Читать книгу A Hatchet Mark in Duplicate - Rev. Alfred Campbell Garrioch - Страница 3

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No doubt I was familiar with that enticing name, Peace River, as far back as the year 1848, when I was still upon my mother’s breasts, a statement warranted by the fact that in 1851 I can remember greedily drinking in stories about Peace River, told by my mother to two older brothers and myself, from which I confidently assume that I must have been one of the same audience, and doing the same thing, if unconsciously, three years earlier, while occupying the infantile position above referred to.

Thoroughly competent was my mother to tell such stories, as she was born at Fort Dunvegan and lived there for years, her father, Mr. Campbell, being at the time Hudson’s Bay Company Officer in charge. Therefore, when the family later moved to the Red River Settlement she knew many things about life at Dunvegan, and, in general, of life in the northern wilds. And the stories told to the little audience of three people gathered about her knees were no fairy tales, but substantial ones about bears, beavers, berries and the like, and while all were entertaining enough to her juvenile audience, as may be supposed, those about bears were by far the most fascinating; and the thriller most indelibly stamped upon my memory is the story of a fight between a Beaver Indian and a grizzly, in which the latter was counted out and died, not, however, before he had drawn blood and left a permanent reminder of the combat on the face of his opponent. Greedily enough I drank in these stories at the time; yet I am not aware that they ever inspired in me the hope that I might some day visit the country. If they did, it must have been subconsciously in the year one, that period in our mortal existence when we may be played upon by the thing called “the subconscious mind.” Speaking, however, from a more reliable consciousness of my Peace River urge, I shall now explicitly state how it was that I came to be a dweller out there.

In the year 1874 the Anglican Church, which sixteen years earlier had entered upon evangelistic work among the Indian tribes of the Mackenzie River basin under the supervision of the Bishop of Rupert’s Land, in that year took an important step forward by forming a new diocese out of the northern part of the Diocese of Rupert’s Land.

The new diocese was appropriately named Athabasca, as it had within its confines the Hudson’s Bay Company district of that name, as well as the Athabasca Lake and the Athabasca River. And until such time as the new diocese itself should be divided there could be no more suitable centre as its Bishop’s headquarters than Fort Chipewyan, beautifully situated at the west end of the lake, whence radiate far-reaching water routes towards the four points of the compass—that going eastward to the end of the lake and beyond, that going westward up the Peace River, that going southward up the Athabasca and that carrying northward the waters of the three routes named down the Great Slave River, on to the Arctic Ocean.

A new diocese having been formed, there had now to be settled the question of providing it with a suitable bishop. Sometimes the placing of a bishop is an extremely difficult thing, because, though people don’t have the choice of their earthly father, they do insist in having a voice—and sometimes a mighty voice—in the choice of their spiritual father. However, in the case of Athabasca there was no difficulty, as the appointment rested conjointly with Archbishop Machray, diocesan of Rupert’s Land, and the Church Missionary Society, which up to that time financed the Indian mission work undertaken in Rupert’s Land. As for the Anglicans in the new diocese, very few of them knew who was their bishop until he took possession of his See at least six months after his consecration. And well might they not object. First of all, they did not have to pay, and, in the second place, they were getting, not a prophet of their own country, but an Englishman—an Englishman whom they knew well and admired greatly.

