As one watches the efforts of the wagoners to store away the valises and rolls of blankets without ejecting the passengers, one remembers that Cæsar's word for baggage was impedimenta. But Prosper, our wagoner, is the best packer on the trail, also he can sing, "I've got rings on my fingers."
"It is strange there are so many dingy half-breeds in the world," says the person by my side who objects to her blankets being tied on behind. "To my thinking there is no colour to compare with white. 'Ishmaels,' I call these breeds."
Prosper's bearing under her choleric criticism is so superbly apathetic that I like him swiftly and completely. Any one can see that he is a man of substantial qualities and not to be excited by fidgety women.
It is fourteen rough miles from Mirror Landing to Soto Landing, along a black trail that lifts and dips through the tall ranks of the poplars and pines. The scenery offers no great varieties except those of light and shade, vista and perspective.
Whenever we pass through a thick-knit stand of pines, the people in the wagons are instinctively reticent and subdued, but, upon emerging into open space where there are only birches to throw a shimmering wayward shadow, 'tis observable that every one laughs or sings. It was La Marseillaise the eight Oblate Brothers sang, and once they broke into a French ballad the theme of which was—
"Mary, I love you,
Will you marry me?"
The team on our wagon is a badly mated one. The off beast trots like a sheep and has a way of hanging her head as if some one had told her a story too shocking to contemplate: while Lisette, the nigh mare, although strong as a steel cable, picks objections to every foot of the way either with a kick or an idiotic sidelong prance. Now and then Prosper, who knows the whole truth about Lisette, and who looks more religious than he really is, advises her as to her forbears and predicts as to her posterity, but, like Job's wild ass, this whimsical-minded trailer "scorneth the multitude of the city and regardeth not the crying of the driver."
"She's a female voter, she is," says an Englishman, who has been back home on a visit, "and it's a tidy bit of walloping she needs."
The London suffragettes would have been pleased with our opinion of their countryman and that we were able to express it in the exact words. After a full and unreserved apology from the frightened traveller, we, in turn, retracted the indecorous charge that he was a ridiculous pinhead, and a man of low understanding, whereupon peace once more reigned in our wagon. It is astonishing what pernicious consequences may follow from the kicking of a wayward-minded mare on the trail. Most of the frontier tragedies are attributable to this very thing.
Anderson's stopping-place which we are passing used to be the only house between Grouard and Athabasca Landing, and accordingly is a notable landmark. Anderson is still unmarried. It is forced upon the notice of a traveller in these North-Western Provinces that every bachelor has little spruce-trees around his house. The bachelor thinks we don't suspect his reason, but we know it is because he hopes, some day, they may come in handy for Christmas-trees.