g, for ever since the first slippery fish
slithered through the hands of primeval man, it has always been the
biggest one that got away. Where these biggest fish foregather
ultimately has always been a mystery to me. Some day, we shall
discover a piscatorial paradise with millions of them in it.

Antoine presents me to Captain Shot, an Indian who has been on this
river for forty-eight years. The Captain is seventy-three, and his
name is really Fausennent. He is called "Shot" because he was the
first man to shoot the rapids of the Athabasca. I say that Antoine
"presents me" but I say it advisedly, for the North levels people, by
which is meant the primitive north where they live with nature. In
this environment, the man who builds boats and supplies food or fuel,
is the superior of the man or woman who writes, or pronounces theories.
I may be able to hoodwink the people up south as to my importance in
our community, but it is different here. And this is as it should be.

Captain Shot is engaged in building a boat for the Honourable the
Hudson's Bay Company, and there is even a smoking-room in it. But,
Blessed Mother! it is no trouble to build a boat now--none at all, for
presently the railway will be completed and the boilers and metal
fixings will come in over it, but in the old days--that is to say up
till now--it was different. When the Northern Navigation Co. brought
in the boilers for their boats, they hauled them a hundred miles over
the trail from Edmonton, and it took seventy-two horses on each boiler.

"Didn't the government help any?" I ask.

Oh yes! the late government at Ottawa tried to help transportation by
sending in fifty reindeer; but the Captain has heard tell that some men
swore terrible oaths at the government, and set their dogs about eating
up the deer, for these men hold a kind of an idea it is railways the
country hereabouts needs, but he is not quite sure as to the rights of
the story.

There are four hundred men employed here at the Landing in building
scows and transhipping. Only a few of the scows are brought back, for
they have to be tracked up by power of man. For this reason, a new
flotilla is built each year.

Captain Shot has many estimable sons, all of whom are rivermen and
shipbuilders. They could hardly be expected to disgrace their name by
becoming mere farmers or teamsters after the unwisdom of the white
man's way. Ho! Ho! the idea of any one wishing to become a f