As it was hardly thinkable in those days that a bishop should be anything but English or, strictly speaking, British, it is perhaps as well that the first bishops in this country had such a prejudice in their favour, for doubtless the episcopal see is sufficiently liable to disturbances without the handicap of a prejudice the other way. As regards the first bishop of Athabasca, Mr. William Bompas, probably those responsible for his appointment did not overlook such considerations as the foregoing; but, independent of them, found what they considered quite sufficient to justify their choice—the record of their man—his humility, piety, energy and versatile qualities. In brief, the following was his record: five years studying law with a noted firm of barristers in London, England; two years more with another firm of barristers; relinquished the study of law in 1858. It is said to be his father who is referred to by Charles Dickens in the “Pickwick Papers” as Sergeant Buzfuz. Although of a Baptist family the son of the sergeant-at-law entered the Anglican ministry and was ordained Deacon in 1859; in 1864 he was ordained priest by Bishop Machray, who was that year on a visit to England; in 1865 he left England to take up mission work in the north, arriving at Fort Simpson, Mackenzie River, on Christmas Day. There he remained the guest of Archdeacon Kirkby until Easter, when he went northward to Forts Norman and McPherson and put in the rest of the winter and the following summer working among the Slavie and Tukudh Indians. The winter of 1866-67 he spent in the igloos of the Eskimo. In 1867-68 we find him back at Fort Simpson in charge of the mission there, and in the latter year we find him at Fort Vermilion, Peace River, for the first time. And so he went on as an itinerating missionary throughout the length and breadth of that great land until 1873, when he was asked to visit England in order that he might be made bishop of the newly formed diocese. And when he accepted that honour, knowing the man as I do, I can readily believe that he did so from as purely disinterested motives as is possible in mortal man, for of all men whom I have known none were freer of conceit or worldly pride than the Right Reverend Bishop Bompas.

He was a remarkable man, and all bishops need to be that. He was morally, spiritually, intellectually and physically a fit man. He was over six feet and well proportioned; but if in this and other respects he was well above the crowd his manner never betrayed the least consciousness of the fact. He was approachable and companionable to all. He lived on the same kind of food and wore clothes no better than theirs, and sometimes not as good. Of him it might fittingly have been said as of John the Baptist, “there was a man sent from God.” His, too, was a “voice crying in the wilderness,” and his the strenuous life, until his work was done, his life ended in a manner consistent with the message the voice had delivered.

I like to think that it was Bishop Bompas, or, if you will, “the voice of one crying in the wilderness,” which induced me to go north just when I was about ready to depart for the south.

My eventful first meeting with Bishop Bompas took place in the month of June, 1874, in what was then the hamlet of Winnipeg. This meeting was brought about by a voice which came to me from the east side of Main Street. The owner of the voice was the Reverend Samuel Pritchard, then professor of English in St. John’s College. He shouted instead of walking across to my side of the street, because in those days the loss of a rubber in the gumbo of Main Street was not an unknown occurrence. The Rev. S. Pritchard shouted, “If you want to go back to schoolteaching, now is your chance. Bishop Bompas, who is staying at Dutch George’s Hotel, and is on his way back to the north, wishes to engage a schoolteacher for work in his diocese.”

Two minutes later I was in the presence of the newly-consecrated bishop, and fifteen minutes later had given him my promise to fill the position offered in the “Far and Furry North.” I was then twenty-six years of age, and, as already admitted, was on the lookout for a job, or what the young people prefer calling a position.

When I left the parental roof at Portage la Prairie six years before, I took charge of the St. John’s parish school in the Red River Settlement; but when the Hudson’s Bay Company régime came to an end in 1870, so did the parochial school system which had been maintained by the Anglican Church since the year 1820. As changes were in order, I resolved on a thorough change for the benefit of my health, so I gave up my studies at St. John’s College and returned to Portage la Prairie. There I engaged for the next three years in semi-agricultural and semi-mercantile transactions. These were very limited in extent, if unlimited as to liability, as all the capital I had to invest was the savings from my three years’ teaching at St. John’s at a salary of twenty pounds per annum.

At the end of the three years I had doubled my capital, bringing it up to three hundred dollars. That did not encourage me to persevere. Although I did astonish myself by going into a calculation as to what would happen if I did persevere and doubled my capital every three years until—well, until I would be as old as I now am. For, according to the calculation, assuming that it worked out as well in practice as it did in theory, I would now find myself the owner of a fortune of eighty million dollars. But well did I know of the pernicious character of the little if that entered into the proposition, also that work and worry would double up as well as capital, resulting, if I may so speak, in my being doubled up long before the allotted period had expired.

