns from land sales and storekeeping, but 
 a great many of them now find village life around 
 their old forts, and railroads close at hand, and Law 
 setting up its officers at their doors, so that in a 
 great part of the territory the romance of the old 
 life, and their authority as well, has fled. 
 
 Less than four years ago I had passed by Ou'Ap 
 pelle without visiting it, but last summer I resolved 
 not to make the mistake again, for it was the last 
 stockaded fort that could be studied without a tire- 
 some and costly journey into the far north. It is on 
 the Fishing Lakes, just beyond Manitoba. But on 
 my way a Hudson Bay officer told me that they had 
 just taken down the stockade in the spring, and that 
 he did not know of a remaining " palisadoe " in all 
 the company's system except one, which, curiously 
 enough, had just been ordered to be put up around 
 Fort Hazleton, on the Skeena River, in northern 
 British Columbia, where some turbulent Indians 
 have been very troublesome, and where whatever 
 civilization there may be in Saturn seems nearer 
 than our own. This one example of the survival of 
 original conditions is far more eloquent of their en- 
 durance than the thoughtless reader would imagine. 
 It is true that there has come a tremendous change 
 in the status and spirit of the company. It is true 
 that its officers are but newly bending to external 
 authority, and that settlers have poured into the 
 
TALKING MUSQUASH 
 
"TALKING musquash" I95 
 
 south with such demands for food, clothes, tools, and 
 weapons as to create within the old corporation one 
 of the largest of shopkeeping companies. Yet to- 
 day, as two centuries ago, the Hudson Bay Company 
 remains the greatest fur -trading association that 
 exists. 
 
 The zone in which Fort Hazleton is situated 
 reaches from ocean to ocean without suffering inva- 
 sion by settlers, and far above it to the Arctic Sea is 
 a grand belt wherein time has made no impress 
 since the first factory was put up there. There and 
 around it is a region, nearly two-thirds the size of 
 the United States, which is as if our country were 
 meagrely dotted with tiny villages at an average dis- 
 tance of five days apart, with no other means of com- 
 munication than canoe or dog train, and with not 
 above a thousand white men in it, and not as many 
 pure-blooded white women as you will find registered 
 at a first-class New York hotel on an ordinary day. 
 The company employs between fifteen hundred and 
 two thousand white men, and I am assuming that 
 half of them are in the fur country. 
 
 We know that for nearly a century the company 
 clung to the shores of Hudson Bay. It will be in- 
 teresting to peep into one of its forts as they were at 
 that time ; it will be amazing to see what a country 
 that bay-shore territory was and is. There and over 
 a vast territory three seasons come in four months — 
 spring in June, summer in July and August, and au- 
 tumn in September.- During the long winter the 
 earth is blanketed deep in snow, and the water is 
 locked beneath ice. Geese, ducks, and smaller birds 
 
196 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 abound as probably they are not seen elsewhere in 
 America, but they either give place to or share the 
 summer with mosquitoes, black-flies, and " bull-dogs " 
 {tabanus) without number, rest, or mercy. For the 
 land around Hudson Bay is a vast level marsh, so 
 wet that York Fort was built on piles, with elevated 
 platforms around the buildings for the men to walk 
 upon. Infrequent bunches of small pines and a litter 
 of stunted swamp -willows dot the level waste, the 
 only considerable timber being found upon the banks 
 of the rivers. There is a wide belt called the Arctic 
 Barrens all along the north, but below that, at some 
 distance west of the bay, the great forests of Canada 
 bridge across the region north of the prairie and the 
 plains, and cross the Rocky Mountains to reach the 
 Pacific. In the far north the musk-ox descends al- 
 most to meet the moose and deer, and on the near 
 slope of the Rockies the wood-buffalo — larger, darker, 
 and fiercer than the bison of the plains, but very like 
 him — still roams as far south as where the buffalo 
 ran highest in the days when he existed. 
 
 Through all this northern country the cold in 
 winter registers 40°, and even 50°, below zero, and 
 the travel is by dogs and sleds. There men in camp 
 may be said to dress to go to bed. They leave their 
 winter's store of dried meat and frozen fish out-of- 
 doors on racks all winter (and so they do down close 
 to Lake Superior); they hear from civilization only 
 twice a year at the utmost ; and when supplies have 
 run out at the posts, w^e have heard of their boiling 
 the parchment sheets they use instead of glass in 
 their windows, and of their cooking the fat out of 
 
"talking musquash 197 
 
 beaver-skins to keep from starving, though beaver is 
 so precious that such recourse could only be had 
 when the horses and dogs had been eaten. As to 
 the value of the beaver, the reader who never has 
 purchased any for his wife may judge what it must 
 be by knowing that the company has long imported 
 buckskin from Labrador to sell to the Chippeways 
 around Lake Nipigon in order that they may not be 
 tempted, as of old, to make thongs and moccasins of 
 the beaver ; for their deer are poor, with skins full of 
 worm-holes, whereas beaver leather is very tough and 
 fine. 
 
 But in spite of the severe cold winters, that are, in 
 fact, common to all the fur territory, winter is the de- 
 lightful season for the traders ; around the bay it is 
 the only endurable season. The winged pests of 
 which I have spoken are by no means confined to 
 the tide-soaked region close to the great inland sea. 
 The whole country is as wet as that orange of which 
 geographers speak when they tell us that the water 
 on the earth's surface is proportioned as if we were 
 to rub a rough orange with a wet cloth. Up in 
 what we used to call British America the illustra- 
 tion is itself illustrated in the countless lakes of all 
 sizes, the innumerable small streams, and the many 
 great rivers that make waterways the roads, as canoes 
 are the wagons, of the region. It is a vast paradise 
 for mosquitoes, and I have been hunted out of fish- 
 ing and hunting grounds by them as far south as the 
 border. The " bull-dog " is a terror reserved for es- 
 pecial districts. He is the Sioux of the insect world, 
 
 as pretty as a warrior in buckskin and beads, but car- 
 13* 
 
198 
 
 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 rying a red-hot sword blade, which, when sheathed in 
 human flesh, will make the victim jump a foot from 
 the ground, though there is no after-pain or itching 
 or swelling from the thrust. 
 
 Having seen the country, let us turn 
 to the forts. Some of them really 
 were forts, in so far as pali- 
 sades and sentry towers 
 and double doors and 
 guns can make a 
 fort, and one 
 twenty 
 
 INDIAN HUNTERS MOVING CAMP 
 
 miles below 
 Winnipeg was 
 fort. It is still 
 When the com- 
 pany ruled the territory as 
 its landlord, the defended 
 
 a stone 
 standinQ;. 
 
"tai.king musquash" 199 
 
 posts were on the plains among the bad Indians, and 
 on the Hudson Bay shore, where vessels of foreign 
 nations might be expected. In the forests, on the 
 lakes and rivers, the character and behavior of the 
 fish-eatins: Indians did not warrant armament. The 
 stockaded forts were nearly all alike. The stock- 
 ade was of timber, of about such a height that a 
 man might look over it on tiptoe. It had towers at 
 the corners, and York Fort had a great " lookout " 
 tower within the enclosure. Within the barricade 
 were the company's buildings, making altogether such 
 a picture as New York presented when the Dutch 
 founded it and called it New Amsterdam, except 
 that we had a church and a stadt-house in our en- 
 closure. The Hudson Ba}^ buildings were some- 
 times arranged in a hollow square, and sometimes in 
 the shape of a letter H, with the factor's house con- 
 necting the two other parts of the character. The 
 factor's house was the best dwelling, but there were 
 many smaller ones for the laborers, mechanics, hunt- 
 ers, and other non-commissioned men. A long, low, 
 whitewashed log -house was apt to be the clerks' 
 house, and other large buildings were the stores 
 where merchandise was kept, the fur -houses where 
 the furs, skins, and pelts were stored, and the Indian 
 trading-house, in which all the bartering was done. 
 A powder-house, ice-house, oil-house, and either a 
 stable or a boat-house for canoes completed the post. 
 All the houses had double doors and windows, and 
 wherever the men lived there was a tremendous 
 stove set up to battle with the cold. 
 
 The abode of jollity was the clerks' house, or bach- 
 
200 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 elors' quarters. Each man had a little bedroom con- 
 taining his chest, a chair, and a bed, with the walls 
 covered with pictures cut from illustrated papers or 
 not, according to each man's taste. The big room 
 or hall, where all met in the long nights and on off 
 days, was as bare as a baldpate so far as its white- 
 washed or timbered walls went, but the table in the 
 middle was littered with pipes, tobacco, papers, books, 
 and pens and ink, and all around stood (or rested on 
 hooks overhead) guns, foils, and fishing-rods. On 
 Wednesdays and Saturdays there was no work in at 
 least one big factory. Breakfast was served at nine 
 o'clock, dinner at one o'clock, and tea at six o'clock. 
 The food varied in different places. All over the 
 prairie and plains great stores of pemmican were 
 kept, and men grew to like it very much, though it 
 was nothing but dried buffalo beef pounded and 
 mixed with melted fat. But where they had pemmi- 
 can they also enjoyed buffalo hunch in the season, 
 and that was the greatest delicacy, except moose muf- 
 fle (the nose of the moose), in all the territory. In 
 the woods and lake country there were venison and 
 moose as well as beaver— which is very good eating 
 — and many sorts of birds, but in that region dried 
 fish (salmon in the west, and lake trout or white-fish 
 nearer the bay) was the staple. The young fellows 
 hunted and fished and smoked and drank and lis- 
 tened to the songs of the voyageurs and the yarns of 
 the " breeds " and Indians. For the rest there was 
 plenty of work to do. 
 
 They had a costume of their own, and, indeed, in 
 that respect there has been a sad change, for all the 
 
SETTING A MINK-TRAP 
 
 people, white, red, and crossed, dressed picturesquely. 
 You could always distinguish a Hudson Bay man by 
 his capote of light blue cloth with brass buttons. In 
 winter they wore as much as a Quebec carter. They 
 wore leather coats lined with flannel, edged with fur, 
 and double-breasted. A scarlet worsted belt went 
 around their waists, their breeches were of smoked 
 buckskin, reaching down to three pairs of blanket 
 socks and moose moccasins, with blue cloth leggins 
 up to the knee. Their buckskin mittens were hung 
 from their necks by a cord, and usually they wrapped 
 a shawl of Scotch plaid around their necks and 
 shoulders, while on each one's head was a fur cap 
 with ear-pieces. 
 
202 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 The French Canadians and " breeds," who were 
 the voyagem's and hunters, made a gay appearance. 
 They used to wear the company's regulation hght 
 blue capotes, or coats, m winter, with flannel shirts, 
 either red or blue, and corduroy trousers gartered at 
 the knee with bead - work. They all wore gaudy 
 worsted belts, long, heavy woollen stockings — cov- 
 ered with gayly- fringed leggins — fancy moccasins, 
 and tuques, or feather -decked hats or caps bound 
 with tinsel bands. In mild weather their costume 
 was formed of a blue striped cotton shirt, corduroys, 
 blue cloth leggins bound with orange ribbons, the in- 
 evitable sash or worsted belt, and moccasins. Every 
 hunter carried a powder-horn slung from his neck, 
 and in his belt a tomahawk, which often served also 
 as a pipe. As late as 1862, Viscount Milton and 
 W. B. Cheadle describe them in a book, The North- 
 west Passage by Land, in the following graphic lan- 
 
 " The men appeared in gaudy array, with beaded fire-bag, gay 
 sash, blue or scarlet leggings, girt below the knee with beaded gar- 
 ters, and moccasins elaborately embroidered. The (half-breed) wom- 
 en were in short, bright-colored skirts, showing richly embroidered 
 leggings and white moccasins of cariboo -skin beautifully worked 
 with flowery patterns in beads, silk, and moose hair." 
 
 The trading-room at an open post was — and is 
 now — like a cross-roads store, having its shelves 
 laden with every imaginable article that Indians 
 like and hunters need — clothes, blankets, files, scalp- 
 knives, gun screws, flints, twine, fire-steels, awls, beads, 
 needles, scissors, knives, pins, kitchen ware, guns, 
 powder, and shot. An Indian who came in with 
 
"talking musquash 203 
 
 furs threw them down, and when they were counted 
 received the right number of castors — Httle pieces of 
 wood which served as money — with which, after the 
 hours of reflection an Indian spends at such a time, 
 he bousfht what he wanted. 
 
 But there was a wide difference between such a 
 trading-room and one in the plains country, or where 
 there were dangerous Indians — such as some of the 
 Crees, and the Chippeways, Blackfeet, Bloods, Sarcis, 
 Sioux, Sicanies, Stonies, and others. In such places 
 the Indians were let in only one or two at a time, 
 the soods were hidden so as not to excite their cu- 
 pidity, and through a square hole grated with a cross 
 of iron, whose spaces were only large enough to pass 
 a blanket, what they wanted was given to them. 
 That is all done away with now, except it be in 
 northern British Columbia, where the Indians have 
 been turbulent. 
 
 Farther on we shall perhaps see a band of Indians 
 on their way to trade at a post. Their custom is to 
 wait until the first signs of spring, and then to pack 
 up their winter's store of furs, and take advantage of 
 the last of the snow and ice for the journey. They 
 hunt from November to May; but the trapping and 
 shooting of bears go on until the 15th of June, for 
 those animals do not come from their winter dens 
 until May begins. They come to the posts in their 
 best attire, and in the old days that formed as strong 
 a contrast to their present dress as their leather 
 tepees of old did to the cotton ones of to-day. Bal- 
 lantyne, who wrote a book about his service with the 
 great fur company, says merely that they were paint- 
 
204 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 ed, and with scalp-locks fringing their clothes; but in 
 Lewis and Clarke's journal we read description after 
 description of the brave costuming of these color-and- 
 ornament- loving people. Take the Sioux, for in- 
 stance. Their heads were shaved of all but a tuft 
 of hair, and feathers hung from that. Instead of 
 the universal blanket of to-day, their main garment 
 was a robe of buffalo-skin with the fur left on, and 
 the inner surface dressed white, painted gaudily with 
 figures of beasts and queer designs, and fringed with 
 porcupine quills. They wore the fur side out only 
 in wet weather. Beneath the robe they wore a shirt 
 of dressed skin, and under that a leather belt, under 
 which the ends of a breech-clout of cloth, blanket 
 stuff, or skin were tucked. They wore leggins of 
 dressed antelope hide with scalp -locks fringing the 
 seams, and prettily beaded moccasins for their feet. 
 They had necklaces of the teeth or claws of wild 
 beasts, and each carried a fire- bag, a quiver, and a 
 brightly painted shield, giving up the quiver and 
 shield when guns came into use. 
 
 The Indians who came to trade were admitted to 
 the store precisely as voters are to the polls under 
 ■the Australian system — one by one. They had to 
 leave their guns outside. When rum was given out, 
 each Indian had to surrender his knife before he got 
 his tin cup. 
 
 The company made great use of the Iroquois, and 
 considered them the best boatmen in Canada. Sir 
 Alexander Mackenzie, of the Northwest Company, 
 employed eight of them to paddle him to the Pacific 
 Ocean by way of the Peace and Fraser rivers, and 
 
"talking musquash" 207 
 
 when the greatest of Hudson Bay executives, Sir 
 George Simpson, travelled, Iroquois always propelled 
 him. The company had a uniform for all its Indian 
 employes — a blue, gray, or blanket capote, very loose, 
 and reaching below the knee, with a red worsted belt 
 around the waist, a cotton shirt, no trousers, but art- 
 fully beaded leggins with wide flaps at the seams, 
 and moccasins over blanket socks. In winter they 
 wore buckskin coats lined with flannel, and mittens 
 were oriven to them. We have seen how the half- 
 breeds were dressed. They were long employed at 
 women's work in the forts, at making clothing and at 
 mending. All the mittens, moccasins, fur caps, deer- 
 skin coats, etc., were made by them. They were also 
 the washer-women. 
 
 Perhaps the factor had a good time in the old 
 days, or thought he did. He had a wife and serv- 
 ants and babies, and when a visitor came, which was 
 not as often as snow-drifts blew over the stockade, 
 he entertained like a lord. At first the factors used 
 to send to London, to the head office, for a wife, to 
 be added to the annual consignment of goods, and 
 there must have been a few who sent to the Orkneys 
 for the sweethearts they left there. But in time the 
 rule came to be that they married Indian squaws. 
 In doing this, not even the first among them acted 
 blindly, for their old rivals and subsequent com- 
 panions of the Northwest and X. Y. companies be- 
 gan the custom, and the French voyageurs and coti- 
 reurs du dots had mated with Indian women before 
 there was a Hudson Bay Company. These rough 
 and hardy woodsmen, and a large number of half- 
 
208 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 breeds born of just such alliances, began at an early- 
 day to settle near the trading-posts. Sometimes they 
 established what might be called villages, but were 
 really close imitations "of Indian camps, composed of 
 a cluster of skin tepees, racks of fish or meat, and a 
 swarm of dogs, women, and children. In each tepee 
 was the fireplace, beneath the flue formed by the 
 open top of the habitation, and around it were the 
 beds of brush, covered with soft hides, the inevitable 
 copper kettle, the babies swaddled in blankets or 
 moss bags, the women and dogs, the gun and paddle, 
 and the junks and strips of raw meat hanging over- 
 head in the smoke. This has not changed to-day ; 
 indeed, very little that I shall speak of has altered in 
 the true or far fur country. The camps exist yet. 
 They are not so clean (or, rather, they are more 
 dirty), and the clothes and food are poorer and harder 
 to get ; that is all. 
 
 The Europeans saw that these women were docile, 
 or were kept in order easily by floggings with the 
 tent poles ; that they were faithful and industrious, as 
 a rule, and that they were not all unprepossessing 
 — from their point of view, of course. Therefore it 
 came to pass that these were the most frequent alli- 
 ances in and out of the posts in all that country. 
 The consequences of this custom were so peculiar 
 and important that I must ask leave to pause and 
 consider them. In Canada we see that the white 
 man thus made his bow to the redskin as a brother 
 in the truest sense. The old courctirs of Norman 
 and Breton stock, loving a wild, free life, and in com- 
 plete sympathy with the Indian, bought or took the 
 
TALKING MUSQUASH 
 
 209 
 
 "^^^"-^ 
 
 squaws to wife, learned the 
 Indian dialects, and shared 
 their food and adventures 
 with the tribes. As more 
 and more entered the wil- 
 derness, and at last came to 
 be supported, in camps and 
 at posts and as voyagctcrs, 
 by the competing fur com- 
 panies, there grew up a class 
 of half - breeds who spoke 
 English and French, mar- 
 ried Indians, and were as 
 much at home with the 
 savages as with the whites. 
 From this stock the Hudson 
 Bay men have had a better 
 choice of wives for more 
 than a century. But when 
 these " breeds " were turbu- 
 lent and murderous — first in 
 the attacks on Selkirk's col- 
 ony, and next during the 
 Riel rebellion — the Indians 
 remained quiet. They de- 
 fined their position when, in 
 18 19, they were tempted 
 with great bribes to massa- 
 cre the Red River colonists. "No," said they; "the 
 colonists are our friends." The men who sousrht to 
 excite them to murder were the officers of the North- 
 west Company, who bought furs of them, to be sure, 
 
 VOYAGEUR OR CANOE -MAN OF 
 GREAT SLAVE LAKE 
 
2IO ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 but the colonists had shared with the Indians in pov- 
 erty and plenty, giving now and taking then. All 
 were alike to the red men — friends, white men, and 
 of the race that had taken so many of their women 
 to wife. Therefore they went to the colonists to tell 
 them what was being planned against them, and not 
 from that day to this has an Indian band taken the 
 war-path against the Canadians. I have read Gen- 
 eral Custer's theory that the United States had to 
 do with meat- eating Indians, whereas the Canadian 
 tribes are largely fish-eaters, and I have seen 10,000 
 references to the better Indian policy of Canada; but 
 I can see no difference in the two policies, and be- 
 tween the Rockies and the Great Lakes I find that 
 Canada had the Stonies, Blackfeet, and many other 
 fierce tribes of buffalo -hunters. It is in the slow, 
 close -growing acquaintance between the two races, 
 and in the just policy of the Hudson Bay men tow- 
 ards the Indians, that I see the reason for Canada's 
 enviable experience with her red men. 
 
