In the annals of frontier-life anywhere you like in the world,

nothing can be found more filled with heroic incident in the

performance of duty and the maintenance of a high prestige, than the

history of our own Canadian Mounted Police. I choose this particular

story, because it exemplifies, so clearly, their dominating sense of

duty and the quiet fortitude in the face of danger and death,

characteristic of their splendid record. It occurred in the far

North, in Klondike days, in a region through which I have travelled

and so it has for me a double interest.

Every winter since the Big Stampede, the Mounted Police have

patrolled the four hundred miles of wilderness lying between Dawson

and Fort McPherson. The latter place consists of a dozen log

buildings, on the MacKenzie, far in the Arctic. It is the centre of

administration for a hundred thousand square miles of territory.

Dawson, the well-known gold-camp, is on the Yukon River, close to the

edge of the Arctic Circle. One round trip is made each winter, with

dog-teams carrying mail, personal and official, needed to keep that

Northern world of Indians, Eskimo, Whites, and half-breeds, in touch

with civilization, and to uphold our British traditions of law and

order.

The journey is always beset with dangers. One day out, and the

members of the patrol know that their lives depend wholly on

themselves. They may see no one else for twenty or thirty days.

They will go through a vast and lonely land travelling along the wide

valleys of frozen rivers, up long narrow gulches filled with snow,

over miles of wind-swept mesas, and across high, treeless, mountain

ridges. "All goes well, if all goes well," is a proverb of the

trail, for in winter-time there, death is always near. His

opportunity comes easily in numerous ways. A gashed foot cut by a

slip of the axe in getting firewood, a sprained ankle, an unsheltered

camp with a blizzard in the night, fog, or wind, or snowstorm, sick

dogs or men, short rations, a mile in the wrong direction, all these

very simply lead to distress, maiming or death. The greatest and

commonest danger comes from the glacial overflows. In winter the

creeks freeze solid. This dams back the water in its sources in the

banks, until the expulsive force in the hidden springs, deep in the

mountains, drives the water out on top of the ice. Even in the most

extreme cold you will find in these canyons, under the snow or shoal

ice, pools of this overflow water remaining liquid for hours. To get

into this with moccasins means an immediate camp and fire, otherwise

there will be frozen feet and permanent crippling, and if one is

alone and dry wood not at hand, it is fatal. All these and more are

the chances the experienced "musher" must be prepared to take. No

"tenderfoot," in his right senses, would attempt such a long journey,

in winter, alone.

It was the morning of December 21st, 1910, that the patrol left Fort

McPherson for Dawson. It comprised Inspector Fitzgerald, Constables

Taylor and Kinney, and Special Constable Carter, with three dog-teams

of five dogs each. They expected to be in Dawson about the beginning

of February. They never reached Dawson. Their comrades at Fort

McPherson of course gave no anxious thought to them, and when the

Dawson search-party came in at close of day on March 22nd, it was

with surprise and horror, that they heard of the loss of the whole

patrol. Next day the frozen bodies of all four were brought in,

those who three months before had set out on that wilderness journey,

so keen and strong. They were found within thirty miles of the Fort,

but it was a long, long trail of 300 terrible miles that they had

travelled.

Towards the end of January the Dawson police commenced to expect the

patrol. After the first week in February, they became uneasy. On

the 20th February some Fort McPherson Indians arrived in Dawson. One

of them, named Esau, had been with the patrol, as guide, to the head

of Mountain Creek, where he was discharged on New Year's Day. The

Police had lost their way, had come on this camp of Indians and

employed Esau to guide them until Fitzgerald was satisfied the party

could do without him, when he was dismissed. It was a tragic mistake.

On the 28th February, Supt. Snyder of the Dawson Post, fearing

trouble, despatched the relief-party under Corporal Dempster,

consisting in addition, of Constables Fyfe and Turner and a

half-breed named Charles Stewart. March 12th, on the McPherson side

of the Divide, Dempster saw the first sure traces of the lost patrol.

In the Big Wind River valley he found a night-camp which had

doubtless been made by the missing men. There were one or two empty

butter and canned-beef tins lying about and a piece of flour-sack

marked, "R.N.W.M. Police, Fort McPherson." The morning of March

16th, they discovered a toboggan and seven sets of dog-harness

"cached" about six miles up Mountain Creek. On searching more

carefully, a dog's paws and shoulder-blade were found, from the

latter of which, the flesh had evidently been cooked and eaten.

Ten miles from Seven-Mile Portage, March 21st, Dempster noticed a

blue handkerchief tied to a willow. He went over to it, climbed the

bank, and broke through the fringe of willows into the timber. There

before his eyes was the end of a chapter in the sad story. In the

snow lay the bodies of Constables Kinney and Taylor. A fire had been

at their feet. Their camp kettle was half-full of moose-skin, which

had been cut up into small pieces and boiled. Dempster's party cut

some brush, covered the bodies with it, and went on in the direction

of the Fort. He says in his report, "I had now concluded that

Fitzgerald and Carter had left these two men in a desperate effort to

reach the Fort, and would be found somewhere between this point and

McPherson. Next morning, about ten miles further down the river, a

trail appeared to lead towards the shore and while feeling in the new

snow for the old tracks underneath, we kicked up a pair of

snow-shoes. We then climbed the bank and a little way back in the

woods we came on the bodies of the other two men. This was Wednesday

the 22nd March. Carter had died first, for he had been laid out upon

his back, his hands crossed upon his breast and a handkerchief placed

over his face. Fitzgerald lay near him."

Dempster and his party then went on to Fort McPherson arriving about

six o'clock in the afternoon the same day. There help was obtained

and the remains were brought in. On March 28th, the four bodies were

laid side by side, in the same grave. The funeral service was read

by the Rev. C. E. Whittaker, the Church of England missionary at that

remote point. A firing-party of five men fired the usual volleys

over the grave. The brave men of the lost patrol had all come to

their last camping-ground.

Fitzgerald's diary of the fatal journey was found. He had kept it up

to Sunday, February 5th, when it ceased. Between the lines, for

there is no sign of weakening in the written words, one can read the

pathetic story of a long struggle against death from starvation and

exposure, an heroic battle, maintained to the last in terrible agony.

Let me quote but six entries from the diary. It was carefully

written commencing December 21st, the day they left the Fort. It is

a sad but thrilling drama extending over fifty days, staged in a

mystic, white, winter-land, cruel and lonely, silent too, save for

the howl of wolf or roar of mountain storm. Every entry is of

absorbing interest, but the quotations suffice to tell of the fateful

seven days spent in vainly searching for the pass up Forrest Gulch,

and then the brave struggle to retrace their steps to Fort McPherson.

Death ever came closer, stalked at last beside them every moment. He

had no power to destroy their unconquerable spirits but he finally

claimed their weary, worn-out bodies. Here is the chronicle.

"Tuesday, Jan. 17th. Twenty three degrees below zero. Fine in the

morning, with a strong gale in the evening. Did not break camp.

Sent Carter and Kinney off at 7.15 A.M. to follow a river going south

by a little east. They returned at 3.30 P.M. and reported that it

ran right up into the mountains, and Carter said it was not the right

river. I left at 8.00 A.M. and followed a river running south but

could not see any cuttings on it. Carter is completely lost and does

not know one river from another. We have now only ten pounds of

flour, and eight pounds of bacon, and some dried fish. My last hope

is gone (of getting through to Dawson) and the only thing I can do is

to return and kill some of the dogs to feed the others and ourselves,

unless we can meet some Indians. We have now been a week looking for

a river to take us over the divide, but there are dozens of rivers

and I am at a loss. I should not have taken Carter's word that he

knew the way from Little Wind river."

* * * * *

"Tuesday, Jan. 24th. Fifty-six below. Strong south wind with very

heavy mist. Left camp at 7.30, went six miles and found the river

overflowed right across. Constable Taylor got in to the waist and

Carter to the hips, and we had to go into camp at 11.00 A.M. Cold

intense for all the open water. Killed another dog and all hands

made a good meal on dog-meat."

* * * * *

"Tuesday, Jan. 31st. Forty-five below. Sixty-two below in the

afternoon. Left camp at 7.15 A.M. had to double-up teams for the

first mile and a half. Nooned one hour and camped at 4.15 P.M. four

miles from Caribou river. Going heavy, travelled part of the time on

our old trail, but it was filled in. Skin peeling off our faces and

parts of the body, lips all swollen and split. I suppose this is

caused by feeding on dog-meat. Everybody feeling the cold very much

for want of proper food. Made seventeen miles."

* * * * *

"Wednesday, Feb. 1st. Fifty-one below. Left camp at 7.30 A.M. and

camped at 4.30 P.M. on the river where we start around Caribou Born

mountain. Killed another dog to-night. This makes eight dogs that

we have killed. We have eaten most of them and fed what dried fish

we had to the dogs. Sixteen miles."

