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

Great Slave Lake 39preparation, discomfort of travel by sea and rail, busy hours at Edmonton, newfaces on the river journey. Ahead of us the unknown, mosquito-haunted andperhaps malignant Rat has no importance. We are lost in a world of clear waterand clear sky which have a strange impalpable look, as if they could bear no weightand had neither beginning nor end nor purpose; no origin nor any aptitude forchange. Something has touched me here and now like music on muted strings. Ihave come home; back to that long-lost home which, without plan or consciouspurpose, I have been always seeking ...Suddenly a voice breaks in on my reverie as I stand leaning on the rail, lost inthe moment yet looking steadily toward the North. It is a harsh voice, but thewords are not harsh."Isn't that just the quietest water you ever saw?" says a man standing beside me.I do not know if he is speaking to me or to himself, but I see that he is the manwith a face like that of the villain in the drama, the man from Arizona who is travellingnorth on no known errand, impelled by some instinct stronger thanreason. The other two tourists join us. One, a rough-spoken, hardened personwhose tongue has a lash for every creed and a mocking jest for every occasion,owns to having spent a sleepless night on deck, as if in spite of himself. "Thatblessed sun going down behind the spruces and the light in the blessed sky allnight, it just got me," he says. The other man says nothing, but his eyes have thelook of a child seeing something that is not there ...The three strolled away together and I was alone again with that stillnessemanating from sky and water, that magic stillness of the North which is not thequiet of a little thing too weak to strive or cry, but the breath of a Power broodingover all.A hush was still about us like the hush there must have been before the birth ofa world. There was not a breath of wind as we steamed ahead without sense ofexpectation or premonition of change. There was nothing to port or starboardon which we could set foot, nothing above us that we could grasp with a hand, nofamiliar object within sight that we could identify. The solidity of the vessel onwhich we stood seemed to be an intrusion into this world. After a while the faintgreen line to the northward that was a narrow bar between sky and water, becamemore definite. A little later we could see trees fringing the lake in a dead levelland that was eventually lost to sight by reason of its very flatness and immensity.It is hard to realise the vast extent of this forested country where nature isprodigal ofleagues, prodigal of trees and water and far horizons. The mere sense