CHAPTER II
WINNIPEG TO ATHABASCA LANDING
"To the far-flung fenceless prairie Where the quick cloud-shadows trail, To our neighbor's barn in the offing And the line of the new-cut rail; To the plough in her league-long furrow."
--_Rudyard Kipling_.
Place a pair of dividers with one leg on Winnipeg and the other leg at Key West, Florida. Then swing the lower leg to the northwest, and it will not reach the limit of good agricultural land.
From Winnipeg to Edmonton, roughly speaking, is a thousand miles, and two railway lines are open to us,--the Canadian Pacific and the Canadian Northern. We go by the former route and return in the autumn by the latter.
Pulling out from Winnipeg, we enter a prairie wheat-field one thousand miles long and of unknown width, into which the nations of the world are pouring. "The sleeping nation beyond," is what General Sherman in a moment of pique once called Canada. The sleeping giant has awakened. We are on the heels of the greatest economic trek this world has ever seen. The historian of to-morrow will rank it with the world migrations.
The flourishing centres of Portage la Prairie, Brandon with its Experimental Farm, Regina, the headquarters of the Mounted Police, Moose Jaw, and Medicine Hat are passed, and with these the new, raw towns in the tar-paper stage, towns that smell of sawdust, naked stand of paint. Never in the world's history did towns spring into life as these do. To-day the wind on the prairie, to-morrow the sharp conversation of the hammer on the nail-head, next week the implement warehouse, the tent hotel, the little cluster of homes. In England it takes a bishop to make a city, but here the nucleus needed is a wheat elevator, red against the setting sun.
The ploughs that we saw in Winnipeg are at work here among the buffalo bones and the spring anemones. As day breaks we catch a glimpse of a sunbonneted mother and her three little kiddies. An ox is their rude coadjutor, and through the flower-sod they cut their first furrow. It is the beginning of a new home. Involuntarily one's mind jumps to the crowded cities of the Old World with their pale-cheeked children and fetid alleyways. Surely in bringing the workless man of the Old World to the manless work of the New, the Canadian Government and the transportation companies are doing a bit of God's work.
Half way between Winnipeg and the Pacific we reach Calgary, breezy, buoyant Calgary, the commercial metropolis of the foothills, already a busy mart and predestined to be the distributing point for many railroads. The biggest man-made thing in Calgary is the C.P.R. irrigation works, the largest on this continent. The area included in the irrigation block is twice as big as the Island of Porto Rico and one-eighth the size of England and Wales; and the ultimate expenditure on the undertaking will reach the five million mark.
Calgary is the centre of a country literally flowing with milk and honey and fat things. The oil-fields of Pincher Creek, with their rich promise of becoming a second Pennsylvania, are contiguous to the city. The winter wheat grown in Southern Alberta was awarded first prize and gold medal at the World's Fair in Oregon in 1905. The hackney carriage horses which took first prize at the last Montreal and New York horse-fairs were foaled and raised near Calgary. If we were to continue going due west from this point, all the scenic glories of the Rocky Mountains would be ours--seventy Switzerlands in one. But that journey must stand over for another day, with the journey to Prince Rupert, the ocean terminus of the Grand Trunk Pacific.
Turning sharply to the north, we travel two hundred miles, and draw into where Edmonton, the capital of Alberta, sits smiling on the banks of her silver Saskatchewan. As he sees us digging out our tents and dunnage, the porter asks, "Then yer not comin' back?" "No." "You _are_ goin' to the North Pole, then, the place you wuz hollerin' fer!"
With the exception of Victoria, Edmonton has the most charming location of all cities of Western Canada. High Hope stalks her streets. There is a spirit of initiative and assuredness in this virile town, a culture and thoughtfulness in her people, expectancy in the very air. It is the city of contrasts; the ox-cart dodges the automobile; in the track of French heel treads the moccasin; the silk hat salutes the Stetson.
Edmonton is the end of steel. Three lines converge here: the Canadian Northern, the Canadian Pacific, and the Grand Trunk Pacific. The Canadian Northern arrived first, coming in four years ago. Now that Edmonton has arrived, it seems the most natural thing in the world that there should have sprung up on the Saskatchewan this rich metropolis, anticipating for itself a future expansion second to no city in commercial Canada. But some one had to have faith and prescience before Edmonton got her start, and the god-from-the-machine was the Canadian Northern, in other words, William Mackenzie and D.D. Mann. Individuals and nations as they reap a harvest are apt to forget the hands that sowed the seed in faith, nothing doubting. When this railroad went into Edmonton, as little was known of the valley of the Saskatchewan as is known now of the valley of the Peace. Without exception, Canadian men of letters go to other countries for recognition, but not so all our men of deeds. Mackenzie and Mann, "the Brains of a Trans-Continental," stayed in Canada and put their genius to work here. The Canadian Northern is the product of Canadian minds and Canadian money.
