AT THE PARTING OF THE RIVERS
"Think o' the stories round the camp, the yarns along the track
O' Lesser Slave an' Herschel's Isle an' Flynn at Fond du Lac;
Of fur and gun, an' ranch, an' run, an' moose an' caribou,
An' bulldogs eatin' us to death!
Good-bye--Good-luck to you!"
Mirror Landing, where we leave the boat to make the portage to Soto
Landing, is on the Lesser Slave River, at its confluence with the
Athabasca. Its name has been well chosen, for the Lesser Slave River
is a clear stream, and shows a kindly portrait to all who look therein.
A telegraph office, an official residence, a stable, and storage sheds
are the only buildings. What is to be done with the portaging party,
whom we have met here and who go back to Athabasca Landing on our boat,
is beyond a mere woman to say. Both parties must spend the night here;
there is only one bunk to every twenty persons, and those who hold
possession utterly refuse to sleep outside with the mosquitoes and
bulldog flies. Once I read a story in the Talmud which I considered
wholly fabulous. It was about a mosquito saving the life of David when
Saul hunted him upon the mountains. I no longer doubt this story, my
incredulity having vanished this day with my courage. A mosquito is
big enough to do anything.
A member of the Royal North-West Mounted Police, truly a most
formidable appearing man, insisted on searching our luggage for
contraband liquor. I was sorely displeased, and could have dealt him a
clout with all my might, for the froward manner in which he turned out
my things to the public view. He might have known if I carried a
flask, it would be in my coat pocket. His only find was an unbroached
bottle of elderberry wine which a rancher's wife was bringing home for
her dinner-party next Christmas. Be it said to the youth's credit that
upon the circumstances being explained to him he returned the wine to
her. He had no authority for so doing, but assuredly he had the
countenance of a great example Yahveh of the Jews having aforetime
"winked at" certain breaches of the law which He considered to be the
better kept in their non-observance.
The liquor taken by the police is either given to the hospital at
Grouard or poured on the ground as a libation to Bacchus and his
woodland troup. It is very foolish to ask the officer in command if
his men ever drink themselves, for he will say, "Pooh! Pooh!" and use
other argumentative exclamations that will fright you out of your wits.
You would almost think the subject was loaded, and it takes a soft look
and a wondrously soft answer to turn away his wrath.
Early in the evening I was invited to browse at the official residence,
and I had a good time; that is to say, I found it distinctly
entertaining. "I would say that you are very welcome," remarked my
hostess as she held out both her hands, "were it not that it seems an
understanding of the fact. I have read your _Sowing Seeds in Danny_,
and feel that I know you extremely well."
It was fortunate I did not tell her she had confused me with Mrs.
McClung, for she gave me eggs to eat that were most cunningly scrambled
with cheese; also many hot rolls sopped in butter, and yellow honey in
its comb.
This is a ramblesome bungalow and very comfortable. Musical
instruments, couches, big cushions, book-shelves and pictures take on a
peculiar attractiveness when they are the only ones in a hundred miles
or more.
After supper we read _Phil-o-rum Juneau_, by William Henry Drummond,
and discussed its relation to the French Canadian legend, _La
Chasse-Gallerie_. Of all our Canadian legends, I like it the best, and
it may happen that you will too. It tells how on each New Year's Night
the spirits of the woodsmen and rivermen are carried in phantom canoes
from these lonely northlands back to the old homesteads in the south,
where, unseen and undisturbed, they mingle with their friends. The
father embraces his children; the lover his maiden, the husband his
wife, and once more the son lays his head on his mother's lap. All of
the voyageurs join the feast, the song, and the dance, so that no man
is lonely in those hours, neither is he weary or sad. It is a better
thing, I make believe, than even the communion of saints. But just
before the dawn comes, the wraith men find themselves back on the
Athabasca, the Mackenzie and the Slave, and no one speaks of where he
has been, or of what he experienced, for all this he must keep hidden
in his heart.
When, over a century ago, the legend first sprang to life, there were
none save men to travel like this, but now, of times, a woman may
travel too. I know this for a certainty in that each New Year's Night
I go myself. In my dug-out canoe--delved from wishful thoughts and
things like that--I take my hurried way across prodigious seas of ice
where never living foot has fallen; adown ill-noted trails through
silver trees; by hidden caverns that are the lairs of the running
winds; over dark forests of pine and across uncounted leagues of white
prairies which light up the darkness, till I come to the warmer
southland, where youths and maidens make wreaths of greenery, and where
mellow-voiced bells ring out the dying year.
And when those who are my own people feel their hearts to be of a
sudden rifled of love; that some one has brushed their cheek, or that a
head is resting on their shoulder, then do they know the exile has come
back, for I have told them it will be thus.
And you, O my readers of the Seven Seas, now that we are friends and
know each other closely, will you of New Year's Night be keenly
watchful too.
