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

D'OY,Ashore 33this calendar.' 'God bless me,' sez I, 'then I've been blind drunk for twomonths.' So I picks up me hat and out I goes an that's how I never joined thepriesthood. "Mter the exchange of several more yarns we muttered excuses and made ourescape to the river. There was the Distributor coming up from her winter quarters,so we retrieved our baggage from the hotel, went down to the steamer and settledinto our cabin.For six days and nights the roar of the rapids sounded in our ears while 200tons of freight were being transported from Fort Fitzgerald to Fort Smith. Forhours we would watch the pelicans, which alone range fearlessly about the waste oftroubled waters, to wrest a living from the jaws of the boiling rapids. Sometimesthese archaic-looking birds would huddle on a rock in mid-current, with an airof ancient wisdom, looking down their orange-coloured beaks, motionless as anyYogi in a trance. At sunset wisps of scaup and pintail would pass across themolten sky above the forest of jack pine, cottonwood and poplar on the far bankof the river.At Fort Smith it was not a case of making friends but rather of finding themeverywhere. Soon we knew many of the inhabitants, the postmaster, storekeepers,lorry-drivers, Hudson's Bay Company employees who were alwayscourteous, Grey Nuns of the North, mounted police and the cook at the hotel.We spent much time listening to yarns with never a dull moment except when wewere alone with the womenfolk. Mter being artificially animated for five minuteson the subjects of babies and cooking, Gwen and I would nearly expire. Therewould be a heavy silence while we watched the door and longed for the appearanceof the men who would enliven us with tales of action and information onnatural history. Among the hausfraus of the Australian bush I had often suffereda similar agonizing silence, as I sat on some verandah, hopelessly moving mybody to and fro in a rocking chair until the husband should appear, full of talkabout the cattle and kangaroos and wallabies, the wild birds on the plain and alarge alligator in the creek, and happy intercourse would be restored.One day we visited the hospital, a three-story building with 13 beds run byFrench-Canadian nuns; these Roman Catholic missions do pioneer work ingrowing potatoes and often they will hold on in the wilderness when the Churchof England fails to do so. The Indian patients had a strange look on their faces.On Sunday we went to the Roman Catholic church with Mr Brabant and as theIndians came along in single file he shook hands with them. We were introduced