[Illustration: A Section of Edmonton]
We walk Edmonton streets for ten days and see neither an old man nor an old woman. The government and the business interests are in the hands of young people who have adopted modern methods of doing things; single tax is the basis of taxation; the city owns its public utilities, including an interurban street railroad, electric lighting plant, water-works, and the automatic telephone. Mr. C.W. Cross, the Attorney-General of Alberta, is the youngest man in Canada to hold that high office. During the first session of the first legislature of this baby province less than three years ago, an enabling act was passed for a university. Nowhere else have I been sensible of such a feeling of united public-spiritedness as obtains here.
Down in the river valley are hundreds of people living under canvas, not because they are poor but because building contractors cannot keep pace with the demand for homes. As we pass these tents, we are rude enough to look in. Most of them are furnished with telephones and the city water; here a bride bends over a chafing dish; another glance discloses an oil-painting that was once shown in the Royal Academy. From the next tent float the strains of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, and, as we stop to listen, a gentleman and his wife step out. An auto picks them up and off they whirl to Jasper Avenue. The Lord o' the Tents of Shem disappears into his bank and Milady drives on to the Government house to read before the Literary Club a paper on Browning's _Saul_. To the tenderfoot from the South it is all delightfully disconcerting--oxen and autos and Browning on the Saskatchewan!
The Sunday before we leave Edmonton I find another set of tents, put up by the Immigration Department, where East-End Londoners are housed pending their going out upon the land. In the first call I make I unearth a baby who rejoices in the name of Hester Beatrice Cran. "H.B.C.," I remark, "aren't you rather infringing on a right, taking that trade-mark?" Quick came the retort, "Ho! If she gets as good a 'old on the land as the 'Udson's Bay Company 'as, she'll do!"
Another lady in the next tent proudly marshalled her olive branches. "D'isy and the baiby were born in the Heast Hend. They're Henglish; please God they'll make good Canaidians. They're tellin' me, miss, there'll be five 'undred more of us on the 'igh seas comin' out to Hedmonton from the Heast Hend, all poor people like ourselves. I often wonder w'y they don't bring out a few dukes to give the country a touch of 'igh life--it's very plain 'ere."
By the first day of June we have our kit complete and are ready to leave. We have tried to cut everything down to the last ounce, but still the stuff makes a rather formidable array. What have we? Tent, tent-poles, typewriter, two cameras, two small steamer-trunks, bedding (a thin mattress with waterproof bottom and waterproof extension-flaps and within this our two blankets), a flour-bag or "Hudson's Bay suit-case" (containing tent-pegs, hatchet, and tin wash-basin), two raincoats, a tiny bag with brush and comb and soap--and last, but yet first, the kodak films wrapped in oilcloth and packed in biscuit-tins. The bits of impedimenta look unfamiliar as we take our first inventory, but we are to come to know them soon by their feel in the dark, to estimate to an ounce the weight of each on many a lonely portage.
[Illustration: The Golden Fleece of Saskatchewan]
At seven in the morning the stage pulls up for us, and it rains--no gentle sizzle-sozzle, but a sod-soaker, yea a gully-washer! The accusing newness of those raincoats is to come off at once. Expansive Kennedy looks askance at the tenderfoots who climb over his wheel. His Majesty's Royal Mail Stage sifts through the town picking up the other victims. We are two big stage-loads, our baggage marked for every point between Edmonton and the Arctic Ocean. Every passenger but ourselves looks forward to indefinite periods of expatriation in the silent places. We alone are going for fun. Our one care is to keep those precious cameras dry. This is the beginning of a camera nightmare which lasts six months until we again reach Chicago.
And the fellow-passengers? Law is represented, and medicine, and the all-powerful H.B. Co. With us is Mr. Angus Brabant going in on his initial official trip in charge of H.B. interests in the whole Mackenzie River District, and with him two cadets of The Company. On the seat behind us sit a Frenchman reading a French novel, a man from Dakota, and a third passenger complaining of a camera "which cost fifty pounds sterling" that somehow has fallen by the way. Sergeant Anderson, R.N.W.M.P., with his wife and two babies are in the other stage.
Kennedy, the driver, is a character. Driving in and out and covering on this one trail twelve thousand miles every year, he is fairly soaked with stories of the North and Northmen. The other stage is driven by Kennedy's son, who, tradition says, was struck by lightning when he was just forgetting to be a boy and beginning to be a man. Dwarfed in mind and body, he makes a mild-flavoured pocket-edition of Quilp.
The roads are a quagmire. The querulous voice of the man who lost his camera claims our attention. "I thought I would be able to get out and run behind and pick flowers." Turning and introducing ourselves, we find the troubled one to be an English doctor going north off his own bat with the idea of founding a hospital for sick Indians on the Arctic Circle.
[Illustration: Irrigation Ditch, Calgary, Alberta]
The girlish figure of a teacher struggling through the awful mud in gum-boots indicates that we have not travelled beyond the range of the little red schoolhouse. Stray wee figures splashing their way schoolward look dreary enough, and I seem to hear the monotonous drone of "seven times nine," "the mountains of Asia," "the Tudor sovereigns with dates of accession," and other things appertaining to "that imperial palace whence I came." All the summer afterwards, when mosquitoes are plenty and food scarce, a backward thought to this teacher making muddy tracks toward the well of English undefiled, brings pleased content.
