CHAPTER XXIII

LESSER SLAVE LAKE TO EDMONTON

"I hear the tread of Nations yet to be, The first low wash of waves where soon shall roll a human sea."

[Illustration: A Peace River Pioneer]

Taking passage on the steamer _Northern Light_, we leave the settlement of Lesser Slave Lake, this world-in-small, on the first day of October, and, from here to Athabasca Landing, travel in company with Mr. J.K. Cornwall, President of the Northern Transportation Company. Between the time of our journey and this writing, Mr. Cornwall has been returned as Member of the Alberta Legislature for the district we are now traversing. He certainly knows his constituency better than most representatives do. There is scarcely a mile of these unmapped ways that he has not tramped alone; not an Indian guide in the North can last with "Jim" for a week, in summer, or on snow-shoes. When some Lesser Slave half-breeds were told that Mr. Cornwall was going to run for the legislature against Allie Brick, one of them said, "Jim wins. Allie Brick can't run. Not much fun in that race. No man on Peace River can run like Jim."

Mr. Cornwall's pronouncement on the North Country can be taken as authoritative. He says, "Practically all the timber of any commercial value between the Great Lakes and the Rocky Mountains is in these northern watersheds. This timber will be a very important factor in the coming development of Prairie Canada to the south, and fortunately, too, it is most get-at-able. There are thirty-six hundred miles of river and lake in the North on which steamers are plying to-day and which are open for navigation for six months in every year. The first railway that comes in will tap a system of transporation equalled only on this continent by the Mississippi and St. Lawrence with the Great Lakes. The American Government has spent two hundred million dollars on the improvement of Mississippi navigation, and to-day it is not as valuable a national asset as the great Athabasca-Mackenzie-Peace system is as it came from the hand of Nature. Thirty thousand bushels of wheat that would grade 'No. 1 Northern' was produced in the Peace River Country this year, besides thousands of bushels of oats and barley. In this Northland there are 100,000,000 acres of land fit for the growing of grain."

Charles Dickens used to carry a note-book in his vest-pocket in which he jotted down names that tickled his fancy. Were Dickens to travel this route with us, his name-note-books would bulge. Where Lesser Slave River issues out of Lesser Slave Lake, we found Tom Lilac in earnest conversation with Jilly Loo-bird. Jilly has navigated the North all the way from Athabasca Landing to Hudson's Hope on the Peace, seeking a wife, and still lacks his connubial rib. Being told that ladies are on board, he breathlessly asks, "What colour?" When he learns that we are white, Jilly makes a dash for some cache in the woods which takes the place of clothes-closet, but the steamer has passed on before he emerges. Another lost chance, both for Jilly and the writer! For two or three miles here, where the river runs out of the lake, it never freezes, and ducks and wild-fowl remain here all the winter in open water. Last month, in this immediate vicinity, no fewer than one hundred moose were killed. Lilac tells us that last winter there was no snow here until March, and two winters ago absolutely no snow fell whatever, so that the sleighs were not gotten out and all the freighting had to be done with waggons. "No need to starve here," says Lilac, "the trout run up to forty pounds each. There are whitefish and grayling, and I gather berries all the year round. In summer, I get the red and white currants, raspberries, saskatoons, blueberries, gooseberries, and strawberries, and all winter long there are both high-bush and low-bush cranberries."

[Illustration: Three Generations]

Travelling with us are Judge Noel and Judge Beck, making the first circuit of justice through this country. Although they had come all the way from Edmonton looking for trouble, so splendid has been the surveillance of the Mounted Police here that no one could scrape up one case for the judges to try. The Peace River people seemed somehow to think that in greeting the judges with an empty house the settlement had failed to make good. Some one comforts them with setting forth as the ethics of the case the fact that the judges should be presented with white gloves, as the traditional sign of an empty docket. Again is Peace River chagrined, neither The Company nor the French Company has white kids in stock. Each judge is made the recipient of a handsome pair of moose-skin gloves, as a substitute, ornamented with beads and quills of the porcupine.

