C Ihe Ladies c cu. V'VVAN - History and Classics, Department of

8 THE LADIES, THE GWICH'IN, AND THE RATfrom which town we should have to set out for the Mackenzie River; he obtaineddetails about expenses, dates of steamers and guides. Finally he sent a wirelesstelegram to the Hudson's Bay post at Aklavik on the Mackenzie Delta, to engage acanoe for us and two Indian guides who would take us up the Rat River as far as LaPierre House. This place stood on the Divide and was, we understood, an Indiansettlement where we could find a guide to take us downriver into the Yukon afterwe had dismissed our own two guides who would walk back over the muskeg toAklavik. Since La Pierre House was marked in the atlas, we came to look upon itas the key pin of our expedition but actually it brought us only disillusion, as Ishall relate in due course.Incidentally our good neighbour quite unconsciously smoothed the way for usin other directions. He was a man of wealth and repute and my mother wasVictorian enough to regard these two attributes, especially when they wereunited, with veneration; she therefore changed her attitude completely. Sheeased my financial position by allowing me to sell out £100 worth of shares froma trust fund and then she began boasting in the village about our forthcomingjourney. As for Gwen, whose parents were dead, she scraped together all hersavings and collected her sketching materials, hoping that they might enable herto earn some dollars. We realised that our money must be hoarded to meet theheavy expenses of the guides and we therefore booked steerage passages in theEmpress of Scotland from Southampton to Quebec.As the time drew near for us to sail, England was in the throes of the greatrailway strike. There were anxious moments. In those days we were not accustomedto using cars for long journeys and as my mother used hers mainly forstation-work and church-going, it was a major upheaval to get her to send us toSouthampton. However, where others' soft persuasiveness would often fail,Gwen could manage my parent by taking much for granted with a certain abruptnessof manner that was habitual to her and we duly set off for Southampton bycar on the great adventure, sailing from there on May 15th.The serious traveller can never return home unchanged, though at whatparticular stage of his journeying the old man is replaced by the new, it is not easyto discover.It is almost impossible to define this spiritual change. Sometimes in a letter ora book the reader may gain a sense of unseen forms hovering like shadows in thebackground of the scene described. In a diary or a record of travel there is alwaysmuch, of importance, that must remain for ever in that region which we call "on