These Canadian men will have it, moreover, that the Britishers brought in snowshoes for their horses, which gear they were wont to designate as "bloomin' tennis racquets." I might have believed this extraordinary statement had I not guessed that my narrator gleaned his idea from the Voyages and Explorations of Samuel de Champlain, for these imperturbable northmen never so much as blink an eye when adding the inevitable pinch of spice to a story.
It is quite true though that the party did bring enormous supplies of "arrested" foods, egg powders, Westphalian hams, almost unlimited quantities of tinned ptarmigan, woodcock, plum-pudding, and other toothsome delicacies well calculated to pique the most jaded and club-debauched palate. Unfortunately, on being opened, nearly all these delicate edibles were found to be spoiled, so that the travellers were forced to exist on such crude diet as pig's face, rice, and beans.
But the liquors still remained. Allah be praised!—barrels and cases of it; yes! even kegs and demi-johns—brandy, burgundy, benedictine, claret, champagne, and canary—these and other brands which I forget, for my interest was attracted from the list to the wistful faces of these historians who think with love and longing on those rare old, fair old golden days that are gone beyond recall.
On their arrival at Edmonton, the commanders of the expedition were informed that a prohibition law was in force in the Yukon and that, in consequence, no spirituous liquors could be carried across its borders. This being the case, there was nothing for it but to drink the liquors in Edmonton. They had no licence to sell it, and to pour it upon the unappreciative prairie would be manifestly absurd—even wicked. This is why I was correct in saying that our vintage of the night was the last bottle of the most prolonged and celebrated spree that ever took place in the North. In truth, it was an Homeric carousal.
The spree lasted for six weeks, and fights with their legal sequences were frequent. To use the most generally approved northern expression of the day, "They just fit and fit," so that more than once the good Archdeacon of Alberta had to pour oil and balm into the broken bones and brittle nerves of the combatants. Indeed, he went so far as to have them nursed in his own home. He is a hale-hearted, fine-fibred gentleman, our Archdeacon.
It is hardly fair, however, to lay the entire spree to the credit of the stampeders. The population of Edmonton, in the late nineties, consisted of fifteen hundred people, and all the male portion of it used their utmost endeavours to prevent any good liquor going to waste. The gentry of the community were invited to partake, but the hewers of wood and drawers of water who had been engaged to exercise the pack-horses by walking them up and down, these, and the disorderly arrant idlers who hung on the borders of the camp, helped themselves. Their motto was the same as Lord Nelson's—"Touch and take." Indeed, the speedy manner in which they relieved the expedition of any encumbering wealth was truly most astonishing. They have a theory in the North that everything belongs by right to the man who has the greatest need. Now, the need of the North is a very big pocket and there are holes in it.
Ultimately, the party got away. They took the Swan Hill route that leads to the Old Assiniboine Crossing, but spring had already set in so that the trails were deep with water, and the muskegs were bottomless pits.
The leader of the expedition (by which they meant the foreman as distinct from the director) was Mr. Matthew Evanston O'Brien, an Irish solicitor and erstwhile Chief of Police in Australia. It is also said he was an English secret-service man. He died in April of this year at Wetaskawin, Alberta, where he was practising law.
The breeds and other packers who accompanied the party became insolent and purposely lost their loads. One man smashed the camp stove and dropped it into a river; others lost tents; while some found hay and oats as hard to hold as quicksilver. Being badly sheltered and underfed, nearly all of their hundred horses died, so that long afterwards teamsters coming to the south picked up wagon loads of harness besides other useful gear. In a word, like the man who tried all the rheumatism cures, the members of the Helpman Expedition were "done good."
Some of the party got as far as Fort Simpson on the Mackenzie River, but in the end every man, greatly chastened in spirit, turned back to Edmonton, where some of them were stranded for several months before money came to take them on to England.