urpose of a memorial tablet, but perhaps the most eloquent, if humble,
testimonies were in the wide North, where the men and their achievements
were so well known for years. Corporal Somers, at Fort Macpherson, cut a
copper camp kettle into strips and engraved upon them the names of the
brave departed, while more recently the famous old name of Smith's
Landing at the end of the Athabasca River navigation was changed to
Fitzgerald as a tribute to the memory of the gallant Policeman whose
name was a household word in all that country.

The fatal ending of the Fitzgerald patrol remains as the most tragic
happening in the long and remarkable history of the Mounted Police. But,
as already suggested, it startled our people into a fuller realization
of what the men of the Force were and are doing so unobtrusively for the
country at such constant risk to themselves. The passing of Fitzgerald
and his companions on that frozen way will not have been in vain if our
Canadian lads learn new lessons from the men whose silent tents are, at
the end of the trail, pitched on the eternal camping ground of Fame. If
these lessons of heroism and devotion to duty are learned and practised
by the young men of to-day, then that lonely fourfold grave under the
Arctic sky will prove to be one of the bulwarks of the nation.

CHAPTER XVI

STRIKING INCIDENTS

The White North was taking its toll of the men who were at the outposts
of Empire as exponents of British administration. When Fitzgerald left
Herschell Island on his last patrol, Sergeant Selig and Constable
Wissenden remained in charge of that remote and lonely point, but in
January, despite the efforts of his solitary white companion Wissenden,
Selig, after much suffering, passed over the Great Divide. Wissenden,
with the help of the natives, made a coffin and placed the body in a
storehouse to await Fitzgerald's expected return. Corporal Somers and
Constable Blake at Fort Macpherson heard through Hudson's Bay Company
men that Selig had died in January, and before they could take any steps
to go to Herschell Island, Dempster came from Dawson with the news of
the death of Fitzgerald and his comrades. One can imagine the strain
upon these men Somers and Blake at Macpherson, and Wissenden alone on
Herschell Island, where, besides suffering loss by the death of his
companion, he was so isolated from the civilized world that he did not
see the face of a white man from November, 1910, t