etchumstock from the neighbourhood
of Eagle--the route we should return to the Yukon by--and were of the
Porcupine and Peel River stock. This was certainly a surprise; I had
deemed all the Tanana River Indians of the same extraction and tongue,
but the stretch of bad water from the Salchaket to the Tanana Crossing
was evidently the boundary between two peoples.

[Sidenote: CHIEF ISAAC]

That night we met Chief Isaac and the principal men of his tribe. At
first it seemed that such broken English as three or four of them had
would be our only medium of intercourse, but later one was discovered
who had visited the lower Tanana and the Yukon and who understood Arthur
indifferently well, and by the double interpretation, halting and
inefficient, but growing somewhat better as we proceeded, it was
possible to enter into communication. These preliminaries arranged, the
chief made a set speech of dignity and force. He thanked me for coming
to them, and regretted he had not been able to wait longer at the Healy
River to help us to his camp. When he was a boy he had been across to
the Yukon and had seen Bishop Bompas, and had been taught and baptized
by him, but he was an old man now and he had forgotten what he had
learned. I was the first minister most of his people had ever seen. They
heard that Indians in other places had mission and school, and they had
felt sorry a long time that no one came to teach them; for they were
very ignorant, little children who knew nothing, and when they heard a
rumour that a mission and school would be brought to them their hearts
were very glad. Wherever we should see fit to "make mission," there he
and his people would go, and would help build for us and help us in
every way; but he hoped it would be near Lake Mansfield and the
Crossing, where most of them lived at present. Farther down the river
was not so good for their hunting and fishing, but they would go
wherever we said. That was the burden of the chief's speech.

I took a liking to the old man at once. He was evidently a chief that
was a chief. The chieftainship here was plainly not the effete and
decaying institution it is in many places on the Yukon. He spoke for all
his people without hesitation or question, and one felt that what he
said was law amongst them.

There followed for two days an almost continuous course of instruction
in the elements of the Christian faith and Christian morals, all day
long and far into the night, w