"Friday, Feb. 3rd. Twenty-six below. Left camp at 7.15 A.M. Men

and dogs very thin and cannot travel far. We have gone about 200

miles on dog-meat and have still about 100 miles to go. I think we

shall make it all right but will have only three or four dogs left.

Fourteen miles."

* * * * *

"Saturday, Feb. 5th. Forty-eight below. Just after noon I broke

through shoal ice and had to make fire, found one foot slightly

frozen. Killed another dog to-night; have only five dogs now and can

only go a few miles a day: everybody breaking out on the body and

skin peeling off. Eight miles."

These were his last written words, except his will, scrawled on a

torn piece of paper with a cinder from the burnt-out fire by which he

died. It read;--"All money in despatch bag and bank, clothes etc., I

leave to my beloved mother, Mrs. John Fitzgerald, Halifax. God bless

all."

So, in brief, runs the story of the "Lost Patrol." There have been

widely-heralded expeditions to North and South Poles. In their

months of outfitting and general preparations, these expeditions left

nothing undone to ensure safety that science could devise or money

buy. They knew they had the eyes of the world upon them with the

consequent urge to worthy endeavour. I wish to take no honour from

them, but to me there is something finer in the way brave men in

lonely places and at dangerous tasks, in civilian as in military

life, risk death continually, not for glory, or fame, or riches, but

simply in doing their routine of duty year after year. The world

takes little notice, save when some startling tragedy occurs, and

then soon forgets.

This story is not told in vain if it will remind Canadians of our own

noble fellows, who in the wilds of our far-flung northern boundaries

are adventuring their lives in these so-called "common" ways. "Their

heroic efforts," says Commissioner Perry, "to return to Fort

McPherson, have not been exceeded in the annals of Arctic travel.

Corporal Dempster's reports show that the unfortunate men were wasted

to shadows. All were strong, powerful, young men, and in the best of

health and condition, when they left on their ill-fated journey. It

is the greatest tragedy which has occurred in this Force during its

existence of thirty-seven years. Their loss has been felt most

keenly by every member, but we cannot but feel a thrill of pride at

their firm endeavour to carry out their duty, and the subsequent

prolonged struggle they made to save their lives."

Brave and gallant gentlemen, I salute you!

_XII._

_An Edinburgh Lad_

The evening of August 7th, 1918, saw the British troops in France

massed under cover along a front of many miles, ready for the morning

and the grand attack of August 8th which led to our final victory.

Throughout the vast organization of our allied armies, now all under

Gen. Foch, gigantic preparations of microscopic thoroughness had been

going on for weeks. Our intentions had been most wonderfully hidden

from our foes by all the artifices of elaborately developed

camouflage. At night the roads of France back of the line were

filled with hundreds of thousands of infantrymen marching to their

appointed places; with countless batteries of big guns and little

guns, and munitions, moving as required by the great secret plan;

with lorries, armoured cars, and tanks, pounding along in almost

endless succession through the darkness. In the daytime little

movement was to be seen beyond what was usual. Artifices, many and

varied, were used to trick our foes, such as fake attacks in Flanders

by a platoon or two of Canadians left in the north to mislead the

enemy, the Canadian troops being then far south. Altogether it

seemed that the Germans were left wholly in the dark as to our

purposes. It was the largest and most brilliantly arranged venture

in the war. Armistice Day testifies how well the plans were carried

through.

Our own corps had been slipping by night into a little patch of

timber, on the Roye road, called Gentelles wood. We had been

gathered there for two days, lying low but so packed in, that, if the

enemy artillery had dropped a single shell anywhere in the woods, it

would have decimated a battalion. What a chance they missed! Enough

to give old Hindenburg the nightmare if he knows of it. It seemed

like another direct intervention of Providence. For weeks before,

the Germans had shelled these woods, a little, almost every day, but

now, at the very time when a few shells would have materially

disarranged our plans, something stayed the hands of the gunners and

not a single shell or bomb came near us.

On the 7th, as soon as it was dark enough, the tanks, hidden in the

brush at the edge of the wood and by hedges at roadsides, commenced

to move to their attack positions. Two score must have passed

through our battalion bivouac. The leading tank made its own road

crashing through the brush, going over ditches and fallen timber, and

turning aside only for the large standing trees. Each driver, hidden

away in the tank and peering through the small look-out, could see

only the lighted end of his officer's cigarette which was used to

guide him in the deep darkness of the trees. No other lights were

allowed. When they were gone we too moved forward, deploying to our

positions in trenches ready for "zero-hour" next day.

The night passed safely, a momentous night, in which the enemy had

his last good chance to spoil our plans and save himself from

overwhelming defeat. Just before dawn, through the light morning

mist, our artillery barrage came down with infernal noise and

destructive effect. It told the enemy that we were going to attack.

The German batteries of course replied with damaging precision, but

it was too late then to save the day. Our guns lengthened range and

the tanks went forward. The other fighting units followed and by

sunrise the grand attack had been fully launched up and down the

whole British and French front. It was an attack that was to

continue victoriously for three months, finally forcing the Germans

on Nov. 11th to confess themselves well and thoroughly whipped.

In this splendid affair the Canadian Corps had a place of special

honor on the extreme right of the British line, and facing the

central attack-area beyond Amiens down the Roye road. Of our own

battalions the 43rd was on the right flank linking up with the left

wing of the French troops. The "liaison platoon" was half Canadian

Camerons and half French "poilus." This junction sector would

probably be the place of greatest danger to the success of the whole

advance, for there, if anywhere, misunderstanding or conflict in

orders might occur leading to a dangerous dislocation in the long

line of the Allies. We were very proud of the confidence placed in

us. The results show that it was not misplaced.

It was a glorious victory. The tanks cleared up the out-lying German

defence posts and enabled our machine-gunners and infantry following

them, to put their full strength against the main German positions.

Before noon the Hun was on the run. We chased him helter-skelter

through fields of yellow grain, across meadows, and down dusty roads,

cornered and captured hundreds of his men in orchards and chateaux.

It was sunny, summer weather in one of the loveliest parts of France.

Our success had surpassed expectations and we were still going on.

There were "beaucoup souvenirs." The enemy in his hurry had left a

litter of stuff behind him, post-cards half-written, tobacco-pipes

half-smoked and still warm, shaving brushes with fresh lather on

them, breakfasts commenced but finished elsewhere, if ever finished.

On Aug. 11th, three days after the attack our brigade was camped

under the trees beside a chateau which had been a German Divisional

Headquarters on Aug. 8th, and was now ten miles behind our line. I

remember it distinctly for that day, a Sunday, I had preached my

farewell sermon to my battalion. I had been inveigled into asking

for a recall to England. They said I needed a rest. Perhaps I did,

and then at that time you couldn't tell how much longer the war was

to last. If I had foreseen an armistice in twelve weeks I should

have done differently. So I was to go to Blighty for a few months,

my substitute had reported for duty and there was nothing for me to

do but go.

A group of men sat around me beneath the trees, as I lingered that

afternoon, chatting about odds and ends of things, leaving the

subject that, I think, was uppermost in our minds pretty much

untouched, for we were all loth to say good-bye. Somehow the talk

turned to stories of clever camouflage suggested by some of our

recent experiences and the boys told several good yarns. I outlined

an old one I had heard my father tell of the arts of camouflage

practised by Indians in his own soldier days in Upper Canada. This

elicited enquiries about my father, and how he came to be soldiering

in Canada so long ago. It was a story I knew well, and so it was

easily told. These men were friends of mine, true and tried, and I

knew they would understand and fill in from their hearts the simple

outline I gave them of my father's life.

* * * * *

Ever since I can remember, Edinburgh has been to me the fairest city

in the world. I am Canadian-born, my mother also, but my father was

an Edinburgh man, and my earliest memories are filled with

word-pictures of that city drawn in warm tones of affection by a

home-sick Scot. Many an hour have I sat at my father's feet, as we

gathered around the fire of a winter's evening, listening to his

stories. He had a wide range of Indian and soldier anecdotes so dear

to a boy's heart, but none of them live so clearly in my recollection

as those he had to tell of his birth-place. Long before I knew what

geography was I had a fairly intimate knowledge of Edinburgh. Calton

Hill, Arthur's Seat, Samson's Ribs, Holyrood Palace, High Street and

Princes Street, I had the right location and a true picture of them

all. When boy-like I would be building forts with blocks or in the

sand, they would always be called Edinburgh Castle.

I knew all his stories except one, and that one was his own life. I

heard that too, at last, and it came about in this wise. An

important registered letter used to come to father quarterly,

containing his soldier's pension. Until I was well along in school I

was not specially interested in the envelope or its contents, but one

day I read the address as it lay near me on the table, and it was

"559 Cpl. G. McDonald, R.C.R." Naturally I became curious. My

father, George Pringle, was getting George McDonald's letter and

money. My father was honest, I never, of course, questioned that.