[Illustration: A Waldorf-Astoria on the Prairie's Edge]
At noon it clears, and as we "make tea" at Sturgeon Creek (the Namao Sepee of the Indians), the first of the "stopping-places" or Waldorf-Astorias of the wilderness, the Doctor has his will and gathers violets, moccasin flowers, and the purple _dodecatheon_. As we pass Lily Lake he remarks, "This reminds me of the Duke of Norfolk's place at Arundel; it is just like this." South Dakoty returns, "I don't know him."
Here and there we pass clusters of Galician huts. Instead of following the line of least resistance in the fertile plains to the south, these people, the Mark Tapleys of the prairies, choose cheap land up here for the pleasure of conquering it and "coming out strong." They are a frugal people, with a fondness for work, a wholesome horror of debt, and the religious instinct strongly insistent. Off on a hillside near each little settlement a naked cross extends its arms. These are their open-air churches, and in all weathers, men, women, and children gather at the foot of the cross to worship the God of their fathers. By and by, when the soil has yielded to their labours, with their own hands will they build a church and without debt it will be dedicated. The idea of raising an imposing church and presenting God with the mortgage does not appeal to the Galician.
The clean sheets at "Eggie's," the second stopping-place, are attractive, and we sleep the sleep of the just. We acknowledge with inward shame that two years of city life have given us the soft muscles of the chee-chaco; we'll have to harden up a bit if we are to reach that far-away ocean.
Next day, midway between Edmonton and Athabasca Landing, we water our horses at the Tautinau. We are standing at the Height of Land, the watershed between the Saskatchewan and the Athabasca. This little ridge where the harebells grow divides the drops of rain of the noon-day shower. Some of these drops, by way of the Saskatchewan, Lake Winnipeg, and Hudson Bay, will reach the Atlantic. Others, falling into the Athabasca, will form part of that yellow-tinged flood which, by way of Great Slave Lake and the mighty Mackenzie, carries its tribute to the Frozen Ocean. These last are the drops we follow.
To save the horses we walk the hills, and I try to match giant steps with Sergeant Anderson. Kennedy, Junior, joins us and has a knotty point to settle regarding "the gentleman wot murdered the man." It is hard to induce a Mounted Policeman to talk. However, to be striding Athabasca Trail with the hero of the Hayward-King murder-trial is too good an opportunity to lose, and, reluctantly rendered, bit by bit the story comes out.
Most people looking at a map of Northwest Canada would think it a safe wilderness for a live man or a dead man to disappear in with no questions asked. In reality, it is about the worst place in America in which to commit a crime and hope to go unpunished.
In September, 1904, the Indians reported to the Mounted Police that they had seen two white men in the early summer, and that afterwards one man walked alone, and was now at Lesser Slave. An observant Cree boy added, "The dog won't follow that other white fellow any more." Sergeant Anderson, going to their last camp, turned over the ashes and found three hard lumps of flesh and a small piece of skull bone. Convinced that murder had been done, he arrested the suspected man and sent him to Fort Saskatchewan for trial. No one knew the identity of either the dead man or the living. In front of the old camp-fire was a little slough or lake, and this seemed a promising place to look for evidence. Sergeant Anderson hired Indian women to wade in the ooze, feeling with their toes for any hard substance. In this way were secured a sovereign-case and a stick-pin of unusual make. The lake was systematically drained and yielded a shoe with a broken-eyed needle sticking in it. Sifting the ashes of the camp-fire and examining them with a microscope, Anderson discovered the eye of the broken needle and thus established a connection between the camp with its burnt flesh and the exhibits from the lake. The maker of the stick-pin in London, England, was cabled to by the Canadian Government, and a Mr. Hayward summoned to come from there to identify the trinkets of his murdered brother. A cheque drawn by the dead Hayward in favour of King came to the surface in a British Columbia bank. Link by link the chain of evidence grew.
It took eleven months for Sergeant Anderson to get his case in shape. Then he convoyed forty Indian witnesses two hundred and fifty miles from Lesser Slave to Edmonton to tell what they knew about the crime committed in the silent places. The evidence was placed before the jury, and the Indians returned to their homes. A legal technicality cropped up and the trial had to be repeated. Once more the forty Indians travelled from Lesser Slave to repeat their story. The result was that Charles King of Utah was found guilty of the murder of Edward Hayward and paid the death penalty.
This trial cost the Canadian Government over $30,000,--all to avenge the death of one of the wandering units to be found in every corner of the frontier, one unknown prospector. Was it worth while? Did it pay? Yes, it paid. It is by such object-lessons that to Indian and white alike is forced home the truth that God's law, "Thou shalt not kill," is also the law of Britain and of Canada.
We are still on foot, when a cry from the Kid hurries us to the hilltop. Reaching the crest, we catch our breaths. Down below lies the little village of "The Landing." That sparkling flood beyond proves the Athabasca to be a live, northward-trending river, a river capable of carrying us with it, and no mere wiggly line on a map.
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