 But even the Hudson Bay men have had trouble 
 with the Indians in recent years, and one serious 
 affair orrew out of the relations between the com- 
 pany's servants and the squaws. There is etiquette 
 even among savages, and this was ignored up at old 
 -Fort St. Johns, on the Peace River, with the result 
 that the Indians slaughtered the people there and 
 burned the fort. They were Sicanie Indians of that 
 region, and after they had massacred the men in 
 charge, they met a boat-load of white men coming up 
 the river with goods. To them they turned their 
 guns also, and only four escaped. It was up in that 
 
"talking musquash 213 
 
 country likewise — just this side of the Rocky Mount- 
 ains, where the plains begin to be forested — that a 
 silly clerk in a post quarrelled with an Indian, and 
 said to him, " Before you come back to this post 
 again, your wife and child will be dead." He spoke 
 hastily, and meant nothing, but squaw and pappoose 
 happened to die that winter, and the Indian walked 
 into the fort the next spring and shot the clerk with- 
 out a word. 
 
 To-day the posts are little village-like collections 
 of buildings, usually showing white against a green 
 background in the prettiest way imaginable; for, as 
 a rule, they cluster on the lower bank of a river, or 
 the lower near shore of a lake. There are not clerks 
 €nouQ:h in most of them to render a clerks' house 
 necessary, for at the little posts half-breeds are seen 
 to do as good service as Europeans. As a rule, 
 there is now a store or trading-house and a fur-house 
 and the factor's house, the canoe -house and the 
 stable, with a barn where gardening is done, as is 
 often the case when soil and climate permit. Often 
 the fur-house and store are combined, the furs being 
 laid in the upper story over the shop. There is al- 
 ways a flag-staff, of course. This and the flag, with 
 the letters " H. B. C." on its field, led to the old hunt- 
 ers' saying that the initials stood for " Here before 
 Christ," because, no matter how far away from the 
 frontier a man might go, in regions he fancied no 
 white man had been, that flag and those letters stared 
 him in the face. You will often find that the factor, 
 rid of all the ancient timidity that called for " palisa- 
 does and swivels," lives on the high upper bank above 
 
214 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 the store. The usual half-breed or Indian villa2:e is 
 seldom farther than a couple of miles away, on the 
 same water. The factor is still, as he always has 
 been, responsible only to himself for the discipline 
 and management of his post, and therefore among 
 the factories we will find all sorts of homes — homes 
 where a piano and the magazines are prized, and 
 daughters educated abroad shed the lustre of refine- 
 ment upon their surroundings, homes where no wom- 
 an rules, and homes of the French half-breed type, 
 which we shall see is a very different mould from 
 that of the two sorts of British half-breed that are 
 numerous. There never was a rule by which to 
 gauge a post. In one you found religion valued and 
 missionaries welcomed, while in others there never 
 was sermon or hymn. In some, Hudson Bay rum 
 met the rum of the free-traders, and in others no rum 
 was bartered away. To-day, in this latter respect, 
 the Dominion law prevails, and rum may not be 
 given or sold to the red man. 
 
 When one thinks of the lives of these factors, hid- 
 den away in forest, mountain chain, or plain, or arctic 
 barren, seeing the same very few faces year in and 
 year out, with breaches of the monotonous routine 
 once a year when the winter's furs are brought in, 
 and once a year when the mail-packet arrives — when 
 one thinks of their isolation, and lack of most of 
 those influences which we in our walks prize the 
 highest, the reason for their choosing that company's 
 service seems almost mysterious. Yet they will tell 
 you there is a fascination in it. This could be under- 
 stood so far as the half-breeds and French Canadians 
 
"TALKING MUSQUASH 21 5 
 
 were concerned, for they inherited the liking ; and, 
 after all, though most of them are only laborers, no 
 other laborers are so free, and none spice life with so 
 much of adventure. But the factors are mainly men 
 of ability and good origin, well fitted to occupy re- 
 sponsible positions, and at better salaries. However, 
 from the outset the rule has been that they have be- 
 come as enamoured of the trader's life as soldiers and 
 sailors always have of theirs. They have usually re- 
 tired from it reluctantly, and some, having gone home 
 to Europe, have begged leave to return. 
 
 The company has always been managed upon 
 something like a military basis. Perhaps the original 
 necessity for forts and men trained to the use of arms 
 suggested this. The uniforms were in keeping with 
 the rest. The lowest rank in the service is that of 
 the laborer, who may happen to fish or hunt at times, 
 but is employed — or enlisted, as the fact is, for a 
 term of years — to cut wood, shovel snow, act as a 
 porter or gardener, and labor generally about the 
 post. The interpreter was usually a promoted la- 
 borer, but long ago the men in the trade, Indians 
 and whites alike, met each other half-way in the mat- 
 ter of language. The highest non-commissioned 
 rank in early days was that of the postmaster at large 
 posts. Men of that rank often got charge of small 
 outposts, and we read that they were " on terms of 
 equality with gentlemen." To-day the service has 
 lost these fine points, and the laborers and commis- 
 sioned officers are sharply separated. The so-called 
 " gentleman " begins as a prentice clerk, and after a 
 few years becomes a clerk. His next elevation is to 
 
2i6 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 the rank of a junior chief trader, and so on through 
 the erades of chief trader, factor, and chief factor, to 
 the office of chief commissioner, or resident American 
 manager, chosen by" the London board, and having 
 full powers delegated to him. A clerk — or " dark," 
 as the rank is called — ma}' never touch a pen. He 
 may be a trader. Then again he may be truly an 
 accountant. With the rank he gets a commission, 
 and that entitles him to a minimum guarantee, with 
 a conditional extra income based on the profits of the 
 fur trade. Men get promotions through the chief 
 commissioner, and he has always made fitness, rather 
 than seniority, the criterion. Retiring officers are 
 salaried for a term of years, the original pension fund 
 and system having been broken up. 
 
 Sir Donald A. Smith, the present governor of the 
 company, made his way to the highest post from the 
 place of a prentice clerk. He came from Scotland 
 as a youth, and after a time was so unfortunate as to 
 be sent to the coast of Labrador, where a man is as 
 much out of both the world and contact with the 
 heart of the company as it is possible to be. The 
 military system was felt in that instance; but every 
 man who accepts a commission engages to hold him. 
 self in readiness to go cheerfully to the north pole, or 
 anywhere between Labrador and the Queen Char- 
 lotte Islands. However, to a man of Sir Donald's 
 parts no obstacle is more than a temporary impedi- 
 ment. Though he stayed something like seventeen 
 years in Labrador, he worked faithfully when there 
 was work to do, and in his own time he read and 
 studied voraciously. When the Riel rebellion — the 
 
" TALKING MUSQUASH 
 
 217 
 
 first one — disturbed 
 the country's peace, 
 he appeared on the 
 scene as commissioner 
 for the Government. 
 Next he became chief 
 commissioner for the 
 Hudson Bay Com- 
 pany. After a time he 
 resisfned that office to 
 00 on the board in 
 London, and thence 
 he stepped easily to 
 the governorship. His 
 parents, whose home 
 was in Morayshire, 
 Scotland, gave him at 
 his birth, in 1S21, not 
 only a constitution of 
 iron, but that shrewd- 
 ness which is only 
 
 Scotch, and he afterwards developed remarkable fore- 
 sight, and such a grasp of affairs and of complex sit- 
 uations as to amaze his associates. 
 
 Of course his career is almost as sins^ular as his 
 gifts, and the governorship can scarcely be said to be 
 the goal of the general ambition, for it has been most 
 apt to go to a London man. Even ordinary promo- 
 tion in the company is very slow, and it follows that 
 most men live out their existence between the rank 
 of clerk and that of chief factor. There are 200 cen- 
 tral posts, and innumerable dependent posts, and the 
 
 O 
 
 [f.i"^'' 
 
 pij^i'' 
 
 .a:!' 
 
 VOYAGEUR WITH TUMPLINE 
 
2l8 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 officers are continually travelling from one to an- 
 other, some in their districts, and the chief or super- 
 vising ones over vast reaches of country. In winter, 
 when dogs and sleds are used, the men walk, as a 
 rule, and it has been nothinq- for a man to trudge 
 looo miles in that way on a winter's journey. Rod- 
 erick Macfarlane, who was cut off from the world up 
 in the Mackenzie district, became an indefatigable 
 explorer, and made most of his journeys on snow- 
 shoes. He explored the Peel, the Liard, and the 
 Mackenzie, and their surrounding regions, and went 
 far within the Arctic Circle, where he founded the 
 most northerly post of the company. By the regular 
 packet from Calgary, near our border, to the north- 
 ernmost post is a 3000- mile journey. Macfarlane 
 was fond of the study of ornithology, and classified 
 and catalogued all the birds that reach the frozen 
 regions. 
 
 I heard of a factor far up on the east side of Hud- 
 son Bay who reads his daily newspaper every morn- 
 ing with his coffee — but of course such an instance is 
 a rare one. He manages it by having a complete set 
 of the London Times sent to him by each winter s 
 packet, and each morning the paper of that date in 
 the preceding year is taken from the bundle by his 
 servant and dampened, as it had been when it left the 
 press, and spread by the factor's plate. Thus he gets 
 for half an hour each day a taste of his old habit and 
 life at home. 
 
 There was another factor who developed artistic 
 capacity, and spent his leisure at drawing and paint- 
 ing. He did so well that he ventured many sketches 
 
"TALKING musquash" 219 
 
 for the illustrated papers of London, some of which 
 were published. 
 
 The half-breed has developed with the age and 
 growth of Canada. There are now half-breeds and 
 half-breeds, and some of them are titled, and others 
 hold high official places. It occurred to an English 
 lord not long ago, while he was being entertained in 
 a Government house in one of the parts of newer 
 Canada, to inquire of his host, " What are these half- 
 breeds I hear about? I should like to see what one 
 looks like." His host took the nobleman's breath 
 away by his reply. " I am one," said he. There is 
 no one w^ho has travelled much in western Canada 
 who has not now and then been entertained in homes 
 where either the man orw^oman of the household was 
 of mixed blood, and in such homes I have found a 
 high degree of refinement and the most polished 
 manners. Usually one needs the information that 
 such persons possess such blood. After that the 
 peculiar black hair and certain facial features in the 
 subject of such gossip attest the truthfulness of the 
 assertion. There is no rule for measuring the char- 
 acter and quality of this plastic, receptive, and often 
 very ambitious element in Canadian society, yet one 
 may say broadly that the social position and attain- 
 ments of these people have been greatly influenced 
 by the nationality of their fathers. For instance, the 
 French habitants and woodsmen far, far too often 
 sank to the level of their wives when they married 
 Indian women. Light-hearted, careless, unambitious, 
 and drifting to the wilderness because of the absence 
 of restraint there ; illiterate, of coarse origin, fond of 
 
220 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 whiskey and gambling — they threw off superiority to 
 the Indian, and evaded responsibihty and concern in 
 home management. Of course this is not a rule, but 
 a tendency. On the other hand, the Scotch and 
 English forced their wives up to their own standards. \ 
 Their own home training, respect for more than the 
 forms of religion, their love of home and of a perma. 
 nent patch of ground of their own — all these had 
 their effect, and that has been to rear half-breed chil- 
 dren in proud and comfortable homes, to send them 
 to mix with the children of cultivated persons in old 
 communities, and to fit them with pride and ambition 
 and cultivation for an equal start in the journey of 
 life. Possessing such foundation for it, the equality 
 has happily never been denied to them in Canada. 
 
 To-day the service is very little more inviting than 
 in the olden time. The loneliness and removal from 
 the touch of civilization remain throuo^hout a vast 
 region ; the arduous journeys by sled and canoe re- 
 main ; the dangers of flood and frost are undimin- 
 ished. Unfortunately, among the changes made by 
 time, one is that which robs the present factor's sur- 
 roundings of a great part of that which was most 
 picturesque. Of all the prettinesses of the Indian 
 costuming one sees now only a trace here and there 
 in a few tribes, while in many the moccasin and 
 tepee, and in some only the moccasin, remain. The 
 birch-bark canoe and the snow-shoe are the main 
 reliance of both races, but the steamboat has been 
 impressed into parts of the service, and most of the 
 descendants of the old-time voyagcur preserve only 
 liis worsted belt, his knife, and his cap and mocca- 
 
"talking musquash 223 
 
 sins at the utmost. In places the engage has become 
 a mere deck-hand. His scarlet paddle has rotted 
 away ; he no longer awakens the echoes of forest or 
 caiion with cJiansons that died in the throats of a 
 generation that has gone. In return, the horrors of 
 intertribal war and of a precarious foothold among 
 fierce and turbulent bands have nearly vanished ; 
 but there was a spice in them that added to the fas- 
 cination of the service. 
 
 The dogs and sleds form a very interesting part of 
 the Hudson Bay outfit. One does not need to go 
 very deep into western Canada to meet with them. 
 As close to our centre of population as Nipigon, on 
 Lake Superior, the only roads into the north are the 
 rivers and lakes, traversed by canoes in summer and 
 sleds in winter. The dogs are of a peculiar breed, 
 and are called " huskies " — undoubtedly a corruption 
 of the word Esquimaux. They preserve a closer re- 
 semblance to the wolf than an}'^ of our domesticated 
 dogs, and exhibit their kinship with that scavenger 
 of the wilderness in their nature as well as their 
 looks. To-day their females, if tied and left in the 
 forest, will often attest companionship with its deni- 
 zens by bringing forth litters of wolfish progeny. 
 Moreover, it will not be necessary to feed all with 
 whom the experiment is tried, for the wolves will be 
 apt to bring food to them as long as they are thus 
 neglected by man. They are often as large as the 
 ordinary Newfoundland dog, but their legs are short- 
 er, and even more hairy, and the hair along their 
 necks, from their shoulders to their skulls, stands 
 erect in a thick, bristling mass. They have the long 
 
224 O^' CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 snouts, sharp -pointed ears, and the tails of wolves^ 
 and their cry is a yelp rather than a bark. Like 
 wolves they are apt to yelp in chorus at sunrise and 
 at sunset. They delight in worrying peaceful ani- 
 mals, setting their own numbers against one, and 
 they will kill cows, or even children, if they get the 
 chance. They are disciplined only when at work^ 
 and are then so surprisingly obedient, tractable, and 
 industrious as to plainly show that though their nat- 
 ure is savage and wolfish, they could be reclaimed by 
 domestication. In isolated cases plenty of them are. 
 As it is, in their packs, their battles among them- 
 selves are terrible, and they are dangerous when 
 loose. In some districts it is the custom to turn 
 them loose in summer on little islands in the lakes» 
 leaving them to hunger or feast according as the 
 supply of dead fish thrown upon the shore is small 
 or plentiful. When they are kept in dog quarters 
 they are simply penned up and fed during the sum- 
 mer, so that the savage side of their nature gets full 
 play during long periods. Fish is their principal 
 diet, and stores of dried fish are kept for their winter 
 food. Corn meal is often fed to them also. Like a 
 wolf or an Indian, a " husky" gets along without food 
 when there is not any, and will eat his own weight 
 of it when it is plenty. 
 
 A typical dog-sled is very like a toboggan. It' is 
 formed of two thin pieces of oak or birch lashed to- 
 gether with buckskin thongs and turned up high in 
 front. It is usually about nine feet in length by six- 
 teen inches wide. A leather cord is run along the 
 outer edges for fastening whatever may be put upon 
 
"TALKING musquash" 225 
 
 the sled. Varying numbers of dogs are harnessed to 
 such sleds, but the usual number is four. Traces, 
 collars, and backhands form the harness, and the dogs 
 are hitched one before the other. Very often the 
 collars are completed with sets of sleigh-bells, and 
 sometimes the harness is otherwise ornamented with 
 beads, tassels, fringes, or ribbons. The leader, or fore- 
 goer, is always the best in the team. The dog 
 next to him is called the steady dog, and the last is 
 named the steer dog. As a rule, these faithful ani- 
 mals are treated harshly, if not brutally. It is a 
 Hudson Bay axiom that no man who cannot curse 
 in three languages is fit to drive them. The three 
 profanities are, of course, English, French, and Ind- 
 ian, though whoever has heard the Northwest French 
 knows that it ought to serve by itself, as it is half- 
 soled with Anglo-Saxon oaths and heeled with Ind- 
 ian obscenity. The rule with whoever goes on a 
 dog-sled journey is that the driver, or mock-passenger, 
 runs behind the dogs. The main function of the 
 sled is to carry the dead weight, the burdens of tent- 
 covers, blankets, food, and the like. The men run 
 along with or behind the dogs, on snow-shoes, and 
 when the dogs make better time than horses are able 
 to, and will carry between 200 and 300 pounds over 
 daily distances of from 20 to 35 miles, according to 
 the condition of the ice or snow, and that many a 
 journey of 1000 miles has been performed in this 
 way, and some of 2000 miles, the test of human en- 
 durance is as great as that of canine grit. 
 
 Men travelling " light," with extra sleds for the 
 freight, and men on short journeys often ride in the 
 
 15 
 
226 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 sleds, which in such cases are fitted up as " carioles " 
 for the purpose. I have heard an unauthenticated 
 account, by a Hudson Bay man, of men who drove 
 themselves, disciplining refractory or lazy dogs by 
 simply pulling them in beside or over the dash-board, 
 and holding them down by the neck while they 
 thrashed them. A story is told of a worthy bishop 
 who complained of the slow progress his sled was 
 making, and was told that it was useless to complain, 
 as the dogs would not work unless they were round- 
 ly and incessantly cursed. After a time the bishop 
 gave his driver absolution for the profanity needed 
 for the remainder of the journey, and thenceforth 
 sped ov^er the snow at a gallop, every stroke of the 
 half-breed's long and cruel whip being sent home 
 with a volley of wicked words, emphasized at times 
 with peltings with sharp -edged bits of ice. Kane, 
 the explorer, made an average of 57 miles a day be- 
 hind these shaggy little brutes. Milton and Cheadle, 
 in their book, mention instances where the dogs made 
 140 miles in less than 48 hours, and the Bishop of 
 Rupert's Land told me he had covered 20 miles in 
 a forenoon and 20 in the afternoon of the same day, 
 without causing his dogs to exhibit evidence of fa- 
 tieue. The best time is made on hard snow and ice, 
 of course, and when the conditions suit, the drivers 
 whip off their snow-shoes to trot behind the dogs 
 more easily. In view of what they do, it is no won- 
 der that many of the Northern Indians, upon first 
 seeing horses, named them simply " big dog." But 
 to me the performances of the drivers are the more 
 wonderful. It was a white youth, son of a factor, 
 

 !E»^ 
 
 
 WW- 
 
 J 
 
 J» 
 
" TALKING MUSQUASH " 229 
 
 who ran behind the bishop's dogs in the spurt of 40 
 miles by daylight that I mention. The men who do 
 such work explain that the " lope " of the dogs is pe- 
 culiarly suited to the dog-trot of a human being. 
 
 A picture of a factor on a round of his outposts, or 
 of a chief factor racing through a great district, will 
 now be intelligible. If he is riding, he fancies that 
 princes and lords would envy him could they see his 
 luxurious comfort. Fancy him in a dog-cariole of 
 the best pattern — a little suggestive of a burial cas- 
 ket, to be sure, in its shape, but gaudily painted, and 
 so full of soft warm furs that the man within is en- 
 veloped like a chrysalis in a cocoon. Perhaps there 
 are Russian bells on the collars of the dogs, and 
 their harness is "Frenchified" with bead-work and 
 tassels. The air, which fans only his face, is crisp 
 and invigorating, and before him the lake or stream 
 over which he rides is a sheet of virgin snow — not 
 nature's winding-sheet, as those who cannot love 
 nature have said, but rather a robe of beautiful er- 
 mine fringed and embroidered with dark evergreen, 
 and that in turn flecked at every point with snow, as 
 if bejewelled with pearls. If the factor chats with 
 his driver, who falls behind at rough places to keep 
 the sled from tipping over, their conversation is car- 
 ried on at so high a tone as to startle the birds into 
 flight, if there are any, and to shock the scene as by 
 the greatest rudeness possible in that then vast, silent 
 land. If silence is kept, the factor reads the prints 
 of game in the snow, of foxes' pads and deer hoofs, of 
 wolf splotches, and the queer hieroglyphics of birds, 
 
 or the dots and troughs of rabbit-trailing. To him 
 
 15* 
 
230 ON CANADA'S FRONTIER 
 
 these are as legible as the Morse alphabet to telegra- 
 phers, and as important as stock quotations to the 
 pallid men of Wall .Street. 
 
