About every twelve miles we pass a stopping place where the winter freighters and their teams are fed. These houses and stables are built of logs and are sheltered by the forest. I prefer to say they have a roof-tree, the words seeming to suggest a good deal more. In spite of their splendid isolation, these stopping places do an excellent business and, while warm and well-provisioned, are still somewhat in the rough. The purser says this roughness is not worth regarding, for while here is the country a fellow roughs it, in the city he "gets it rough."
"And that reminds me, ladies, of my errand to you," he continues; "you are probably aware there are only sixteen bunks on this boat and eight mattresses. You, of course, will use your own blankets and pillows, but I perceive you have not secured mattresses. It would be wonderfully easy if you were to carry off one, or even two, from the priests' state-rooms, for at this very minute the priests say prayers on the lower deck."
"And believe me," he concludes in a highly chivalrous manner, "you two ladies have an unquestionable right to the mattresses, so that I shall consider your act to be one of perfect propriety."
Thus encouraged by the pursuer I proceeded with my room-mate to seize our "unquestionable rights," but, approaching the priests' door, my heart failed me, and our undertaking seemed a plain and undeniable demonstration of wickedness like the robbing of a child's bank. They are such quiet, well-deserving men, these eight black-smocked Brothers who are going North to the jubilee of the great Bishop Grouard, the like of whom there never was. Also, they are very polite, and the one who is an astronomer and comes from Italy, picked out the tenderest cut of beef for me at supper.
"Pray don't be silly," snorted my room-mate, "the rules of their Order say distinctly they shall deny themselves and not sleep softly. Besides, when men take terrible vows that they will never get married, it is a woman's stoutest duty to steal their mattress whenever the opportunity serves."
She also told me with rapid brevity some names which Clement of Alexandria, a Father of the Church, applied to women in the early days of the Christian era. She had read about them in a history......
In the falling of the night, at the mauve hour, our ship having been made fast, we go ashore and talk with the Indians who are camped here in a wigwam. One of the passengers, who has lived among the Crees for many years, tells me I express myself with redundancy in that the literal meaning of wigwam is camping-ground. She says the Indians have many grotesque folk tales, which are told by the men. Each story has a moral which they desire their wives to consider from an educative standpoint. Once there was a man whose utim (that is to say his dog) used to turn into an iskwao, or woman, when it became dark. She had yellow hair and her arms were white and soft like the breast feathers of a young bird. This happened long ago, before the Indians were baptized and when people were not so pious as they are now. Any man can do the same thing to this day if he happens to know the magic formula.
There is also a tale about a woman of the woods whom we, in our scientific conceit, call the echo. Once when her man was away for many moons on the great sepe, or river, the woman took another husband, so that when her man came back she flouted him and slapped his face. That night the moon changed her into a voice, and now she calls for her husband to come and love her, but he only mocks at her.
This habit of the husbands in telling tales with palpable deductions attached would seem to be common to other races than the Indians, for the Romans, likewise, had a story about the echo. It appears that Jupiter confided to Madam Echo the history of his amours, and when she told his secrets among her friends she was deprived of speech and could only repeat the questions which were asked of her. The Cree story is the better one. It has a fine human motive which the other lacks, and also it drops, a much-needed tribute on the worn altar of domesticity.
When a fire is lighted with birch bark and tamarack knots, we sit beside it and are more merry than you could believe.