agent who is going north with the last of
the treaty payments. These old-timers in the north country
tell us all kinds of stories. Wish I had time to put them
down. People up here get about one mail a year. One winter
mail comes across the mountains from Dawson. They say a mail
goes into Fort McPherson from Dawson every winter, too.
Three years ago four members of the Mounted Police were lost
trying to make it across from McPherson to Dawson. Their
names were Inspector Fitzgerald, Constables Taylor and
Kenny, and Carter, a special constable. They all starved.
They are buried at Fort McPherson. Their guide was Carter,
and he got lost. The inspector of the Mounted Police who is
to go to Fort Herschel was in the Boer War, in Africa, far
south of the Equator.

"Uncle Dick tells me that the names of the tribes through
which we will pass on our big journey are, first, the Crees,
who go as far north as McMurray and Chippewyan; then the
Great Chippewyan people, scattered here over a big country;
then the Dog Ribs, the Yellow Knives, the Slavies, the
Mountain Slavies, the Rabbit or Hare people, the Loucheux,
and the Eskimos. The Loucheux and the Eskimos lap over along
the southern edge of the Arctic. We are among the Dog Ribs
here. Their canoes are very small, made out of spruce and
birch bark, and so narrow you would not think they could
float anything at all. That's as big as they can get the
bark up here.

"Now we begin to see sledges and snow-shoes and meat-racks.
They have to put everything up high so the dogs can't get
them. Dried fish everywhere, or what is left of the last
winter's supply. Looks like we were in the North at last.
Father Le Fevre told me that at Chippewyan they put up over
a hundred thousand 'pieces of fish'--that means a whole fish
each--every year for the people and the dogs.

"English mission at Hay River has seventy scholars. They are
put in red coats. They live on fish and potatoes. We leave
at Hay River the wife of the Anglican minister. There are
two young ladies stationed there also. The minister's wife
had been gone for two years--outside, as we call it in
Alaska. Found a garden here, quite a potato-field, also
fresh pie-plant, lettuce, and radishes, all big enough to
eat on July 1st. Many fat