e living tissues of his very life. They were a
creation, made from nothing, given a body by the individual genius of
the man. The drain cut down his nervous energy, made him lean, drew the
anxious lines of an incipient exhaustion across his brow.

At first, as may be gathered, the advantages of the game seemed to be
strongly in the Indian's favour. The food supply, the transportation
facilities, and advantage of position in case game should be encountered
were all his. Against him he need count seriously only the offset of
dogged Anglo-Saxon grit. But as the travel defined itself, certain
compensations made themselves evident.

Direct warfare was impossible to him. He possessed only a
single-barrelled muzzle-loading gun of no great efficiency. In case of
ambush he might, with luck, be able to kill one of his pursuers, but he
would indubitably be captured by the other. He would be unable to
approach them at night because of their dogs. His dog-team was stronger,
but with it he had to break trail, which the others could utilise
without further effort. Even should his position in advance bring him on
game, without great luck, he would be unable to kill it, for he was
alone and could not leave his team for long. And his very swiftness in
itself would react against him, for he was continually under the
temptation daily to exceed by a little his powers.

These considerations the white men at first could not see; and so,
logically, they were more encouraged by them when at last they did
appear. And then in turn, by natural reaction when the glow had died,
the great discouragement of the barren places fell on their spirits.
They plodded, seeing no further than their daily necessity of travel.
They plodded, their eyes fixed to the trail, which led always on toward
the pole star, undeviating, as a deer flies in a straight line hoping to
shake off the wolves.

The dense forest growth was succeeded in time by the low spruce and
poplar thickets; these in turn by the open reaches planted like a park
with the pointed firs. Then came the Land of Little Sticks, and so on
out into the vast whiteness of the true North, where the trees are
liliputian and the spaces gigantic beyond the measures of the earth;
where living things dwindle to the significance of black specks on a
limitless field of white, and the aurora crackles and shoots and spreads
and threatens like a great inimical and magnificent spirit.

The tendency seemed toward a