 Suddenly in the distance he sees a human figure. 
 Time was that his predecessors would have stopped 
 to discuss the situation and its dangers, for the sight 
 of one Indian suggested the presence of more, and 
 the question came, were these friendly or fierce ? 
 But now the sled hurries on. It is only an Indian 
 or half-breed hunter minding his traps, of which he 
 may have a sufTficient number to give him a circuit 
 of ten or more miles away from and back to his 
 lodge or village. He is approached and hailed by 
 the driver, and with some pretty name very often — 
 one that may mean in English " hawk flying across 
 the sky when the sun is setting," or " blazing sun," or 
 whatever. On goes the sled, and perhaps a village is 
 the next object of interest ; not a village in our sense 
 of the word, but now and then a tepee or a hut peep- 
 ing above the brush beside the water, the eye being 
 led to them by the signs of slothful disorder close by 
 — the rotting canoe frame, the bones, the dirty tat- 
 tered blankets, the twig-formed skeleton of a steam 
 bath, such as Indians resort to when tired or sick or 
 uncommonly dirty, the worn-out snow-shoes hung on 
 a tree, and the racks of frozen fish or dried meat here 
 and there. A dog rushes down to the water- side 
 barking furiously — an Indian dog of the currish type 
 of paupers' dogs the world around — ^and this stirs 
 the village pack, and brings out the squaws, who are 
 addressed, as the trapper up the stream was, by 
 some poetic names, albeit poetic license is sometimes 
 
"talking musquash 231 
 
 strained to form names not at all pretty to polite 
 senses, " All Stomach " being that of one dusky prin- 
 cess, and serving to indicate the lengths to which 
 poesy may lead the untrammelled mind. 
 
 The sun sinks early, and if our traveller be jour- 
 neying in the West and be a lover of nature, heaven 
 send that his face be turned towards the sunset ! 
 Then, be the sky anything but completely storm- 
 draped, he will see a sight so glorious that eloquence 
 becomes a naked suppliant for alms beyond the gift 
 of language when set to describe it. A few clouds 
 are necessary to its perfection, and then they take on 
 celestial dyes, and one sees, above the vanished sun, 
 a blaze of golden yellow thinned into a tone that is 
 luminous crystal. This is flanked by belts and 
 breasts of salmon and ruby red, and all melt towards 
 the zenith into a rose tone that has body at the base, 
 but pales at top into a mere blush. This I have 
 seen night after night on the lakes and the plains 
 and on the mountains. But as the glory of it beck- 
 ons the traveller ever towards itself, so the farther he 
 follows, the more brilliant and gaudy will be his re- 
 ward. Beyond the mountains the valleys and waters 
 are more and more enriched, until, at the Pacific, 
 even San Francisco's shabby sand-hills stir poetry 
 and reverence in the soul by their borrowed magnifi- 
 cence. 
 
 The travellers soon stop to camp for the night, 
 and while the " breed " falls to at the laborious but 
 quick and simple work, the factor either helps or 
 smokes his pipe. A sight-seer or sportsman would 
 have set his man to bobbing for jack -fish or lake 
 
232 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 trout, or would have stopped a while to bag a par- 
 tridge, or mio^ht have boudit whatever of this sort 
 the trapper or Indian village boasted, but, ten to one,, 
 this meal would be of bacon and bread or dried 
 meat, and perhaps some flapjacks, such as would 
 bring coin to a doctor in the city, but which seem 
 ethereal and delicious in the wilderness, particularly 
 if made half an inch thick, saturated with grease, well 
 browned, and eaten while at the temperature and 
 consistency of molten lava. 
 
 The sled is pulled up by the bank, the ground is 
 cleared for a fire, wood and brush are cut, and the 
 deft laborer starts the flame in a tent-like pyramid of 
 kindlings no higher or broader than a teacup. This 
 tiny fire he spreads by adding fuel until he has con- 
 structed and led up to a conflagration of logs as 
 thick as his thighs, cleverly planned with a backlog 
 and glowing fire bed, and a sapling bent over the 
 hottest part to hold a pendent kettle on its tip. The 
 dogs will have needed disciplining long before this, 
 and if the driver be like many of his kind, and works 
 himself into a fury, he will not hesitate to seize one 
 and send his teeth together throuoh its hide after he 
 has beaten it until he is tired. The point of order 
 having thus been raised and carried, the shaggy, 
 often handsome, animals will be minded to forget 
 their private grudges and quarrels, and, seated on 
 their haunches, with their intelligent faces towards 
 the fire, will watch the cooking intently. The pocket- 
 knives or sheath-knives of the men will be apt to be 
 the only table implement in use at the meal. Cana- 
 da had reached the possession of seigniorial man- 
 
"talking musquash 235 
 
 sions of great character before any other knife was 
 brought to table, though the ladies used costly blades 
 set in precious and beautiful handles. To-day the 
 axe ranks the knife in the wilderness, but he who 
 has a knife can make and furnish his own table — 
 and his house also, for that matter. 
 
 Supper over, and a glass of grog having been put 
 down, with w'ater from the hole in the ice whence 
 the liquid for the inevitable tea was gotten, the 
 nights rest is begun. The method for this varies. 
 As good men as ever walked have asked nothing 
 more cosey than a snug warm trough in the snow and 
 a blanket or a robe; but perhaps this traveller will 
 call for a shake-down of balsam boughs, with all the 
 furs out of the sled for his covering. If nicer yet, he 
 may order a low hollow chamber of three sides of 
 banked snow, and a superstructure of crotched sticks 
 and cross-poles, with canvas thrown over it. Every 
 man to his quality, of course, and that of the servant 
 calls for simply a blanket. With that he sleeps as 
 soundly as if he w^ere Santa Claus and only stirred 
 once a year. Then will fall upon what seems the 
 whole world the mighty hush of the wilderness, 
 broken only occasionally by the hoot of an owl, the 
 cry of a wolf, the deep thug of the straining ice on 
 the lake, or the snoring of the men and dogs. But 
 if the earth seems asleep, not so the sky. The magic 
 shuttle of the aurora borealis is ofttimes at work up 
 over that North country, sending its shifting lights 
 weaving across the firmament with a tremulous brill- 
 iancy and energy we in this country get but pale 
 hints of when we see the phenomenon at all. Flash- 
 
236 ON Canada's frontier 
 
 ing and palpitating incessantly, the rose-tinted waves 
 and luminous white bars leap across the sky or dart 
 up and down it in manner so fantastic and so force- 
 ful, even despite their shadowy thinness, that travel- 
 lers have fancied themselves deaf to some seraphic 
 sound that they believed such commotion must pro- 
 duce. 
 
 An incident of this typical journey I am describing 
 would, at more than one season, be a meeting with 
 some band of Indians going to a post with furs for 
 barter. Though the bulk of these hunters fetch their 
 quarry in the spring and early summer, some may 
 come at any time. The procession may be only that 
 of a family or of the two or more families that live to- 
 gether or as neighbors. The man, if there is but one 
 group, is certain to be stalking ahead, carrying noth- 
 ing but his gun. Then come the women, laden like 
 pack-horses. They may have a sled packed with the 
 furs and drawn by a dog or two, and an extra dog 
 may bear a balanced load on his back, but the squaw 
 is certain to have a spine -warping burden of meat 
 and a battered kettle and a pappoose, and whatever 
 personal property of any and every sort she and her 
 liege lord own. Children who can walk have to do 
 so, but it sometimes happens that a baby a year and 
 a half or two years old is on her back, while a new- 
 born infant, swaddled in blanket stuff, and bagged 
 and tied like a Bologna sausage, surmounts the load 
 on the sled. A more tatterdemalion outfit than a 
 band of these pauperized savages form it would be 
 difficult to imagine. On the plains they will have 
 liorses dragging travoises, dogs with travoises, women 
 
"talking musquash 237 
 
 and children loaded with impedimenta, a colt or two 
 running loose, the lordly men riding free, straggling 
 curs a plent}', babies in arms, babies swaddled, and 
 toddlers afoot, and the whole battalion presenting at 
 its exposed points exhibits of torn blankets, raw meat, 
 distorted pots and pans, tent, poles, and rusty traps, 
 in all eloquently suggestive of an eviction in the 
 slums of a great city. 
 
 I speak thus of these people not willingly, but out 
 of the necessity of truth-telling. The Indian east of 
 the Rocky Mountains is to me the subject of an ad- 
 miration which is the stronger the more nearly I find 
 him as he was in his prime. It is not his fault that 
 most of his race have degenerated. It is not our 
 fault that we have better uses for the continent 
 than those to which he put it. But it is our fault 
 that he is, as I have seen him, shivering in a cotton 
 tepee full of holes, and turning around and around 
 before a fire of wet wood to keep from freezing to 
 death ; furnished meat if he has been fierce enough 
 to make us fear him, left to starve if he has been do- 
 cile ; taught, aye, forced to beg, mocked at by a re- 
 ligion he cannot understand, from the mouths of men 
 who apparently will not understand him ; debauched 
 with rum, despoiled by the lust of white men in every ' 
 form that lust can take. Ah, it is a sickening stor)^' 
 Not in Canada, do you say? Why, in the northern 
 wilds of Canada are districts peopled by beggars who 
 have been in such pitiful stress for food and covering 
 that the Hudson Bay Company has kept them alive 
 with advances of provisions and blankets winter after 
 winter. They are Indians who in their strength 
 
238 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 never Qrave the Government the concern it now fails 
 to show for their weakness. The great fur company 
 has thus added generosity to its long career of just 
 dealing with these poor adult children ; for it is a fact 
 that though the company has made what profit it 
 might, it has not, in a century at least, cheated the 
 Indians, or made false representations to them, or 
 lost their good -will and respect by any feature of its 
 policy towards them. Its relation to them has been 
 paternal, and they owe none of their degradation 
 to it. 
 
 I have spoken of the visits of the natives to the 
 posts. There are two other arrivals of great con- 
 sequence — the coming of the supplies, and of the 
 winter mail or packet. I have seen the provisions 
 and trade goods being put up in bales in the great 
 mercantile storehouse of the company in Winnipeg 
 — a store like a combination of a Sixth Avenue 
 ladies' bazaar and one of our wholesale grocers' shops 
 — and I have seen such weights of canned vegetables 
 and canned plum-pudding and bottled ale and other 
 luxuries that I am sure that in some posts there is 
 good living on high days and holidays if not always. 
 The stores are packed in parcels averaging sixty 
 pounds (and sometimes one hundred), to make them 
 convenient for handling on the portages — " for pack- 
 ing them over the carries," as our traders used to 
 say. It is in following these supplies that we be 
 come most keenly sensible of the changes time has 
 wrought in the methods of the company. The day 
 was, away back in the era of the Northwest Com- 
 pany, that the goods for the posts went up the Ottawa 
 
" TALKING MUSQUASH " 241 
 
 from Montreal in great canoes manned by hardy voy- 
 ageurs in picturesque costumes, wielding scarlet pad- 
 dles, and stirring the forests with their happy songs. 
 The scene shifted, the companies blended, and the 
 centre of the trade moved from old Fort William, 
 close to where Port Arthur now is on Lake Superior, 
 up to Winnipeg, on the Red River of the North. 
 Then the Canadians and their cousins, the half-breeds, 
 more picturesque than ever, and manning the great 
 York boats of the Hudson Bay Company, swept in a 
 long train through Lake Winnipeg to Norway House, 
 and thence by a marvellous water route all the way 
 to the Rockies and the Arctic, sendino- off freight for 
 side districts at fixed points along the course. The 
 main factories on this line, maintained as such for 
 more than a century, bear names whose very mention 
 stirs the blood of one who knows the romantic, pictu- 
 resque, and poetic history and atmosphere of the old 
 company when it was the landlord (in part, and in 
 part monopolist) of a territory that cut into our North- 
 west and Alaska, and swept from Labrabor to Van- 
 couver Island. Northward and westward, by waters 
 emptying into Hudson Bay, the brigade of great boats 
 worked through a region embroidered with sheets 
 and ways of water. The system that was next en- 
 tered, and which bore more nearly due west, bends 
 and bulges with lakes and straits like a ribbon all 
 curved and knotted. Thus, at a great portage, the 
 divide was reached and crossed ; and so the waters 
 flowing to the Arctic, and one — the Peace River — 
 rising beyond the Rockies, were met and travelled. 
 
 This was the way and the method until after the Ca- 
 16 
 
242 OX CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 nadian Pacific Railway was built, but now the Winni- 
 peg route is of subordinate importance, and feeds only 
 the region near the west side of Hudson Bay. The 
 Northern supplies now go by rail from Calgary, in 
 Alberta, over the plains by the new Edmonton rail- 
 road. From Edmonton the goods go by cart to Atha- 
 basca Landing, there to be laden on a steamboat, 
 which takes them northward until some rapids are 
 met, and avoided by the use of a singular combina- 
 tion of bateaux and tramway rails. After a slow prog- 
 ress of fifteen miles another steamboat is met, and 
 thence they follow the Athabasca, through Atha- 
 basca Lake, and so on up to a second rapids, on the 
 Great Slave River this time, where oxen and carts 
 carry them across a sixteen -mile portage to a screw 
 steamer, which finishes the 3000-mile journey to the 
 North. Of course the shorter branch routes, dis- 
 tributing the goods on either side of the main track, 
 are still traversed by canoes and hardy fellows in 
 the old way, but with shabby accessories of cos- 
 tume and spirit. These boatmen, when they come 
 to a portage, produce their tomplines, and " pack" 
 the goods to the next waterway. By means of these 
 " lines" they carry great weights, resting on their 
 backs, but supported from their skulls, over which 
 the strong straps are passed. 
 
 The winter mail-packet, starting from Winnipeg in 
 the depth of the season, goes to all the posts by dog 
 train. The letters and papers are packed in great 
 boxes and strapped to the sleds, beside or behind 
 which the drivers trot along, cracking their lashes 
 and pelting and cursing the dogs. A more direct 
 
"TALKING musquash" 243 
 
 course than the old Lake Winnipeg way has usually 
 been followed by this packet ; but it is thought that 
 the route iv/^ Edmonton and Athabasca Landinorwill 
 serve better yet, so that another change may be made. 
 This is a small exhibition as compared with the bri- 
 gade that takes the supplies, or those others that 
 come plashing down the streams and across the coun- 
 try with the furs every year. But only fancy how 
 eagerly this solitary semi-annual mail is waited for ! 
 It is a little speck on the snow-wrapped upper end of 
 all North America. It cuts a tiny trail, and here and 
 there lesser black dots move off from it to cut still 
 slenderer threads, zigzagging to the side factories and 
 lesser posts ; but we may be sure that if human eyes 
 could see so far, all those of the white men in all that 
 vast tangled system of trading centres would be watch- 
 ing the little caravan, until at last each pair fell upon 
 the expected missives from the throbbing world this 
 .side of the border. 
 
VIII 
 
 
 CANADA S EL DORADO 
 
 HERE is on this continent a terri- 
 tory of imperial extent which is 
 one of the Canadian sisterhood of 
 States, and yet of which small ac- 
 count has been taken by those 
 who discuss either the most ad- 
 vantageous relations of trade or 
 that closer intimacy so often re- 
 ferred to as a possibility in the fut- 
 ure of our country and its north- 
 ern neighbor. Although British 
 Columbia is advancing in rank 
 among the provinces of the Do- 
 minion by reason of its abundant 
 natural resources, it is not remark- 
 able that we read and hear little 
 concerning it. The people in it 
 are few, and the knowledge of it is 
 even less in proportion. It is but 
 partially explored, and for what 
 can be learned of it one must catch 
 up information piecemeal from blue-books, the pam- 
 phlets of scientists, from tales of adventure, and from 
 the less trustworthy literature composed to attract 
 travellers and settlers. 
 
CANADA S EL DORADO 245 
 
 It would severely strain the slender facts to make 
 a sizable pamphlet of the history of British Columbia. 
 A wandering and imaginative Greek called Juan de 
 Fuca told his people that he had discovered a passage 
 from ocean to ocean between this continent and a 
 great island in the Pacific. Sent there to seize and 
 fortify it, he disappeared — at least from history. This 
 was about 1592. In 177S Captain Cook roughly sur- 
 veyed the coast, and in 1 792 Captain Vancouver, who 
 as a boy had been with Cook on two voyages, ex- 
 amined the sound between the island and the main- 
 land with great care, hoping to find that it led to the 
 main water system of the interior. He gave to the 
 strait at the entrance the nickname of the Greek, 
 and in the following year received the transfer of 
 authority over the country from the Spanish com- 
 missioner Bodega of Quadra, then established there. 
 The two put aside false modesty, and named the 
 great island " the Island of Vancouver and Quadra." 
 At the time the English sailor was there it chanced 
 that he met that hardy old homespun baronet Sir 
 Alexander Mackenzie, who was the first man to cross 
 the continent, making the astonishing journey in a 
 canoe manned by Iroquois Indians. The main-land 
 became known as New Caledonia. It took its pres- 
 ent name from the Columbia River, and that, in turn, 
 got its name from the ship Columbia, of Boston, Cap- 
 tain Gray, which entered its mouth in 1792, long 
 after the Spaniards had known the stream and called 
 it the Oregon. The rest is quickly told. The re- 
 gion passed into the hands of the fur-traders. Van- 
 couver Island became a crown colony in 1849, ^^<i 
 
246 ON Canada's frontier 
 
 British Columbia followed in 1858. They were 
 united in 1866, and joined the Canadian confedera- 
 tion in 1 87 1. Three years later the province ex- 
 ceeded both Manitoba and Prince Edward Island in 
 the value of its exports, and also showed an excess of 
 exports over imports. It has a Lieutenant-governor 
 and Legislative Assembly, and is represented at Ot- 
 tawa in accordance with the Canadian system. Its 
 people have been more closely related to ours in busi- 
 ness than those of any other province, and they en- 
 tertain a warm friendly feeling towards "the States." 
 In the larger cities the Fourth of July is informally 
 but generally observed as a holiday. 
 
 British Columbia is of immense size. It is as ex- 
 tensive as the combination of New England, the 
 Middle States and Maryland, the Virginias, the Caro- 
 linas, and Georgia, leaving Delaware out. It is larger 
 than Texas, Colorado, Massachusetts, and New Hamp- 
 shire joined together. Yet it has been all but over- 
 looked by man, and may be said to be an empire 
 with only one wagon road, and that is but a blind 
 artery halting in the middle of the country. But 
 whoever follows this necessarily incomplete survey 
 of what man has found that region to be, and of what 
 his yet puny hands have drawn from it, will dismiss 
 the popular and natural suspicion that it is a wilder- 
 ness worthy of its present fate. Until the whole 
 globe is banded with steel rails and yields to the 
 plough, we will continue to regard whatever region 
 lies beyond our doors as waste-land, and to fancy that 
 every line of latitude has its own unvarying climatic 
 characteristics. There is an opulent civilization in 
 
CANADA S EL DORADO 247 
 
 what we once were taught was " the Great Ameri- 
 can Desert," and far up at Edmonton, on the Peace 
 River, farming flourishes despite the fact that it is 
 where our school-books located a zone of perpetual 
 snow. Farther along we shall study a country 
 crossed by the same parallels of latitude that dissect 
 inhospitable Labrador, and we shall discover that as 
 ereat a difference exists between the two shores of 
 the continent on that zone as that which distinguish- 
 es California from Massachusetts. Upon the coast 
 of this ncQ-lected corner of the world we shall see 
 that a climate like that of England is produced, as 
 England's is, by a warm current in the sea ; in the 
 southern half of the interior we shall discover valleys 
 as inviting as those in our New England ; and far 
 north, at Port Simpson, just below the down-reaching 
 claw of our Alaska, we shall find such a climate as 
 Halifax enjoys. 
 