The result of my cogitations was that I decided to look for pastures new, and so it was that I bethought me of the domains of Uncle Sam, to which I decided to move, and return, for a time at least, to the work of schoolteaching, confident that I could teach my American cousins a few things, and equally sure that they could teach me many things, among them, for instance, how to save more than three hundred dollars in six years.

Behold me then, after only fifteen minutes’ thinking, completely reversing this decision by consenting to go into the northern wilds of Canada. Was this a case of aimlessness or impulsiveness? I think not. Rather may it be compared to that of a man with his gun all ready loaded, who is turning round to find a safe and proper target, and who lets fly immediately he has found it. Being not unlike others of the great army of human beings, my aim was to help others while helping myself, and while revolving in my mind how to do this most effectively the people of the north loomed up in sight, diverting my attention from those of the south. Both, no doubt, could very well have done without me; but the former, perhaps not quite so well. Then there was the spirit of adventure, or was it the spirit of my mother’s stories? Be that as it may, Bishop Bompas did not have to exercise his eloquence to any great extent to persuade me to accompany him to the north.

One little incident of the first stage of the journey I cannot resist mentioning, and I do so without hesitation as it only pleasantly affects the memory of the chief actor, who has long since passed to the great beyond. The party of missionaries who trekked northward over the prairies in ox carts was in charge of Archdeacon Cowley, a fine old gentleman who besides being Archdeacon was Rupert’s Land Secretary for the Church Missionary Society. Exercising a privilege to which he was entitled as Archdeacon, he wore gaiters, a circumstance which occasioned a temporary misunderstanding between him and Floss, a half-grown water-spaniel which I was taking to the North.

This enjoyable ox-cart stage of my journey ended at Green Lake. There the Hudson’s Bay Company had a trading post and depot which was in charge of Mr. La Liberti, an elderly, quiet and civil French-Canadian, who obligingly hired two Crees to take me down the Beaver River to Isle à la Crosse in a birch-bark canoe. This was the district fort, and it was at the time in charge of Chief Factor William McMurray. From him and his excellent wife I received hospitality for two weeks; and, at the end of that time, Mr. Maurice, postmaster in charge at Buffalo Lake, arrived in a York boat to get his winter outfit. Mr. Maurice was a son-in-law of Mr. La Liberti and, like him, a French-Canadian; but, unlike him, he was very loquacious, and could express himself fluently, not only in his mother tongue, but, when occasion required, in English, Cree or Chipewyan as well. To his care Mr. McMurray intrusted me with instructions to see me safe at Long Portage, sometimes called Methy Portage, or, in the language of Mr. Maurice, Portage la Loche. There he was to hire two Indians to take me down the Clearwater and Athabasca rivers by canoe to Fort Chipewyan. “And there,” said he, “doubtless my friend, Mr. McFarlane, will look after you.”

The journey from Winnipeg to Fort Chipewyan occupied four months, and on my arrival I found it a foregone conclusion that I was to stay there for the winter, and I have never had occasion to regret having done so, for not only did Mr. Roderick McFarlane “look after me” in a reasonable and acceptable manner, but the residents in general gave me the impression that they regarded me as something in the nature of an acquisition, partly, it may be, because of their having heard—what I did not forget—that their bishop and mine had imported me specially to take charge of a seminary which it was in his mind to build some day, somewhere, in his diocese; and that, in the meantime, there was nothing else for it but for me to teach where and when and what, as best I could. To this end I made a careful study of the situation, and to insure an auspicious beginning made it a point to ingratiate myself with the church and the state, and to fraternize with the people, especially those who were parents and had children who might be available as pupils.

The church, if I may so speak, was represented by Rev. Arthur Shaw and his lovely wife, a young and newly-married English couple, who had been stationed here by Bishop Bompas on his way north. The state, to me, for most practical purposes, was represented by Mr. McFarlane, who was so good to me then and afterwards that when he died a few years ago in Winnipeg there were probably few outside of his wife and children who felt his removal more keenly than I.