Still it was a puzzle to my boyish mind. He came into the room, saw

what I was doing, and so I asked him to tell me about it. "It must

look odd to you, my boy," he said, "and I've been waiting until you

were old enough to hear and understand the explanation. To-night

after supper, if no visitors come, I'll tell you the reason of it."

That evening under the lamplight we gathered around his arm-chair and

he told his own story.

"Long ago," he said, "when I was a boy, our family were living very

happily in what was then one of the best parts of old Edinburgh. My

father was a man of substance and gave us all a good schooling and a

trade. Of my mother I shall only say that she was to me the most

wonderful and the most beautiful woman in the world. I had a twin

brother John and we were very much alike in appearance. When we were

fourteen years old our mother died. We mourned as only boys of that

age can mourn, with deep grief too poignant for words. Within three

years father married again. Our stepmother was an excellent woman

and kind to us, and I know now my father did right. But we couldn't

bear to have anyone else in our own mother's place. Loyal in our

love to her we grew embittered towards our father. There were no

"words," but when about seventeen years old we ran away from home,

tramped south to London, and there, being Edinburgh tradesmen, soon

found work. A year or so and then we got an inkling that father had

traced us. Determined not to go back we enlisted in the Rifle

Brigade and to hide our identity gave our names as John and George

McDonald, our mother's maiden name. You see where our hearts were.

Within the year our unit left for Canada, and we had been in barracks

at Halifax, Nova Scotia, only a few months when we were paraded one

day before the commanding officer, Col. Lawrence. He took us into

his own room and there he spoke to us as a friend. He had received a

letter eloquent with a father's love for his two wandering laddies.

Father had traced us by our Christian names, and our likeness to each

other. I think, too, the name McDonald, which we thought would

baffle him, only made him more certain. Col. Lawrence read the

letter aloud to us, and it moved us deeply. Money enough was

enclosed to buy our discharge and pay our passage home. The officer

urged us to return. At first we were inclined to yield, but some

dour devil of bitterness took control of our hearts and we said we

would not go, would accept no money, and wished to have no further

communication with our father. Such was the unrelenting reply the

colonel would have to send back to Edinburgh. How many, many times

has remorse punished me for that unkind decision. Yet we blindly

thought that love and loyalty to the mother we had lost made it right

that we should turn our backs on our father's outstretched arms. We

never heard from him again, and we have lost all trace of our

relatives in Scotland.

"You can easily construct the rest of my story. After serving some

years more we left the army for a time. I was married to your

mother, Mary Cowan, at Murray Harbor South, Prince Edward Island.

Shortly after we re-enlisted under our army name in the Royal

Canadian Rifles, then a newly organized regiment, with which I served

until I finally gave up the soldier life, and settled in Galt under

my right name. My service was sufficient to get me a medal and a

pension. The pension comes addressed as you have seen, and the medal

is similarly inscribed. It is the regimental number that identifies

me and the money and medal are rightfully mine. But a thousand

pensions can never ease my heart of regrets for the suffering we

needlessly inflicted on our father who loved us and whom we loved."

* * * * *

This was the homely story told in my father's words to those kiltie

lads that summer afternoon under the apple trees in an alien land.

They listened and understood, for every true Scottish heart responds

to these stories of our own folk and our homeland.

From the lone shieling of the misty island

Mountains divide them, and a waste of seas,

But still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland,

And they in dreams behold the Hebrides.

And it's all the same whether they are from the east coast or the

west, the Highlands, or the Islands, or the Borders, city or

country-born, the Scot never knows the place Scotland has in his

affections until he becomes an exile.

I slipped away after saying farewell, and, with my faithful henchman

Macpherson, climbed up on a waiting lorry and was off down the dusty

road towards Boulogne, homesick for the men I left behind me.

SEQUEL

It was my privilege to spend the winter of 1919-20 in Edinburgh

taking lectures at New College, a glorious year. I had searched the

city for traces of my father's people without success, and had almost

given up hopes of ever finding them. One day early in the session I

was standing in the Common Hall of the college chatting with other

students, when one of them named Scott asked me if he might enquire

why my father went to Canada, for I had been saying he came from

Edinburgh. I gave him a few details and he seemed much interested.

Further explanations and his eyes lighted up with excitement. I soon

found what caused it. Several eager questions and answers back and

forth and I knew that one of my great ambitions had been realized. I

had found one of the old Edinburgh Pringles from whom we had been

estranged so many years. His mother was a Pringle, the daughter of

an older brother of my father's. It was one of the supreme occasions

of my life. In our hand-clasp in that college hall under the shadow

of the Castle, the separation of nearly a century was ended. Some of

you can guess how deeply I was stirred. Fancy or fact, I was certain

he had my father's voice and eyes. We opened our hearts to each

other and it was pleasant talk. I had reason to be proud of my

new-found cousin. He was then assistant-minister in one of the

noblest of Edinburgh's many fine churches, "Chalmer's Territorial

United Free," commonly called "The West Port." My first sermon in my

father's city was preached from his pulpit, and in it I could not

forbear telling the congregation of the strange and happy meeting

with their minister.

_XIII._

_Last Chance_

For three months in the fall of 1918 I served with the 1st Canadian

Tanks. Canada had two tank battalions organized late in the war.

Neither of them had the good fortune to get to France. The first was

composed of volunteer recruits drawn largely from the Universities of

Ontario and Quebec, and they were a remarkably keen lot of soldiers.

Quite a number of the officers belonged to the faculties of these

colleges and many of the men were graduates or undergraduates.

After arrival from Canada they were under canvas for a week or two at

Rhyll in Wales, but soon moved into permanent quarters on the

Bovington farm in Dorset county. Bovington was a great tank camp. A

number of Imperial tank units along with ours were located there for

training, with large machine-shops and many auxiliary units. The

country immediately around the huts swarmed with soldiers and "herds"

of noisy tanks.

I joined the battalion for duty about mid-August and stayed with them

until after the Armistice. Those were very happy weeks. Everyone

was good to me. Besides I had just come from the turmoil of France,

and the quaint, quiet, pastoral beauty of Dorset seemed a haven of

peace. I had pleasant times in camp. Then there were exhilarating

walks to take with my good friends, Somerville, Smith, Macfarlane,

Bobbie Kerr and others, over the downs through miles of purple

heather, and along deep hedge-lined country roads to some

old-fashioned thatch-roofed village, where we would have tea and a

rest before returning. Or of a morning we would walk down the six

miles to Lulworth Cove on the coast, three miles of our journey

between hedges of giant rhododendron, with the limbs of oak, pine and

beech trees forming a leafy arch over our heads. At the Cove hotel

we would enjoy one of their famous boiled-lobster dinners, with

potatoes, water-cress and lettuce, and a rice-custard dessert.

Dorset, too, is a country filled with stirring, historic association

recalling frequent battles fought against sea-borne invaders, and

many also were the smugglers' stories we heard of this shore so near

to France and so filled with coves and caves. There is romance as

well as adventure. Thomas Hardy found inspiration in the Dorset

folklore for his masterpiece, "Tess of the D'Urbervilles." The most

imposing castle-ruin I have seen is there, Corfe Castle, visible for

miles against the sky. It recalls fierce attack and prolonged siege

in the days of Cavalier and Roundhead.

By the beginning of November the battalion was through its training,

taking in its written examinations the highest marks in the camp.

Soon after came the eagerly-awaited order to mobilize for France. In

a few days we had our lorries parked, our kits ready, our fighting

"colors" up on our tunics, and our final letters from England sent

off home. The day was set, I think Nov. 14th, for our embarkation at

a channel port for France.

They would have done great deeds in battle these fine bright lads,

but they were not to be given the opportunity. Nov. 11th, 1918, was

a dismal day for the Canadian Tank Corps. At eleven o'clock the

order, "Cease fire," sounded along our whole line in France and the

Armistice emerged into history, blasting their hopes of active

service. On a Sunday following I had to preach a sermon of rejoicing

to the battalion. It was a parade service so that I had a

congregation of 900 men who gave me a perfect hearing, but all the

same the sermon was a failure. I knew it would be even if I had been

eloquent, and in my heart I was glad that these Canadian boys could

not rejoice with me. They were disgusted with their fate. Another

day or two and they would have got to France, and that would have

been something, even if they hadn't been fortunate enough to get into

battle.

From their standpoint it was no occasion for hilarity. They fired no

guns, they beat no drums, and generally were a very gloomy-looking

lot of fellows. I am enough of a barbarian to like them all the

better for it. Later in the week I tried to relieve the situation a

little for some of them by telling in the rest-hut one evening what I

knew of the naming of one of the famous Klondike creeks.

* * * * *

There is a well-known creek in the North called Last Chance and I

shall try to tell you something of its story. It may help you to

feel that while you missed the real fighting in France there's still

lots of chance of adventure in life for you all. Last Chance is a

tributary of Hunker Creek, fifteen miles in the hills back of Dawson.

