_Corneille_ in the original. A set of Shakespeare with exquisite line
drawings by Howard shows signs of hard reading, and so does the _Apology
for the Life of Mr. Colly Cibber_. One wonders how a man embedded in
Fort Simpson, as a fly in amber, would ever think of sending to the
_Grand Pays_ for _Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy_, yet we find it here,
cheek by jowl with _The Philosophy of Living or the Way to Enjoy Life
and Its Comforts. The Annual Register of History, Politics, and
Literature of the Year 1764_ looks plummy, but we have to forego it. The
lengthy titles of the books of this vintage, as for instance, _Death-Bed
Triumphs of Eminent Christians, Exemplifying the Power of Religion in a
Dying Hour_, bring to mind the small boy's definition of
porridge--"fillin', but not satis-fyin'." Two more little books with big
titles are _Actors' Budget of Wit and Merriment, Consisting of
Monologues, Prologues and Epilogues_, and _The London Prisons, with an
Account of the More Distinguished Persons Who Have Been Confined in
Them_.

But the book that most tempts our cupidity is _Memoirs of Miss A---- n,
Who Was Educated For a Nun, with Many Interesting Particulars_. We want
that book, we want to take it on with us and read it when we reach the
Land of the Eskimo, where the Mackenzie slips into the Arctic by all its
silver mouths. We lift the volume up, and put it down again, and we
hunger to steal it. Jekyll struggles with Hyde. At last the Shorter
Catechism and the Westminster Confession of Faith triumph; we put it
down and softly close the door behind us. And ever since we have
regretted our Presbyterian training.

At Fort Simpson, it is like walking across a churchyard or through an
old cathedral. Here men lived and wrought and hoped, cut off from their
kind, and did it all with no thought of being heroic. We walk along the
shore to watch Indian women busied in making a birchbark canoe and in
washing clothes with washboards--the old order and the new. A little
dive into the mosquito-ridden woods discloses a wonderful patch of
Pyrola and a nest of Traills' flycatcher, and makes us wish that the
minutes were longer and the mosquitoes fewer. What a beautiful tiling
this Pyrola is, with its inverted anthers and the cobwebby margins of
its capsule! Its bracted, nodding flowers run through all shades of
white, pale yellow, and dark yellow.

Down on the beach we chat with a prospector and his son, a lad of
fifteen, who are