Upon investigation I found that there were only six Protestant families in the fort who had children of school age. All these were present at the opening of the school. There were twelve of them—all boys—and their ages ranged from seven to fourteen.

According to usage, Mr. Shaw was my superior, as he was in holy orders and the incumbent, while I was a layman and only a temporary and accidental adjunct of the local mission establishment.

As there had been no certainty of my being a resident of the place until my actual appearance on the scene, Mr. McFarlane had, apparently, made all housing arrangements for the winter, leaving me to be put up or put up with later, in the event of my arrival. I found that already some rearranging had been necessary in order to accommodate the Shaws, one Peter Loutit, a carpenter, having obligingly vacated a new house to that end. The said new house was about eighteen by sixteen, and had “two rooms and a garret,” and these divisions were made by nothing more impervious to sound than one thickness of inch lumber. When the Shaws made this house their abode, it became technically “the Mission,” and I, as a missionary, naturally made for it on my arrival. Mr. and Mrs. Shaw, who came from Yorkshire, received me with Yorkshire hospitality, and assigned me to the garret as my share of “the mission.” That invasion of their privacy was pardonable, but I am glad to say that it lasted only as long as it took me to build a little house for myself.

Fortunately for me, I had grown up with Portage la Prairie, where any settler who could not have built his own log house would have been called a kipooch, a useless fellow; so the cramped position existing at the mission gave me a splendid opportunity to prove to the natives of Athabasca that no such term of contempt could fittingly be applied to me. I must, however, admit that but for some assistance kindly provided by Mr. McFarlane, winter might have overtaken me before my house was finished.

The first mission building erected at Fort Chipewyan was a log house fifteen by twelve, daubed within and without with mud. It stood about fifteen rods west of the house occupied by Mr. Shaw, on a piece of land donated by Mr. McFarlane, acting for the Hudson’s Bay Company. In this interesting little structure I passed a happy winter baching it, and instilled into the minds of my twelve pupils a respectable knowledge of the three R’s—Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, and that without overlooking the fourth R—Religion.

With the spring there arrived millions of geese and wavies, and then Floss and I gave the rabbits and ptarmigan a rest and turned our attention to the newer and bigger game which it may be said had come up to our door, for, standing at the door of my house, or stationed in a driftwood stand on the lake shore a few yards away, I brought down as many of these delicious birds as we needed.

A few weeks after the birds from the south, there arrived the brigade of boats from the north, and among the passengers was Bishop Bompas, who continued with the brigade right through to Methy Portage, and then, on the home lap, took me aboard as passenger to Fort Simpson, there to study under him during the following winter.

On the way down, the brigade touched at each of the forts which at that time were stationed on the route: viz. Fort Resolution, situated at the mouth of the Great Slave River; Hay River post, situated at the mouth of Hay River, and Fort Providence, situated on the right bank of the Mackenzie River, not many miles north of its outflow from the Great Slave Lake.

The crews and passengers were made up of six nationalities, white or red, and were so wisely arranged that those belonging to any of them could always converse in his mother tongue with their more immediate neighbours. Fortunately for me, there was on board an old college mate, Mr. Kenneth McDonald, at this time an officer in the Company’s service. By him I was introduced to Dr. McKay, who was in charge of the brigade. This introduction was followed by an invitation to share with them their mess, their tent and their sternsheets.

Mr. McDonald was a lively young gentleman, and the doctor, though twice as old, was not averse to innocent fun, so that I found myself, in a way, obliged to try my hand at “a little nonsense now and then.” I had my violin with me, and it turned out that we could all play on that instrument, so we entered into a lively competition, each endeavouring to show that he didn’t have to play second fiddle.