In the rush days a road-house was put up there and named after the

creek. Later it was assumed that the creek had got its name from the

road-house, and this had been so named because it was the "last

chance to get a drink" outward bound on that trail. But here's the

real story.

"Old Yank" was the man who gave the creek its name. He was a gambler

of that kind who go out into the wilds among giant mountain-peaks,

and in far-off, unnamed valleys alone with their pick-axe, shovel,

and gold-pan stake their lives on the chance that there is gold in

rock or gravel. Who can quarrel with such gambling? There are no

marked cards in that game. If they win they win clean, and if they

lose, well they've lived a glorious, free life filled with health,

hope, and work without a master, and the companionship of a few

choice friends.

The old man had come to the time when he knew that shortly his

prospecting days would be ended. Then he would land in some Old

Man's Home unless he could make a clean-up soon and have enough to

save him from that baleful finish. He had made several "stakes" when

he was younger in the southern mountains, but he had either thrown

his wealth away in the purchase or development of worthless claims,

on further prospecting expeditions, or had lost it in a gold camp

where he had been fleeced by some of the various kinds of human

vultures which always flocked to the gold-diggings, when they proved

rich, to prey upon the miners.

He told me a story of how once in the early days in the Caribou he

was sitting in a card game with a number of strangers. He had lost

half his spring clean-up to them when the police raided the

road-house and took them all "in" to stand trial before Judge Begbie.

Begbie was a man noted for his swift, stern methods and his keen

penetration in court. He didn't interfere with what he called

"square" card gambling among a group of miners, but he was a terror

to the professional card-sharper. Next day every man pleaded that he

was a working miner and had just come in from the hills. Where all

were dressed alike in rough clothes it seemed impossible to decide

who were telling the truth. Begbie never hesitated. "Show me the

palms of your hands," he said, and the constable made them line up

with their hands held up, palms out. The judge inspected them

rapidly, ordered two men detained and dismissed the others. Those

released had callouses on their hands that you can get only by the

use of pick and shovel. The two detained, questioned, and sent to

penitentiary in New Westminster were soft-handed.

When I first met Yank the sinews of his right hand were so drawn up

and stiffened by the jar of the pick through years of work that he

could not open his hand. The way he got his fingers around the

pick-handle was by shoving the end of it in with his left hand

through the curve of thumb and forefinger on his right.

He was busy prospecting in a valley near the Klondike at the time

those wonderful gold-fields were discovered. He was only a divide or

two away. A squaw-man passing with three Indians on his way to the

mouth of the Klondike to fish salmon had stopped a day with him. He

advised the man to "pan" here and there, where there was rim-rock

showing, as they went along in the creek-bottoms. He himself was

getting light prospects and it might be better closer in to the

Klondike basin. He asked and was promised that, if they struck

anything good, one of them would come back and let him know. They

followed his advice and found rich pay on Rabbit Creek, but they

failed to keep their promise to the old man whose advice had so

enriched them. Yank never knew of the Klondike stampede, until the

next year when two strangers, who had got lost, wandered into his

valley and told him the amazing news. He put on his pack and left

forthwith but he was too late. Hundreds of men from Stewart and

Forty-Mile were now located on the best ground and the stream of

stampeding "cheechacos" from the outside world was already commencing

to flood in. There was nothing left that he thought worth staking.

He crossed the ridge from Rabbit Creek, (now called Bonanza), with a

heavy heart, heading back to his lonely cabin. Off the divide he

came into a narrow gulch which he followed. It widened into a

good-sized valley. He was surprised as he went along to see neither

cabins nor claim-stakes. He travelled its whole length indeed and

found none. Although right in the rich region it had been

overlooked. When he got to the mouth of the gulch he saw why, in

those first days of hurried staking it had been left untouched, for

the valley narrowed into a very small opening where it entered the

larger Hunker creek. The stampeders passing up and down Hunker would

rarely see the scarcely noticeable break in the hills hidden by the

trees, or if they saw it would not think it worth exploring. He lost

no time in going back up the creek to the wider part. There he put

down a hole near the rim where it was only a few feet to bed-rock and

found excellent prospects. He now set about staking Discovery claim.

With his axe he cut, about five feet from the ground, a smooth

four-inch face on four sides of a small tree in the centre of the

valley, and then pencilled on the down-stream side this inscription,

"No. 1 Post. Discovery claim. I, Joe. Chronister, claim fifteen

hundred feet down-stream, and from base to base, for placer mining

purposes," signed his name with date and hour, and the number of his

miner's certificate. Then he stepped off five hundred paces roughly

downstream through the brush and then "blazed" his second tree as

before, marking it, "No. 2 Post, Discovery claim," and writing as on

No. 1, with "down-stream" changed to "up-stream."

He camped that night on his claim, and before he lay down on his

spruce-bough bed to sleep, he sat awhile by the dying fire dreaming

old dreams again. Perhaps this time it would be very rich; it

prospected fine but "prospects" were only prospects. "Well," he

mused, "old-timer, you're near the end of the game. If there's

nothing good under the muck here it will be 'over the hill to the

poorhouse' for you. It's your last chance, last chance."

It was with this thought running through his mind that next day he

entered the recording office in Dawson, with his good friend the

stalwart Capt. Jim McLeod at his side to see that he got square

treatment, and recorded discovery on his creek which was named on the

government records, "Last Chance," at his request.

It is good to know that Yank's claim was rich. Providence had been

kind to the old man. He saved his clean-ups and lived in comfort the

rest of his days in a snug log-cabin in Dawson, near the wild waters

of the turbulent Klondike, where they rush into the depths of the

mighty Yukon.

_XIV._

_A Moose Hunt_

It was my good fortune to be in London on "leave" the day the

Armistice was signed. At 11 o'clock in the morning the multitude of

giant "siren" whistles, used for warning the approach of enemy

air-craft, broke into a wild chorus of deafening howls, and Londoners

knew that Germany, the aggressor, had accepted the lowly seat of the

vanquished. The sounds of public rejoicing commenced immediately and

by the late afternoon the celebration was in full swing. It was a

celebration in which I could not be content with a spectator's part.

I entered into it with all my heart. The whole outburst, for the

first day at least, was the spontaneous and natural expression of joy

at a glad release from the curse of war, which had lain heavily upon

the Old Land for four long, black, bitter years.

I then started out early in the evening, mingling with the immense

crowds down Southampton Row and Kingsway to the Strand, along to

Trafalgar Square, then up to Piccadilly, and home after midnight by

way of Regent and Oxford Streets. All those great thoroughfares and

squares were filled from side to side with whirlpools of people.

Everywhere were groups of dancers or singers, all sorts of foolish

processions big and little, all sorts of bands, noisemakers and

fireworks. Workmen standing on ladders, surrounded by thousands of

madly cheering observers, were taking the light-shields off the

street-lamps. This meant that London streets would be lighted for

the first time since 1914. In the immense moving crowds huge circles

would form as if by magic, then everyone in it, all strangers to one

another, would join hands and dance up and down, and in and out, to

some old song. I got into one of these happy groups by chance in

front of Nelson's monument in Trafalgar Square, where we all danced

up to the centre and back singing, "Here we go gathering nuts in

May," and then commenced to circle round to the chorus of

"Ring-a-ring-a-rosy." We were just like a throng of happy children

at a picnic. Then the formation dissolved, and its members

disappeared into the singing, shouting, noisy crowds.

I fell in with an English officer, and he and I joined forces with an

English bugler wearing an Australian soldier's hat. He had lost his

own cap and had picked this one up somewhere. We three marched along

arm-in-arm; the bugler would blow a call, then pass the bugle to us

and we would each make some hideous noises upon it. I had my Cameron

glengarry on and as we crushed along with the crowd, every now and

then, out of the clamor, I could hear voices calling to me, "Well

done, Jock," "Good old Scotty." Don't think we were at all

conspicuous, for nearly everyone was doing things quite as foolish.

We felt compelled to shout, cheer, sing, or do something to express

our overflowing joy that the war was past at long last. These people

of the Old Country knew the deep tragedy, the terrible

heart-breaking, nerve-racking strain of the war as Canada could not

know it. "It was meet that they should make merry and be glad." I

saw practically no drinking nor roughness. It was a remarkable

demonstration free, that night, from all the artificiality of

pre-arrangement.

Next day I attended the Thanksgiving Service at St. Paul's Cathedral.

