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

66 THE LADIES, THE GWICH'IN, AND THE RATthe inner eye a whole life history, some great or little tragedy enacted withoutspectator or human consolation.Here is one. In a certain home, that is to say in a partitioned hut where thecracks between each log are filled with mud or moss and the roof is ceiled withbrown paper, a tired little woman sits in a rocking chair with a peaky infant onher lap. The baby's eyes are black as ink, it is very small for its age. The woman hasa shaded look in her eyes as if she were trying to veil some insistent secret feeling,there is no hope nor animation in her face. She is a little slip of a creature, cityborn,married to a half-breed trapper, and now our steamer has brought her inthe first mail received from the outside for many months. Her husband isearning a bare subsistence; drink has always been his trouble. The home has anempty air, with a floor of bare boards and on the walls nothing but two cheapcoloured prints and some Indian bead-work hanging from a nail. Through thepartition door we can see her kitchen with its bare, unfurnished look. One ortwo raggedly cut empty tins lie on the floor, shining brightly but they are the onlybright objects in that home.At every turn in this country one sees those empty tins, between the cabins andamong the Indian tents, even along the earth track that serves as a main street,these unsightly objects are thrown out and left to lie there. It seems as if, amongthese hard-living people, no one has the leisure to beautify or even to keep tidytheir home surroundings.So that little woman sits there, week after week, all dreams of yesterdaybecoming dim, all hope for the morrow stillborn.There is another home. Here also the crevices between the logs are filled withmud or moss, but inside there are rugs on the floor. There are also photographsand knick-knacks and a gramophone and several tables, and the rocking chair isupholstered. Moreover, the father of the family is a white man. The children areasleep in the next room, a cheerful meal is ready in the over-heated cabin, butthe woman hardly speaks at all, there is a set look on her face, like the look of animage. One cannot imagine her glancing expectantly round any corner or facingany new road with hope. The man's talk, though slow to the point of reluctance,as if he had nearly lost the habit of human intercourse, is interesting, for it iscentred on the wild life of the forest where he works as a woodcutter and there islittle he does not know about wild birds and animals.Later we learned that he only works intermittently, that on every possibleoccasion he "goes on the toot" and that, on these occasions, he always takes his