of porcupine work, made by a half-breed woman at Fort
Nelson on the Liard (a feeder of the Mackenzie).

M--Armlets of porcupine-quill work, made by half-breed girl at Fort
Chipewyan.]

Mr. and Mrs. William Johnson, with generous courtesy, have made us
their guests while we stay, and their refined home is a clear delight.
Mr. Johnson is as clever a man as Mr. Wyllie, but in other lines.
Without ever having seen an electric light, he learned by study and
research more about electricity than nine men out of ten know who go
through Electrical Training Schools. With the knowledge thus gained he
constructed and put into working use an electric-light plant at Fort
Simpson on the Mackenzie. Far up here on the map, too, the "Judge," as
he is lovingly called, taught himself all about watches, and he is now
Father Time for the whole Mackenzie District, regulating and mending
every timepiece in the country. The corrected watches are carried to
their owners by the next obliging person who passes the post, where the
owner is notching off the days on a piece of stick while he waits. A
watch, the works of which were extracted from three old ones and
assembled within one case by this Burbank of Watchdom, found its way
down to Chicago. The jeweller into whose hands it fell declared that
among all his workmen there was not one who could have duplicated the
job.

Chipewyan is a bird paradise; the whole woods are vocal to-day. In the
autumn, wonderful hunts are made of the southward-flying cranes, geese,
and waveys, thousands of these great birds being killed and salted and
put in ice chambers for winter use. If the mosquitoes were not so bad we
would spend hours in the woods here with "God's jocund little fowls."
These sweet songsters seem to have left far behind them to the south all
suspicion of bigger bipeds. We hear the note of the ruby-crowned kinglet
(_regulus calendula_) which some one says sounds like "Chappie, chappie,
jackfish." The American red-start comes to our very feet, the yellow
warbler, the Tennessee warbler, the red-eyed vireo, and the magnolia
warbler, which last, a young Cree tells us, is
"High-Chief-of-all-the-small-birds." Rusty blackbirds are here with
slate-coloured junco, and we see a pair of purple finches. We are
fortunate in getting a picture of the nest of the Gambel sparrow and two
of the nesting white-throated, sparrow. They are ferreted out for us by
the sharp eyes of a girl who says her Cree name is
"