The King and Queen were there and many personages of note, but it was

common folk who filled the vast building and crowded the streets for

blocks around. There was no sermon. There could not have been any

sermon or preacher adequate to such an occasion. The fortieth

chapter of Isaiah was read, and how mystically and beautifully it

expressed our thoughts, short prayers were said, and then the people

stood up to sing, led by a great military massed band and the

Cathedral organ. The instrumental music alone was enough to thrill

one's soul, but when those thousands joined, with heart and voice, in

melodious thanksgiving to God for release from the abundant travail

of the bitter years, filling the glorious old temple full with a glad

tumultuous harmony, the effect was indescribable. Hundreds were so

moved they could find no voice for song, and could only lift their

faces to heaven with tears of joy running down their cheeks. In all

the history of the Empire there never was a moment when the whole

British people were so stirred and held by such high and tense

emotion. The glad, loud song of thankfulness had also the minor note

vibrant with sorrow, there was the echo of a sob in it. This great

nation, rejoicing in righteous victory, kept sad and sacred memories

of her million slain.

While in London for these few wonderful days I stayed at the West

Central Hotel, and there, one afternoon later in the week, I was

delighted to meet an old "tillicum" of the trails, Tom Patton. For

three rare days we companied together and talked about old friends

and other days. We revelled in memories of the glorious years we

spent together in the far-off northland. In imagination we travelled

again many a well-known mile, and memorable experiences we had in

common were recalled. I was sorry when the last day of my leave

came, for Patton was one of the very best of my old Yukon friends and

"there are no friends like the old friends after all." That last

evening three other old Klondikers, whom we had discovered in London,

foregathered with us in my room and enjoyed a Yukon evening. There

were many interesting stories told that night. Each had his own

contribution, and there were some yarns in whose spinning we all lent

a hand. There was one in which Patton and I had equal share, one I

had often told to my comrades in France to while away a weary hour.

It described a hunting trip up the Yukon river he and I took one fall

to get some wild-fowl. We ran on bigger game and that is why I call

it a Moose Hunt.

* * * * *

In 1906, late in the autumn, when every night brought sharp frost,

and fish and fowl were heading for the sea and the south to escape

the icy-fingers of on-coming winter, Patton and I planned a

fortnight's holiday up the Yukon to shoot ducks.

We hired a rowboat at Dawson, and put it aboard a river steamboat on

which we had taken passage up-stream about a hundred miles to the

mouth of White River. There the steamer slowed up enough to let us

launch our boat and get into it with our outfit, leaving us then on

the great river to our own devices.

We decided to make camp immediately for it was getting on in the day.

So we pulled across to the left bank, tied up our boat, and commenced

to look about us. I noticed a well-marked trail in the brush which I

followed for a few yards and came on a cabin. I knocked at the door

and it was quickly opened by the occupant. I told him who I was and

he asked me in. The place was dark, dirty, and smelly, nor was I

taken with the man's personal appearance, for his hair was long and

tangled, and his face almost hidden by an untrimmed beard. His

welcome was genuine, however, and when I grew accustomed to the dim

candle-light I noticed that he had clear, kindly eyes. He was glad

to see me. I was his first visitor in three months. He had staked

some gold-bearing rock, and there he had lived alone for a year

trying to uncover it enough to prove it a real ledge, and to prospect

it sufficiently so that he might interest "capital" in it. He had

absolute faith in the value of his find, talking with assurance of

the day when he would sell it for thousands.

I informed him that I had a partner and called to Patton who came

along. We told him what we were out for. He advised us to stay the

night there, and in the early morning we would be sure to get some

sport in the marshes, ponds, and slack-water where the White joins

the Yukon. He wouldn't hear of us making camp for ourselves, and we

had to accept his hospitality. He was very lonely, he said, and it

did him a whole lot of good to see us and have some talk.

Late in the afternoon we went out to examine the ground and arrange

our morning shoot. We heard a strange noise coming from beyond the

distant northern skyline of the river valley. It sounded like the

far-off cackling of barn-yard geese. Soon the source of it appeared

in the north. It was the advance guard of a great flight of sandhill

cranes on their journey to the south coast. They are toothsome

birds, about the size of a small turkey but standing higher. They

are very shy and it is all but impossible to get them within range of

a shot-gun. I am not exaggerating when I say that they flew for two

hours in a continuous, clamorous stream of arrow-shaped formations

from our northern horizon, until they disappeared from view over the

southern hills. There were thousands of them in that one contingent.

The old-timer, "Alabama Bill" he was called, served for supper that

night a meat-stew composed of porcupine, moose-meat and other things.

I ate my share and kept it. Patton is more sensitive that way than I

am, and on this occasion he proved traitor to the good old British

maxim, "What we have, we hold." I don't blame him. One had need of

keen appetite and strong digestion to enjoy and profit by that

mysterious mixture. "Alabama" made us talk far on into the morning,

but at last we rolled into our bunks. We slept uneasily for various

causes, and were glad to get out in the early morning to be ready in

position for daylight and our birds.

To make a long story short, we had good luck the next ten days as we

floated downstream towards Dawson, tying up and camping when and

where we wished, and hunting in likely places. The sloughs and

little lakes were alive with ducks and geese, and we had our boat

half-full of them before we reached Indian river. From that point it

was an easy day's run to Dawson.

We made camp on the shore at Indian in the afternoon, and went back

into the thick woods on the extensive flats behind us to explore. We

came on a pond and got a few more ducks. This pond was peculiar in

that at one side a trail led down to it, and the shore was trampled

as if herds of cattle were accustomed to water there. It was a

"moose-lick," a place to which for years, at certain seasons, the

moose came at night from miles around, because the water and soil had

in them some salty substance which they liked or needed.

We weren't hunting big game and so had brought only one rifle for

emergencies, but here was a chance right under our noses that we

couldn't pass, although we knew it was rather late in the season for

moose to visit the lick. At the edge of the pond we picked a

good-sized tree that we could climb and find secure footing in. Then

we went back the half-mile to the shore and had supper.

When it grew dark we went out to our tree and climbed up in it, to

watch for the possible coming of the moose. For four long, miserably

cold hours we clung to our perch. It was pitch dark and absolutely

silent, save for the dull murmur of the Yukon, and the "plunk, plunk"

of some little diving duck at long intervals in the pond.

Half-a-dozen times we were inclined to abandon our vigil, but one

encouraged the other and we hung on. About midnight we were rewarded

by hearing, through the darkness, a sound like the breaking of a

branch away on the mountain slope. It startled us, coming on us out

of the night when we were tense with prolonged listening to unbroken

silence. Soon there was no mistaking the approach of the monarch of

the woods. It seemed as if some great boulder were crashing down the

hillside through the trees. Every now and then there would be a

minute of complete stillness, and we could imagine him standing, with

lordly, lifted head and wide-branching antlers, listening and

sniffing the air for strange noises or smells. He seemed satisfied

that no danger lurked in the woods, for he came straight across from

the foot of the mountain. At last by the noise we knew he was

nearing our tree. Nearer he came and very near, leisurely now,

probably feeding. In the dense darkness we could see nothing of him

as yet until we heard something scrape against our tree. Looking

down with straining eyes, I marked his dark, slowly-moving outline in

the brush. I could have dropped on the animal's back had I been so

minded. The proverbial "salt" might easily have been placed on his

tail. The time for action had come. I had the rifle. In the

darkness I couldn't see the barrel, so real aiming was impossible,

but the moose was that near I felt I couldn't miss him anyway. I

fired where I judged his shoulder should be. I regret to tell you

that the flame of the gun showed that the bullet had gone an inch

over his back, and I had missed him altogether! My left arm was

around a limb and so the second shot was a trifle slow, but after the

first, it seemed as if the moose jumped into the air, turned, and was

fifty feet away in the timber on his back-trail when he lit! We

heard him going at head-long speed and fired at the noise, but he

went on until the sound died away in the distance.

We crawled down to the ground, stiff with cold, and dumb with

disappointment. I knew it was a complete miss, but "hope springs

eternal in the human breast," and we lighted matches and searched the

ground and leaves for bloodstains. We searched his trail thus for

twenty yards, then gave up, went back to camp and under our blankets.

Patton was very decent about it. He knew how I felt. Once only did

he make reference to my failure. The next day we were nearing

Dawson, where our friends would come and inspect our "bag," when he

said, "Well, George, wouldn't it be pleasant to pull into Dawson with

a fine moose lying between us in the boat?" "Don't say another word,

Tom," I replied, "or I'll burst into tears!"

I felt my almost inexcusable failure very keenly, for I made three

separate trips, alone, to Indian river, and hunted there

persistently, and very uncomfortably too, for that moose, but he

never gave me another chance.

_XV._

_An Old Prospector_

The good ship _Araguaya_ of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Line was

under commission during the war as a Canadian hospital ship on the

North Atlantic. She and her sister ship the _Essequibo_, with the

_Llandovery Castle_ and _Letitia_, composed the fleet used to convey

our wounded from the old land to Canada. The _Letitia_ was wrecked

in a fog on the rocks near Halifax with no loss of lives. The

_Llandovery Castle_ was sunk by a submarine while returning empty to

England. Mostly all the ship's officers, M.O.'s, nurses, and crew

were drowned or shot by the fiend who commanded the U-boat. The

chaplain, Capt. McPhail, was killed. By strange chance his body,

with life-belt, was carried towards France and months afterwards was

found on the beach and buried.

