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

Lure of the North 25as the Indian tea-plant-Kalmia and Si9rinchium. Among those trees we had to wearour mosquito veils. Whenever we went ashore there was much hand-shaking andheartiness. The people of this new country gave us a most refreshing sense ofequality that at once swept away our lifelong class distinctions.The archdeacon, a fine upstanding friendly man, was the first person we metwho had actually travelled up the Rat by canoe, for Mr Warner had made thejourney in winter over snow and ice. The parson, with four or five guides, hadtowed his wife and baby upriver in an Eskimo skin boat and had made the portageover the Divide into the Yukon. Often he had been obliged to wade up to hischest in the current. We listened to his stories anxiously. Later, when we werealone, Gwen said: "No good getting the wind up." The same thought was uppermostin both our minds. If we had to take four or five guides instead of two, howwould our money last out?Once the Athabasca had pulled out into the river, heading north, we seemed toenter a new existence and new impressions followed each other so quickly thatmany of them became blurred in outline. Yet I can still recapture certain scenesand conversations that seemed to express the essence of our whole journey, of thenew land wherein we were travelling and the new outlook that was so soon tobecome our own .... We are heading downstream towards the great Mackenzie Delta and ourgreat adventure, only four days out from Edmonton, but already the North hascast a spell upon us and not only on us, for every one of the motley crowd on thissteamer is travelling under this same spell. Police returning to Ellesmere Land orMelville Island or northern Canada, each one summoned back to his post ofduty; trappers lured back, after a spell in some city, to their solitary huts by thestrength of nostalgia; legal men proceeding to the Eskimo murder trial,missionary and trader, storekeeper and nun, all are travelling north with a peculiarelation as if a light were shining there. Only three, besides Gwen and myself,are simply tourists. "I just have that uneasy feeling I want to go North," says theman from Arizona, puzzled at his own awakening imagination. The other twoobserve with surprise that "there's no need to hurry in the North."This river is full of shifting sandbanks. Our shallow-draught steamer ispropelled by a paddle-wheel and fed by wood fires; every few hours we have to tieup to the river bank beside a pile oflogs, in order to replenish fuel. Half-breedssaunter ashore, lithe as cats, dark-skinned, clad in mechanics' overalls, green