“Sister Vincent de Paul goes north for the first time,” he said, smiling now at the other of the gray-habited nuns who found themselves in these strange surroundings. “She is called to Fort Resolution, and may stay there for some years. We do not know.
“And here,” he added, pulling up by the ear a swarthy little boy who seemed more Indian than white, “this we will call Charl’. We are taking him back to his father, who is the factor at Resolution. His mother is native woman, as you see, and this boy has been at Montreal for two years at school. Eh bien, Charl’, you will be good boy now? If not I shall tell your papa!
“You see,” he explained to the others who now for the first time were getting some acquaintance of this mission-work, “we try to do the best we know, and to make life easier for these people in the Far North. It is a hard fortune that they have. Always they starve—never have they enough. And every year the great brigade goes north so that they may last yet another year.”
Presently there came down overland to the fleet yet other men who made part of the strange, wild company. Cap. Shott, friendly and paternal in his way, brought on for introduction to the party the Dominion judge, who every year goes north to settle the legal disputes which may have arisen at the several posts for a considerable distance to the north. The judge had with him his clerk and secretary, and there was also a commissioner, as well as another official, a member of the Indian Department, who was bound north to pay the tribesmen their treaty money.
There came also the wife of a member of the Anglican Church, which, as well as the Catholic Church, has missions all along the great waterway almost to the Arctic Sea. So that, as may be seen, the personnel of the brigade that year was of varied and interesting composition.
All came out as Uncle Dick and Father Le Fèvre had said—by the time breakfast was over the half-breed boatmen began to come down at a trot overland from the town. Few of them had slept. All of them had been drinking most of the night. They came with their heads tied up, their eyes red, each man looking uncomfortable, but they all went aboard and made ready for their work. Father Le Fèvre shook his head as he looked at them.
“Too bad, too bad, my children!” said he, “but you will not learn, you will not learn at all. However, two days on the river and your heads will be more clear. Providence has arranged, I presume, that there shall be two or three days’ travel between the landing and the Grand Rapids. Else fewer of our boats would get through!”
As the scows swung out into the river, under no motive power excepting that of the current, the men arranged themselves for the long journey, each to suit himself, but under a loose sort of system of government. At the long steering-sweep, made from a spruce pole twenty feet in length, stood always the steersman, holding the scow straight in the current. The ten tons of luggage was piled high in each scow, and all covered with a great tarpaulin to protect the cargo of side-meat, salt, sugar, flour, and steel traps, cloth, strouds, other rough supplies, as well as the better stock of trade goods—prints, powder, ball, rifles, matches, a scant supply of canned goods—and such other additions to the original stock as modern demands instituted by the independent traders for the most part had now made necessary in the traffic with the tribes. That year, indeed, a few hand sewing-machines went north, and some phonographs—things of wonder to the ignorant native of that far-off land.
The progress of the boats, although steady, seemed very slow, and, as there was no work to do, the men amused themselves as best they might. There were several fiddlers in the fleet, and now and then, as the Midnight Sun swept down, well handled by the commodore, François, they passed a scow on whose bow deck a scantily clad half-breed was dancing to the music of the violin. Now and again across the water came the curious droning song of the Cree steersmen, musical but wild.
The great brigade was off on its start for the long journey from the Rockies to the icy sea, continuing one more year of the wild commerce which had become a part of the land itself for more than a century now.