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

24 THE LADIES, THE GWICH · IN . AND THE RAT"The End oiSteel."Waterwtrys Station, Albertaand Great WaterwtrysRailwtry. n.d. PAAA3936.woodpiles or wandered among willows and exquisite poplars that were very talland slender with silver stems. Then at last a tug came up the river with anotherscow and took us eight miles down the river to where the SS Athabasca was moored.There followed two days of delay and confusion. There were tugs and scowscoming and going, upriver and downriver, fetching goods, unloading goods intothe Athabasca; there was the king's birthday when our tug came alongside withoutany load; there was a bag of tools at Waterways to be fetched for the sergeantmajorof police and a final delay while the engineer was having his hair cut,before, at last, we steamed off down the Mackenzie River towards the delta whichlies more than 1500 miles north of Waterways.During those two days Gwen and I wandered about the forest that hemmed usin on either shore. There were pale poplars among dark firs ; there was greenwater, utterly still. Among those poplars there hung a silence so heavy that itseemed as if no voice had ever spoken or echoed there. There were swallow-tailbutterflies and sooty terns and exciting flowers, Trientaiis, Ledum-which is known