trol, to supply with free illumination every
city of prairie Canada. It has destroyed all vegetation for a radius of
twenty yards; but, oddly enough, outside this range of demarcation the
growth is more luxuriant and comes earlier and stays later than that of
the surrounding country. One redheaded Klondiker, ignorant of gas and
its ways, ten years ago struck a match to this escaping stream, was
blown into the bushes beyond, and came out minus hair, eye-brows and red
beard--the quickest and closest shave he ever had. The shells of birds'
eggs, tea-leaves from many a cheering copper-kettle, tufts of
rabbit-hair, and cracked shin-bones of the moose, with here a greasy
nine of diamonds, show, this Stromboli of the Athabasca to be the
gathering-place of up and down-river wanderers. You can boil a kettle or
broil a moose-steak on this gas-jet in six minutes, and there is no
thought of accusing metre to mar your joy. The Doctor has found a
patient in a cabin on the high bank, and rejoices. The Indian has
consumption. The only things the Doctor could get at were rhubarb pills
and cod-liver oil, but these, with faith, go a long way. They may have
eased the mind of poor Lo, around whose dying bunk we hear the relatives
scrapping over his residuary estate of rusty rifle, much-mended
fishing-net, and three gaunt dogs.

We pass House River, and the devout cross themselves and murmur a
prayer. The point is marked by a group of graves covered with canvas.
Here years ago a family of four, travelling alone, contracted
diphtheria, and died before help could reach them. There is another
legend of which the boatmen unwillingly speak, the story of the
_Wetigo_, or Indian turned cannibal, who murdered a priest on this
lonely point, and ate the body of his victim. The taste for human flesh,
Philip Atkinson assures us, grows with the using, and this lunatic of
long ago went back to the camps, secured an Indian girl as bride,
carried her to this point, took her life, and ate of her flesh. It is a
gruesome story.

[Illustration: Grand Rapids on the Athabasca River]

Now begin the rapids, ninety miles of which we are to run. This rough
water on the Athabasca is one of the only two impediments to navigation
on the long course between Athabasca Landing and the Polar Ocean. These
first rapids, frankly, are a disappointment. The water is high, higher
than it has been for ten years, so the boiling over the boulders is not
very noticeable. The Pelic