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

148 THE LADIES, THE GWICH'IN, AND THE RATonce we passed some fine rocky bluffs where peregrine falcons and eagles werescreaming overhead but always, when those echoes had died away, the unearthlysilence of that country would come flooding back to fill our world. We paddledsoftly, trying not to break that silence.We had been told that there was neither a settlement nor even an inhabited hutbetween La Pierre House and Old Crow, so when one day at noon, we cameround a bend and heard children's voices, we thought we were having hallucinations,until we saw two tents and a white man with an Indian family."My name is David Low," he said, after tying our canoe to his scow and helpingus to scramble ashore. Half a dozen half-breed children were clustering round usand then his flat-faced Indian wife came forward. We shook hands and went intoone of the tents and sat there chatting for some time. The husband was a FrenchCanadian who had come in from Quebec during the Klondike gold rush and hadnever made enough money to go out. When we left, he gave us a present of someking salmon he had caught and it proved to be a most welcome change in ourdiet.It was strange, we agreed, after we had waved good-bye and had paddled onagain, that neither of us wanted to meet any more strangers in huts. Were webecoming queer in the head like those solitary trappers who could not bear tohave another hut within a hundred miles of their own, we wondered?Actually, we did meet more strangers before reaching Old Crow, for a day orso later we found a couple of old Indians encamped on the right bank. They wereliving alone in a tent beside four empty huts and they spoke very little English, so,having pulled in and landed to exchange a few courtesies by dumb show, we wenton our way.There was one night when we decided to sleep in the open; I was glad to besaved the trouble of helping to pitch the tent, for I was hobbling about in a singleshoe, being unable to get a shoe on to the other foot until my sodden toe hadfinished peeling. We chose a place about 20 yards from the river. We had givenup wearing veils, but there were still a few mosquitoes out, so we put up ourmosquito bars and then went to sleep in great contentment under the open sky.Something, possibly an unusual sound or movement close at hand, woke meearly and there, within ten yards of the tent, standing as still as if it were posingfor a picture, stood a single caribou. I nudged Gwen in the ribs and she sat upjust in time to see him plunge into the river and that was the only caribou we sawin all our 600 miles of travel through wild country. Later, when we met the