One day while we were afloat, I manoeuvred for the doctor’s vote by saying to him, after he had done his best with “The Days of Auld Lang Syne,” “Doctor, that was just fine. I do like that old tune when one puts some soul into it as you do.” Then, immediately after, Mr. McDonald took his turn, and played “The Devil Among the Taylors,” putting into it as much energy as if he were in mortal combat with his Satanic Majesty, and when he was through and had laid the violin across his knees, and the Doctor smiling and rubbing his hands had said, “How very realistic!” I said to myself, “Toujours, the Doctor is coming round to my side,” so I said, reaching out my hand for the violin, “Please pass me over that fiddle and see how I’ll electrify the fishes.”

Then, by way of an appeal to the Doctor’s Scottish predilections, I played “Annie Laurie,” trying to do so with as much pathos as if Miss Laurie were my own special admiration.

When I was through the Doctor said, “Well, I don’t know what effect that may have had on the Mackenzie River fishes; but it was fine, and took my thoughts back to Aberdeen.” I was aware that the Doctor was a graduate of Aberdeen University.

Mr. McDonald qualified his praise of my performance by saying, “You did pretty well, Garrioch, but, as in your playing generally, there were notes which you failed to sound with sufficient distinctness.”

“Listen to him, Doctor. Now give us two the benefit of your candid and unbiased opinion. Which would you say is the better fiddler?”

But the canny Scot was non-committal and he smilingly replied, “It would be infra dignitatem or in short I’d be in fera dig if I undertook to be a judge in such matters, and I can only say that, according to my amateur ideas, you both border on perfection.”

At the time of this voyage Doctor McKay had been seven years in the country, having been sent out in 1868 by the Hudson’s Bay Company to investigate the Indian diseases with a view of applying remedial measures; and, as it happened, he reached Fort Simpson and spent his first winter in the country in that particular year when Bishop Bompas—still only Mr. Bompas—in the course of his itinerancy was in charge of the mission. During that winter the Doctor occupied a room in the mission, an arrangement in which I would venture to say there was considerable reciprocity, as the missionary for three years had had no certain dwelling-place and only the previous winter nothing better than the igloos of the greasy Eskimo, while for companionship he had, time and again, to depend on those whose language he was only learning; now he could rest in a comfortable house where he was master, while he daily enjoyed the companionship of an educated gentleman who came fresh from the Old Land. And that gentleman was fortunate in having the opportunity to learn about the Indian diseases from one who above all others was competent to speak on the subject in a manner which would aid the Doctor in accomplishing the object for which he had been sent to the country.

I cannot say where it was that Mr. Bompas obtained a working knowledge of medicine and surgery; but as he was always qualifying toward the maximum of usefulness to the souls and bodies of his fellow men, I could well believe that he did not allow the winter of 1868-69 to pass without getting some pointers in surgery from the man of Aberdeen. Be that as it may, a few years later he saved the life of David Vilnauve, who was one of the steersmen on this voyage of which I now write.

Vilnauve was working under a stage from which thousands of whitefish were suspended, ten in a bunch, by means of stout rods passed through their tails, when the stage collapsed, pinning him underneath, and badly fracturing one of his legs. Due, most likely, to the lack of proper treatment, gangrene set in, and Dr. McKay being far beyond reach, Bishop Bompas was sent for and the case put in his hands. Vilnauve was a Roman Catholic; but, of course, it would be the bishop’s own religion and not that of Vilnauve which had to count in a case like this, and the bishop’s religion was to save life temporally or spiritually whenever he saw a chance to do so.

What instruments the bishop had with which to perform the operation of amputation above the knee, I am unable to say, for, knowing him as I did, I could never bring myself to ask him any questions about the matter, instinctively feeling that he must have passed through an awful ordeal while performing the operation. I have, therefore, only the word of a Hudson’s Bay clerk to go upon, and that individual laughingly—perhaps one should say profanely—described the operation to me as having been performed with a handsaw and a butcher knife. Be that as it may, the operation was performed successfully, and Vilnauve lived long enough afterwards to catch and hang and eat a great many more whitefish, and after having learned from painful experience that “a stitch in time saves nine,” literally as well as otherwise, he would doubtless have improved ideas as to the importance of sound timbers.