 British Columbia has a length of 800 miles, and 
 averages 400 miles in width. To whoever crosses 
 the country it seems the scene of a vast earth-dis- 
 turbance, over which mountains are scattered with- 
 out system. In fact, however, the Cordillera belt is 
 there divided into four ranges, the Rockies forming 
 the eastern boundary, then the Gold Range, then the 
 Coast Range, and, last of all, that partially submerged 
 chain whose upraised parts form Vancouver and the 
 other mountainous islands near the main-land in the 
 Pacific. A vast valley flanks the south-western side 
 of the Rocky Mountains, accompanying them from 
 where they leave our North-western States in a wide 
 straight furrow for a distance of 700 miles. Such 
 
248 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 great rivers as the Columbia, the Fraser, the Parsnip, 
 the Kootenay, and the Finlay are encountered in it. 
 While it has a ksser agricultural value than other 
 valleys in the province, its mineral possibilities are 
 considered to be very great, and when, as must be the 
 case, it is made the route of communication between 
 one end of the territory and the other, a vast timber 
 supply will be rendered marketable. 
 
 The Gold Range, next to the westward, is not bald, 
 like the Rockies, but, excepting the higher peaks, is 
 timbered with a dense forest growth. Those busiest 
 of all British Columbian explorers, the " prospectors," 
 have found much of this system too difificult even for 
 their pertinacity. But the character of the region is 
 well understood. Here are high plateaus of rolling 
 country, and in the mountains are glaciers and snow 
 fields. Between this system and the Coast Range is 
 what is called the Interior Plateau, averaging one 
 hundred miles in width, and following the trend of 
 that portion of the continent, with an elevation that 
 grows less as the north is approached. This plateau 
 is crossed and followed by valleys that take every di- 
 rection, and these are the seats of rivers and water, 
 courses. In the southern part of this plateau is the 
 best grazing land in the province, and much fine ag- 
 ricultural country, while in the north, where the cli- 
 mate is more moist, the timber increases, and parts 
 of the land are thought to be convertible into farms. 
 Next comes the Coast Range, whose western slopes 
 are enriched by the milder climate of the coast ; and 
 beyond lies the remarkably tattered shore of the 
 Pacific, lapped by a sheltered sea, verdant, indented 
 
CANADA S EL DORADO 249 
 
 by numberless inlets, which, in turn, are faced by un- 
 counted islands, and receive the discharge of almost 
 as many streams and rivers — a wondrously beautiful 
 region, forested by giant trees, and resorted to by 
 numbers of fish exceeding calculation and belief. 
 Beyond the coast is the bold chain of mountains 
 of which Vancouver Island and the Queen Char- 
 lotte Islands are parts. Here is a vast treasure in 
 that coal which our naval experts have found to 
 be the best on the Pacific coast, and here also are 
 traces of metals, whose value industry has not yet 
 established. 
 
 It is a question whether this vast territory has yet 
 100,000 white inhabitants. Of Indians it has but 
 20,000, and of Chinese about 8000. It is a vast land 
 of silence, a huge tract slowly changing from the 
 field and pleasure-ground of the fur-trader and sports- 
 man to the quarry of the miner. The Canadian Pa- 
 cific Railway crosses it, revealing to the immigrant 
 and the globe-trotter an unceasing panorama of 
 grand, wild, and beautiful scenery unequalled on this 
 continent. During a few hours the traveller sees, 
 across the majestic cafion of the Fraser, the neglected 
 remains of the old Cariboo stage road, built under 
 pressure of the gold craze. It demonstrated surpris- 
 ing energy in the baby colony, for it connected Yale, 
 at the head of short steam navigation on the Fra- 
 ser, with Barkerville, in the distant Cariboo country, 
 400 miles away, and it cost $500,000. The traveller 
 sees here and there an Indian village or a " mission," 
 and now and then a tiny town ; but for the most 
 part his eye scans only the primeval forest, lofty 
 
250 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 mountains, valleys covered with trees as beasts are 
 with fur, cascades, turbulent streams, and huge shel- 
 tered lakes. Except at the stations, he sees few 
 men. Now he notes a group of Chinamen at work 
 on the railway ; anon he sees an Indian upon a 
 clumsy perch and searching the Fraser for salmon, 
 or in a canoe paddling towards the gorgeous sunset 
 that confronts the daily west-bound train as it rolls 
 by great Shuswap Lake. 
 
 But were the same traveller out of the train, and 
 gifted with the power to make himself ubiquitous, 
 he would still be, for the most part, lonely. Down in 
 the smiling bunch -grass valleys in the south he 
 would see here and there the outfit of a farmer or 
 the herds of a cattle-man. A burst of noise would 
 astonish him near by, in the Kootenay country, 
 where the new silver mines are being worked, where 
 claims have been taken up by the thousand, and 
 whither a railroad is hastening. Here and there, at 
 points out of sight one from another, he would hear 
 the crash of a lumberman's axe, the report of a hun- 
 ter's rifle, or the crackle of an Indian's fire. On the 
 P'raser he would find a little town called Yale, and 
 on the coast the streets and ambitious buildings and 
 busy wharves of Vancouver would astonish him. 
 Victoria, across the strait, a town of larger size and 
 remarkable beauty, would give him company, and 
 near Vancouver and Victoria the little cities of New 
 Westminster and Nanaimo (lumber and coal ports 
 respectively) would rise before him. There, close to- 
 gether, he would see more than half the population 
 of the province. 
 
AN IMPRESSION OF SHUSWAP LAKE 
 BRITISH COLUMBIA 
 
 'f-'^a/ff/fi. 
 
 Fancy his isolation as 
 he looked around him in 
 the northern half of the ter- 
 ritory, where a few trails lead to fewer posts of the 
 Hudson Bay Company, where the endless forests and 
 multitudinous lakes and streams are cut by but infre- 
 quent paddles in the hands of a race that has lost 
 one-third its numerical strength in the last ten years, 
 where the only true homes are within the palisades 
 or the unguarded log-cabin of the fur-trading agents, 
 and where the only other white men are either wash- 
 ing sand in the river bars, driving the stages of the 
 only line that penetrates a piece of the country, or 
 are those queer devil-may-care but companionable 
 Davy Crocketts of the day who are guides now and 
 then, hunters half the time, placer-miners when they 
 please, and whatever else there is a call for between- 
 times ! 
 
252 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 A very strange sight that my supposititious trav- 
 eller would pause long to look at would be the herds 
 of wild horses that defy the Queen, her laws, and her 
 subjects in the Lillooet Valley. There are thousands 
 of them there, and over in the Nicola and Chilcotin 
 country, on either side of the Fraser, north of Wash- 
 ington State. They were originally of good stock, 
 but now they not only defy capture, but eat valuable 
 grass, and spoil every horse turned out to graze. The 
 newspapers aver that the Government must soon be 
 called upon to devise means for ridding the valleys 
 of this nuisance. This is one of those sections which 
 promise well for future stock-raising and agricultural 
 operations. There are plenty such. The Nicola 
 Valley has been settled twenty years, and there are 
 many cattle there, on numerous ranches. It is good 
 land, but rather high for grain, and needs irrigation. 
 The snowfall varies greatly in all these valleys, but in 
 ordinary winters horses and cattle manage well with 
 four to six weeks' feeding. On the upper Kootenay, 
 a valley eight to ten miles wide, ranching began a 
 quarter of a century ago, during the gold excitement. 
 The "cow -men" raise grain for themselves there. 
 This valley is 3000 feet high. The Okanagon Val- 
 ley is lower, and is only from two to five miles wide, 
 but both are of similar character, of very great length, 
 and are crossed and intersected by branch valleys. 
 The greater part of the Okanagon does not need 
 irrisfatins. A beautiful country is the Kettle River 
 region, along the boundary between the Columbia 
 and the Okanasron. It is narrow, but flat and smooth 
 on the bottom, and the land is very fine. Bunch-grass 
 
CANADA S EL DORADO 
 
 -d:> 
 
 covers the hills around it for a distance of from four 
 hundred to five hundred feet, and there timber be- 
 gins. It is only in occasional years that the Kettle 
 River Valley needs water. In the Spallumcheen Val- 
 ley one farmer had 500 acres in grain last summer, 
 and the most modern agricultural machinery is in use 
 there. These are mere notes of a few among almost 
 innumerable valleys that are clothed with bunch- 
 grass, and that often possess the characteristics of 
 beautiful parks. In many wheat can be and is raised, 
 possibly in most of them. I have notes of the suc- 
 cessful growth of peaches, and of the growth of al- 
 mond-trees to a height of fourteen feet in four years, 
 both in the Okanagon country. 
 
 The shooting in these valleys is most alluring to 
 those who are fond of the sport. Caribou, deer, bear, 
 prairie-chicken, and partridges abound in them. In 
 all probability there is no similar extent of country 
 that equals the valley of the Columbia, from which, 
 in the winter of 1888, between six and eight tons of 
 deer-skins were shipped by local traders, the result 
 of lesfitimate huntino^. But the forests and mount- 
 ains are as they were when the white man first saw 
 them, and though the beaver and sea-otter, the mar- 
 ten, and those foxes whose furs are coveted by the 
 rich, are not as abundant as they once were, the rest 
 of the game is most plentiful. On the Rockies and 
 on the Coast Range the mountain-goat, most difficult 
 of beasts to hunt, and still harder to get, is abundant 
 yet. The "big-horn," or mountain-sheep, is not so 
 common, but the hunting thereof is usually success- 
 ful if good guides are obtained. The cougar, the 
 
^54 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 grizzly, and the lynx are all plentiful, and black and 
 brown bears are very numerous. Elk are going the 
 way of the " big-horn "—are preceding that creature, 
 ■in fact. Pheasants (imported), grouse, quail, and 
 water-fowl are among the feathered game, and the 
 river and lake fishing is such as is not approached 
 in any other part of the Dominion. The province 
 is a sportsman's Eden, but the hunting of big game 
 there is not a venture to be lightly undertaken. It 
 is not alone the distance or the cost that gives one 
 pause, for, after the province is reached, the mountain- 
 climbino- is a task that no amount of wealth will 
 lighten. And these are genuine mountains, by-the- 
 way, wearing eternal caps of snow^ and equally eter- 
 nal deceit as to their distances, their heights, and as 
 to all else concerning which a rarefied atmosphere 
 can hocus-pocus a stranger. There is one animal, 
 king of all the beasts, which the most unaspiring 
 hunter may chance upon as well as the bravest, and 
 that animal carries a perpetual chip upon its shoul- 
 der, and seldom turns from an encounter. It is the 
 grizzly-bear. It is his presence that gives you either 
 zest or pause, as you may decide, in hunting all the 
 others that roam the mountains. Yet, in that hun- 
 ter's dream-land it is the grizzly that attracts many 
 sportsmen every year. 
 
 From the headquarters of the Hudson Bay Compa- 
 ny in Victoria I obtained the list of animals in whose 
 skins that company trades at that station. It makes 
 a formidable catalogue of zoological products, and 
 is as follows : Bears (brown, black, grizzly), beaver, 
 badger, foxes (silver, cross, and red), fishers, mar- 
 
CANADA S EL DORADO 255 
 
 tens, minks, lynxes, musk-rat, otter (sea or land), pan- 
 ther, raccoon, wolves (black, gray, and coyote), black- 
 tailed deer, stags (a true stag, growing to the size of 
 an ox, and found on the hills of Vancouver Island), 
 caribou or reindeer, hares, mountain- goat, big-horn 
 (or mountain-sheep), moose (near the Rockies), wood- 
 buffalo (found in the north, not greatly different from 
 the bison, but larger), geese, swans, and duck. 
 
 The British Columbian Indians are of such unpre- 
 possessing appearance that one hears with compara- 
 tive equanimity of their numbering only 20,000 in 
 all, and of their rapid shrinkage, owing principally to 
 the vices of their women. They are, for the most 
 part, canoe Indians, in the interior as well as on the 
 coast, and they are (as one might suppose a nation 
 of tailors would become) short-legged, and with those 
 limbs small and inclined to bow. On the other 
 hand, their exercise with the paddle has given them 
 a disproportionate development of their shoulders 
 and chests, so that, being too large above and too 
 small below, their appearance is very peculiar. They 
 are fish -eaters the year around ; and though some, 
 like the Hydahs upon the coast, have been warlike 
 and turbulent, such is not the reputation of those in 
 the interior. It was the meat -eating Indian who 
 made war a vocation and self-torture a dissipation. 
 The fish-eating Indian kept out of his way. These 
 short squat British Columbian natives are very dark- 
 skinned, and have physiognomies so different from 
 those of the Indians east of the Rockies that the 
 study of their faces has tempted the ethnologists into 
 -extraordinary guessing upon their origin, and into a 
 
256 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 contention which I prefer to avoid. It is not guess- 
 ing to say that their high cheek-bones and flat faces 
 make them reseijible the Chinese. That is true to 
 such a degree that in walking the streets of Victoria, 
 and meeting alternate Chinamen and Sivvash, it is 
 not always easy to say which is which, unless one 
 proceeds upon the assumption that if a man looks 
 clean he is apt to be a Chinaman, whereas if he is 
 dirty and ragged he is most likely to be a Si wash. 
 
 You will find that seven in ten among the more 
 intellisfent British Columbians conclude these Ind- 
 ians to be of Japanese origin. The Japanese cur- 
 rent is neighborly to the province, and it has drifted 
 Japanese junks to these shores. When the first 
 traders visited the neighborhood of the mouth of the 
 Columbia they found beeswax in the sand near the 
 vestio;es of a wreck, and it is said that one wreck of 
 a junk was met with, and 12,000 pounds of this wax 
 was found on her. Whalers are said to have fre- 
 quently encountered wrecked and drifting junks in 
 the eastern Pacific, and a local legend has it that in 
 1834 remnants of a junk with three Japanese and a 
 cargo of pottery were found on the coast south of 
 Cape Flattery. Nothing less than all this should ex- 
 cuse even a rudderless ethnologist for so cruel a re- 
 flection upon the Japanese, for these Indians are so 
 far from pretty that all who see them agree with Cap- 
 tain Butler, the traveller, who wrote that " if they are 
 of the Mongolian type, the sooner the Mongolians 
 change their type the better." 
 
 The coast Indians are splendid sailors, and their 
 dugouts do not always come off second best in rac- 
 
CANADA S EL DORADO 
 
 257 
 
 ing with the boats of white men. With a primitive 
 yet ingeniously made tool, like an adze, in the con- 
 struction of which a blade is tied fast to a bent 
 handle of bone, these natives laboriously pick out the 
 heart of a great cedar log, and shape its outer sides 
 into the form of a boat. When the log is properly 
 hollowed, they fill it with water, and then drop in 
 stones which they have heated in a fire. Thus they 
 steam the boat so that they may spread the sides and 
 fit in the crossbars which keep it strong and pre- 
 serve its shape. These dugouts are 
 sometimes sixty feet long, and are 
 used for whaling and long voyages 
 in rough seas. They are capable 
 of carrying tons of the salmon or 
 oolachan or herring, of which these 
 people, who live as their fathers 
 did, catch sufficient in a few days 
 for their maintenance throughout 
 a whole year. One gets an idea 
 of the swarms of fish that infest 
 those waters by the knowledge 
 that before nets were used the her- 
 ring and the oolachan, or candle- 
 fish, were swept into these boats 
 by an implement formed by stud- 
 ding a ten-foot pole with spikes or 
 nails. This was swept among the fish in the water, 
 and the boats were speedily filled with the creatures 
 that were impaled upon the spikes. Salmon, sea- 
 otter, otter, beaver, marten, bear, and deer (or caribou 
 or moose) were and still are the chief resources of 
 17 
 
 THE TSCIIUMMUM, OR 
 
 TOOI, USED IN MAKING 
 
 CANOES 
 
258 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 most of the Indians. Once they sold the fish and 
 the peltry to the Hudson Bay Company, and ate 
 what parts or surplus they did not sell. Now they 
 work in the canneries or fish for them in summer, 
 and hunt, trap, or loaf the rest of the time. However, 
 while they still fish and sell furs, and while some are 
 yet as their fathers were, nearly all the coast Indians 
 are semi -civilized. They have at least the white 
 man's clothes and hymns and vices. They have 
 churches ; they live in houses ; they work in can- 
 neries. What little there was that was picturesque 
 about them has vanished only a few degrees faster 
 than their own extinction as a pure race, and they 
 are now a lot of longshoremen. What Mr. Duncan 
 did for them in Metlakahtla — especially in housing 
 the families separately — has not been arrived at even 
 in the reservation at Victoria, where one may still 
 see one of the huge, low, shed-like houses they prefer, 
 ornamented with totem poles, and arranged for eight 
 families, and consequently for a laxity of morals for 
 which no one can hold the white man responsible. 
 
 They are a tractable people, and take as kindly 
 to the rudiments of civilization, to work, and to co- 
 operation with the whites as the plains Indian does 
 to tea, tobacco, and whiskey. They are physically 
 but not mentally inferior to the plainsman. They 
 carve bowls and spoons of stone and bone, and their 
 heraldic totem poles are cleverly shapen, however 
 grotesque they may be. They still make them, but 
 they oftener carve little ones for white people, just as 
 they make more silver bracelets for sale than for wear. 
 They are clever at weaving rushes and cedar bark 
 
CANADA S EL DORADO 259 
 
 into mats, baskets, floor-cloths, and cargo covers. In 
 a word, they were more prone to work at the outset 
 than most Indians, so that the present longshore ca- 
 reer of most of them is not greatly to be wondered at. 
 To any one who threads the vast silent forests of 
 the interior, or journeys upon the trafficless water- 
 ways, or, gun in hand, explores the mountains for 
 game, the infrequency with which Indians are met 
 becomes impressive. The province seems almost 
 unpeopled. The reason is that the majority of the 
 Indians were ever on the coast, where the water 
 yielded food at all times and in plenty. The natives 
 of the interior were not well fed or prosperous when 
 the first white men found them, and since then small- 
 pox, measles, vice, and starvation have thinned them 
 terribly. Their graveyards are a feature of the scen- 
 ery which all travellers in the province remember. 
 From the railroad they may be seen along the Era- 
 ser, each grave apparently having a shed built over 
 it, and a cross rising from the earth beneath the shed. 
 They had various burial customs, but a majority 
 buried their dead in this way, with queerly-carved or 
 painted sticks above them, where the cross now testi- 
 fies to the work at the " missions." Some Indians 
 marked a man's burial-place with his canoe and his 
 gun; some still box their dead and leave the boxes 
 on top of the earth, while others bury the boxes. 
 Among the southern tribes a man's horse was often 
 killed, and its skin decked the man's grave ; while in 
 the far north it was the custom among the Stickeens 
 to slaughter the personal attendants of a chief when 
 he died. The Indians along the Skeena River ere- 
 
26o ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 mated their dead, and sometimes hung the ashes in 
 boxes to the family totem pole. The Hydahs, the 
 fierce natives of certain of the islands, have given up 
 cremation, but they used to believe that if they did 
 not burn a man's body their enemies would make 
 charms from it. Polygamy flourished on the coast, 
 and monogamy in the interior, but the contrast was 
 due to the difference in the worldly wealth of the 
 Indians. Wives had to be bought and fed, and the 
 woodsmen could only afford one apiece. 
 
