The New North. Agnes Deans CameronЧитать онлайн книгу.
is big and busy, and no corner of it more crowded than the General Hospital, no corps more overworked. Dr. Stewart had two men's work to do. He worked all day and was busy well into the night. A doctor's natural tendency is to see in each man that he ministers to merely "a case," a manifestation of some disease to be watched and tabulated and ticked off into percentages. But in the Stewart-Carlton-Grey combination, Fate had thrown together three young men in whom the human part, the man element, loomed large.
The doctor guessed that under that brave front the heart of the trapper was eating itself out for the cry of the moose, the smell of wood-smoke by twilight. We are happiest when we create. So he said to Carlton, "Did you ever write a story?" The head shook answer. "Well, why don't you try? You must know a lot, old chap, about out-door things, that nobody else knows. Think some of it out, and then dictate it to Grey here."
The outcome was disappointing. The uncouth sounds, translated by Grey, were bald, bare, and stiff. Soon the stiffness worked off. With half-shut eyes Carlton lived again in the woods. He lifted the dewy branch of a tree and surprised the mother deer making the toilet of her fawn, saw the beaver busied with his home of mud and wattles, heard the coyote scream across the prairie edge. Easily the thought flowed, and the stuff that Grey handed in was a live story that breathed. In that brave heart the joy of the creator stirred, and with it that feeling which makes all endeavour worth while—the thought that somebody cares. A close observer at this stage of the game may read, too, on the face of Grey the kindly look that comes when we forget ourselves long enough to take the trouble to reach out for another man's viewpoint.
Carlton's short stories, submitted to a publisher, were pronounced good, were accepted, and brought a cash return. They struck a new note among the squabblings of the nature-fakers. Favourable comment came from those who read them, who, reading, knew naught of their three authors. Before this Carlton had never written a line for publication; but he had been a true observer. He had felt, and was able to project himself into the minds of those living things he had seen and hunted.
I leave the hospital cot with a strange lump forming in my throat, although every one around me, and the patient most of all, is gay and blithe. I say to Carlton, "I wish I could take your knowledge and your eyes with me into the North, there is so much I will miss because of my lack of knowledge." With Grey's kindly interpretation I get my answer, "You must take your own mind, your own eyes; you must see for yourself."
During the last day in Winnipeg, while the Kid (like faithful Ariovistus) is looking after the impedimenta, I snatch half an hour to look in at the Royal Alexandra upon the reception which the Women's Canadian Club is tendering to Mrs. Humphry Ward. Rain-bespattered, short-skirted, and anchored with disreputable rubbers gluey with Winnipeg mud, I sit on the fringe of things, fairly intoxicated with the idea that we are off and this North trip no dream. Mrs. Sanford Evans presides with her usual savoir faire and ushers in the guest of the day, beautifully-gowned and gracious.
Like a bolt from the blue came the summons from the president, and I, all muddy, am called to the seats of the mighty. I have never seen a more splendid aggregation of women than the members of the Winnipeg Canadian Club, tall, strong, alert, and full of initiative. To face them is a mental and moral challenge. I try to hide those muddy shoes of mine. The Winnipeg women are indulgent, they make allowance for my unpresentable attire, and shower upon me cheery wishes for the success of my journey. Mrs. Humphry Ward calls attention to the lack of playgrounds in England. She wants to bring more fresh air and space to the crowded people of the Old World. I submit that my wish is the mathematical converse to hers. My great desire is to call attention to the great unoccupied lands of Canada, to induce people from the crowded centres of the Old World to use the fresh air of the New.
To those who bid us good-bye at the train, the Kid and I yell exultantly, "All aboard for the Arctic Ocean and way ports!"
A group of Galicians sitting by the curb, two mothers and seven small children, one a baby at the breast, make the last picture we see as the train pulls out. It was the end of their first day in Winnipeg. The fathers of the flock evidently were seeking work and had left their families gazing through the portals of the strange new land. In the half-sad, altogether-brave lines on the young mothers' faces and their tender looks bent on the little ones we read the motive responsible for all migrations—"Better conditions for the babies." In the little fellows of seven or eight with their ill-fitting clothes and their dogged looks of determination one sees the makers of empire. Before a decade is past they will be active wheat-growers in their own right, making two grains grow where one grew before and so "deserving better of mankind than the whole race of politicians put together." I think it was President Garfield who said, "I always feel more respect for a boy than for a man. Who knows what possibilities may be buttoned up under that ragged jacket?" It doesn't take long for the foreigners to make good. A young Icelander, Skuli Johnson, of all the thousands of Winnipeg students, this year captured the coveted honor of the academic world—the Rhodes scholarship.
We slip out of Winnipeg as the bells of St. Boniface ring the vespers from their turrets twain. Whittier, who never saw this quaint cathedral, has immortalized it in verse. The story is one of those bits of forgotten history so hard to get hold of in a day when Winnipeg measures its every thought in bushels and bullion.
The settlers who came to Selkirk on the outskirts of present Winnipeg just a hundred years ago were sturdy Scots, weaned on the Psalms of David and the Shorter Catechism. There were English missionaries here and priests of the Church of Rome, but the disciples of John Knox wanted some one to expound Predestination to them. A religious ceremony performed by any man who was not a Presbyterian seemed scarcely binding. One old lady, speaking of the nuptials of her daughter, said, "I wudna have Janet marrit by the bishop. She maun wait till we can have a properly-ordained meenister." And he was coming. Even now he was floating in on the Red River with Indian and half-breed boatmen, having reached St. Paul from Scotland via the Atlantic seaboard some weeks before.
When a Scot and an Indian get in a boat together, to use a Will Carleton phrase, "they do not teem with conversational grace." Straight from Aberdeen, the young Dominee coming into Winnipeg little dreamed that the Church of Rome had established its Mission on the Red River decades ago. In fact, he knew as little about Canada as he did about Timbuctoo, and in his simplicity thought himself "the first that ever burst into that silent sea." When the evening breeze brought to his ears a muffled sound, he was in doubt how to place it.
"Is it the clang of wild-geese?
Is it the Indian's yell,
That lends to the voice of the North-wind
The tones of a far-off bell?"
The Indian boatmen said nothing, but thought deep, like the Irishman's parrot.
"The voyageur smiles as he listens
To the sound that grows apace;
Well he knows the vesper ringing
Of the bells of St. Boniface."
Once the young Scot had reached his flock, he wrote back to a friend in the States telling how he came across on the edge of the wilderness
"The bells of the Roman Mission,
That call from their turrets twain
To the boatmen on the river,
To the hunter on the plain."
That friend was a fellow-townsman of the "Quaker Poet." The story was told to Whittier and inspired the lines of The Red River Voyageur.
CHAPTER II
WINNIPEG TO ATHABASCA LANDING