I have said that the Doctor, Mr. McDonald and I spent some of our time on the voyage from Fort Chipewyan to Fort Simpson in innocent fun in which my violin came in handy, and I would like to add that this was only at such times as we were sailing or floating smoothly over the water, or when there was no call to put forth a hand to help a body, for there were times when we did not feel at all funny. For instance, when with our heavily-loaded boats we were crossing a wide stretch of the Great Slave Lake, and a strong wind was causing such gigantic waves that to the voyageurs it looked as if any boat a considerable distance away was being swamped as it slid into the trough of the sea, and for long seconds showed nothing but a sail above water. One had only to look then at the anxious expression in the experienced steersman’s face to know that this was no time for nonsense. Or again, when, later on the same day, the brigade was making for the one landing place which would afford a safe harbour for the night, and when still a mile from it we were shrouded in pitchy darkness. Then again it became every face to be serious if it had a normal brain behind it. And unquestionably we were serious, until Admiral Bouvie of the Hudson’s Bay fleet, “who was guide himself, on that occasion, led by an occult instinct or something of the sort,” guided the others by shouts and a beacon light into the haven where they would be. And, after that, when the storm and the darkness were past, and once more—safely seated in the sternsheets of our boats—we quietly floated northward on the vast intake of the Mackenzie River, then might we again have fittingly engaged in harmless essays at wit and humour; but not so “when the day was far spent, and night was drawing nigh,” for after we had prepared ourselves to face the darkness as a solid unit by fastening the boats together, we were dominated by a spirit of quietness as we partook of our evening meal, so that when the sun had sunk behind the western bank and was bathing the trees which lined it, leaving us in contrasting shades in the river below, there was a silence the meaning of which was well expressed when some one repeated the lines:

Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,

Lead thou me on;

The night is dark, and I am far from home,

Lead thou me on.

So down the river we float on and on and on toward the ocean beyond.

On arriving at Fort Simpson we found the entire population of the place—about one hundred—lined up on the bank waiting for us to land, and when we had done so there followed a pretty general mix-up in greetings of all sorts. When I, a young man then, heard the smack of many pairs of lips coming in contact each with the other, I may be pardoned for confessing that, for the time being, I was painfully conscious of being a stranger.

When this affecting scene was over the Company’s officers accompanied Mr. Wm. Hardisty, who was officer in charge, to the big house, standing to the right, while we missionaries followed Bishop Bompas to the mission establishment, which consisted of two fair-sized buildings exactly alike, standing in line sixty yards back from the river, so that this fort, like some others, had an arrangement of buildings which in the usage of the North was called “the square,” and in this particular case it was formed by the two mission buildings on the west, the “big house” on the north, the river on the east, and the sale-shop and the provision store on the south.

As the visiting officers and missionaries had still far to go and much to do before the winter freeze-up, the stay at Fort Simpson was limited to the two days necessary for the transaction of business; and, in consequence, social amenities, so far as the mission was concerned, had to be attended to sans ceremonie.

It was in this connection that one of my missionary friends taught me that brandy may sometimes come in very handy. It had come to be known somehow that I had imported two quarts of brandy along with my year’s supply of more necessary things; and this missionary friend came to me and said, “I would esteem it a favour if you would lend me that brandy, so that I might extend hospitality to the Company’s officers by inviting them over to our quarters to join us in a friendly glass. It will take up little time and will be a fitting acknowledgment of the many acts of hospitality which they extend to us.”

I replied, “I feel the force of your arguments, and I think I may be able to postpone an attack of colic until you make good about this time next year.”

“All right. I’ll set out right now and invite them to be with us here at eight o’clock this evening, and I trust that with the spirit you have shown you may succeed in warding off the colic for all time without the spirits.”