 To return to their canoes, which most distinguish 
 them. When a dugout is hollowed and steamed, a 
 prow and stern are added of separate wood. The 
 prow is always a work of art, and greatly beautifies 
 the boat. It is in form like the breast, neck, and 
 bill of a bird, but the head is intended to represent 
 that of a savage animal, and is so painted. A mouth 
 is cut into it, ears are carved on it, and eyes are 
 painted on the sides ; bands of gay paint are put 
 upon the neck, and the whole exterior of the boat is 
 then painted red or black, with an ornamental line 
 of another color along the edge or gunwale. The 
 sailors sit upon the bottom of the boat, and propel 
 it with paddles. Upon the water these swift vessels, 
 with their fierce heads uplifted before their long, 
 slender bodies, appear like great serpents or nonde- 
 script marine monsters, yet they are pretty and 
 graceful withal. While still holding aloof fiom the 
 ethnologists' contention, I yet may add that a book- 
 seller in Victoria came into the possession of a packet 
 of photographs taken by an amateur traveller in the 
 interior of China, and on my first visit to the prov- 
 
CANADA S EL DOKAUO 
 
 261 
 
 incc, nearly four 
 years ago, I 
 found, in look- 
 ing through 
 these views, sev- 
 eral Chinese 
 boats which 
 were strangely 
 and remarkably 
 like the dug- 
 outs of the pro- 
 vincial Indians. 
 They were too 
 small in the 
 pictures for it to 
 be possible to 
 decide whether 
 they were built 
 up or dug out, 
 but in general 
 they were of the 
 same external 
 appearance, and 
 each one bore 
 the upraised an- 
 imal-head prow, shaped and painted like those I 
 could see one block away from the bookseller's 
 shop in Victoria. But such are not the canoes 
 used by the Indians of the interior. From the 
 Kootenay near our border to the Cassiar in the far 
 north, a cigar-shaped canoe seems to be the general 
 native vehicle. These are sometimes made of a 
 
 ""^ 
 
 THE FIRST OF THE SALMON RUN, FRASEK 
 RIVER 
 
262 ON Canada's frontier 
 
 sort of scroll of bark, and sometimes they are dug- 
 outs made of cotton-wood logs. They are narrower 
 than either the cedar dugouts of the coast or the 
 birch-bark canoes of our Indians, but they are roomy, 
 and fit for the most dangerous and deft work in 
 threading the rapids which everywhere cut up the 
 navigation of the streams of the province into sepa- 
 rated reaches. The Rev. Dr. Gordon, in his notes 
 upon a journey in this province, likens these canoes 
 to horse -troughs, but those I saw in the Kootenay 
 country were of the shape of those cigars that are 
 pointed at both ends. 
 
 Whether these canoes are like any in Tartary or 
 China or Japan, I do not know. My only quest for 
 special information of that character proved disap- 
 pointing. One man in a city of British Columbia is 
 said to have studied such matters more deeply and 
 to more purpose than all the others, but those who 
 referred me to him cautioned me that he was eccen- 
 tric. 
 
 " You don't know where these Indians came from, 
 eh ?" the savant replied to my first question. " Do 
 you know how oyster-shells got on top of the Rocky 
 Mountains } You don't, eh ? Well, I know a woman 
 who went to a dentist's yesterday to have eighteen 
 teeth pulled. Do you know why women prefer arti- 
 ficial teeth to those which God has given them } 
 You don't, eh 1 Why, man, you don't know any- 
 thing." 
 
 While we were — or he was — conversing, a labor- 
 ing-man who carried a sickle came to the open door, 
 and was asked what he wanted. 
 
Canada's el dorado 263 
 
 " I wish to cut your thistles, sir," said he. 
 
 " Thistles ?" said the savant, disturbed at the inter- 
 ruption. " the thistles ! We are talking about 
 
 Indians." 
 
 Nevertheless, when the laborer had gone, he had 
 left the subject of thistles uppermost in the savant's 
 mind, and the conversation took so erratic a turn 
 that it might well have been introduced hap-hazard 
 into Tristram Shandy. 
 
 " About thistles," said the savant, laying a gentle 
 hand upon my knee. " Do you know that they are the 
 Scotchmen's totems ? Many years ago a Scotchman, 
 sundered from his native land, must needs set up his 
 totem, a thistle, here in this country ; and now, sir, 
 the thistle is such a curse that I am haled up twice a 
 year and fined for having them in my yard." 
 
 But nearly enough has been here said of the native 
 population. Though the Indians boast dozens of 
 tribal names, and almost every island on the coast 
 and village in the interior seems the home of a sepa- 
 rate tribe, they will be found much alike — dirty, 
 greasy, sore -eyed, short -legged, and with their un- 
 kempt hair cut squarely off, as if a pot had been up- 
 turned over it to guide the operation. The British 
 Columbians do not bother about their tribal divis- 
 ions, but use the old traders' Chinook terms, and call 
 every male a " siwash " and every woman a " klootch- 
 man." 
 
 Since the highest Canadian authority upon the 
 subject predicts that the northern half of the Cordil- 
 leran ranges will admit of as his^h a metalliferous de- 
 velopment as that of the southern half in our Pacific 
 
264 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 States, it is important to review what has been done 
 in mining, and what is thought of the future of that 
 industry in the province. It may almost be said that 
 the history of gold-mining there is the history of Brit- 
 ish Columbia. Victoria, the capital, was a Hudson 
 Bay post established in 1843, and Vancouver, Queen 
 Charlotte's, and the other islands, as well as the main- 
 land, were of interest to only a few white men as 
 parts of a great fur-trading field with a small Indian 
 population. The first nugget of gold was found at 
 what is now called Gold Harbor, on the west coast 
 of the Queen Charlotte Islands, by an Indian woman, 
 in 185 1. A part of it, weighing four or five ounces, 
 was taken by the Indians to Fort Simpson and sold. 
 The Hudson Bay Company, which has done a little 
 in every line of business in its day, sent a brigantine 
 to the spot, and found a quartz vein traceable eighty 
 feet, and yielding a high percentage of gold. Blast- 
 ing was begun, and the vessel was loaded with ore ; 
 but she was lost on the return voyage. An Ameri- 
 can vessel, ashore at Esquimault, near Victoria, was 
 purchased, renamed the Recovery, and sent to Gold 
 Harbor with thirty miners, who worked the vein 
 until the vessel was loaded and sent to England. 
 News of the mine travelled, and in another year a 
 small fleet of vessels came up from San Francisco; 
 but the supply was seen to be very limited, and after 
 $20,000 in all had been taken out, the field was 
 abandoned. 
 
 In 1855 gold was found by a Hudson Bay Com- 
 pany's employe at Fort Colville, now in Washington 
 State, near the boundary. Some Thompson River 
 
CANADA S EL DORADO 265 
 
 (B. C.) Indians who went to Walla Walla spread a re- 
 port there that gold, like that discovered at Colville, 
 was to be found in the valley of the Thompson. A 
 party of Canadians and half-breeds went to the region 
 referred to, and found placers nine miles above the 
 mouth of the river. By 1858 the news and the au- 
 thentication of it stirred the miners of California, and 
 an astonishing invasion of the virgin province began. 
 It is said that in the spring of 1858 more than twenty 
 thousand persons reached Victoria from San Fran- 
 cisco by sea, distending the little fur -trading post 
 of a few hundred inhabitants into what would even 
 now be called a considerable city; a city of canvas, 
 however. Simultaneously a third as many miners 
 made their way to the new province on land. But 
 the land was covered with mountains and dense 
 forests, the only route to its interior for them was the 
 violent, almost boiling, Fraser River, and there was 
 nothing on which the lives of this horde of men could 
 be sustained. By the end of the year out of nearly 
 thirty thousand adventurers only a tenth part re- 
 mained. Those who did stay worked the river bars of 
 the lower Fraser until in five months they had shipped 
 from Victoria more than half a million dollars' worth 
 of gold. From a historical point of view it is a pe- 
 culiar coincidence that in 1859, when the attention 
 of the world was thus first attracted to this new 
 country, the charter of the Hudson Bay Company ex- 
 pired, and the territory passed from its control to be- 
 come like any other crown colony. 
 
 In i860 the gold-miners, seeking the source of the 
 "flour" gold they found in such abundance in the bed 
 
266 
 
 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 of the river, pursued their search into the heart and 
 almost the centre of that forbidding and unbroken ter- 
 ritory. The Ouesnel River became the seat of their 
 operations. Two years later came another extraordi- 
 nary immigration. This was not surprising, for 1500 
 miners had in one year (1861) taken out $2,000,000 
 
 INDIAN SAI.MON-FISIIING IN THE THRASHER 
 
CANADA S EL DORADO 267 
 
 in gold-dust from certain creeks in what is called the 
 Cariboo District, and one can imagine (if one does 
 not remember) what fabulous tales were based upon 
 this fact. The second stampede was of persons from 
 all over the world, but chiefly from England, Cana- 
 da, Australia, and New Zealand. After that there 
 were new "finds" almost every year, and the miners 
 worked gradually northward until, about 1874, they 
 had travelled through the province, in at one end 
 and out at the other, and were working the tribu- 
 taries of the Yukon River in the north, beyond the 
 60th parallel. Mr. Dawson estimates that the total 
 yield of gold between 1858 and 1888 was $54,108,804; 
 the average number of miners employed each year 
 was 2775, and the average earnings per man per 
 year were $622. 
 
 In his report, published by order of Parliament, Mr. 
 Dawson says that while gold is so generally distrib- 
 uted over the province that scarcely a stream of any 
 importance fails to show at least "colors" of the 
 metal, the principal discoveries clearly indicate that 
 the most important mining districts are in the sys- 
 tems of mountains and high plateaus lying to the 
 south-west of the Rocky Mountains and parallel in 
 direction with them. 
 
 This mountain system next to and south-west of 
 the Rockies is called, for convenience, the Gold 
 Range, but it comprises a complex belt "of several 
 more or less distinct and partly overlapping ranges " 
 — the Purcell, Selkirk, and Columbia ranges in the 
 south, and in the north the Cariboo, Omenica, and 
 Cassiar ranges. "This series or system constitutes 
 
268 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 the most important metalliferous belt of the province. 
 The richest gold fields are closely related to it, and 
 discoveries of metalliferous lodes are reported in 
 abundance from all parts of it which have been ex- 
 plored. The deposits already made known are very 
 varied in character, including highly argentiferous 
 galenas and other silver ores and auriferous quartz 
 veins." This same authority asserts that the Gold 
 Range is continued by the Cabinet, Coeur d'Alene, 
 and Bitter Root mountains in our country. While 
 there is no single well-developed gold field as in Cali- 
 fornia, the extent of territory of a character to occa- 
 sion a hopeful search for gold is greater in the prov- 
 ince than in California. The average man of business 
 to whom visitors speak of the mining prospects of the 
 province is apt to declare that all that has been lack- 
 ing is the discovery of one grand mine and the en- 
 listment of capital (from the United States, they gen- 
 erally say) to work it. Mr. Dawson speaks to the 
 same point, and incidentally accounts for the retarded 
 development in his statement that one noteworthy 
 difference between practically the entire area of the 
 province and that of the Pacific States has been oc- 
 casioned by the spread and movement of ice over the 
 province during the glacial period. This produced 
 changes in the distribution of surface materials and 
 directions of drainage, concealed beneath "drifts "the 
 indications to which prospectors farther south are used 
 to trust, and by other means obscured the outcrops of 
 veins which would otherwise be well marked. The 
 dense woods, the broken navigation of the rivers, in 
 detached reaches, the distance from the coast of the 
 
'ii/>/w/n///r ' '/'fviii. 
 
 
 ■i»n«Kr" 
 
 »'lli«""i'lll|!'i||l!'!|lffl™ifl|||| 
 
 /; 
 
 /4'' 
 '.ii 
 
 
 1^\ 
 
 
CANADA S EL DORADO 27 1 
 
 richest districts, and the cost of labor supplies and ma- 
 chinery — all these are additional and weighty reasons 
 for the slowness of development. But this was true of 
 the past and is not of the present, at least so far as 
 southern British Columbia is concerned. Railroads are 
 reaching up into it from our country and down from 
 the transcontinental Canadian Railway, and capital, 
 both Canadian and American, is rapidly swelling an 
 already heavy investment in many new and promising 
 mines. Here it is silver- mininsr that is achievins: 
 importance. 
 
 Other ores are found in the province. The iron 
 which has been located or worked is principally on 
 the islands — Queen Charlotte, Vancouver, Texada, 
 and the Walker group. Most of the ores are mag- 
 netites, and that which alone has been worked — on 
 Texada Island — is of excellent quality. The output 
 of copper from the province is likely soon to become 
 considerable. Masses of it have been found from 
 time to time in various parts of the province — in the 
 Vancouver series of islands, on the main-land coast, 
 and in the interior. Its constant and rich association 
 with silver shows lead to be abundant in the country, 
 but it needs the development of transport facilities to 
 give it value. Platinum is more likely to attain im- 
 portance as a product in this than in any other part 
 of North America. On the coast the granites are of 
 such quality and occur in such abundance as to lead 
 to the belief that their quarrying will one day be an 
 important source of income, and there are marbles, 
 sandstones, and ornamental stones of which the same 
 may be said. 
 
J./Z 
 
 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 One of the most valuable products of the province 
 is coal, the essential in which our Pacific coast States 
 are the poorest. • The white man's attention was first 
 attracted to this coal in 1835 by some Indians who 
 brought lumps of it from Vancouver Island to the 
 Hudson Bay post on the main-land, at Milbank Sound. 
 The Beaver, the first steamship that stirred the waters 
 of the Pacific, reached the province in 1836, and used 
 coal that was found in outcroppings on the island 
 beach. Thirteen years later the great trading com- 
 pany brought out a Scotch coal-miner to look into 
 the character and extent of the coal find, and he was 
 followed by other miners and the necessary apparatus 
 for prosecuting the inquiry. In the mean time the 
 present chief source of supply at Nanaimo, seventy 
 miles from Victoria and about opposite Vancouver, 
 was discovered, and in 1852 mining was begun in 
 earnest. From the very outset the chief market for 
 the coal was found to be San Francisco. 
 
 The original mines are now owned by the Van- 
 couver Coal-mining and Land Company. Near them 
 are the Wellington Mines, which began to be worked 
 in 1 87 1. Both have continued in active operation 
 from their foundation, and with a constantly and 
 rapidly growing output. A third source of supply 
 has very recently been established with local and 
 American capital in what is called the Comox Dis- 
 trict, back of Baynes Sound, farther north than 
 Nanaimo, on the eastern side of Vancouver Island. 
 These new works are called the Union Mines, and, if 
 the predictions of my informants prove true, will pro- 
 duce an output equal to that of the older Nanaimo 
 
Canada's el dorado 273 
 
 collieries combined. In 1884 the coal shipped from 
 Nanaimo amounted to 1000 tons for every day of the 
 year, and in 1889 the total shipment had reached 
 500,000 tons. As to the character of the coal, I quote 
 again from Mr. Dawson's report on the minerals of 
 British Columbia, published by the Dominion Govern- 
 ment: 
 
 " Rocks of cretaceous age are developed over a considerable area 
 in British Columbia, often in very great thickness, and fuels occur in 
 them in important quantity in at least two distinct stages, of which 
 the lower and older includes the coal measures of the Queen Char- 
 lotte Islands and those of Ouatsino Sound on Vancouver Island, with 
 those of Crow Nest Pass in the Rocky Mountains ; the upper, the 
 coal measures of Nanaimo and Comox, and probably also those of 
 Suquash and other localities. The lower rocks hold both anthracite 
 and bituminous coal in the Queen Charlotte Islands, but elsewhere 
 contain bituminous coal only. The upper have so far been found to 
 yield bituminous coal only. The fuels of the tertiary rocks are, gen- 
 erally speaking, lignites, but include also various fuels intermediate 
 between these and true coals, which in a few places become true 
 bituminous coals." 
 
 It is thought to be more than likely that the Co- 
 mox District may prove far more productive than the 
 Nanaimo region. It is estimated that productive 
 measures underlie at least 300 square miles in the 
 Comox District, exclusive of what may extend beyond 
 the shore. The Nanaimo area is estimated at 200 
 square miles, and the product is no better than, if it 
 equals, that of the Comox District. 
 
 Specimens of good coal have been found on the 
 main-land in the region of the upper Skeena River, 
 on the British Columbia water-shed of the Rockies 
 near Crow Nest Pass, and in the country adjacent to 
 the Peace River in the eastern part of the province. 
 
 18 
 
274 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 Anthracite which compares favorably with that of 
 Pennsylvania has been found at Cowgitz, Queen 
 Charlotte Islands. In 187 1 a mining company began 
 work upon this coal, but abandoned it, owing to diffi- 
 culties that were encountered. It is now believed 
 that these miners did not prove the product to be of 
 an unprofitable character, and that farther explora- 
 tion is fully justified by what is known of the field. 
 Of inferior forms of coal there is every indication of 
 an abundance on the main-land of the province. " The 
 tertiary or Laramie coal measures of Puget Sound 
 "^and Bellingham Bay" (in the United States) "are con- 
 tinuous north of the international boundary, and must 
 underlie nearly 18,000 square miles of the low coun- 
 try about the estuary of the Fraser and in the lower 
 part of its valley." It is quite possible, since the 
 better coals of Nanaimo and Comox are in demand 
 in the San Francisco market, even at their high price 
 and with the duty added, that these lignite fields may 
 be worked for local consumption. 
 
 Already the value of the fish caught in the British 
 Columbian waters is estimated at $5,000,000 a year, 
 and yet the industry is rather at its birth than in its 
 infancy. All the waters in and near the province 
 fairly swarm with fish. The rivers teem with them, 
 the straits and fiords and gulfs abound with them, 
 the ocean beyond is freighted with an incalculable 
 weieht of livins food, which must soon be distributed 
 among the homes of the civilized world. The prin- 
 cipal varieties of fish are the salmon, cod, shad, white- 
 fish, bass, flounder, skate, sole, halibut, sturgeon, 
 oolachan, herring, trout, haddock, smelts, anchovies. 
 
■^. 
 
 ■J'^UI. f.l'.iW/i.- 
 
 THE SALMON CACHE 
 
 dog-fish, perch, sardines, oysters, crayfish shrimps, 
 crabs, and mussels. Of other denizens of the water, 
 the whale, sea-otter, and seal prove rich prey for those 
 who search for them. 
 
 The main salmon rivers are the Fraser, Skeena, 
 and Nasse rivers, but the fish also swarm in the inlets 
 into which smaller streams empty. The Nimkish, 
 
276 ON Canada's frontier 
 
 on Vancouver Island, is also a salmon stream. Setting 
 aside the stories of water so thick with salmon that 
 a man might walk upon their backs, as well as that 
 tale of the stage-coach which was upset by salmon 
 banking themselves against it when it was crossing a 
 fording-place, there still exist absolutely trustworthy 
 accounts of swarms which at their height cause the 
 larofest rivers to seem alive with these fish. In such 
 cases the ripple of their back fins frets the entire 
 surface of the stream. I have seen photographs that 
 show the fish in incredible numbers, side by side, like 
 logs in a raft, and I have the word of a responsible 
 man for the statement that he has gotten all the 
 salmon needed for a small camp, day after day, by 
 walking to the edge of a river and jerking the fish 
 out with a common poker. 
 
