here stretches beyond us a
country rich in possibilities we know, and one day this land, unknown
and dubbed "barren" because unknown, will support its teeming millions.
Chimerical? Why so?

Parallels of latitude are great illuminators. When we run this line of
55 deg. westward what do we strike in Asia? The southern boundary of the
Russian Province of Tobolsk. Superimpose a map of that Province on a map
of Canada and we find that the great Mackenzie waterway which we are to
follow cuts Tobolsk almost directly through the centre. In the year
1900, Russian Tobolsk produced twenty-one million bushels of grain,
grazed two and a half million head of live stock, exported one and a
half million dollars' worth of butter, and supported a population of one
and a half million souls. There is not one climatic condition obtaining
in the Asiatic Province that this similar section of Canada which we are
about to enter does not enjoy.

Off a little jetty some lads are fishing. There is a camaraderie felt by
all fishermen, and soon I have a rod and access to the chunk of
moose-meat which is the community bait. Within half an hour, rejoicing
in a string of seventeen chub and grayling, we wend our way back to the
little village. The elements that compose it? Here we have a large
establishment of the Hudson's Bay Company, an Anglican and a Roman
Mission, a little public school, a barracks of the Northwest Mounted
Police, a post office, a dozen stores, a reading-room, two hotels, and a
blacksmith shop, and for population a few whites leavening a host of
Cree-Scots half-breeds.

Athabasca Landing is part of the British Empire. But English is at a
discount here; Cree and French and a mixture of these are spoken on all
sides. The swart boatmen are the most interesting feature of the
place,--tall, silent, moccasined men, followed at the heel by ghostlike
dogs. From this point north dogs are the beasts of burden; the camel may
be the ship of the desert, but the dog is the automobile of the
silences. The wise missionary translates his Bible stories into the
language of the latitude. As Count von Hammerstein says, "What means a
camel to a Cree? I tell him it is a moose that cannot go through a
needle's eye." The Scriptural sheep and goats become caribou and
coyotes, and the celestial Lamb is typified by the baby seal with its
coat of shimmering whiteness. Into the prohibition territory that
stretches north of this no liquor can be taken except