And so it came about that, at the hour just named, in a large room lit up with Belmont candles, there were gathered around a fifteen-foot table upon which stood two bottles of brandy and the requisite number of glasses, all the officers and all the missionaries except the bishop—why, I did not know nor ever sought to know—and so, while conversation went on, interspersed with an anecdote or two, the wholesome liquor was sipped and pipes were smoked. After a friendly hour thus spent the company rose and with “good-nights” and other pleasant wishes, departed to prepare for the general dispersion on the morrow. As for me, I stood there, gazing on the spectacle of emptiness with mingled feelings of pride and regret, and said to myself, “Toujours, this is a free country, and it’s meself that was wise when I imported only two bottles of the stuff instead of four.”

My stay at Fort Simpson as the guest of Bishop Bompas during the winter of 1875-76 was both pleasant and profitable. Under his tutorage I resumed the study of Greek and theology and learned some more of the Beaver Indian language. It is also possible that, at the same time, my deportment underwent some improvement, as the Bishop’s palace, humble as it was, afforded me the privilege of associating with two English ladies, Mrs. Bompas, who was a kind and cultured lady, and her companion, Miss Wheelright, a very intellectual young lady of uncommon adaptability.

But, by way of adapting myself to the necessity of being brief, I hasten on to say that I was admitted to deacon’s orders on Christmas Day—that the Bishop went north three months later, leaving me in charge until I had an opportunity of going south with the brigade—that during this interval I performed my first marriage by uniting in holy matrimony Miss Wheelright and a Hudson’s Bay clerk, Mr. H. B. Round—that when I set out southwards with the brigade, I had the responsibility of escorting Mrs. Bompas as far as Fort Chipewyan, and that, in the autumn, I proceeded thence up the Peace River to establish a mission at Fort Vermilion.

Looking back on my four-score years’ experience, I feel constrained to say that so few of my plans have worked out as I expected that I have come to regard determinate planning as to where I shall be, what I shall do, or what I shall become, as a pretty sure way of laying up for myself unnecessary trouble and disappointment; and it would seem to me that owing to the kaleidoscopic changes which have been in order throughout the world during the past decade, men are bound to find it increasingly difficult to do definite and successful planning, especially if the plans extend any distance ahead.

However, when I established the Anglican mission at Fort Vermilion, giving it the name of Unjaga—a name which somehow did not stick—I had with the recuperative qualities of youth—I was then only twenty-nine years of age—so far recovered from the miscarriage of my previous plans that I could bear to think of them with complacency as:

“Hopes which were angels in their birth;

But finished young like things on earth.”

Once more, with a revival of self-confidence and optimism, I dared to plan for my lifetime at least. And such was the definiteness and sincerity of my intentions that I could visualize the results of my labours at the one place, Unjaga, in the course of the next forty years. And why not? Had I not taken up the work in obedience to the command of the Master of the vineyard? And shall it not be honour enough for any man, if by concentrating all his efforts upon one little corner of God’s earth, he can succeed in making it more worthy of Him? But because of my writing thus let there be no clasping of the hands and turning up of the eyes, with such exclamations as, “Oh, how beautiful! What disinterestedness! What self-dedication!” On the other hand, do not let there be such exclamations as this: “What balderdash! What pharisaical humbug! What crazy egotism!” Instead of such extremes which would place a typical human like myself either undeservedly high or undeservedly low, just “think and believe and say” what follows to the end of the paragraph. The ordinary man has a soul whose imperfections he honestly bewails, “Oh, man, the heavenliness of whose aspirations indicates the heavenliness of thine origin, go on, still go on, and when thy soul—as it is sure to do—exposes the earthiness of its life-companion, the poor body, still be a man and go on until, D.V., thou shalt reach God’s objective and thine own.”

In some such spirit I entered upon my labours at Fort Vermilion in the year 1876, and as I am writing this in the year 1927, last year would have been jubilee year for me at Vermilion had I worked on there according to my plans; but I stayed at Vermilion only seven years, at least forty-four years short of my objective as to time, and God only knows how short as to services rendered.

