The New North

Agnes Deans Cameron

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• Publié par: thuim
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 22
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The New North, by Agnes Deans Cameron
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Title: The New North
Author: Agnes Deans Cameron
Release Date: July 10, 2004 [EBook #12874]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NEW NORTH ***
Produced by Brendan Lane and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
THE NEW NORTH
Being Some Account of a Woman's Journey through
Canada to the Arctic
BY AGNES DEANS CAMERON
WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR

Published November, 1909

A Magnificent Trophy
TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER, JESSIE ANDERSON CAMERONAND
TO ALL THOSE WHO TRY TO LIVE OUT HER SIMPLE RULE: "WE MUST
JUST TRY TO DO THE VERY BEST WE CAN"
PREFACE
It is customary to write a preface. Mine shall be short. Out of a full heart, I wish
to thank all the splendid people of the North who, by giving me so freely
information and photographs, and chapters out of their own lives, have
facilitated the writing of this story. For their spontaneous kindness to me and
mine no acknowledgment that I can here make is adequate. What we feel most
strongly we cannot put into words.
AGNES DEANS CAMERON.
August, 1909.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I: THE MENDICANTS REACH WINNIPEG
The Mendicants leave Chicago—The invisible parallel of 49 where the eagle
perches and makes amorous eyes at the beaver—Union Jack floats on an
oxcart—A holy baggage-room—Winnipeg, the Buckle of the Wheat-Belt—The
trapper and the doctor—Mrs. Humphry Ward speaks—Boy Makers of Empire
—The vespers of St. Boniface
CHAPTER II: WINNIPEG TO ATHABASCA LANDING
The 1,000-mile wheat-field—Calgary-in-the-Foothills—Edmonton, the end of
steel—The Brains of a Trans-Continental—Browning on the Saskatchewan
—East Londoners in tents—Our outfit—A Waldorf-Astoria in the wilderness
—The lonely cross of the Galician—Height of Land—Sergeant Anderson,
R.N.W.M.P., the sleuth of Lesser Slave
CHAPTER III: ATHABASCA LANDING
Athabasca Landing, the Gateway of the North—English gives place to Cree
—Limit of the Dry Martini—Will the rabbits run?—The woman
printer—Hymnbooks by hand in the Cree syllabic—Baseball even here—Rain and
reminiscences—The World's Oldest Trust
CHAPTER IV: DOWN THE ATHABASCA ONE HUNDRED AND
SIXTYFIVE MILES TO GRAND RAPIDS
"Farewell, Nistow!"—The rainy deck of a "sturgeon head" under a tarpaulin
—Drifting by starlight—The wild geese overhead—Forty-foot gas-spout at the
Pelican—The mosquito makes us blood-brothers—Four days on our Robinson
Crusoe Island in the swirling Athabasca—Nomenclature of the North
—Sentinels of the Silence
CHAPTER V: NINETY MILES OF RAPIDS
The Go-Quick-Her takes the bit in her mouth—Mallards on the half-shell—We
set the Athabascan Thames afire—Sturgeon-head breaks her back on the Big
Cascade—Fort McMurray—A stranded argosy, wreckage on the beach—Miss
Christine Gordon, the Free Trader—A land flowing with coal and oil and gas
and tar, timber and lime
CHAPTER VI: FORT CHIPEWYAN PAST AND PRESENT
Old Fort Chipewyan—In the footsteps of Mackenzie and Sir John Franklin—Sir
John turns parson—Grey Nuns and brown babies—Where grew the prize
wheat of the Philadelphia Centennial—Militant missionaries fight each other for
souls—The strong man Loutit—Wyllie at the forge—An electric watch-maker
—Where the Gambel sparrow builds—"Out of old books"
CHAPTER VII: LAKE ATHABASCA AND ITS FOND DU LAC
Farewell to the Mounted Police—Our blankets on the deck—Fern odours by
untravelled ways—Typewriting and kodaking in 20 hours of daylight
—Navigating Lake Athabasca by the power o' man—A 23-inch trout—Firstwhite women at Fond du Lac—Carlyle among the Chipewyans, a Fond du Lac
library—The hermit padre and the hermit thrush—Worn north trails of the
trapper—Caribou by the hundred thousands—The phalarope and the
suffragette
CHAPTER VIII: FOND DU LAC TO FORT SMITH
