the ships of the whalers and fur traders
are passing up and down--that there is any sign of human habitation on
the straits.

Walrus wallow on the pink granite islands in huge herds. Polar bears
flounder from icepan to icepan. The arctic hare, white as snow but for
the great bulging black eye, bounds over the boulders. Snow buntings,
whistling swans, snow geese, ducks in myriads--flacker and clacker and
hold solemn conclave on the adjoining rocks, as though this were their
realm from the beginning and for all time.

Of a tremendous depth are the waters of the straits. Not for nothing has
the ice world been grinding through this narrow channel for billions of
years. No fear of shoals to the mariner. Fear is of another sort. When
the ice is running in a whirlpool and the incoming tide meets the ice
jam and the waters mount thirty-five feet high and a wind roars between
the high shores like a bellows--then it is that the straits roll and
pitch and funnel their waters into black troughs where the ships go
down. "Undertow," the old Hudson's Bay captains called the suck of the
tide against the ice wall; and that black hole, where the lumpy billows
seemed to part like a passage between wall of ice and wall of water, was
what the mariners feared. The other great danger was just a plain crush,
getting nipped between two icepans rearing and plunging like fighting
stallions, with the ice blocks going off like pistol shots or smashed
glass. No child's play is such navigating either for the old sailing
vessels of the fur traders or the modern ice-breakers propelled by
steam! Yet, the old sailing vessels and the whaling fleets have
navigated these straits for two hundred years.

Agnes C. Laut: "The Conquest of the Great Northwest."

Good name in man and woman,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.

Shakespeare

SCOTS WHA HAE

Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led;
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to victorie.
Now's the day, and now's the hour;
See the front o' battle lour:
See approach proud Edward's power--
Chains and slaverie!

Wha will be a traitor knave?
Wha can fill a coward's grave?