During my first year at Fort Vermilion I was the guest of the Hudson’s Bay Company, represented at the time, at that post, by Mr. Donald Ross, one of the finest men I have ever known. He and I became great friends, and it was one of the sorrows of my life when he died at Vermilion about eighteen months after my arrival. I laid him to rest there about fifty yards from the fort on the edge of the Beaver Indian burying-ground, planning that later I would build a church beside it and have it enclosed within the God’s acre.

While enjoying the advantage of having no establishment of my own to look after, I selected land and erected a dwelling-house thereon, two miles down-stream from the fort and on the same side of the river, the south side. In this work I was assisted by Thomas Macklin, a civilized Saulteaux and good specimen of the genus homo, who stood six feet in his moccasins. He was a Hudson’s Bay Company servant obligingly made over to the mission for one year by my friend, Roderick McFarlane. In the mission house built with Macklin’s help, I put in my fourth winter in the North, baching it with only Floss as a companion as at Fort Chipewyan. Being now thrown on my own resources for food, I had to put in half my time snaring rabbits, and it being one of the very lean years in the seven-year ebb and flow cycle of rabbit mortality, there were days when my “daily round” was not rewarded with so much as one hare, although one day I caught as many as six Arctic hare—another name for rabbit. My daily average was two rabbits, which would have been ample for myself and dog, but there were others to be thought of. A Beaver Indian, Too-nih-ke by name, once a famous hunter, but now bed-ridden with scrofula, was camped thirty steps from my door with his mother, wife and little daughter, the four of them dependent for food on the little they could get from the Hudson’s Bay Company and myself.

My own up-bringing demanded when I got back from my snares and fried a rabbit—if I had one to fry—that I should go shares with my neighbours, and well did I know that these principles which had been instilled into me from my childhood were strongly backed up by the communistic principles of the neighbours with whom I now had to do. But that rabbit did smell, oh, so tempting. Nevertheless and forasmuch as I had a conscience and some self-respect and philanthropy, and I contemplated teaching the gospel of charity right where I was in Unjaga for the next half-century, I felt that “I was in for it,” and I divided the rabbit. And if I failed to do so as disinterestedly as I should have done, preferring the promise, “open thy mouth wide and I will fill it” to the other, “cast thy bread upon the waters and thou shalt find it after many days,” perhaps I may be excused.

Poor Too-nih-ke! It was pathetic indeed to hear him speak of the better days he had known, when with a lavish hand he was wont to distribute the fruits of his prowess as a hunter to those whose chief claim upon him was that they had no one to provide for them, and now he was himself in a worse predicament, in that his only helpers could only help him by begging for him and themselves from a half-starving community.

At length the situation became so desperate that he resolved to kill his only horse. It was a young stallion and in good condition. It was killed on the feeding grounds and its meat brought in on a sleigh by one of the Company’s men. The first intimation of the important occurrence I received was one day when I returned from my snares and was getting ready to sit down to my fried rabbit, when the door opened and Too-nih-ke’s mother entered and, approaching, handed me a small chunk of fat boiled meat in a dish.

“Ha-ta? Moose,” I asked, and she replied, “In-too-e klin-chok et-sun. No, it is horse flesh.”

I was so delighted to find that she had not on this occasion entered to share my good things, but rather with intent to share hers with me, that I very truthfully said as I took the meat, “Merci, o-ti-a sin-ih-ti-ke. Thank you, I am very much pleased.”

But when the old lady had gone and I beheld on the piece of flesh the evidence of her culinary methods, with which I was aforetime familiar, I regretted that she had not brought it in raw. As it was, I simply tasted it, and formed an unfavourable opinion—not of horseflesh generally, but certainly of this particular sample. Then I turned it over to Floss, who, after eating it greedily, gave the usual evidences of canine satisfaction in detail.