The Indian women have fallen on better days since the government passed a law prohibiting the Indian from selling his cattle without a permit from the agency, and making it illegal for a white man to purchase. Previously, the Indian gambled away his animals, leaving his squaw and papooses to suffer from starvation.
"The old effigy" asleep in the sun is, I am informed, a chief of distinction. Like Froissart's Knights, the hereditary chieftain may be blind, crippled and infirm. His body fordone with age is by them considered to be full of the spirit of wisdom. He is the giver of law and keeper of traditions. The Indians have no dead-line in their tribal codes, it being held in suspension north of 55° with the league rules and the game laws, a fact which leads to the deduction that what the world has gained by civilization is fairly balanced by what it has lost.
While we have been getting acquainted with the Indians, our ship has carried us into the finest duck grounds in the world, the teal and mallard rising from the rice beds in almost incredible numbers. It seems impossible that their numbers should ever be noticeably depleted, nor are they likely to be, until Grouard, which we have now reached, has become the splendid metropolis its people have planned and which, no doubt, their efforts will one day materialize.
"We believe," says my medical friend, "that any one who says Grouard isn't going to be a large city hasn't got things properly sized-up. I hope you won't go south again, my interesting child," he further continues; "it would seem like being cut off in the flower of your days. While sometimes shadowed here, the days are never dull, and if no one loves you in this burgh, believe me, it will be entirely your own fault."
CHAPTER XV
THE BISHOP OF THE ARCTIC.
The trail hath no languorous longing;
It leads to no Lotus land;
On its way dead Hopes come thronging
To take you by the hand;
He who treads the trail undaunted, thereafter shall command.
—KATE SIMPSON HAYES.
Half a century ago Bishop Taché wrote a letter to France, in which he asked for some missionaries. In response to this appeal a certain young Grouard was sent to Fort Garry. When Bishop Taché looked over the slender stripling he said: "I asked for a man; they sent me a boy." But a year later he wrote again: "Please send me more boys." This was fifty years ago, and from that day to this the northern world has had but one opinion of Grouard—he makes good. He is a worker who sticks to his text. To-day, he is the head of the Catholic missions in the far north, and his diocese, until lately, included the very Yukon.
He is seventy-seven years old (but we don't believe it), with a leonine head, an unrazored face and a chest like a draught horse; an erect man who commands the instant attention of whatever company he enters. Assuredly, he is the type of the sound mind in the sound body. It is not to be wondered that his attractive personality made him the cynosure of all eyes, and that his name was on every tongue when, several years ago, he went to England, there to attend a great conference of his Church.