forward to indefinite periods of expatriation in the silent
places. We alone are going for fun. Our one care is to keep those
precious cameras dry. This is the beginning of a camera nightmare which
lasts six months until we again reach Chicago.

And the fellow-passengers? Law is represented, and medicine, and the
all-powerful H.B. Co. With us is Mr. Angus Brabant going in on his
initial official trip in charge of H.B. interests in the whole Mackenzie
River District, and with him two cadets of The Company. On the seat
behind us sit a Frenchman reading a French novel, a man from Dakota, and
a third passenger complaining of a camera "which cost fifty pounds
sterling" that somehow has fallen by the way. Sergeant Anderson,
R.N.W.M.P., with his wife and two babies are in the other stage.

Kennedy, the driver, is a character. Driving in and out and covering on
this one trail twelve thousand miles every year, he is fairly soaked
with stories of the North and Northmen. The other stage is driven by
Kennedy's son, who, tradition says, was struck by lightning when he was
just forgetting to be a boy and beginning to be a man. Dwarfed in mind
and body, he makes a mild-flavoured pocket-edition of Quilp.

The roads are a quagmire. The querulous voice of the man who lost his
camera claims our attention. "I thought I would be able to get out and
run behind and pick flowers." Turning and introducing ourselves, we find
the troubled one to be an English doctor going north off his own bat
with the idea of founding a hospital for sick Indians on the Arctic
Circle.

[Illustration: Irrigation Ditch, Calgary, Alberta]

The girlish figure of a teacher struggling through the awful mud in
gum-boots indicates that we have not travelled beyond the range of the
little red schoolhouse. Stray wee figures splashing their way schoolward
look dreary enough, and I seem to hear the monotonous drone of "seven
times nine," "the mountains of Asia," "the Tudor sovereigns with dates
of accession," and other things appertaining to "that imperial palace
whence I came." All the summer afterwards, when mosquitoes are plenty
and food scarce, a backward thought to this teacher making muddy tracks
toward the well of English undefiled, brings pleased content.

[Illustration: A Waldorf-Astoria on the Prairie's Edge]

At noon it clears, and as we "make tea" at Sturgeon Creek (the Namao
Sepee of the Indians), the first of the "stopping-places" or
Waldorf-Astorias of