It was here that our conversation wheeled off from the consideration of
this legend to the northern postman. In the final summary he must be
classed among those peerless fellows who, because of their courage and
incredible endurance, have won for Canada this myriad-acred but
hitherto waste heritage. No man here who puts his hand to the mail
bags must ever look back; he must have the quality of keeping on
against the odds. He is the modern young Lord Lochinvar, who stays not
for brake and stops not for stone. Often his route is stretched out to
hundreds of miles, and there is no corner grocery where he may thaw out
his extremities while mumbling driftless things about the weather and
the government.
Presently the railways will have taken over his perilous profession,
and he will exist only as a memory of pioneer days. For this reason I
took great heed while my host talked concerning him and of the
qualities which go into making a successful postie under the aurora.
He must be agile, light of weight, abstemious, trustworthy, tireless,
thewed and sinewed like a lynx, and, above all, he must have
wire-strung nerves. In a word, his profession requires a strong will
in a sound body.
"Does it ever happen that the mail is not delivered?" I asked.
My host hesitated, and made three rings of smoke while he considered
the answer, as though he would be sure-footed as to his facts.
"Sometimes it is not delivered, Madam," said he; "there may be an
untoward happening, in which event its delivery depends upon the
recovery of the carrier's body."
When he made another three rings of smoke he proceeded with the story.
"Yes! the mail-carrier in this country is a special person and must not
be judged as general. He deserves a much better reward than he gets.
To my thinking, it is a vast pity poetic justice so frequently fails.
It may be that some day you will write a story about us Northmen, and
if you do, be sure you set down how Destiny so often blue-pencils our
lives in the wrong places. We will read your book down here, all of
us, just to see if you have been true to us instead of laying up for
yourself royalties on earth."
"And where do you bury a postman who dies with his mail-bags?" I
further pursued.
"Holy Patriarch!" he ejaculated. "You don't think he is carried back
to Athabasca Landing? His body is cached in a tree and the police are
notified. When they give their permission, and when the ground is
thawed out in the spring, we bury him just where he died. It may,
however, interest you to know that the letters 'O.H.M.S.' are cut on
his tombstone."
"'O.H.M.S.'" I repeated. "Don't you mean 'I.H.S.,' _Iesous Hominum
Salvator_, the same as we write over our altars and on our baptismal
fonts?"
"No!" he replied, "I mean 'O.H.M.S.'; the same as they stamp on
government letters which are franked '_On His Majesty's Service_.' You
see the work of delivering the mails down this way, while extremely
arduous, must never for a moment be considered as menial. The carrier
is a servant to none save His Imperial Majesty, George the Fifth, of
England."
They are all gamblers, these Northmen: they play for love, for money or
for the mere pleasure of the play, and Boys of our Heart, like the
mail-couriers and the striplings of the Mounted Police, gamble with the
elements for life itself.
"Ah, well!" remarked my host, as he put away his pipe for the night,
"these fellows know the rules and dangers of the game when they 'sit
in,' and while twenty-six of the cards are black, it is just as well to
bear in mind that there are an equal number of reds."
On my return to the ship at midnight, I found that some one had seized
and was occupying my state-room on the nine-tenths of the law idea.
She seemed to be a woman turbulent in spirit, and, accordingly I left
her in possession: also, I left her door open to the mosquitoes, who
are evil whelps and more tutored in crime than you could believe.
The purser, a very agreeable and well-behaved man, gave up his office
to me, but I did not rest well, in that a whirligig of jubilant
mosquitoes was occupying it conjunctively. Being full-blooded and
sometimes inclined to be rather mean, I endeavoured to accept this
retributory plague as a chastening which might prove beneficial to both
body and soul.
In the morning all the reckonings of the trip were settled at a desk
beside my bunk, the men moving around with the prehensile tread of the
villain who goes round a corner in the moving-picture films. I
pretended they had not awakened me, and breathed with much regularity,
but all the while I was stealthily peeping. They would not have
understood if I had made objections to their entering, for here, at the
edge of things, all men are gentlemen, or are supposed to be.
Conventionality would be actual boorishness, and a woman must try and
earn for herself the title of a good scout, it being the highest
encomium the North can pass upon her.
Before leaving the ship for the portage, we backed into the Athabasca,
and, after travelling two or three miles, unloaded a vast deal of
freight at a little tent town on the bank. Here and there, through
this country, you come upon these white encampments, which mean that
the iron furrows of the railway are steadily pushing the frontier
farther and farther north. This was the first load of freight to be
brought down the Athabasca for the building of the Grand Trunk Pacific
Railway. It was only rough hardware truck, but, withal, amiable to my
eyes, standing, as it did, for the end of a long rubber between fur and
wheat. You would like the looks of the young engineers who took charge
of the stuff. They were no muffish sick-a-bed fellows, but brown with
wind and sun, hardy-moulded and masterful. One of them has written
something about life on the right-of-way, which he intends sending me
to touch up a bit for a paper. It augurs well for a country when its
workers love it and want to write about it.
And even so, My Canada, should I forget thee, may my pen fingers become
sapless and like to poplar twigs that are blasted by fire. And may it
happen in like manner to any of thy breed who are drawn away from love
of thee.