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

FriendJy Faces 155hospitable cabin and spent the evening pressing our flowers, with the luxury of atable to help us, looking at Mr Frost's photographs of the country and having along chat with him. He had been in the North-West Mounted Police, but afterleaving the force had discovered that he could not bear to leave the northcountry; he liked his independence too much.In that room we had the joy of sleeping in partial darkness, but there was noopen window and we found it very stuffy. So we got up at 4, and our hostappeared at once and cooked us a superb breakfast and then took us along toMartha, who had spent the night making our moccasins. We traded some of ourbeads and silks for one pair and some pork and biscuits for the other, Mr Frostarranging the exchange to the satisfaction of all parties. He told us that the wholesettlement was agog over our unexpected arrival. They had never seen womencome over the Divide like that before and they were all saying to each other, intones of awed surprise, "Those two women they came down the river paddlingtheir canoe like a couple of squaws." Then he added his own opinion of ourjourney: "Gee-whiz," he said, "but I guess it was fierce, your trip up the Rat."We would gladly have listened to him and his tales of the North for many daysbut some travel urge was pushing us on and regretfully we said good-bye to him,knowing that we would never have a chance to make any return for his thoughtfulkindness. So we set off with David, using two paddles, each of us in turn taking atwo hours spell with our guide. All day we studied the river shores with thegreatest interest, for the last few days the banks had been continually changingtheir form and direction. Sometimes there would be overhanging banks some 12feet high, with chunks of ice, like tree stumps, embedded in the earth and thewater below would be swirling round at a tremendous pace on the concave shore.On the opposite side of the river, there would always be a flat spit of groundcovered with stones. Sometimes, as we looked ahead, we would see these stonyspits of land jutting out into the current now from the right bank and now fromthe left and apparently meeting, or even overlapping in the middle. In the sameway, when walking down a narrow valley in mountain country, one sees the peaksahead on either side. They seem to be interlocked, barring all exit, yet day afterday one walks on, finding a road between those peaks and then yet more mountainsahead, still apparently interlocked and standing as prison walls to the valley.On the Porcupine River these tongues of shingle seemed, in perspective, toform a pathway of stone in mid -current, yet always we found a way through. Mtera time we became accustomed to this rhythm of the river, whereby it maintains its