e along
her banks. In this vast land men speak not of bread as the staff of
life; their unvoiced prayer is, "Give us our fish in due season." From
the waters of this river, since man was, have the Indians drawn and
dipped and seined their sustenance--inconnu, jack-fish, grayling,
white-fish, and loche. The wide bosom of the Mackenzie, in winter's ice
or summer's spate, forever has been the people's highway--a trail worn
smooth by sled-runner and moccasin in the ice-season, melting its breast
in the spring-time to open a way to the questing bow of the birch-bark.

Along these banks, forgotten tepee-poles, deserted fish-stage, and
lonely grave remain, a crumbling commentary of yesterday, a hint of
recurring to-morrows. Son succeeds father, race replaces race, but the
great Mackenzie flows on, and, as it flows, unwritten history along
these banks is ever in the making. Tragedy and triumph,
self-aggrandisement and self-obliteration, are here as well as in the
noisy world we have left. Lessons these are for us, too, if we bring the
keen eye and listening ear. Among Mackenzie tribes no Yellow-Knife,
Dog-Rib, or Slavi starved while another had meat, no thievish hand
despoiled the cache of another. A man's word was his bond, and a promise
was kept to the death. Not all the real things of life are taught to the
Cree by the Christian. Courage is better than culture, playing the game
of more importance than the surface niceties of civilisation, to be a
man now of more moment than to hope to be an angel hereafter.

About noon we reach Fort Wrigley, and are boarded by priests and
Indians all interested in the new steamer and impressed with its size.
One asks if it is a boat or an island, and another declares it is "just
like a town." Fort Wrigley is an inconspicuous post with a dreary enough
record of hunger and hardship. We find it rich in flowers and will
always remember it as the one place in the North in which we gathered
the fringed gentian (_Gentiana crinata_) with its lance-shaped leaves,
delicately-fringed corollas, and deep violet blue. The fringed gentian
is rapidly becoming a thing of the past in a great many localities, and
it gives us pleased surprise to find it far up in latitude 63 deg.. Purple
asters are here, too, and the heart-shaped seed-pods of shepherd's-purse
or mother's-heart. Wrigley adds to our collection the green-penciled
flowers of the grass of Parnassus, with wild flax, and both pink and
purple columbin