Thank God all the German submarines were not run by such as sank the

_Llandovery_. I have a snapshot taken from the deck of the

_Essequibo_ of a U-boat which stopped that ship, searched her

thoroughly but courteously and then let her go unharmed.

I spent ten months as chaplain on the _Araguaya_ and a happy time it

was. That was the "cushiest" job I have ever had. We were under

cover all the time, had abundance of good food and luxuries for

everyone, and every device that money could buy to entertain our

patients on their nine-day trip across. Besides, in my special work

I had a flock which never strayed far from me. They couldn't!

Practically all the staterooms had been taken out, only sufficient

being left for M.O's, nurses, and ship's officers. This made fine,

large, airy wards for the bed cases, fitted with swinging cots so

that they did not feel the roll of the vessel. I had a comfortable

room all to myself, for Col. Whidden and later Col. Murray were both

very considerate of my comfort.

You will be interested to know that at the celebration of the

completion of the Kiel Canal, the _Araguaya_ was loaned by the

R.M.S.P. Co. to the Kaiser for use as his private yacht during the

regatta, as a token of British goodwill. The suite of rooms our O.C.

used had been the Kaiser's, and mine was one of those that "Little

Willie" had occupied!

The ship's officers and crew were all first-class seamen of heroic

stuff. The majority of them had been through the dread experience of

being torpedoed, some two or three times, and had seen many of their

mates shot down or drowned. Yet here they were from stoke-hold to

pilot-house carrying on as cheerfully as ever.

Capt. Barrett, the skipper, a short, stout, ruddy-faced Englishman

sat at the head of the table, with our O.C. and officers to his right

and his own officers to his left. Many a merry meal we had together

there. I can hear Major Shillington's steadying voice when he

thought he saw trouble ahead in our arguments, Gunn with the happy

laugh, Langham bringing us down to cold, hard facts, and the others

good men all, with whom I companied those days. Tell your choicest

funny story and you'd hear Capt. Johnson's stage-whisper, "I kicked

the slats out of my cradle the first time I heard that!" I often

wore my tartan uniform for "old-time's" sake, and the Cameron

trousers always started the skipper bemoaning that now we'd have a

stormy night since the padre had put on his "tempestuous pants." Of

course we frequently fought the question out around the table. I

based my claim to wear Highland garb, blow high or blow low, not only

on my connection with the 43rd, but because I was a thorough-bred

Scot. I carried the war into the enemy's country by maintaining that

it was wrong to let anyone wear it but those of Scottish extraction.

My own Camerons were nearly all Scots, this I know from careful

official census taken in France. We had ten or fifteen per cent. who

did not belong to "the elect," but they became fine fellows from

being continually in such good company, and I find no fault with them

for wearing the kilts. But the principle is wrong. Suppose on the

field of battle a fierce and haughty Prussian surrendered to a kilted

man whom he thought to be a Scot, only to find on getting back to the

corral that his captor was a peaceful Doukhobor in kilts. What a

humiliation and what cruelty! I actually met an officer in France

belonging to a Canadian Kiltie battalion (not ours) who asked me the

meaning of the words "Dinna Forget," the title of a book which lay

before him on the table. I asked him what he thought it was. He

said "I suppose the name of a girl, the heroine of the story, 'Dinna'

maybe a local way of spelling 'Dinah,' and 'Forget' is her surname.

That's my guess." He was in full, Scottish, regimental field-uniform

when he spoke these words! I was dumb for a little before I could

tell him what the words really meant. It is not the claim of

superiority of race but simply a matter of honest practice. The

tartan costume has become the recognized badge of Scottish birth or

ancestry. It is therefore perpetrating a fraud upon the public for a

man of any other race to parade in this distinctively national garb.

It would fill too many pages even to outline the varied aspects of

our life aboard the boat. Matron Shaw and her noble band of nurses

should have a page to themselves. We carried about nine hundred

patients each trip and after two days out, when they became able to

hear "The Return of the Swallow" recited without getting pale around

the gills, everything went along with a hum. There were lectures,

concerts, movies, shovelboard and deck tennis tournaments, dozens of

phonographs and all sorts of parlor games and books, and on Sunday

our religious services. The boys were all glad to be going home to

Canada and they were easily entertained.

The great event was, of course, our first sight of land and then the

disembarkation. The later trips we unloaded at Portland, Maine, and

I cannot recollect having seen a more magnificent demonstration of

public good-will than was given us by those Yankees. The first time

we put in there, while the boat was still twenty feet away from the

dock the thousands of people on the wharf commenced to cheer and the

bands to play, and we were bombarded with candies, cigars, cigarettes

and fruit. Much of it fell into the water. When we tied up a score

of committees came aboard and almost submerged us under endless

quantities of oranges, apples, bananas, grapes, dough-nuts, cake,

sandwiches, ice-cream, tea, coffee and soft drinks, and expensive

candies and everything else that we could eat or drink, that the law

would allow, in superabundance. They took our hundreds of letters

and many telegrams and sent them without costing us a penny. The

latest newspapers, bouquets, of choice flowers for everyone, concert

parties, and indeed everything good that kind hearts could think of

was showered upon us. I remember a western bed-patient asked me if I

thought they would get him a plug of a special brand of chewing

tobacco. He hadn't been able to buy it in four years overseas and it

was his favorite. "Sure thing," one of them said and in half-an-hour

two men came aboard lugging along enough of that tobacco to stock a

small store! I cannot go further into details. Enough to say that

every trip it was the same, except that their hospitality became more

systematized. Probably fifteen thousand wounded Canadian soldiers

passed through Portland on their way home, and I know they will find

it hard to forget the free-handed, warm-hearted welcome they got in

that city. This memory will surely be a leaven working towards the

maintenance and development of peace and good-will between Canada and

the United States.

But I must tell my story of the North. One trip Major Dick

Shillington persuaded me to give them a Klondike evening. We

gathered down below in "H" Mess and there I told something of the

life-story of my old friend of by-gone days, a trail-blazer and

prospector, Duncan McLeod.

* * * * *

When first I met Duncan McLeod, "Cassiar Mac" he was commonly called,

he and his partner, John Donaldson, both old men, were working far up

a tributary of Gold Bottom Creek which had not yet been fully

prospected. Each liked to have his own house and do his own cooking,

and so they lived within a few yards of each other in the creek

bottom at the foot of the mountain summit that rose between them and

Indian River. My trail over to the other creeks passed across their

ground, and when we became friends I seldom failed to arrange my

fortnightly trip over the divide so as to reach their place about

dusk. I would have supper with one or the other and stay the night.

McLeod was an old-country Scot, Donaldson born of Scottish parents in

Glengarry county, Ontario. I am not using their real names, but they

were real men. One of them, Donaldson, is still living in the wilds

of the Yukon, still prospecting. He was the first white man the

Teslin Indians had seen and known. They looked upon him as their

"Hi-yu-tyee," a sort of super-chief, during the years he lived near

them. He had been just and kind with them, and his consequent

influence saved occasional serious friction between the Indians and

whites from becoming murder or massacre.

After supper we would all three gather in one of the cabins and I

would hear good talk until far towards midnight. Then there would be

a pause and McLeod would say, "Well, Mr. Pringle, I think it is time

we were getting ready for our beds." I knew what he meant. "Yes, it

is," I would reply. The Bible would be handed me, I would read a

chapter and we would kneel in prayer to God. Then to our bunks for a

good sleep and early away in the morning for me to make the

twenty-five miles over the heights to Gold Run before dark.

What great talks those were I used to hear. I was only a boy then,

and these old men had seen so much of the wild free life of the West

of long ago days. What stirring adventures they had had! They came

west before the railways by way of the American prairies, and, lured

by gold discoveries, had entered the mountains, and then following

the prospector's will-o-the-wisp, the better luck that lies "just

over the divide," they had gone farther and farther north. They had

met and become partners in the Caribou camp, and had been together

nearly forty years, in the Cassiar, on the Stewart, at Forty-Mile and

now the Klondike.

Donaldson had a wonderful native power of description. When

story-telling he would pace slowly back and forth in the shadow

beyond the dim candle-light and picture with quiet, resonant voice

scenes and events of the past. How vivid it seemed to me! How the

soul of the young man thrilled as he listened! Often there was a

yearning at my heart when under his spell to lay aside my mission and

go out into the farthest wilds, seeking adventure and living the

free, fascinating life they had lived. How I wish I had written down

these stories as they were told to me. But maybe they wouldn't have

"written," for much of the interest lay in the personality of the

story-teller.

McLeod's part was usually to help with dates or names when

Donaldson's memory failed to recall them, but often he too would spin

a yarn, and when he did there was always in its telling a gentleness,

I can think of no better word, that gave a charm often missing in

Donaldson's rougher style.

They were both big men physically, but McLeod had been magnificent.

