It was pitiful to see these French people leaving the homes in which they, or their ancestors, had lived for generations. Pathos and humor combined, sometimes, in the appearance of the odd conveyances and the motive-power used. I saw one dear old lady propped up in a wheelbarrow, her son trundling her along. There were plenty other strange and sorry sights. With it all they seemed cheerful, and determined to make the best of everything.
This battalion-trek I stayed behind with a half-company of men who had been held by fatigue-duties. When we set out we decided to try a short-cut across the fields, but we wandered considerably, and had not reached our destination when supper-time drew near. We had no provisions with us. While the men were resting by the road, tired, hot, and hungry, I sauntered off by myself to where I noticed a wreath of smoke above the trees of an orchard. I saw a few soldiers there, standing by a fire not far from the farm-sheds. As I got closer two of them came hesitatingly towards me, saluted, and one said, "Sir, is your name Pringle?" I said it was, and then we discovered that eighteen years before we had knocked around together in the Atlin gold-diggings.
They remembered me after all those years! They belonged to a detachment of Canadian Railway Troops. The upshot of it was that when I told them of my tired and hungry kilties, they got me into friendly touch with the Q.M. Sergeant billeted in the farmhouse. He showed himself a right good fellow and in short order I was on my way back to my men heading a small but well-laden carrying-party. Our boys could hardly believe their eyes when they saw us toddling along, laden with two big kitchen dixies of hot tea, a dozen loaves of bread and a full tin of good, fresh hard-tack. The tea and rations refreshed us and made the remaining kilometres easy.
We found the battalion located in a picturesque little farm-village. The group of houses lay snugly hidden among trees, while out on all sides, over rolling land, one could see long stretches of cultivated fields, in blocks of brown and varying shades of green. Other than the farm buildings, there was only a small store, a blacksmith shop, and a tavern. The houses were ancient, built with out-buildings to enclose a court-yard, in the centre of which was, almost invariably, a manure-pile and cess-pool.
The inhabitants were primitive in their ways, kindly farm-folk of simple manners, hard-working and apparently contented.
One well, over 130 feet deep, served for public use. It was worked by a hand-windlass and to get a pail of water was a laborious process. The rough wooden shelter over it was erected, so the inscription read, in 1879. I suppose it was an event in village history when that shelter was added. There must be a wide variety of things, besides water, at the bottom of that well. The water tasted good enough, but one's imagination should not be allowed to work too carefully over the subject.
Chatting along the way after we left the Railway Troops, my talk naturally turned from the kindness done us through those Klondike friends, to other fine men I knew in the North. I was made to promise to tell "the bunch" a Yukon Story some evening after we got properly settled in our new billets. Two or three nights afterwards, I redeemed my promise. In one of the old barns, sitting on a low beam, with the men lying around in the straw, I related to them the grim tragedy of the Lost Patrol.
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In the annals of frontier-life anywhere you like in the world, nothing can be found more filled with heroic incident in the performance of duty and the maintenance of a high prestige, than the history of our own Canadian Mounted Police. I choose this particular story, because it exemplifies, so clearly, their dominating sense of duty and the quiet fortitude in the face of danger and death, characteristic of their splendid record. It occurred in the far North, in Klondike days, in a region through which I have travelled and so it has for me a double interest.
Every winter since the Big Stampede, the Mounted Police have patrolled the four hundred miles of wilderness lying between Dawson and Fort McPherson. The latter place consists of a dozen log buildings, on the MacKenzie, far in the Arctic. It is the centre of administration for a hundred thousand square miles of territory. Dawson, the well-known gold-camp, is on the Yukon River, close to the edge of the Arctic Circle. One round trip is made each winter, with dog-teams carrying mail, personal and official, needed to keep that Northern world of Indians, Eskimo, Whites, and half-breeds, in touch with civilization, and to uphold our British traditions of law and order.