The reclining friend breaks the silence with a word or
two of Cree in an undertone to the steersman, a screech-owl cries, from
high overhead drops down that sound which never fails to stir vagrant
blood--the "unseen flight of strong hosts prophesying as they go." It is
the wild geese feeling the old spring fret even as we feel it. In
imagination I pierce the distance and see the red panting throat of that
long-necked voyageur as he turns to shout back raucous encouragement to
his long, sky-clinging V.
Floating as we float, it is no longer a marvel to us that this North
holds so many scientific men and finished scholars--colonial Esaus
serving as cooks, dog-drivers, packers, trackers, oil-borers. The not
knowing what is round the next corner, the old heart-hunger for new
places and untrod ways,--who would exchange all this for the easy ways
of fatted civilization!
At five in the morning there is a drawing-in of the fleet to Pelican
Portage. Before two hours have passed the grasshopper has become a
burden, and it is 102 deg. in the shade, and no shade to be had. We are now
a hundred miles from Athabasca Landing. On the left bank we come across
a magnificent gas-well with a gush of flame twenty or thirty feet in
height.
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