Again I look, and two red-coated warriors greet me. They are on the look-out for contraband, and are as fine and clean and well-set fellows as any I have seen anywhere. They belong to the mounted police, and live chiefly in the saddle, as there are but five hundred of them to all this gigantic North-West. I had already made their acquaintance. At the first station we came to after leaving Manitoba, one of them came into the car, gave a searching glance all round, and then walked out. ‘What was that for?’ I asked the General. ‘Oh! he has come to see if we have any whisky. They are very particular. I was coming this way once, when a fellow traveller took out his pocket flask and began drinking. The mounted policeman who saw him do it immediately took his flask from him, and emptied it there and then.’ This strict prohibition is the result, not of the prevalence of Temperance sentiment in the North-West, but rather of fear of the Indians, who are better shots than the mounted police, although not so well provided with fire-arms. The people seem to anticipate that the law will be relaxed when the whites are more numerous and the Indians fewer. The law has had good results, nevertheless. In obedience to it the German gives up his lager-beer. And next to the Scotch the Germans make the best emigrants.
The General tells me such is the fineness of the climate that he finds he can get on very well without his customary glass of grog. At Moose Jaw the inhabitants take to Hop Bitters instead, and one of the institutions of the place is the Hop Bitters Brewery.
I believe you may keep whisky if you get a permit, and a permit is not difficult, I understand, to get.
I am sorry to say the General, in spite of the mounted police, offered me a drop of whisky, and at a later period a friend, as we sat smoking, asked me if I was ready for a ‘smile.’ Of course, in my ignorance, I replied in the affirmative. Diving under his seat, he brought out a fine bottle of real Scotch, and, mixing it with water, offered me a ‘smile.’ You may be sure I indignantly refused. You cannot expect me to be a party to the violation of the law.
These Indians just now are creating a little apprehension, especially the tribe under the renowned Yellow Calf, who it was hoped had taken to farming, and who last year had a good crop, and bought a reaping machine; but the Indians are very restless, and Yellow Calf has sent a messenger to rouse the tribes, and a strong party of the mounted police are detached to watch his movements. They are dying off the face of the earth, and we may well suppose that they bear no love to the white man, who has taken possession of the lands which they once knew to be their own. Here the people evidently think that the sooner the Indians are exterminated the better. The men do not work; all that is done by the squaws—wretched women with long black hair, and little black eyes as round as beads, and who rejoice in blankets quite as unromantic, but quite as comfortable, as those of their lords and masters. Hitherto, I have not made way with the dusky beauties, but I may be more successful by-and-by.
I believe the Indians have a real grievance against the Canadian Government. It was agreed that they should be settled in reserves, and that they should have a certain amount of food supplied. This compact was fairly observed by the Canadian Government; but in an evil hour they made this part of their duty over to contractors, and we know what contractors are, all the world over. The Indians say faith has not been kept with them, and it is to be feared that they have good reason for saying so. Just now they are starving, as this is the close season, and they are not permitted to hunt or fish. They say that there is no close season as far as the stomach is concerned, and from personal experience I may say I believe they are right.
It is now noon on the prairie, and I am dying of the heat. Oh, for the forest shade! Oh, for the crystal stream! Alas! the water here is not good for the stranger, and I fear to touch it. At Toronto I managed pretty well on Apollinaris water; but out here nothing of the kind is to be had. What am I to do? The beef here is so tough that you can’t cut it with a knife, and must have belonged to the oldest importation from my native land; and I have to pay a price for which I can have a luxurious repast in London. O Spiers and Pond! O Gordon and Co.! O respected Ring and Brymer, under whose juicy joints and sparkling wines the ancient Corporation of London renews its youth! How my soul longs for your flesh-pots in this dry and thirsty land, where no water is! I have been out on the prairie under the burning sun. It is cracked, and parched, and bare, and the flowers refuse to bloom, and only the gigantic grasshopper or the pretty but repulsive snake meets my eye. That dim line, protracted to the horizon east and west, is the railroad. That far-off collection of sheds is the rising town of Moose Jaw. That blue line on the horizon, which makes me pant for the sea, is a mirage. Far off are some white tents glistening in the sun. They are the wigwams of the Indians.
Like the Wandering Jew, again I urge on my wild career, and here I am with noble savages—so hideous that words fail to tell their hideousness. No wonder the squaws are bashful. They have little to be proud of, though they have necklaces and rings and ornaments around their belts, and gay shawls, which have come from some far away factory. Some of them have put a streak of red paint where the black hair divides. Others are painted as much as any Dowager of Mayfair, and have ear ornaments that reach down to the middle. Not one is fairly passable.
Rousseau and the sentimentalists, who talk of the savage, greatly err in their estimate of that noble individual. He is lazy and filthy, gluttonous, and would be a wine-bibber had he the chance. I looked into his tent, and there he was sitting naked, whilst his squaw was cooking a bit of a horse with the hair on for his dinner. He is unpleasant as a neighbour for many reasons, and is indifferent how he gets a dollar, or how his squaw earns it either. All along the prairie he seems to have nothing to do but to rush to the nearest railway station, and sit there all day in the hope that some passing traveller may give him tobacco or cash, the only two things on earth he seems to care for. Apparently, the mothers are fond of their young. The men are clever at stealing horses, and the traveller must look after his horses by night, or he may find them, as friends of my own did, gone in the morning. But to return to the prairie, it is an awful place to travel in alone; it is so easy to lose one’s way. I heard wonderful stories in this respect. Fancy being lost on the prairie; nothing but the grass to eat; nothing but the sky to look at; nothing in the shape of human speech to listen to. Out here by myself, I felt more than once how appropriate the language of the poet beloved by our grandmothers:
‘O Solitude, where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms,
Than reign in this horrible place.’