building a skiff in which to ascend the Liard, hunting
gold. Yesterday a Mr. and Mrs. Carl and a Mr. and Mrs. Hall passed us on
the river. Outfitted for two years, they will prospect for gold in the
Nahanni Mountains and toward the headwaters of the Liard. One of the
couples has just come out from Glasgow and this is their honeymoon. We
half envy them their journey. Can anything compare with the dear
delights of travelling when you do not know and nobody knows just what
lies round the next corner?

[Illustration: A Slavi Family at Fort Simpson]

The dogs at Simpson are "wicked." Picking our way among them, I
particularly approve this term of the natives, attributing as it does a
human conception and malice aforethought to these long-legged wraiths.
The first articulate sound an Indian child of the Mackenzie learns to
make is "Mash!" an evident corruption of the French "_Marche_." This is
what Shakespeare meant when he speaks of "a word to throw at a dog." A
brown baby just emerged from the cocoon stage of the moss-bag toddles
with uplifted pole into a bunch of these hungry mongrels and disperses
them with a whack of the stick and the lordly "Mash!" of the superior
animal. For our own part we are "scared stiff," but follow along in the
wake of our infant protector to a wee wooden church which staggers under
the official title, "The Cathedral of St. David."

[Illustration: A Slavi Type from Fort Simpson]

We have had occasion to speak of the splendid service rendered to
Northern and Western Canada by the Hudson's Bay Company and by the Royal
Northwest Mounted Police. A third factor through the years has been
building Empire with these. Are we not as a people too prone to minimise
the great nation-building work performed by the scattered missionaries
in the lone lands beyond the railway? Ostensibly engaged in the work of
saving souls, Canadian missionaries, both Roman and English, have opened
the gates of commerce, prosecuted geographical discovery, tried to
correct social evils, and added materially to our store of exact
science. Through their influence, orphanages have been founded, schools
established, and hospitals opened. Creeds take a secondary place to
deeds in this land, and when you discuss a man, be he cleric or layman,
the last thing you ask is, "To what church does he belong?"
Incidentally, it does seem rather odd that with Scottish blood running
through the veins of nine-tenths of the people of this North a