Our travel is against current now, for we make slower
time than we did coming in and consequently see more of the passing
shore-line. The last specimens we gather within the Arctic Circle are
the blue blossoms of the flax. In them we see the earnest of many a
cultivated farm of the future. The days are getting perceptibly shorter
and one by one the old familiar constellations come back in the
heavens. We find it a relief to have once more a twilight and a
succeeding period of dusk. Yet are we loath to leave this fascinating
North with its sure future, its quaint to-days, and all the glamour of
its rich past.
We had just passed Fort Norman when the sharp eyes of an Indian
deck-hand saw three figures on the beach ahead. Pulling in at the point
where the Gravel River joins the Mackenzie, we find a regular Robinson
Crusoe group,--Mr. J. Keele, of the Dominion Government Survey, and his
two associates. Going in on the Yukon side, Mr. Keele's task has been to
cross the Divide between the Yukon and the Mackenzie, mapping the rocks.
The only white man they had seen in sixteen months was a French priest
who had passed yesterday, and whose knowledge of current events in
Canada and Europe was scanty.
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