He was now nearly eighty years old and broken with rheumatism, but in

the giant frame and noble face and head crowned with its snow-white

hair I saw my ideal of what a great Highland Chieftain might have

been in the brave days of old.

Donaldson told me one night, while his partner was making a batch of

bread in his own cabin, what he knew of McLeod's history. "I have

never known a man," he said, "that would measure up to my partner.

None of us want our record searched too closely but it wouldn't make

any difference to him. Nothing, nobody, seemed to have any power to

make Mac do anything crooked or dirty. Whisky, gambling, bad

women--he passed them up without apparent effort. Very strange too,

even the few good women we have met in these camps never won anything

from him but wholesome admiration. He had only to say the word and

he could have had any one of them, but he didn't seem to care that

way. What his experience had been before we met I do not know, he

has never spoken much about it to anyone. But he and I have lived

together as partners for nearly half a century, through the crazy,

wicked days of all these gold camps, and Mac never did anything that

he would be ashamed to tell his own mother."

A fine tribute. Perhaps under the circumstances the finest thing

that could be said of any man, for you cannot imagine the thousand

almost irresistible temptations that were part of the daily life of

the stampeders in those northern camps. Enough for me to say that

many men of really good character back East, where they were

unconsciously propped up by influences of family, church, and

community, failed miserably to keep their footing when they came to

the far north where all these supports were absent and temptation was

everywhere. I do not judge them. God only knows the fight they had

before they surrendered. So it was an arresting event to meet a man

who had seen it all and whose partner of forty years told me he had

lived clean.

I often wondered what McLeod's story was. I had known him for three

years before I ventured to ask him details about his home in

Scotland, and why he left it to come so far away. I knew he had been

reared in a village south of Edinburgh, in a good home with good

parents, and much else he had told me, but there had always been a

reticence that made you certain there was something else held back.

One winter night when we were alone in his cabin, he opened his heart

to me. He was an old-fashioned Scot. I was his "minister" and he

knew me well. Besides he was coming to the end of the trail, and he

needed a confidant.

He said his story was hardly worth while bothering me with, I knew

most of it, but what he could never tell anyone was about the lassie

he had loved and lost. He had fallen in love with the brown eyes and

winsome face of Margaret Campbell, a neighbour's daughter. They had

gone to the same school, had taken their first communion together,

and had both sung in the village church choir. When he revealed his

love to her she told him she had guessed his secret and had lang syne

given her heart to him. They were betrothed and very happy. But

Margaret took ill in the fall and died before the new year. Early in

the year he sailed from Leith for Canada, hoping that new scenes

would soften his grief. As the years passed he kept moving west and

then north. He grew to like the free life of the prospector and had

not cared to leave the mountains and the trails.

Time had healed the wound but his love for the sweetheart of his

youth was just as true and tender as ever. From a hidden niche at

the head of his bed he took down a small box, brought it to the table

near the candle and unlocked it. He showed me his simple treasures.

His rough, calloused hands trembled as he lifted them carefully from

the box. There was a small photo so faded I could barely see the

face on it. "You'll see she was very beautiful," he said, for he saw

with the clear vision of loving memory what was not for my younger

but duller eyes to discern. There was her gold locket with a wisp of

brown hair in it. "She left me this," he said, "when she died."

Last, there was an old letter, stained and worn, the only love-letter

she had ever written him, for he had only once been far enough or

long enough away to need letters. He had spent a week in Glasgow

after they became engaged and she had written to him. This was all.

Somehow I felt as if I were on sacred ground, that the curtain had

been drawn from before a Holy Place, and I was looking upon something

more beautiful than I had ever seen before. As the old man put the

box away his eyes were shining "with a light that never was on sea or

land." Mine were moist, and for a little I couldn't trust my voice

to speak as I thought of the life-time of unswerving fealty to his

dead lassie. Such long, lonely years they must have been!

We did not say much more that night but the words we spoke were full

of understanding and reverence. When it grew late and he handed me

the Bible I hesitated in choosing a chapter, but not for long. The

comfort and rejoicing of the twenty-third Psalm were all we wanted.

One morning, not long afterwards, Donaldson came into my cabin on

Hunker creek in evident distress. McLeod hadn't come out as usual to

his work that morning, and he had gone to see what was wrong and

found him in his bunk hardly able to speak. He had taken "a stroke."

A neighbouring miner watched by the sick man while Donaldson hitched

up his dogs and raced to Dawson for medical aid. Donaldson went off

down the trail and I hurried up the gulch to my old friend. He

lingered for two or three days. The doctor could do nothing for him

but to ease his last moments.

I stayed near him until the end came. When he tried to speak his

utterance was indistinct and what few words I could make out showed

that his mind was wandering. Sometimes he was on the trail or in the

camp, but oftenest he was home again in the far away land he loved,

and in boyhood days among folk we did not know save one, known only

to me, whose name was continually on his lips.

He had a lucid interval just before he died and for a minute or two

he thought and spoke clearly. I told him that death was near. Was

there anything that we could do for him? "Not very much," he said,

"I want Donaldson to have all I own. He's been a good partner. Bury

my box with me. I'm not afraid to go now. It's just another

prospecting trip to an unknown land and I have a Great Guide. He

won't forsake an old prospector. He was one Himself, I'm thinking,

when He came seeking us. He will keep a firm grip of me now that the

trail is growing dark. I'm not afraid."

These were his last words, and as he slipped away, we, who were

gathered in the dimly-lighted little cabin, felt somehow that the

Guide he spoke of was right at hand. He would surely keep "a firm

grip" of the old miner on his last prospecting trip, even if strange

storms were blowing, and it was black dark when they crossed the

Great Divide. It would come morning too in that land when night was

past, and when the new day dawned I know he would soon find the one

whom he had "loved long since and lost awhile."

_XVI._

_Soapy Smith, the Skagway Bandit_

My billet on the hospital ship _Araguaya_ was very comfortable and my

duties agreeable, but every time we reached port on the Canadian side

of the Atlantic I had an impulse to desert the ship and become a

stowaway on the hospital-train bound for British Columbia. It was

there my wife and boy lived and I hadn't seen them for three years.

However I got the chance at last to go without breaking regulations,

for when I requested it, leave was readily granted me to stay ashore

over one round-trip of the boat. This was supplemented by my taking

the place of an absent conducting officer on the western train. So

my transportation cost me nothing, except the congenial task of

making myself generally useful to the returning soldiers.

We had crossed the prairies, dropping many of our crowd at way

points, and were climbing slowly along after supper up through a

lonely stretch of mountains, when someone in the car where I was

"visiting" gave it as his opinion that this would be a good piece of

road on which to stage a train-robbery. This, of course, led to the

mention of gun-men that they had known or heard of, men of the same

ilk as Jesse James and Bill Miner. I contributed the story of Soapy

Smith, the man who pulled off the most remarkably prolonged hold-up

of which I have ever read. In the most approved dime-novel style he

terrorized a town, not for a few days or weeks, but for six months.

* * * * *

"You'll have to see the spot where Soapy died." The Skagway man who

said this was rather proud of the celebrity which the bandit had

brought to the place. I had come by the steamboat the nine hundred

miles north from Vancouver, and was forced to spend a day in Skagway

before going over the White Pass on my way to Dawson. A resident of

the town was taking me around showing me the sights of this mushroom

camp. It was humming with life and packed with people. The rush to

the goldfields was then at its height. I judged by my friend's tone

that he expected me to be deeply impressed with this particular

sight. So down to the sea we went and out on the wharf. As we

walked down he outlined the story of Smith's career in the camp. On

the pier he showed me a dark stain, covering about a square foot,

made by the life-blood of the man who for half-a-year forced Skagway

to pay him tribute in hard cash. He was the leader of a group of men

who robbed and cheated in wholesale style, and when it was necessary,

in getting their victim's money, did not stop at murder. No one had

attempted successfully to interfere with him. Reputable merchants

were all intimidated into handing him their "life-insurance premiums"

whenever he asked for them. His reputation as a "killer" was such

that on the fourth of July, when good Americans celebrate their

freedom, he rode at the head of the procession on a white horse!

Very few complained loudly enough for Soapy to hear. Without

question his nerve is to be admired. I have never heard or read in

the annals of the west anything to equal his record in that Alaskan

port. Desperadoes have ridden into towns, "shot them up," took what

they wanted and got away with it. But this man and his gang lived

openly in a town of several thousands and in the most brazen fashion

ran the place for months, although he was known as a crook, gunman,

and leader of a gang of thugs. Skagway, it is true, was simply an

eddy in a stream running into the gold-fields. In their mad haste to

get on and over the Pass people wouldn't take time to straighten out

the morals of the camp. The Soapy Smith business was especially

uninviting as something to mix into. "It isn't my funeral," they

would say, "and I don't want it to be."

Jefferson B. Smith hailed from the city of St. Louis in the U.S.A.