 There are about sixteen canneries on the Fraser, 
 six on the Skeena, three on the Nasse, and three 
 scattered in other waters — River Inlet and Alert Bay. 
 The total canning in 1889 was 414,294 cases, each 
 of 48 one-pound tins. The fish are sold to Europe, 
 Australia, and eastern Canada. The American market 
 takes the Columbia River salmon. A round $1,000,000 
 is invested in the vessels, nets, trawls, canneries, oil- 
 factories, and freezing and salting stations used in 
 this industry in British Columbia, and about 5500 men 
 are employed. " There is no difficulty in catching 
 the fish," says a local historian, "for in some streams 
 they are so crowded that they can readily be picked 
 out of the water by hand." However, gill-nets are 
 found to be preferable, and the fish are caught in 
 these, which are stretched across the streams, and 
 
CANADA S EL DORADO 277 
 
 handled by men in flat-bottomed boats. The fish are 
 loaded into scows and transported to the canneries, 
 usually frame structures built upon piles close to the 
 shores of the rivers. In the canneries the tins are 
 made, and, as a rule, saw-mills near by produce the 
 wood for the manufacture of the packing-cases. The 
 fish are cleaned, rid of their heads and tails, and then 
 chopped up and loaded into the tins by Chinamen 
 and Indian w^omen. The tins are then boiled, solder- 
 ed, tested, packed, and shipped away. The industry 
 is rapidly extending, and fresh salmon are now being 
 shipped, frozen, to the markets of eastern America 
 and England. My figures for 1889 (obtained from 
 the Victoria Times) are in all likelihood under the 
 mark for the season of 1890. The coast is made rag- 
 ged by inlets, and into nearly every one a water- 
 course empties. All the larger streams are the haven 
 of salmon in the spawning season, and in time the 
 principal ones will be the bases of canning operations. 
 The Dominion Government has founded a salmon 
 hatchery on the Fraser, above New Westminster. It 
 is under the supervision of Thomas Mowat, Inspector 
 of Fisheries, and millions of small fry are now annu- 
 ally turned into the great river. Whether the unex- 
 ampled run of 1889 was in any part due to this proc- 
 ess cannot be said, but certainly the salmon are not 
 diminishing in numbers. It was feared that the ref- 
 use from the canneries would injure the " runs" of 
 live fish, but it is now believed that there is a profit 
 to be derived from treating the refuse for oil and 
 guano, so that it is more likely to be saved than 
 thrown back into the streams in the near future. 
 
2/8 ON Canada's frontier 
 
 The oolachan, or candle-fish, is a valuable product 
 of these waters, chiefly of the Fraser and Nasse 
 rivers. They are said to be delicious when fresh, 
 smoked, or salted, and I have it on the authority of 
 the little pamphlet " British Columbia," handed me 
 by a government official, that " their oil is considered 
 superior to cod-liver oil, or any other fish-oil known."" 
 It is said that this oil is whitish, and of the con- 
 sistency of thin lard. It is used as food by the na- 
 tives, and is an article of barter between the coast 
 Indians and the tribes of the interior. There is so 
 much of it in a candle-fish of ordinary size that when> 
 one of them is dried, it will burn like a candle. It 
 is the custom of the natives on the coast to catch 
 the fish in immense numbers in purse-nets. They 
 then boil them in iron -bottomed bins, straining the 
 product in willow baskets, and running the oil into 
 cedar boxes holding fifteen gallons each. The Nasse 
 River candle -fish are the best. Thev beo^in runninaf 
 in March, and continue to come by the million for a 
 period of several weeks. 
 
 Codfish are supposed to be very plentiful, and to 
 frequent extensive banks at sea, but these shoals have 
 not been explored or charted by the Government,, 
 and private enterprise will not attempt the work. 
 Similar banks off the Alaska coast are already the 
 resorts of California fishermen, who drive a prosper- 
 ous trade in salting large catches there. The skil, or 
 black cod, formerly known as the "coal-fish," is a 
 splendid deep-water product. These cod weigh from 
 eight to twenty pounds, and used to be caught by 
 the Indians with hook and line. Already white men 
 
CANADA S EL DORADO 279 
 
 are driving the Indians out by superior methods. 
 Trawls of 300 hooks are used, and the fish are found 
 to be plentiful, especially off the west coast of the 
 Queen Charlotte Islands. The fish is described as 
 superior to the cod of Newfoundland in both oil and 
 meat. The general market is not yet accustomed to 
 it, but such a ready sale is found for what are caught 
 that the number of vessels engaged in this fishing in- 
 creases year by year. It is evident that the catch of 
 skil will soon be an important source of revenue to 
 the province. 
 
 AN lUEAL OK THE COAST 
 
 Herring are said to be plentiful, but no fleet is yet 
 fitted out for them. Halibut are numerous and com- 
 mon. They are often of very great size. Sturgeon 
 are found in the Fraser, whither they chase the sal- 
 mon. One weighing 1400 pounds was exhibited in 
 Victoria a few years ago, and those that weigh more 
 than half as much are not unfrequently captured. 
 The following is a report of the yield and value of 
 the fisheries of the province for 1889: 
 
28o 
 
 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 Kind of Fish. 
 
 Salmon in cans . ._ lbs 
 
 fresh . . .' lbs 
 
 salted bbls 
 
 " smoked lbs 
 
 Sturgeon, fresh 
 
 Halibut. " 
 
 Herring, " 
 
 " smoked 
 
 Oolachans, " 
 
 fresh 
 
 salted bbls, 
 
 Trout, fresh lbs. 
 
 Fish, assorted 
 
 Smelts, fresh 
 
 Rock cod 
 
 Skil, salted bbls. 
 
 Fooshqua, fresh 
 
 Fur seal-skins No. 
 
 Hair " " 
 
 Sea-otter skins " 
 
 Fish oil gals. 
 
 Oysters sacks 
 
 Clams 
 
 Mussels 
 
 Crabs No. 
 
 Abelones boxes 
 
 Isinglass lbs. 
 
 Estimated fish consumed in prov- 
 ince 
 
 Shrimps, prawns, etc 
 
 Estimated consumption by Ind- 
 ians — 
 
 Salmon 
 
 Halibut 
 
 Sturgeon and other fish . . 
 Fish oils 
 
 Quantity. 
 
 Value. 
 
 20,I2'2,I2S 
 2,187.000 
 
 3.749 
 
 12,900 
 
 318.600 
 
 605.050 
 
 1 90,000 
 
 33,000 
 
 82.500 
 
 6,700 
 
 380 
 
 14,025 
 
 322.725 
 
 52,100 
 
 39.250 
 
 1.560 
 
 268.350 
 
 33.570 
 
 7.000 
 
 115 
 
 141,420 
 
 3.000 
 
 3,500 
 
 250 
 
 175,000 
 
 100 
 
 5,000 
 
 Approximate yield , 
 
 M.414.655 36 
 218.700 00 
 
 37,460 00 
 2,580 00 
 
 15,930 00 
 
 30,152 50 
 9,500 00 
 3,300 00 
 8,250 00 
 1,340 00 
 3.800 00 
 1,402 50 
 
 16,136 25 
 3,126 00 
 1,962 50 
 
 18,720 00 
 
 13.417 50 
 
 335.700 00 
 
 5,250 00 
 
 1 1 , 500 00 
 
 70,710 00 
 
 5,250 00 
 
 6,125 00 
 
 500 00 
 
 5,250 00 
 
 500 00 
 
 1,750 00 
 
 100,000 00 
 5,000 00 
 
 2,732,500 00 
 
 190,000 00 
 
 260.000 00 
 
 75.000 00 
 
 3,605,467 61 
 
 When it is considered that this is the showing of 
 one of the newest communities on the continent, 
 numbering only the population of what we would 
 call a small city, suffering for want of capital and 
 nearly all that capital brings with it, there is no 
 
CANADA S EL DORADO 28 1 
 
 longer occasion for surprise at the provincial boast 
 that they possess far more extensive and richer fish- 
 ing-fields than any on the Atlantic coast. Time and 
 enterprise will surely test this assertion, but it is al- 
 ready evident that there is a vast revenue to be 
 wrested from those waters. 
 
 I have not spoken of the sealing, which yielded 
 $236,000 in 1 88 7, and may yet be decided to be ex- 
 clusively an American and not a British Columbian 
 source of profit. Nor have I touched upon the ex- 
 traction of oil from herrings and from dog-fish and 
 whales, all of which are small channels of revenue. 
 
 I enjoyed the good-fortune to talk at length with a 
 civil engineer of high repute who has explored the 
 greater part of southern British Columbia — at least 
 in so far as its main valleys, waterways, trails, and 
 mountain passes are concerned. Having learned not 
 to place too high a value upon the printed matter 
 put forth in praise of any new country, I was espe- 
 cially pleased to obtain this man s practical impres- 
 sions concerning the store and quality and kinds of 
 timber the province contains. He said, not to use 
 his own words, that timber is found all the way back 
 from the coast to the Rockies, but it is in its most 
 plentiful and majestic forms on the west slope of 
 those mountains and on the west slope of the Coast 
 Range. The very largest trees are between the 
 Coast Range and the coast. The country between 
 the Rocky Mountains and the Coast Range is dry by 
 comparison with the parts where the timber thrives 
 best, and, naturally, the forests are inferior. Between 
 the Rockies and the Kootenay River cedar and tarn- 
 
282 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 aracks reach six and eight feet in diameter, and at- 
 tain a height of 200 feet not infrequently. There 
 are two or three kinds of fir and some pines (though 
 not very many) in this region. There is very Httle 
 leaf-wood, and no hard-wood. Maples are found, to 
 be sure, but they are rather more like bushes than 
 trees to the British Columbian mind. As one moves 
 westward the same timber prevails, but it grows 
 shorter and smaller until the low coast country is 
 reached. There, as has been said, the giant forests 
 occur again. This coast region is largely a flat 
 country, but there are not many miles of it. 
 
 To this rule, as here laid down, there are some not- 
 able exceptions. One particular tree, called there 
 the bull-pine — it is the pine of Lake Superior and 
 the East — grows to great size all over the province. 
 It is a common thing to find the trunks of these 
 trees measuring four feet in diameter, or nearly thir- 
 teen feet in circumference. It is not especially valu- 
 able for timber, because it is too sappy. It is short- 
 lived when exposed to the weather, and is therefore 
 not in demand for railroad work; but for the ordinary 
 uses to which builders put timber it answers very 
 well. 
 
 There is a maple which attains great size at the 
 coast, and which, when dressed, closely resembles 
 bird's-eye-maple. It is called locally the vine -maple. 
 The trees are found with a diameter of two -and -a 
 half to three feet, but the trunks seldom rise above 
 forty or fifty feet. The wood is crooked. It runs 
 very badly. This, of course, is what gives it the 
 beautiful grain it possesses, and which must, sooner 
 
m\\ «v 
 
CANADA S EL DORADO 285 
 
 or later, find a ready market for it. There is plenty 
 of hemlock in the province, but it is nothing like so 
 large as that which is found in the East, and its bark 
 is not so thick. Its size renders it serviceable for 
 nothing larger than railway ties, and the trees grow 
 in such inaccessible places, half-way up the mount- 
 ains, that it is for the most part unprofitable to 
 handle it. The red cedars — the wood of which is con- 
 sumed in the manufacture of pencils and cigar-boxes 
 — are also small. On the other hand, the white cedar 
 reaches enormous sizes, up to fifteen feet of thick- 
 ness at the base, very often. It is not at all extraor- 
 dinary to find these cedars reaching 200 feet above 
 the ground, and one was cut at Port Moody, in clear- 
 ing the way for the railroad, that had a length of 310 
 feet. When fire rages in the provincial forests, the 
 wood of these trees is what is consumed, and usually 
 the trunks, hollow and empty, stand grimly in their 
 places after the fire would otherwise have been for- 
 gotten. These great tubes are often of such dimen- 
 sions that men put windows and doors in them and 
 use them for dwellings. In the valleys are immense 
 numbers of poplars of the common and cottonwood 
 species, white birch, alder, willow, and yew trees, but 
 they are not estimated in the forest wealth of the 
 province, because of the expense that marketing 
 them would entail. 
 
 This fact concerning the small timber indicates at 
 once the primitive character of the country, and the 
 vast wealth it possesses in what might be called heroic 
 timber — that is, sufficiently valuable to force its way 
 to market even from out that unopened wilderness.. 
 
286 ON Canada's frontier 
 
 It was the opinion of the engineer to whom I have 
 referred that timber land which does not attract the 
 second glance of. a prospector in British Columbia 
 would be considered of the first importance in Maine 
 and New Brunswick. To put it in another wa}^ river- 
 side timber land which in those countries would fetch 
 fifty dollars the acre solely for its wood, in British 
 Columbia would not be taken up. In time it may 
 be cut, undoubtedly it must be, when new railroads 
 alter its value, and therefore it is impossible even 
 roughly to estimate the value of the provincial forests. 
 A great business is carried on in the shipment of 
 ninety-foot and one-hundred-foot Douglas fir sticks to 
 the great car-building works of our country and Can- 
 ada. They are used in the massive bottom frames of 
 palace cars. The only limit that has yet been reach- 
 ed in this industry is not in the size of the logs, but 
 in the capacities of the saw-mills, and in the possibil- 
 ities of transportation by rail, for these logs require 
 three cars to support their length. Except for the val- 
 leys, the whole vast country is enormously rich in this 
 timber, the mountains (excepting the Rockies) being 
 clothed with it from their bases to their tops. Vancou- 
 ver Island is a heavily and valuably timbered country. 
 It bears the same trees as the main-land, except that it 
 has the oak-tree, and does not possess the tamarack. 
 The Vancouver Island oaks do not exceed two or 
 two -and -a- half feet in diameter. The Douglas fir 
 (our Oregon pine) grows to tremendous proportions, 
 especially on the north end of the island. In the old 
 offices of the Canadian Pacific Railway at Vancouver 
 are panels of this wood that are thirteen feet across, 
 
CANADA S EL DORADO 287 
 
 showing that they came from a tree whose trunk was 
 forty feet in circumference. Tens of thousands of 
 these firs are from eight to ten feet in diameter at the 
 bottom. 
 
 Other trees of the province are the great silver-fir, 
 the wood of which is not very valuable; Englemann's 
 spruce, which is very like white spruce, and is very 
 abundant ; balsam-spruce, often exceeding two feet in 
 diameter; the yellow or pitch pine; white pine; yellow 
 cypress; crab -apple, occurring as a small tree or 
 shrub; western birch, comojon in the Columbia re- 
 gion ; paper or canoe birch, found sparingly on Van- 
 couver Island and on the lower Fraser, but in abun- 
 dance and of large size in the Peace River and upper 
 Fraser regions ; dogwood, arbutus, and several minor 
 trees. Among the shrubs which grow in abundance 
 in various districts or all over the province are the 
 following : hazel, red elder, willow, barberry, wild red 
 cherry, blackberry, yellow plum, choke-cherry, rasp- 
 berry, gooseberr3^ bearberry, currant, and snowberry, 
 mooseberry, bilberry, cranberry, whortleberry, mul- 
 berry, and blueberry. 
 
 I would have liked to write at lenorth concerning 
 the enterprising cities of the province, but, after all, 
 they may be trusted to make themselves known. It 
 is the region behind them which most interests 
 mankind, and the Government has begun, none too 
 promptly, a series of expeditions for exploiting it. As 
 for the cities, the chief among them and the capital, Vic- 
 toria, has an estimated population of 22,000. Its busi- 
 ness district wears a prosperous, solid, and attractive 
 appearance, and its detached dwellings — all of frame, 
 
288 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 and of the distinctive type which marks the houses of 
 the CaHfornia towns — are surrounded by gardens. It 
 has a beautiful but inadequate harbor; yet in a few 
 years it will have spread to Esquimault, now less than 
 two miles distant. This is now the seat of a British 
 admiralty station, and has a splendid haven, whose 
 water is of a depth of from six to eight fathoms. At 
 Esquimault are governme nt offices, churches, schools,, 
 hotels, stores, a naval " canteen," and a dry-dock 450- 
 feet long, 26 feet deep, and 65 feet wide at its en- 
 trance. The electric street railroad of Victoria was 
 extended to Esquimault in the autumn of 1890. Of 
 the climate of Victoria Lord Lome said, " It is softer 
 and more constant than that of the south of Eng- 
 land." 
 
 Vancouver, the principal city of the main-land, is 
 slightly smaller than Victoria, but did not begin ta 
 displace the forest until 1886. After that every 
 house except one was destroyed by fire. To-day it 
 boasts a hotel comparable in most important respects 
 with any in Canada, many noble business buildings 
 of brick or stone, good schools, fine churches, a really 
 great area of streets built up with dwellings, and a 
 notable system of wharves, warehouses, etc. The 
 Canadian Pacific Railway terminates here, and so- 
 does the line of steamers for China and Japan. The 
 city is picturesquely and healthfully situated on an 
 arm of Burrard Inlet, has gas, water, electric lights,, 
 and shows no sign of halting its hitherto rapid growth. 
 Of New Westminster, Nanaimo, Yale, and the still 
 smaller towns, there is not opportunity here for more 
 than naming. 
 
Canada's el dorado 289 
 
 In the original settlements in that territory a pecul- 
 iar institution occasioned gala times for the red men 
 now and then. This was the "potlatch," a thing to 
 us so foreign, even in the impulse of which it is be- 
 gotten, that we have no word or phrase to give its 
 meaning. It is a feast and merrymaking at the ex- 
 pense of some man who has earned or saved what he 
 deems considerable w-ealth, and who desires to dis- 
 tribute every iota of it at once in edibles and drink- 
 ables among the people of his tribe or village. He 
 does this because he aspires to a chieftainship, or 
 merely for the credit of a "potlatch " — a high distinc- 
 tion. Indians have been known to throw away such 
 a sum of money that their "potlatch" has been given 
 in a huge shed built for the feast, that hundreds have 
 been both fed and made drunk, and that blankets and 
 ornaments have been distributed in addition to the 
 feast. 
 
 The custom has a new sio-nificance now. It is the 
 w'hite man who is to enjoy a greater than all previous 
 potlatches in that region. The treasure has been 
 garnered during the ages by time or nature or what- 
 soever you may call the host, and the province itself 
 is offered as the feast. 
 
 19 
 
IX 
 
 DAN Dunn's outfit 
 
 AT Revelstoke, 380 miles from the Pacific Ocean, 
 in British Columbia, a small white steamboat, 
 built on the spot, and exposing a single great paddle- 
 wheel at her stern, was waiting to make another of her 
 still few trips through a wilderness that, but for her 
 presence, would be as completely primitive as almost 
 any in North America. Her route lay down the 
 Columbia River a distance of about one hundred 
 and thirty miles to a point called Sproat's Landing, 
 where some rapids interrupt navigation. The main 
 load upon the steamer s deck was of steel rails for a 
 railroad that was building into a new mining region 
 in what is called the Kootenay District, just north of 
 our Washinorton and Idaho. The sister ranije to the 
 Rockies, called the Selkirks, was to be crossed by the 
 new highway, which would then connect the valley of 
 the Columbia with the Kootenay River. There was 
 a temptation beyond the mere chance to join the first 
 throng that pushed open a gateway and began the 
 breaking of a trail in a brand-new country. There 
 was to be witnessed the propulsion of civilization be- 
 yond old confines by steam-power, and this required 
 railroad building in the Rockies, where that science 
 finds its most formidable problems. And around and 
 through all that was being done pressed a new popu- 
 
DAN DUNN S OUTFIT 
 
 291 
 
 lation, made up of many of the elements that pro- 
 duced our old-time border life, and gave birth to some 
 of the most picturesque and exciting chapters in 
 American History. 
 
 It should be understood that here in the very heart 
 of British Columbia only the watercourses have been 
 travelled, and there was neither a settlement nor a 
 house along the Columbia in that great reach of its 
 valley between our border and the Canadian Pacific 
 Railway, except at the landing at which this boat 
 stopped. 
 
 Over all the varying scene, as the boat ploughed 
 along, hung a mighty silence ; for almost the only life 
 on the deep wooded sides of the mountains was that 
 of stealthy game. At only two points were any human 
 beings lodged, and these were wood-choppers who 
 supplied the fuel for the steamer — a Chinaman in one 
 place, and two or three white men farther on. In this 
 part of its magnificent valley the Columbia broadens 
 in two long loops, called the Arrow Lakes, each more 
 than two miles wide and twenty to thirty miles in 
 length. Their prodigious towering walls are densely 
 wooded, and in places are snow-capped in midsummer. 
 The forest growth is primeval, and its own luxuriance 
 crowds it beyond the edge of the grand stream in the 
 fretwork of fallen trunks and bushes, whose roots are 
 bedded in the soft mass of centuries of forest debris. 
 
