the camp, helped themselves.
Their motto was the same as Lord Nelson's--"Touch and take." Indeed,
the speedy manner in which they relieved the expedition of any
encumbering wealth was truly most astonishing. They have a theory in
the North that everything belongs by right to the man who has the
greatest need. Now, the need of the North is a very big pocket and
there are holes in it.

Ultimately, the party got away. They took the Swan Hill route that
leads to the Old Assiniboine Crossing, but spring had already set in so
that the trails were deep with water, and the muskegs were bottomless
pits.

The leader of the expedition (by which they meant the foreman as
distinct from the director) was Mr. Matthew Evanston O'Brien, an Irish
solicitor and erstwhile Chief of Police in Australia. It is also said
he was an English secret-service man. He died in April of this year at
Wetaskawin, Alberta, where he was practising law.

The breeds and other packers who accompanied the party became insolent
and purposely lost their loads. One man smashed the camp stove and
dropped it into a river; others lost tents; while some found hay and
oats as hard to hold as quicksilver. Being badly sheltered and
underfed, nearly all of their hundred horses died, so that long
afterwards teamsters coming to the south picked up wagon loads of
harness besides other useful gear. In a word, like the man who tried
all the rheumatism cures, the members of the Helpman Expedition were
"done good."

Some of the party got as far as Fort Simpson on the Mackenzie River,
but in the end every man, greatly chastened in spirit, turned back to
Edmonton, where some of them were stranded for several months before
money came to take them on to England.

Do not laugh at their misfortune. It is not seemly so to do, for, in
all this wildly-warring world, there are few more bitter cups than the
failure of a big financial coup in the which you have invested your own
(and alas!) other people's money.

Besides, few of the scores of parties who started fared any better,
while many faced worse. Some of them, like the Moody Expedition,
returned because they could not make over two or three miles a day,
they having to fell the impeding timber. At this rate of travel, the
journey would have occupied five years.

Other crusaders returned because they had no food or money, a condition
that scarcely makes for progress or health.

Still others came back because th