h the wilds of the continent.

Behind at a sort of dog-trot came women, clothed in skirts and shawls
made of red and green blankets; papooses in moss bags on their mothers'
backs, their little heads wobbling under the fur flaps and capotes.
Then, as the dog teams sped from a trot to a gallop with whoops and
jingling of bells, there whipped past a long, low, toboggan-shaped
sleigh with the fastest dogs and the finest robes--the equipage of the
chief factor or trader. Before the spectator could take in any more of
the scene, dogs and sleighs, runners and women, had swept inside the
gate.

[Illustration: A VIEW OF THE INTERIOR OF OLD FORT GARRY Drawn by H. A.
Strong]

At a still earlier period, say in the seventies, one who in summer
chanced to be on Lake Winnipeg at the mouth of the great Saskatchewan
river--which, by countless portages and interlinking lakes, is connected
with all the vast water systems of the North--would have seen the fur
traders sweeping down in huge flotillas of canoes and flat-bottomed
Mackinaw boats--exultant after running the Grand Rapids, where the
waters of the Great Plains converge to a width of some hundred rods and
rush nine miles over rocks the size of a house in a furious cataract.

Summer or winter, it was a life of wild adventure and daily romance.

Here on the Saskatchewan every paddle-dip, every twist and turn of the
supple canoes, revealed some new caprice of the river's moods. In places
the current would be shallow and the canoes would lag. Then the paddlers
must catch the veer of the flow or they would presently be out
waist-deep shoving cargo and craft off sand bars. Again, as at Grand
Rapids, where the banks were rock-faced and sheer, the canoes would run
merrily in swift-flowing waters. No wonder the Indian voyageurs regarded
all rivers as living personalities and made the River Goddess offerings
of tobacco for fair wind and good voyage. And it is to be kept in mind
that no river like the Saskatchewan can be permanently mapped. No map or
chart of such a river could serve its purpose for more than a year.
Chart it to-day, and perhaps to-morrow it jumps its river bed; and
where was a current is now a swampy lake in which the paddlemen may lose
their way.

When the waters chanced to be low at Grand Rapids, showing huge rocks
through the white spray, cargoes would be unloaded and the peltry sent
across the nine-mile portage by tramway; but when the river was high--as
in June af