 Early in the journey the clerk of the steamer told 
 me that wild animals were frequently seen crossing 
 the river ahead of the vessel; bear, he said, and deer 
 and elk and porcupine. When I left him to go to 
 my state-room and dress for the rough journey ahead 
 
292 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 of me, he came to my door, calling in excited tones for 
 me to come out on the deck. " There's a big bear 
 ahead !" he cried, and as he spoke I saw the black 
 head of the animal cleaving the quiet water close to 
 the nearer shore. Presently Bruin's feet touched the 
 bottom, and he bounded into the bush and disap- 
 peared. 
 
 The scenery was superb all the day, but at sundown 
 nature began to revel in a series of the most splendid 
 and spectacular effects. For an hour a haze had 
 clothed the more distant mountains as with a trans- 
 parent veil, rendering the view dream-like and soft 
 beyond description. But as the sun sank to the sum- 
 mit of the uplifted horizon it began to lavish the most 
 intense colors upon all the objects in view. The snowy 
 peaks turned to gaudy prisms as of crystal, the wood- 
 ed summits became impurpled, the nearer hills turned 
 a deep green, and the tranquil lake assumed a bright 
 pea -color. Above all else, the sky was gorgeous. 
 Around its western edge it took on a rose-red blush 
 that blended at the zenith with a deep blue, in which 
 were floating little clouds of amber and of flame- lit 
 pearl. 
 
 A moonless night soon closed around the boat, and 
 in the morning we were at Sproat's Landing, a place 
 two months old. The village consisted of a tiny clus- 
 ter of frame-houses and tents perched on the edge 
 of the steep bank of the Columbia. One building was 
 the office and storehouse of the projected railroad, 
 two others were general trading stores, one was the 
 hotel, and the other habitations were mainly tents. 
 
 I firmly believe there never was a hotel like the 
 
DAN nUNN S OUTFIT 
 
 293 
 
 hostlery there. In a general way its design was an 
 adaptation of the plan of a hen-coop. Possibly a box 
 made of gridirons suggests more clearly the principle 
 of its construction. It was two stories high, and con- 
 tained about a baker's dozen of rooms, the main one 
 beino^ the bar-room, of course. After the framework 
 
 AN INDIAN CANOE ON THE COLUMBIA 
 
 had been finished, there was perhaps half enough 
 "slab" lumber to sheathe the outside of the house, 
 and this had been made to serve for exterior and in- 
 terior walls, and the floors and ceilings besides. The 
 consequence was that a flock of gigantic canaries 
 might have been kept in it with propriety, but as a 
 place of abode for human beings it compared closely 
 with the Brooklyn Bridge. 
 
 They have in our West many very frail hotels that 
 the people call "telephone houses," because a tenant 
 can hear in every room whatever is spoken in any 
 
294 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 part of the building; but in this house one could 
 stand in any room and see into all the others. A 
 clergyman and bis wife stopped in it on the night 
 before I arrived, and the good woman stayed up until 
 nearly daylight, pinning papers on the walls and lay- 
 ing them on the floor until she covered a corner in 
 which to prepare for bed. 
 
 I hired a room and stored my traps in it, but I 
 slept in one of the engineers' tents, and met with a 
 very comical adventure. The tent contained two 
 cots, and a bench on which the engineer, who occu- 
 pied one of the beds, had heaped his clothing. Sup- 
 posing him to be asleep, I undressed quietly, blew out 
 the candle, and popped into my bed. As I did so one 
 pair of its legs broke down, and it naturally occurred 
 to me, at almost the same instant, that the bench 
 was of about the proper height to raise the fallen end 
 of the cot to the right level. 
 
 " Broke down, eh .?" said my companion — a man, 
 by-the-way, whose face I have never yet seen. 
 
 " Yes," I replied. " Can I put your clothing on the 
 floor and make use of that bench ?" 
 
 " Aye, that you can." 
 
 So out of bed I leaped, put his apparel in a heap 
 on the floor, and ran the bench under my bed. It 
 proved to be a neat substitute for the broken legs, 
 and I was quickly under the covers again and ready 
 for sleep. 
 
 The engineer's voice roused me. 
 
 " That's what I call the beauty of a head-piece," he 
 said. Presently he repeated the remark. 
 
 " Are you speaking to me.''" I asked. 
 
DAN DUNN S OUTFIT 295 
 
 " Yes; I'm saying that's what I call the beauty of a 
 head-piece. It's wonderful; and many's the day and 
 night I'll think of it, if I live. What do I mean ? Why, 
 I mean that that is what makes you Americans such 
 a great people — it's the beauty of having head-pieces 
 on your shoulders. It's so easy to think quick if 
 you've got something to think with. Here you are, 
 and your bed breaks down. What would I do ? 
 Probably nothing. I'd think what a beastly scrape 
 it was, and I'd keep on thinking till I went to sleep. 
 What do you do ? Why, as quick as a flash you says, 
 ' Hello, here's a go !' ' May I have the bench .?' says 
 you. ' Yes,' says I. Out of bed you go, and you 
 clap the bench under the bed, and there you are, as 
 right as a trivet. That's the beauty of a head-piece, 
 and that's what makes America the wonderful coun- 
 try she is." 
 
 Never was a more sincere compliment paid to my 
 country, and I am glad I obtained it so easily. 
 
 There was a barber pole in front of the house, set 
 up by a " prospector " who had run out of funds (and 
 everything else except hope), and who, like all his 
 kind, had stopped to " make a few dollars " wherewith 
 to outfit as^ain and continue his search for ijold. He 
 noted the local need of a barber, and instantly be- 
 came one by purchasing a razor on credit, and paint- 
 ing a pole while waiting for custom. He was a jocu- 
 lar fellow — a born New Yorker, by-the-way. 
 
 " Don't shave me close," said I. 
 
 "Close.'*" he repeated. "You'll be the luckiest 
 victim I've slashed yet if I get off any of your beard 
 at all. How's the razor?" 
 
296 ON Canada's frontier 
 
 "All right." 
 
 " Oh no, it ain't," said he ; " you're setting your 
 nerves to stand it, so's not to be called a tender-foot. 
 I'm no barber. I expected to 'tend bar when I 
 bumped up agin this place. If you could see the 
 blood streaming down your face you'd faint." 
 
 In spite of his self -depreciation, he performed as 
 artistic and painless an operation as I ever sat 
 through. 
 
 While I was being shaved the loungers in the 
 barber-shop entered into a conversation that re- 
 vealed, as nothing else could have disclosed it, the 
 deadly monotony of life in that little town. A hen 
 cackled out-of-doors, and the loungers fell to ques- 
 tioning one another as to which hen had laid an egg. 
 
 " It must be the black one," said the barber. 
 
 " Yet it don't exactly sound like old blacky 's 
 cackle," said a more deliberate and careful speaker, 
 
 " 'Pears to me 's though it might be the speckled 
 un," ventured a third. 
 
 "She ain't never laid no eggs," said the barber. 
 
 " Could it be the bantam ?" another inquired. 
 
 Thus they discussed with earnestness this most in- 
 teresting event of the morning, until a young man 
 darted into the room with his eyes lighted by excite- 
 ment. 
 
 " Say, Bill," said he, almost breathlessly, " that's 
 the speckled hen a-cackling, by thunder ! She's laid 
 an egg, I guess." 
 
 In Sproat's Landing we saw the nucleus of a rail- 
 road terminal point. The queer hotel was but little 
 more peculiar than many of the people who gathered 
 
i(*J4@i?^^»?^^ 
 
 C ..j_ * A^i) 
 
 ,«««4 ' r^ -^ /^t^^ 
 
 "you're setting your nerves to stand it" 
 
 on the single street on pay-day to spend their hard- 
 earned money upon a great deal of illicit whiskey and 
 a few rude necessaries from the limited stock on sale 
 in the stores. There never had been any grave dis- 
 order there, yet the floating population was as motley 
 a collection of the riffraff of the border as one could 
 well imagine, and there was only one policeman to 
 
298 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 enforce the law in a territory the size of Rhode Isl- 
 and. He was quite as remarkable in his way as any 
 other development of that embryotic civilization. His 
 name was Jack Kirkup, and all who knew him spoke 
 of him as being physically the most superb example 
 of manhood in the Dominion. Six feet and three 
 inches in height, with the chest, neck, and limbs of a 
 giant, his three hundred pounds of weight were so 
 exactly his complement as to give him the symmetry 
 of an Apollo. He was good-looking, with the beauty 
 of a round-faced, good-natured boy, and his thick hair 
 fell in a cluster of ringlets over his forehead and upon 
 his neck. No knight of Arthur's circle can have 
 been more picturesque a figure in the forest than this 
 " Jack." He was as neat as a dandy. He wore high 
 boots and corduroy knickerbockers, a flannel shirt 
 and a sack-coat, and rode his big bay horse with the 
 ease and sfrace of a Skobeleff. He smoked like a fire 
 of green brush, but had never tasted liquor in his life. 
 In a dozen years he had slept more frequently in the 
 open air, upon pebble beds or in trenches in the snow, 
 than upon ordinary bedding, and he exhibited, in his 
 graceful movements, his sparkling eyes and ruddy 
 cheeks, his massive frame and his imperturbable good- 
 nature, a degree of health and vigor that would seem 
 insolent to the average New Yorker. Now that the 
 railroad was building, he kept ever on the trail, along 
 what was called " the right of way" — going from camp 
 to camp to "jump" whiskey peddlers and gamblers 
 and to quell disorder — except on pay-day, once a 
 month, when he stayed at Sproat's Landing. 
 
 The echoes of his fearless behavior and lively ad- 
 
DAN DUiNN S OUTFIT 
 
 299 
 
 ventures rang in every gathering. Ti\e general tenor 
 of the stories was to the effect that he usually gave 
 one warning to evil-doers, and if they did not heed 
 that he " cleaned them out." He carried a revolver, 
 but never had used it. Even when the most notori- 
 ous gambler on our border had crossed over into 
 " Jack's " bailiwick the policeman depended upon his 
 fists. He had met the gambler and had " advised" 
 him to take the cars next day. The gambler, in re- 
 
 V^«*NT. 
 
 ' *"W W 
 
 .{«*,(,. 
 
 ^'4i 
 
 JACK KIRKUP, THE MOUNTAIN SHERIFK 
 
300 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 ply, had suggested that both would get along more 
 quietly if each minded his own affairs, whereupon 
 Kirkup had said, " You hear me : take the cars out 
 of here to-morrow." The little community (it was 
 Donald, B. C, a very rough place at the time) held 
 its breathing for twenty- four hours, and at the ap- 
 proach of train -time was on tiptoe with strained 
 anxiety. At twenty minutes before the hour the 
 policeman, amiable and easy-going as ever in appear- 
 ance, began a tour of the houses. It was in a tavern 
 that he found the gambler. 
 
 " You must take the train," said he. 
 
 " You can't make me," replied the gambler. 
 
 There were no more words. In two minutes the 
 giant was carrying the limp body of the ruffian to a 
 wagon, in which he drove him to the jail. There he 
 washed the blood off the gambler's face and tidied 
 his collar and scarf. From there the couple walked 
 to the cars, where they parted amicably. 
 
 " I had to be a little rough," said Kirkup to the 
 loungers at the station, " because he was armed like 
 a pin-cushion, and I didn't want to have to kill him." 
 
 We made the journey from Sproat's Landing to 
 the Kootenay River upon a sorry quartet of pack- 
 horses that were at other times employed to carry 
 provisions and material to the construction camps. 
 They were of the kind of horses known all over the 
 West as " cayuses." The word is the name of a once 
 notable tribe of Indians in what is now the State of 
 Washington. To these Indians is credited the intro- 
 duction of this small and peculiar breed of horses, 
 but many persons in the West think the horses get 
 
DAN DUNNS OUTFIT 3OI 
 
 the nickname because of a humorous fancy begotten 
 of their \vildness, and suggesting that they are only 
 part horses and part coyotes. But all the wildness 
 and the characteristic " bucking" had long since been 
 " packed " out of these poor creatures, and they 
 needed the whip frequently to urge them upon a slow- 
 progress. Kirkup was going his rounds, and accom- 
 panied us on our journey of less than twenty miles to 
 the Kootenay River. On the way one saw every 
 stage in the construction of a railway. The process 
 of development was reversed as we travelled, because 
 the work had been pushed well along where we start- 
 ed, and was but at its commencement where we ended 
 our trip. At the landing half a mile or more of the 
 railroad had been completed, even to the addition of 
 a locomotive and two gondola cars. Beyond the 
 little strip of rails was a long reach of graded road- 
 bed, and so the progress of the work dwindled, until 
 at last there was little more than the trail -cutters' 
 path to mark what had been determined as the "right 
 of way." 
 
 For the sake of clearness, I will first explain the 
 steps that are taken at the outset in building a rail- 
 road, rather than tell what parts of the undertaking 
 we came upon in passing over the various " con- 
 tracts " that were being worked in what appeared a 
 confusing and hap-hazard disorder. I have mentioned 
 that one of the houses at the landing was the railroad 
 company's storehouse, and that near by were the 
 tents of the surveyors or civil engineers. The road 
 was to be a branch of the Canadian Pacific system, 
 and these enorineers were the first men sent into the 
 
302 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 country, with instructions to survey a line to the new 
 mining region, into which men were pouring from the 
 older parts of Canada and from our country. It was 
 understood by them that they were to hit upon the 
 most direct and at the same time the least expensive 
 route for the railroad to take. They went to the 
 scene of their labors by canoes, and carried tents, 
 blankets, instruments, and what they called their 
 " grub stakes," which is to say, their food. Then they 
 travelled over the ground between their two terminal 
 points, and back by another route, and back again by 
 still another route, and so back and forth perhaps 
 four and possibly six times. In that way alone were 
 they enabled to select the line which offered the 
 shortest length and the least obstacles in number and 
 degree for the workmen who were to come after 
 them. 
 
 At Sproat's Landing I met an engineer, Mr. B. C. 
 Stewart, who is famous in his profession as the most 
 tireless and intrepid exponent of its diflficulties in the 
 Dominion. The young men account it a misfortune 
 to be detailed to go on one of his journeys with him. 
 It is his custom to start out with a blanket, some 
 bacon and meal, and a coffee-pot, and to be gone for 
 weeks, and even for months. There scarcely can have 
 been a hardier Scotchman, one of more simple tastes 
 and requirements, or one possessing in any higher 
 degree the quality called endurance. He has spent 
 years in the mountains of British Columbia, finding 
 and exploring the various passes, the most direct and 
 feasible routes to and from them, the valleys between 
 the ranges, and the characteristics of each section of 
 
ENGINEER ON THE PRELIMINARY SURVEY 
 
DAN DUNN S OUTFIT 305 
 
 the country. In a vast country that has not other- 
 wise been one -third explored he has made himself 
 familiar with the full southern half. He has not 
 known what it was to enjoy a home, nor has he seen 
 an apple growing upon a tree in many years. During 
 his long and close-succeeding trips he has run the 
 whole gamut of the adventures incident to the lives 
 of hunters or explorers, suffering hunger, exposure, 
 peril from wild beasts, and all the hair-breadth escapes 
 from frost and storm and flood that Nature unvan- 
 quished visits upon those who first brave her depths. 
 Such is the work and such are the men that fiQ^ure 
 in the foremost preliminaries to railroad building. 
 
 Whoever has left the beaten path of travel or gone 
 beyond a well-settled region can form a more or less 
 just estimate of that which one of these professional 
 pioneers encounters in prospecting for a railroad. I 
 had several " tastes," as the Irish express it, of that 
 very Kootenay Valley. I can say conscientiously that 
 I never was in a wilder region. In going only a few 
 yards from the railroad " right of w^ay " the difficulties 
 of an experienced pedestrianism like my own in- 
 stantly became tremendous. There was a particular- 
 ly choice spot for fishing at a distance of three-quar- 
 ters of a mile from Dan Dunn's outfit, and I travelled 
 the road to it half a dozen times. Bunyan would 
 have strengthened the Pilgrims Progress had he 
 known of such conditions with which to surround 
 his hero. Between rocks the size of a city mansion 
 and unsteady bowlders no larger than a man's head 
 the ground was all but covered. Among this wreckage 
 trees grew in wild abundance, and countless trunks 
 
3o6 ON Canada's frontier 
 
 of dead ones lay rotting between them. A jungle as 
 dense as any I ever saw was formed of soft-wood sap- 
 lings and bushes, so that it was next to impossible to 
 move a yard in any direction. It was out of the 
 question for any one to see three yards ahead, and 
 there was often no telling when a foot was put down 
 whether it was going through a rotten trunk or upon 
 a spinning bowlder, or whether the black shadows 
 here and there were a foot deep or were the mouths 
 of fissures that reached to China. I fished too long 
 one night, and was obliged to make that journey after 
 dark. After ten minutes crowded with falls and false 
 steps, the task seemed so hopelessly impossible that 
 I could easily have been induced to turn back and 
 risk a night on the rocks at the edge of the tide. 
 
 It was after a thorough knowledge of the natural 
 conditions which the railroad men were overcoming 
 that the gradual steps of their progress became most 
 interesting. The first men to follow the engineers, 
 after the specifications have been drawn up and the 
 contracts signed, are the " right-of-way " men. These 
 are partly trail-makers and partly laborers at the 
 heavier work of actually clearing the wilderness for 
 the road-bed. The trail-cutters are guided by the long 
 line of stakes with which the engineers have marked 
 the course the road is to take. The trail -men are 
 sent out to cut what in general parlance would be 
 called a path, over which supplies are to be thereafter 
 carried to the workmen's camps. The path they cut 
 must therefore be sufficiently wide for the passage 
 alons it of a mule and his load. As a mule's load 
 will sometimes consist of the framework of a kitchen 
 
DAN DUNN S OUTFIT 307 
 
 range, or the end boards of a bedstead, a five-foot 
 swath throucfh the forest is a trail of serviceable 
 
 O 
 
 width. The trail-cutters fell the trees to rio^ht and 
 left, and drag the fallen trunks out of the path as 
 they go along, travelling and working between a mile 
 and two miles each day, and moving their tents and 
 provisions on pack-horses as they advance. They 
 keep reasonably close to the projected line of the 
 railway, but the path they cut is apt to be a winding 
 one that avoids the larger rocks and the smaller 
 ravines. Great distortions, such as hills or gullies, 
 which the railroad must pass through or over, the trail 
 men pay no heed to; neither do the pack-horses, whose 
 tastes are not consulted, and who can cling to a rock 
 at almost any angle, like flies of larger growth. This 
 trail, when finished, leads from the company's store- 
 house all along the line, and from that storehouse, on 
 the backs of the pack-animals, come all the food and 
 tools and clothing, powder, dynamite, tents, and living 
 utensils, to be used by the workmen, their bosses,, 
 and the engineers. 
 
 Slowly, behind the trail-cutters, follow the " right- 
 of-way" men. These are axemen also. All that they 
 do is to cut the trees down and drag them out of the 
 way. 
 
 It is when the axemen have cleared the rigrht of 
 way that the first view of the railroad in embryo is 
 obtainable. And very queer it looks. It is a wide 
 avenue through the forest, to be sure, yet it is little 
 like any forest drive that we are accustomed to in the 
 realms of civilization. 
 
 Every succeeding stage of the work leads towards. 
 
3o8 
 
 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 the production of an even and level 
 thoroughfare, without protuberance or 
 depression, and in the course of our 
 
 ride to Dan 
 Dunn's camp 
 on the Koo- 
 tenay we saw 
 the rapidl}^ 
 devel oping 
 railroad in 
 each phase 
 of its evolu- 
 tion from the 
 rough surface 
 of the wilder- 
 ness. Now 
 we would 
 come upon a 
 long reach of 
 finished road- 
 bed on com- 
 pa ra t ively 
 level ground 
 all ready for 
 the rails, with 
 carpenters at work in little gullies which they were 
 spanning with timber trestles. Next we would see a 
 battalion of men and dump-carts cutting into a hill 
 of dirt and carting its substance to a neighboring 
 valley, wherein they were slowly heaping a long and 
 symmetrical wall of earth -work, with sloping sides 
 and level top, to bridge the gap between hill and hill. 
 