He got the nickname he bore because at the beginning of his career of

crookedness he used to sell soap to some of the citizens of Denver,

Colorado. There is nothing remarkable about selling soap unless you

do it Smith's way. In the evenings he and a confederate would set up

their "stand" on a suitable downtown street. All he needed was a

high box for a "pulpit" and a smaller box behind it to stand on.

This with a flaring torch giving an uneven light, some cakes of cheap

soap, a couple of five-dollar bills and some change, completed the

outfit. A little clever "spieling," kept up more or less all

evening, and the usual crowd would gather out of curiosity. He would

show them an unwrapped piece of soap all the while extolling its

great merits as a cleanser. To show how disinterested he was in

introducing this superior article that only needed to be known to

become popular, he would say he was going to wrap a five-dollar-bill

in with some of these cakes of soap. He would sell the soap at fifty

cents each piece, and everyone that bought stood to get the soap and

make four dollars and fifty cents in cash out of the deal. Further

if they watched him carefully they would see him actually put the

five-dollar bill in when he wrapped up the soap, although he wouldn't

guarantee that it would always be found there when the purchaser

unwrapped his package. Of course he deceived them simply by clever

sleight-of-hand. Rarely would any money be found, but people liked

to be fooled if it is done the right way. To get them "biting" he

might let one of the bills go to a confederate who was seemingly just

one of the crowd. It was a money-making business as a rule for there

were ordinarily quite a number of "easy-marks" around. They got the

soap anyway. So came the name "Soapy."

Well, it was the same old clever, crooked game in other bigger and

bolder forms that he now worked in Skagway, with the gun-play in

addition. When the steamboat City of Seattle came into port there on

January 17th, 1898, Soapy and his "merrie-men" were among the

passengers. He was a slight built man, only five feet seven inches

tall, very dark complexioned with a full beard and moustache. He

wore a round Stetson hat with a hard brim. He soon established

headquarters in the "Kentucky saloon" and "Jeff Smith's Parlors."

These were liquor saloons, not providing board or lodging, and

running crooked gambling games in their rear, a fruitful source of

revenue to Smith's card-sharpers. Then he and his confederates got

busy on all sorts of other schemes to steal people's money. He had

at least thirty followers, and there wasn't a dishonest trick known

to the underworld of those days that some of them couldn't work.

They wore Masonic, Oddfellow, Elk and other fraternity emblems that

might help in working "confidence-games." They opened up Information

Bureaus where newcomers could be conveniently sized-up and robbed

then or later on. One member who was very successful in luring

victims was Old Man Tripp. He had grey hair, a long white beard and

a benevolent countenance. It seemed impossible to suspect him of

criminal intent. Smith had most of the gambling-joints paying him a

big percentage. He even had men clever at the old, old "shell-game"

running it in the fine weather at relay points on the trail.

One of his favorite stunts for a while at first was to recruit for

the Spanish-American war which was just then stirring the fighting

blood of Americans. While the would-be soldier was stripped, having

a fake medical examination, his clothing was looted of whatever money

or valuables it might contain.

A rather amusing incident occurred during Smith's regime in

connection with the efforts of a Sky Pilot to raise some money at

Skagway to build a church in a little place along the coast called

Dyea. The parson came to Skagway in a rowboat one morning and

started out with his subscription list. One of the first he tackled

by chance and unknown to himself was the notorious bandit. Smith

heartily endorsed the proposition and headed the list with one

hundred dollars which he paid over in cash to the clergyman. Then he

took the latter gentleman along to the principal merchants, hotel-men

and gamblers and saw to it that they all gave handsome donations. At

the close of the day the visitor decided to make for home. He was

happy in the possession of over $2,000 in cash for his new church,

thinking too what a splendid fellow this Mr. Smith was. On the way

to the beach he was "held up" by one of Mr. Smith's lieutenants and

relieved of all the money he had collected. He could get no redress.

Other occurrences, such as the smothering of the negro-wench in order

to steal the few hundred dollars she had earned by washing, were

despicable and worthy only of the meanest type of criminal.

Naturally there were many shooting scrapes in connection with the

operations of the gang, and some killings, but nothing was done to

end it. Not only was no move made to interfere with Soapy, but

almost everyone refrained from speaking against him openly for

reasons easy to understand. Of course there were men in Skagway who

hotly resented the hold this outlaw had on the town, and were doing

what they could to bring public sentiment to efficient action against

him. One of these, a Canadian, was the editor of a local news sheet.

In later years he became governor of Alaska. His name was Strong and

it suited him, for he wasn't lacking in strength of character. One

day, after his paper had appeared with an editorial making a

scarcely-veiled attack on Soapy and his gang, he was met and stopped

on the street by Smith accompanied by a tough named Mike Daley. They

were loud and boisterous in accusing Strong of having offered

personal insult to them in his newspaper. They demanded a retraction

and apology and evidently meant to force a street-fight. Strong

refused to withdraw his statement and declared that he intended to

stand by his editorial. The loud quarrelling tones of the two

desperadoes attracted the attention of two friends of Strong's, named

D. C. Stephens and Allen, who happened to be walking down the same

street. They hurried to the aid of their friend who at the risk of

his life still refused to back down. The sight of reinforcements

spoiled Smith's game and he and Daley went on without accomplishing

their sinister purpose.

There was another man who did not hesitate to say anywhere, and in

most forcible terms what he thought of these criminals. This man was

Frank Reid, a land-surveyor. He was fearless, and too quick with a

gun for these crooks to attempt to silence. But he got very little

open support and could do nothing single-handed.

Of course things couldn't go on like this. In the Spring matters

reached a climax. Word had at last got into the Klondike that it

wasn't safe to come out by way of Skagway with your gold, that you

were likely to be relieved of your "poke" by desperadoes. This news

commenced to turn out-going gold-laden traffic down the Yukon and out

by way of St. Michaels. The Skagway merchants saw "the goose that

laid the golden eggs" flying away, and it put them at last into a

ferment of anger at the cause of it. This led to the formation of a

Vigilance Committee of which Reid was the moving spirit.

Finally a Nanaimo man named Stewart, waiting for the steamboat on his

way home from the Klondike, had $3,000.00 in nuggets stolen from him

by one of Soapy's confidence men who had offered to turn it into

currency. It was all he had and he made such a fuss that the whole

town knew about his loss. He reported it to the U.S. Deputy-Marshal,

a man named Taylor who was in Smith's pay. He got no satisfaction.

The Vigilance Committee then took it up, and made it a "casus belli"

against Soapy. They attempted to hold a secret meeting in a private

hall but Smith and his confederates managed to break in on them.

They then adjourned to Sylvester's wharf. At the land-end of the

pier Frank Reid and a man named Murphy were posted to stop anyone

approaching who was not a member of the Committee. Smith heard of

this move and set off on the war-path down the main street towards

the water-front. He carried a loaded .30-.30 Winchester rifle and as

he went down the road he called on everyone to put up their hands.

There were hundreds of men there but Soapy got a completely unanimous

"vote" as he passed along, until he reached Reid and in him he met a

man who called his bluff. Reid ordered him to stop and fired at him,

but his revolver, a .45 Colt, failed to go off. He then grabbed the

muzzle of Smith's gun and shoved it up in the air before he could

shoot. Smith in the struggle backed away hanging on to his rifle,

and while the gun was thus lowered and pointed momentarily at Reid's

groin he fired. Reid fell to the ground but instantly fired at Smith

again. This time the revolver responded and Smith dropped shot

through the heart. He bled to death in a few minutes where he lay.

This was the evening of July 8th, three days after the celebration

already mentioned in which the gunman had taken the leading part. So

the wharf was stained, and so ended the life of a man with a career

of which the last six months were unique in the history of the wild

west.

Their leader gone, the break-up of his followers was quick and easy.

After caring for Reid the Committee split up into armed groups of

five or six men each. Some guarded the exits from the town, others

closed the dance-halls, saloons, and gambling places. Every cabin

was searched. Smith was killed on Friday and by Sunday the lot were

rounded up and jailed. The captures included the five most dangerous

members of the gang, Old Man Tripp, Slim Jim, Bowers, Mike Daly, and

Scar-faced Charlie. It was indeed hard for any of them to escape.

In front was the sea and behind the mountains with only one passable

trail through them over into the Yukon Territory. They were all

deported on out-going steamers. Most of them got long terms in

penetentiary. Before the shooting a few of them who saw danger ahead

straggled over into Canada by way of the White Pass but they changed

into "model citizens" when they came under the surveillance of the

Mounted Police.

Smith was buried with scant ceremony and no mourners. Frank Reid

lingered for two weeks when he also died. The whole place turned out

at his funeral to do honor to his bravery in ridding the town of the

pestilential group of criminals who had been in control so long.

Warwick Bros. & Rutter, Limited

Printers and Bookbinders, Toronto, Canada

End of Project Gutenberg's Tillicums of the Trail, by George C. F. Pringle