When a trapper is not working he is whittling. This is a bad year for the trappers: two summers came together.
Eggs are a dollar a dozen and four loaves of bread may be had for the same price. Beef sells for twenty-five cents a pound and butter for sixty-five.
There is an outcropping of coal on a mountainside twelve miles away. A sample of the coal has been sent to Edmonton for analysis.
The main café is built of logs and a notice in English advises the wayfarer to "Stick to our pies. Never mind the looks of the house," it further enjoins. "It's the oysters we eat, not the shell."
The village boasts of a brass-band with twenty instruments. Although instructed by wire to meet us at the boat to-day, they failed to assemble, the members of the company having quarrelled over the selections to be played.
Lots on main street sell as high as two thousand dollars each.
A gentleman in tweed suit with capacious pockets and tan leggings which he has brought with him across the Atlantic, has decided to stand for the legislature at the next election. "The electors will say," he assures us, "that I have been drunk. They will say that I have been in jail, but I shall reply with repartee. You see I've always been deucedly clever at repartee."
The Mounted Police Barracks, the Indian Agency, the Hudson's Bay Post and the Catholic Mission are on the hill above the village. The Church of England Mission lies out and beyond, on a further hill. The bankers ride out to the further hill to play tennis with the pretty English girls who teach in the school.
When an elderly jocose Irishman so far forgets himself as to say "darlint" to a breed-girl, he must not be surprised if she draws a wry face and calls him muchemina; that is to say, "bad berries."
I might write a book on the news to be picked up on this main street, if a tide of sleep did not threaten to submerge me. In this dry crystalline atmosphere, one must sleep an hour or two sometimes, however unwilling the spirit or unique and alluring the things present.