 FALLING MONARCHS 
 
DAN DUNN S OUTFIT 309 
 
 Again, we came upon places where men ran towards 
 us shouting that a " blast " was to be fired. Here 
 w^as what was called " rock work," where some granite 
 rib of a mountain or huge rocky knoll was being 
 blow^n to flinders with dynamite. 
 
 And so, through all these scenes upon the pack- 
 trail, we came at last to a white camp of tents hidden 
 in the lush greenery of a luxuriant forest, and nestling 
 beside a rushing mountain torrent of green water 
 flecked with the foam from an eternal battle with a 
 myriad of sunken rocks. It was Dunn's headquar- 
 ters — the construction camp. Evening was falling, 
 and the men were clambering down the hill-side trails 
 from their work. There was no order in the disposi- 
 tion of the tents, nor had the forest been prepared for 
 them. Their white sides rose here and there wher- 
 ever there was a space between the trees, as if so 
 many great white moths had settled in a garden. 
 Huge trees had been felled and thrown across ravines 
 to serve as aerial foot-paths from point to point, and 
 at the river's edge two or three tents seemed to have 
 been pushed over the steep bluff to find lodgement on 
 the sandy beach beside the turbulent stream. 
 
 There were other camps on the line of this work, 
 and it is worth while to add a word about their man- 
 agement and the system under which they were main- 
 tained. In the first place, each camp is apt to be 
 the outfit of a contractor. The whole work of build- 
 ing a railroad is let out in contracts for portions of 
 five, ten, or fifteen miles. Even when great jobs of 
 seventy or a hundred miles are contracted for in one 
 piece, it is customary for the contractor to divide his 
 
310 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 task and sublet it. But a fairly representative bit of 
 mountain work is that which I found Dan Dunn 
 superintending, as, the factotum of the contractor who 
 undertook it. 
 
 If a contractor acts as " boss " himself, he stays 
 upon the ground ; but in this case the contractor had 
 other undertakings in hand. Hence the presence of 
 Dan Dunn, his walking boss or general foreman. 
 Dunn is a man of means, and is himself a contractor 
 by profession, who has worked his way up from a 
 start as a laborer. 
 
 The camp to which we came was a portable city, 
 complete except for its lack of women. It had its 
 artisans, its professional men, its store and workshops, 
 its seat of government and officers, and its policeman, 
 its amusement hall, its work-a-day and social sides. 
 Its main peculiarity was that its boss (for it was like 
 an American city in the possession of that function- 
 ary also) had announced that he was going to move 
 it a couple of miles away on the following Sunday. 
 One tent was the stableman's, with a capacious " cor- 
 ral " fenced in near by for the keeping of the pack 
 horses and mules. His corps of assistants was a 
 large one ; for, besides the pack-horses that connected 
 the camp with the outer world, he had the keeping of 
 all the " grade-horses," so called — those which draw 
 the stone and dirt carts and the little dump-cars on 
 the false tracks set up on the levels near where " fill- 
 ing" or "cutting" is to be done. Another tent was 
 the blacksmith's. He had a " helper," and was a busy 
 man, charged with all the tool-sharpening, the care of 
 all the horses' feet, and the repairing of all the iron- 
 
DAN DUNN S OUTFIT 
 
 3" 
 
 work of the wagons, cars, 
 and dirt -scrapers. Near 
 by was the harness-man's 
 tent, the shop of the leath- 
 er-mender. In the centre 
 of the camp, h'ke a low 
 citadel, rose a mound of 
 logs and earth bearing on 
 a sign the single word 
 " Powder," but containing 
 within its great sunken 
 chamber a considerable 
 store of various explo- 
 sives — giant, black, and 
 Judson powder, and dyna- 
 mite. 
 
 More tremendous force 
 is used in railroad blasting 
 than most persons imag- 
 ine. In order to perform 
 a quick job of removing a 
 section of solid mountain, 
 the drill-men, after making 
 a bore, say, twenty feet in 
 depth, begin what they call 
 "springing" it by explod- 
 ing little cartridges in the bottom of the drill hole 
 until they have produced a considerable chamber 
 there. The average amount of explosive for which 
 they thus prepare a place is 40 or 50 kegs of giant 
 powder and 10 kegs of black powder; but Dunn 
 told me he had seen 280 kegs of black powder and 
 
 DAN DUNN ON HIS WORKS 
 
312 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 500 pounds of dynamite used in a single blast in 
 mountain work. 
 
 Another tent ^yas that of the time-keeper. He jour- 
 neyed twice a day all over the work, five miles up 
 and five down. On one journey he noted what men 
 were at labor in the forenoon, and on his return he 
 tallied those who were entitled to pay for the second 
 half of the day. Such an official knows the name of 
 every laborer, and, moreover, he knows the pecuniary 
 rating of each man, so that when the workmen stop 
 him to order shoes or trousers, blankets, shirts, to-^ 
 bacco, penknives, or what not, he decides upon his 
 own responsibility whether they have sufficient money 
 coming to them to meet the accommodation. 
 
 The " store " was simply another tent. In it was 
 kept a fair supply of the articles in constant demand 
 — a supply brought from the headquarters store at 
 the other end of the trail, and constantly replenished 
 by the pack-horses. This trading-place was in charge 
 of a man called " the book-keeper," and he had two 
 or three clerks to assist him. The stock was pre- 
 cisely like that of a cross-roads country store in one 
 of our older States. Its goods included simple medi- 
 cines, boots, shoes, clothing, cutlery, tobacco, cigars, 
 pipes, hats and caps, blankets, thread and needles, 
 and several hundred others among the ten thousand 
 necessaries of a modern laborer's life. The only legal 
 tender received there took the shape of orders written 
 by the time-keeper, for the man in charge of the store 
 was not required to know the ratings of the men 
 upon the pay-roll. 
 
 The doctor's tent was among the rest, but his office 
 

 "^^J- 
 
 
DAN DUNNS OUTFIT 315 
 
 might aptly have been said to be " in the saddle." He 
 was nominally employed by the company, but each 
 man was " docked," or charged, seventy-five cents a 
 month for medical services whether he ever needed a 
 doctor or not. When I was in the camp there was 
 only one sick man — a rheumatic. He had a tent all 
 to himself, and his meals were regularly carried to 
 him. Though he was a stranger to every man there, 
 and had worked only one day before he surrendered 
 to sickness, a purse of about forty dollars had been 
 raised for him among the men, and he was to be 
 *' packed " to Sproat's Landing on a mule at the com- 
 pany's expense whenever the doctor decreed it wise 
 to move him. Of course invalidism of a more serious 
 nature is not infrequent where men work in the paths 
 of sliding rocks, beneath caving earth, amid falling 
 forest trees, around giant blasts, and with heavy tools. 
 
 Another one of the tents was that of the " boss 
 packer." He superintended the transportation of sup- 
 plies on the pack-trail. This " job of 200 men," as 
 Dunn styled his camp, employed thirty pack horses 
 and mules. The pack-trains consisted of a " bell- 
 horse " and boy, and six horses following. Each 
 animal was rated to carry a burden of 400 pounds of 
 dead weight, and to require three quarts of meal three 
 times a day. 
 
 Another official habitation was the " store-man's " 
 tent. As a rule, there is a store-man to every ten 
 miles of construction work ; often every camp has 
 one. The store-man keeps account of the distribu- 
 tion of the supplies of food. He issues requisitions 
 upon the head storehouse of the company, and makes 
 
3i6 ON Canada's frontier 
 
 out orders for each day's rations from the camp store. 
 The cooks are therefore under him, and this fact sue- 
 gests a mention of the principal building in the camp 
 — the mess hall, or "grub tent." 
 
 This structure was of a size to accommodate two 
 hundred men at once. Two tables ran the length of 
 the unbroken interior — tables made roughly of the 
 slabs or outside boards from a saw-mill. The benches 
 were huge tree - trunks spiked fast upon stumps. 
 There was a bench on either side of each table, and 
 the places for the men were each set with a tin cup 
 and a tin pie plate. The bread was heaped high on 
 wooden platters, and all the condiments — catsup, 
 vinegar, mustard, pepper, and salt — were in cans that 
 had once held condensed milk. The cooks worked 
 in an open-ended extension at the rear of the great 
 room. The rule is to have one cook and two 
 " cookees " to each sixty men. 
 
 While I was a new arrival just undergoing intro- 
 duction, the men, who had come in from work, and 
 who had " washed up " in the little creeks and at the 
 river bank, began to assemble in the " grub tent " for 
 supper. They were especially interesting to me be- 
 cause there was every reason to believe that they 
 formed an assembly as typical of the human flotsam 
 of the border as ever was gathered on the continent. 
 Very few were what might be called born laborers ; 
 on the contrary, they were mainly men of higher ori- 
 gin who had failed in older civilizations ; outlaws 
 from the States; men who had hoped for a gold-mine 
 until hope was all but dead ; men in the first flush of 
 the gold fever ; ne er-do-wells ; and here and there a 
 
DAN DUNN S OUTFIT 
 
 17 
 
 working-man by training. They ate as a good many 
 other sorts of men do, with great rapidity, little eti- 
 quette, and just enough unselfishness to pass each 
 other the bread. It was noticeable that they seemed 
 to have no time for talking. Certainly they had 
 earned the right to be hungry, and the food was good 
 and plentiful. 
 
 "^v ) ! 
 
 
 
 A SKETCH ON THE WORK 
 
 Dan Dunn's tent was just in front of the mess 
 tent, a few feet away on the edge of the river bluff. 
 It was a little "A" tent, with a single cot on one side, 
 a wooden chest on the other, and a small table be- 
 tween the two at the farther end, opposite the door. 
 
 " Are ye looking at my wolverenes ?'' said he. 
 *' There's good men among them, and some that ain't 
 so good, and many that's worse. But railroading is 
 
3l8 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 good enough for most of 'em. It ain't too rich for 
 any man's blood, I assure ye." 
 
 Over six feet in height, broad-chested, athletic, and 
 carrying not an ounce of flesh that could be spared, 
 Dan Dunn's was a striking figure even where phys- 
 ical strength was the most serviceable possession of 
 every man. From never having given his personal 
 appearance a thought — except during a brief period 
 of courtship antecedent to the establishment of a 
 home in old Ontario — he had so accustomed himself 
 to unrestraint that his habitual attitude was that of a. 
 long-bladed jack-knife not fully opened. His long 
 spare arms swung limberly before a long spare body 
 set upon long spare legs. His costume was one that 
 is never described in the advertisements of city cloth- 
 iers. It consisted of a dust -coated slouch felt hat, 
 which a dealer once sold for black, of a flannel shirt, 
 of homespun trousers, of socks, and of heavy " bro-^ 
 gans." In all, his dress was what the aesthetes of Mr. 
 Wilde's day might have aptly termed a symphony in 
 dust. His shoes and hat had acquired a mud-color,, 
 and his shirt and trousers were chosen because they 
 originally possessed it. Yet Dan Dunn was dis- 
 tinctly a cleanly man, fond of frequent splashing in 
 the camp toilet basins — the Kootenay River and its 
 little rushing tributaries. He was not shaven. As- 
 a rule he is not, and yet at times he is, as it happens. 
 I learned that on Sundays, when there was nothing 
 to do except to go fishing, or to walk over to the en- 
 gineer's camp for intellectual society, he felt the un- 
 conscious impulse of a forgotten training, and put on 
 a coat. He even tied a black silk ribbon under his- 
 
DAN DUNN S OUTFIT 
 
 319 
 
 collar on such occasions, and if no one had given 
 him a good cigar during the week, he took out his 
 best pipe (which had been locked up, because what- 
 ever was not under lock and key was certain to be 
 stolen in half an hour). Then he felt fitted, as he 
 would say, " for a hard day s work at loafing." 
 
 If you came upon Dan Dunn on Broadway, he 
 would look as awkward as any other animal removed 
 from its element ; yet on a forest trail not even Davy 
 Crockett was handsomer or more picturesque. His 
 face is reddish-brown and as hard-skinned as the top 
 of a drum, befitting a man who has lived out-of-doors 
 all his life. But it is a finely moulded face, instinct 
 with good-nature and some gentleness. The witch- 
 ery of quick Irish humor lurks often in his eyes, but 
 
 THE MESS TEN! Al NIGHT 
 
320 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 can quickly give place on occasion to a firm light, 
 which is best read in connection with the broad, 
 strong sweep of his massive under-jaw. There you 
 see his fitness to command small armies, even of 
 what he calls " wolverenes." He is willing to thrash 
 any man who seems to need the operation, and yet 
 he is equally noted for gathering a squad of rough 
 laborers in every camp to make them his w^ards. He 
 collects the money such men earn, and puts it in 
 bank, or sends it to their families. 
 
 " It does them as much good to let me take it as 
 to chuck it over a gin-mill bar," he explained. 
 
 As we stood looking into the crowded booth, 
 where the men sat elbow to elbow, and all the knife 
 blades were plying to and from all the plates and 
 mouths, Dunn explained that his men were well fed. 
 " The time has gone by," said he, " when you could 
 keep an outfit on salt pork and bacon. It's as far 
 gone as them days when they say the Hudson Bay 
 Company fed its laborers on rabbit tracks and a stick. 
 Did ye never hear of that } Why, sure, man, 'twas 
 only fifty years ago that when meal hours came the 
 bosses of the big trading company would give a 
 workman a stick, and point out some rabbit tracks, 
 and tell him he'd have an hour to catch his fill. But 
 in railroading nowadays we give them the best that's 
 going, and all they want of it — beef, ham, bacon, po- 
 tatoes, mush, beans, oatmeal, the choicest fish, and 
 game right out of the woods, and every sort of vege- 
 table (canned, of course). Oh, they must be fed well, 
 or they wouldn't stay." 
 
 He said that the supplies of food are calculated on 
 
DAN DUNNS OUTFIT 32 1 
 
 the basis of three-and-a-half pounds of provisions to 
 a man — all the varieties of food being proportioned 
 so that the total weight will be three -and- a -half 
 pounds a day. The orders are given frequently and 
 for small amounts, so as to economize in the number 
 of horses required on the pack-trail. The amount to 
 be consumed by the horses is, of course, included in 
 the loads. The cost of " packing " food over long 
 distances is more considerable than would be sup- 
 posed. It was estimated that at Dunn's camp the 
 freighting cost forty dollars a ton, but I heard of 
 places farther in the mountains where the cost was 
 double that. Indeed, a discussion of the subject 
 brought to light the fact that in remote mining 
 camps the cost of "packing" brought lager-beer in 
 bottles up to the price of champagne. At one camp 
 on the Kootenay bacon was selling at the time I 
 was in the valley at thirty cents a pound, and dried 
 peaches fetched forty cents under competition. 
 
 As we looked on, the men were eating fresh beef 
 and vegetables, with tea and coffee and pie. The 
 head cook was a man trained in a lumber camp, and 
 therefore ranked high in the scale of his profession. 
 Every sort of cook drifts into camps like these, and 
 that camp considers itself the most fortunate which 
 happens to eat under the ministrations of a man who 
 has cooked on a steamboat ; but a cook from a lum- 
 ber camp is rated almost as proudly. 
 
 "Ye would not think it," said Dunn, "but some of 
 them men has been bank clerks, and there's doctors 
 and teachers among 'em — ^everything, in fact, except 
 preachers. I never knew a preacher to get into a 
 
"THEY GAINED ERECTNESS BY SLOW JOLTS " 
 
 railroad gang. 
 The men are 
 always chang- 
 — coming 
 and going. 
 We don't have 
 to advertise 
 for new hands. 
 The woods is 
 full of men out 
 of a job, and 
 out of everything — pockets, elbows, and all. They 
 drift in like peddlers on a pay-day. They come here 
 with no more clothing than will wad a gun. The 
 most of them will get nothing after two months' 
 work. You see, they're mortgaged with their fares 
 against them (thirty to forty dollars for them which 
 the railroad brings from the East), and then they have 
 their meals to pay for, at five dollars a week while 
 they're here, and on top of that is all the clothing 
 and shoes and blankets and tobacco, and everything 
 they need — all charged agin them. It's just as well 
 
DAN DUNN S OUTFIT 323 
 
 for them, for the most of them are too rich if they're 
 a dollar ahead. There's few of them can stand the 
 luxury of thirty dollars. When they get a stake of 
 them dimensions, the most of them will stay no 
 .longer after pay-day than John Brown stayed in 
 heaven. The most of them bang it all away for 
 drink, and they are sure to come back again, but the 
 ' prospectors ' and chronic tramps only work to get 
 clothes and a flirting acquaintance with food, as well 
 as money enough to make an afridavit to, and they 
 never come back again at all. Out of 8500 men 
 we had in one big work in Canada, 1500 to 2000 
 knocked off every month. Ninety per cent, came 
 back. They had just been away for an old-fashioned 
 drunk." 
 
 It would be difificult to draw a parallel between 
 these laborers and any class or condition of men in 
 the East. They were of every nationality where news 
 of gold-mines, of free settlers' sections, or of quick 
 fortunes in the New World had penetrated. I rec- 
 ognized Greeks, Finns, Hungarians, Danes, Scotch, 
 English, Irish, and Italians among them. Not a man 
 exhibited a coat, and all were tanned brown, and 
 were as spare and slender as excessively hard work 
 can make a man. There was not a superfluity or an 
 ornament in sight as they walked past me ; not a 
 necktie, a finger-ring, nor a watch-chain. There were 
 some very intelligent faces and one or two fine ones 
 in the band. Two typical old-fashioned prospectors 
 especially attracted me. They were evidently of 
 gentle birth, but time and exposure had bent them, 
 and silvered their long, unkempt locks. Worse than 
 
324 
 
 ON CANADA S FRONTIER 
 
 all, it had planted in their faces a blended expression 
 of sadness and hope fatigued that was painful to see. 
 It is the brand that is on every old prospector's face. 
 A very few of the men were young fellows of thirty, 
 or even within the twenties. Their youth impelled 
 them to break away from the table earlier than the 
 others, and, seizing their rods, to start off for the fish- 
 ino: in the river. 
 
 But those who thought of active pleasure were few 
 indeed. Theirs was killing work, the most severe 
 kind, and performed under the broiling sun, that at 
 hio-h mountain altitudes sends the mercury above 
 1 00° on every summer's day, and makes itself felt as 
 if the rarefied atmosphere was no atmosphere at all. 
 After a long day at the drill or the pick or shovel in 
 such a climate, it was only natural that the men 
 should, with a common impulse, seek first the solace 
 of their pipes, and then of the shake-downs in their 
 tents. I did not know until the next morning how 
 severely their systems were strained ; but it happened 
 at sunrise on that dky that I was at my ablutions 
 on the edge of the river when Dan Dunn's gong 
 turned the silent forest into a bedlam. It was called 
 the seven-o'clock alarum, and was rung two hours 
 earlier than that hour, so that the men might take 
 two hours after dinner out of the heat of the day, 
 " else the sun would kill them," Dunn said. This 
 was apparently his device, and he kept up the trans- 
 parent deception by having every clock and watch 
 in the camp set two hours out of time. 
 
 With the sounding of the gong the men began to 
 appear outside the little tents in which they slept in 
 
DAN DUNN S OUTFIT 
 
 325 
 
 couples. They came stumbling down the bluff to 
 wash in the river, and of all the pitiful sights I ever 
 saw, they presented one of the worst ; of all the 
 straining and racking and exhaustion that ever hard 
 labor gave to men, they exhibited the utmost. They 
 were but half awakened, and they moved so painfully 
 and stiffly that I imagined I could hear their bones 
 creak. I have seen spavined work-horses turned out 
 to die that moved precisely as these men did. It was 
 shocking to see them hobble over the rough ground ; 
 it was pitiful to watch them as they attempted to 
 straighten their stiffened bodies after they had been 
 bent double over the water. They gained erectness 
 by slow jolts, as if their joints were of iron that had 
 rusted. Of course they soon regained whatever elas- 
 ticity nature had left them, and were themselves for 
 the day — an active, muscular force of men. But that 
 early morning sight of them was not such a spectacle 
 as a right-minded man enjoys seeing his fellows take 
 part in. 
 
 THE END 
 
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