for politeness, and we find it even
so. The good nuns are trying to make reputable citizens of the young
scions of the Dog-Rib and Yellow-Knife nations and are succeeding
admirably as far as surface indications go. We approach a group of
smiling boys arrayed in their Sunday clothes, awaiting a visit of the
Bishop. With one accord come off their Glengarry bonnets, smoking caps,
and Christie stiffs, and a row of brown hands is extended to greet us.
Very trim the laddies look in their convent-made cadet-uniforms, as,
standing at "'Shun!" they answered our every question with, "Yes,
missus," "No, missus." When we ask their names, without tittering or
looking silly they render up the whole list of saintly cognomens. Here
they have once more their white brothers "skinned"; no civilised man,
woman, or child ever stood up in public and announced his full baptismal
name in an audible tone without feeling a fool. I have seen grizzled
judges from the bench, when called upon to give evidence as witnesses,
squirm like schoolboys in acknowledging that their godfathers had dubbed
them "Archer Martin" or "Peter Secord" or whatever it might be.

It is certainly Old Worldish. We speak with Father Laity who, all
unconscious of the commotion around him, marches up and down the trail
and reads his breviary. He tells us he is a Breton and that in an age
that is past he served as a drummer-boy in the Prussian war. The Father
came to this shut-in land forty-one years ago.

Great Slave Lake, which presents a formidable barrier to the passage of
the smaller land birds, is a breeding station of the sea-swallow. The
Arctic tern hatches on its shores, laying its eggs in the beach gravel.
The bird, with its slender body, deeply-forked tail, and
shrilly-querulous voice, is everywhere in evidence. Does the whole
family of lake birds show any more exquisite colour-scheme than the
pearly plumage, small coral feet, carmine bill, and black cap of this
tern? In a dell carpeted with silverweed and wild mustard, we come
across a nest of our persisting friend, the chipping sparrow. Afterward
we wander down to the shore and make the acquaintance of Pilot Julien
Passepartout, whose calling as Mackenzie River navigator allows him to
live out the largeness of his title, though I like best to think of him
by the cradle-name his mother gave him, Tenny Gouley, which means "_A
man born_."

Down at the Treaty tent, Dog-Rib and Yellow-Knife are being handed the
five