It is quite true though that the party did bring enormous supplies of
"arrested" foods, egg powders, Westphalian hams, almost unlimited
quantities of tinned ptarmigan, woodcock, plum-pudding, and other
toothsome delicacies well calculated to pique the most jaded and
club-debauched palate. Unfortunately, on being opened, nearly all
these delicate edibles were found to be spoiled, so that the travellers
were forced to exist on such crude diet as pig's face, rice, and beans.

But the liquors still remained. Allah be praised!--barrels and cases
of it; yes! even kegs and demi-johns--brandy, burgundy, benedictine,
claret, champagne, and canary--these and other brands which I forget,
for my interest was attracted from the list to the wistful faces of
these historians who think with love and longing on those rare old,
fair old golden days that are gone beyond recall.

On their arrival at Edmonton, the commanders of the expedition were
informed that a prohibition law was in force in the Yukon and that, in
consequence, no spirituous liquors could be carried across its borders.
This being the case, there was nothing for it but to drink the liquors
in Edmonton. They had no licence to sell it, and to pour it upon the
unappreciative prairie would be manifestly absurd--even wicked. This
is why I was correct in saying that our vintage of the night was the
last bottle of the most prolonged and celebrated spree that ever took
place in the North. In truth, it was an Homeric carousal.

The spree lasted for six weeks, and fights with their legal sequences
were frequent. To use the most generally approved northern expression
of the day, "They just fit and fit," so that more than once the good
Archdeacon of Alberta had to pour oil and balm into the broken bones
and brittle nerves of the combatants. Indeed, he went so far as to
have them nursed in his own home. He is a hale-hearted, fine-fibred
gentleman, our Archdeacon.

It is hardly fair, however, to lay the entire spree to the credit of
the stampeders. The population of Edmonton, in the late nineties,
consisted of fifteen hundred people, and all the male portion of it
used their utmost endeavours to prevent any good liquor going to waste.
The gentry of the community were invited to partake, but the hewers of
wood and drawers of water who had been engaged to exercise the
pack-horses by walking them up and down, these, and the disorderly
arrant idlers who hung on the borders of