World's records beaten on the Athabasca—Down the Slave to Smith's Landing
—Priests sink in the Rapid of the Drowned—The Mosquito Portage—Fort
Smith, the new headquarters—Lady-slippers and night-hawks—Steamer built
in the wilderness—Last stand of the wood bison—The grey wolf
persists—Furtrade and the silver-fox—Breeding pelicans.
CHAPTER IX: SLAVE RIVER AND GREAT SLAVE LAKE
"Red lemol-lade" kiddies—Tons of crystal salt—Great Slave Lake and its fertile
shores—Yellow-Knife and Dog-Rib, subjects of the Seventh Edward—Hay
River and its annual mail—Ploughing with dogs—Bill balked—The Alexandra
Falls—Bishop Bompas as a surgeon; amputations while you wait.
CHAPTER X: PROVIDENCE TO SIMPSON, ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY
MILES DOWN THE MACKENZIE
Drowning of De-deed—Fort Simpson, the old headquarters—A mouldy
museum—The shrew-mice that were not preserved in rum—The farthest north
library—Gold-seekers and grub-staked brides—Bishop Bompas, the Apostle of
the North—Owindia, the Weeping One—Fort Simpson in the first year of
Victoria the Good.
CHAPTER XI: FORT GOOD HOPE ON THE ARCTIC CIRCLE
Tenny Gouley tells us things—Mackenzie River, past and present—The fringed
gentian at Fort Wrigley—The fires Mackenzie saw—The weathered knob of
Bear Rock—Great Bear Lake—Orangeman's Day at Norman—The Ramparts
of the Mackenzie—Fort Good Hope under the Arctic Circle—Mignonette and
Old World courtesy—We meet Hagar once more—Potatoes on the Circle—The
Little Church of the Open Door
CHAPTER XII: ARCTIC RED RIVER AND ITS ESKIMO
Arctic Red River—Wilfrid Laurier, the merger—Mrs. Ila-la-Rocko, the danseuse
—Marriage as the Oo-vai-oo-aks see it—Orange-blossoms at Su-pi-di-do's
—Trading tryst at Barter Island—Floating fathers—By-o Baby Bunting—Wild
roses and tame Eskimo—Midnight football with walrus bladder and enthusiasm
—Education that makes for manliness
CHAPTER XIII: FORT MACPHERSON FOLK
Sir John Franklin's lobsticks at Point Separation—We reach Fort Macpherson
on the Peel—Sergeant Fitzgerald, R.N.W.M.P., eulogizes the Eskimo—An
Eskimo wife must make boots that are waterproof—She ariseth also while it is
yet night and cheweth the boots of her household—Cribbage-boards the link
between Dick Swiveller and the Eskimo—Linked sweetness long drawn out
—Chauncey Depew of the Kogmollycs
CHAPTER XIV: MORALIZING UNDER THE MIDNIGHT SUN
The Midnight Sun—Our friend the heathen—"We want to go to hell"—Catching
fish by prayer—The Eskimo and the Flood—Pink tea at the Pole—Always a
balance in the Eskimo Bank—Marriage for better and not for worse—Christmas
carols even here
CHAPTER XV: MAINLY CONCERNING FOOD
Jurisprudence on ice—The generous Innuit—Emmie-ray, the Delineator pattern
—Weak races are pressed south—Roxi, a re-incarnation of Sir Philip Sidney
—Blubbery bon vivants—Eskimo knew the Elephant—We write the last chapter
of the story of McClure, the navigator—Cannibalism at the Circle
CHAPTER XVI: THE TALE OF A WHALE
Circumpolar Bowhead makes his last stand—Whales here and elsewhere
—The Yankee peddler at Canada's back-door—Thirteen and a half million in
whale values—Wind-swept Herschel, the Isle of Whales—One wife for a
thousand years—Baleen, Spermaceti, and Ambergris—Save the Whale
CHAPTER XVII: SOUTH FROM THE ARCTIC TO CHIPEWYANLives lost for the sake of a white bead—The stars come back—The Keele party
from the Dollarless Divide—"Here and there a grayling"—Across Great Slave
Lake—The first white women at Fort Rae—Land of the musk-ox—Tales of 76
below—Two Thursdays in one week—Rabbits on ice
CHAPTER XVIII: TO MC MURRAY AND BACK TO THE PEACE
The nuptials of 'Norine—Ladies round gents and gents don't go—The
fossilgatherers—I give my name to a Cree kiddie—A solid mile of red raspberries
—The typewriter an uncanny medicine—The Beetle Fleet leaves for Outside
—Shipwrecked on a batture
CHAPTER XIX: UP THE PEACE TO VERMILION
Ho! for the Peace—One break in 900 miles of navigation—A grey
wolf—Bearmeat and the Se-weep-i-gons—Ninety-foot spruces—Tom Kerr and his bairns
—The fish-seine that never fails—Our lobsticks by Red River—The Chutes of
the Peace
CHAPTER XX: VERMILION-ON-THE-PEACE
The farthest n