so silly as one
might think. They had learnt from experience that the Aurora Borealis
was in some way connected with electricity, and experience had equally
shown them that the skin of the reindeer, if briskly stroked by the
hand on a dark night, would emit as many electric sparks as the back
of a cat. On the other hand, the Amerindians in the southern and more
temperate regions thought the Aurora Borealis was a vast concourse of
"spirits of the happy day" dancing in the clouds.

Thus there were no climatic reasons why, both in summer and in winter,
immense distances should not be quickly covered in Canada between the
Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean. This is how a mere hundred of
white pioneers opened up Canada to the knowledge of the civilized
world far quicker than the same area could have been discovered in
Africa or Asia. Sometimes, for about a month, between the melting of
the snow and ice and the steady flowing of the rivers in the late
spring, or between the uncertain autumn of November and the confirmed
winter of December, there might be an interval of a few weeks in which
journeys had to be made on foot under conditions of great hardship,
through mud, swamp, and over sharp stones or slippery rocks.

"The plains are covered with water from the melting of the snow so
suddenly, and our men suffer much, as they are continually on the
march, looking after Indians in every creek and little river. The
water is commonly knee deep, in some places up to the middle, and in
the morning is usually covered with ice, which makes it tedious and
even dangerous travelling. Some of our men lose the use of their legs
while still in the prime of life", wrote one eighteenth-century
pioneer, in the Canadian spring.

Severe as were the winter conditions of climate, the explorers were
just as willing to travel through the winter as the summer, because in
the winter they were spared the awful plague of mosquitoes and midges
which still renders summer and early-autumn travel throughout the
whole of Canada, from the United States borders on the south to the
Arctic Ocean on the north, a severe trial, and even an unbearable
degree of physical suffering.

CHAPTER VII

The Amerindians and Eskimo: the Aborigines of British North America

I have already attempted to describe in the first chapter the ancient
peopling of America from north-eastern Asia, but it might be useful if
I gave here some description of the Eskimo and