At Norris's, we leave the steamer and shoot the current of the swift Lesser Slave River in a cranky dugout. The Dominion Government, with a series of wing-dams, is putting this river to school, teaching it how to make its bed neatly and wash out its own channel. Where the Lesser Slave River runs into the Athabasca, we change the dugout for a scow, and from there to Athabasca Landing float down the last stretch of our northern waterways of delight. There is frost each night now and the deciduous trees on the banks are a rich riot of colour. We resurrect from the depths all the warm clothing available and have opportunity of testing in their own latitudes the lynx-paw robes, moose-skin hunting-coats, and other spoils that we are bringing out to civilisation.

Every passenger who floats with us enlarges our knowledge and enriches our vocabulary. Judge Noel's bodyguard is a young stripling of the Mounted Police, born in dear old Lunnon. It is always interesting to note the different things of which people are proud. Old men boast of their age and young ones of their youth. The fat woman in the side-show is arrogant over her avoirdupois; the debutante glories in her slender waist; and the globe-trotter triumphs in the miles he has travelled. Wyllie claimed distinction in never having left Chipewyan. This Mounted Policeman, who stretches out on the scow, plumes himself on two things: "I 'old the dahnsin' championship of Edmonton. I got a gold watch lahst winter for waltzin'." We smile approval, and the constable continues, "I waltzed,--reversin',--an 'our-an'-a-'alf! And--," straightening himself up, "I am the best-tattooed man in the Province of Alberta."

[Illustration: A Family on the Lesser Slave]

Rich is the descriptive language of the North, and we lie awake on the scows, rolled in our blankets, loath to lose any of it. "Jim" is at the sweep. Many of the men are going out from the North for the first time in four or five years. They also seem too interested to slumber, and all night long the conversation goes on. A priest is describing some man who seems to be hard to identify. "You know him,--the son of the ole man with the patch on his nose wot died. I christen him last winter." No one is more apt at naming than these men. Two days ago, at the treaty at Lesser Slave, when a smiling couple drew five dollars for a baby one day old, a Cree bystander dubbed the baby "dat little meal-ticket." A young girl who came up to claim her money was nicknamed "Pee-shoo," or "The Lynx," because of her bad temper. So we see where all the old cats of the south come from.

[Illustration: A One Night Stand]

The scow glides on, and we doze, but do not sleep. In the dark she hits something and bumps us wide awake to hear the reassuring, "This is where Pat Cunningham's horses were drownded last week." Under Jim's command, everybody works, even learned judges from Edmonton. He says, "Take another shot at the oars, and then you can hit the feathers." In the morning, one half-breed fails to turn up for _meat-su_ and the comment is, "He feels the feathers pullin'." "Don't blime 'im," remarks the constable, passing the tea, "only fools and 'orses work."

"He reached out his hand for a drink," rendered into trans-Athabascan would be, "He got his thievin' irons on the joy-juice," or "He stretched his mud-hooks for the fight-water." "He set him a-foot for his horse" means "He stole his horse," and from this we derive all such phrases as, "He set him a-foot for his blankets," "He set him a-foot for his furs," "He set him a-foot for his wife."

The springy tussocks of grass growing in swampy places are _têtes des femmes_, a name that pleased our fancy and made us think each time we negotiated them of walking over the swaying heads of women in a crowd. To call the tribes together, Indians are wont to send out significant little pieces of wood. The announcement in the society columns, if the Indians had any, would be, "The Crees sent out chips for a crush." An Indian far down the Mackenzie had a name that kings might envy. He was known among his tribe as _The-Man-Who-Goes-Around-and-Helps_. When a beardless and ardent missionary approached this splendid chief, wanting to "convert" him to the Christian religion, the old man replied with indulgent dignity, "My son, for eighty years have I served the Great Spirit in my own way. I fear I am now too old to change."

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