Lords of the North | Page 3

laughed the officer, amused at my uncle, who had been a
leading spirit in the North-West Company and whose enthusiasm knew
no bounds, "Egad! You gentlemen adventurers wouldn't need to have
accomplished much to eclipse Braddock." And he paused with a

questioning supercilious smile. "Sir Alexander was a first cousin of
yours, was he not?"
My uncle flushed hotly. That slighting reference to gentlemen
adventurers, with just a perceptible emphasis of the adventurers, was
not to his taste.
"Pardon me, Sir," said he stiffly, "you forget that by the terms of their
charter, the Ancient and Honorable Hudson's Bay Company have the
privilege of being known as gentlemen adventurers. And by the Lord,
Sir, 'tis a gentleman adventurer and nothing else, that stock-jobbing
scoundrel of a Selkirk has proved himself! And he, sir, was neither
Nor'-Wester, nor Canadian, but an Englishman, like the commander of
the Citadel." My uncle puffed out these last words in the nature of a
defiance to the English officer, whose cheeks took on a deeper purplish
shade; but he returned the charge good-humoredly enough.
"Nonsense, MacKenzie, my good friend," laughed he patronizingly, "if
the Right Honorable, the Earl of Selkirk, were such an adventurer, why
the deuce did the Beaver Club down at Montreal receive him with open
mouths and open arms and----"
"And open hearts, Sir, you may say," interrupted my Uncle MacKenzie.
"And I'd thank you not to 'good-friend' me," he added tartly.
Now, the Beaver Club was an organization at Nor'-Westers renowned
for its hospitality. Founded in 1785, originally composed of but
nineteen members and afterwards extended only to men who had
served in the Pays d'En Haut, it soon acquired a reputation for
entertaining in regal style. Why the vertebrae of colonial gentlemen
should sometimes lose the independent, upright rigidity of self-respect
on contact with old world nobility, I know not. But instantly, Colonel
Adderly's reference to Lord Selkirk and the Beaver Club called up the
picture of a banquet in Montreal, when I was a lad of seven, or
thereabouts. I had been tricked out in some Highland costume
especially pleasing to the Earl--cap, kilts, dirk and all--and was taken
by my Uncle Jack MacKenzie to the Beaver Club. Here, in a room, that
glittered with lights, was a table steaming with things, which caught

and held my boyish eyes; and all about were crowds of guests,
gentlemen, who had been invited in the quaint language of the club,
"To discuss the merits of bear, beaver and venison." The great Sir
Alexander MacKenzie, with his title fresh from the king, and his feat of
exploring the river now known by his name and pushing through the
mountain fastnesses to the Pacific on all men's lips--was to my Uncle
Jack's right. Simon Fraser and David Thompson and other famous
explorers, who were heroes to my imagination, were there too. In these
men and what they said of their wonderful voyages I was far more
interested than in the young, keen-faced man with a tie, that came up in
ruffles to his ears, and with an imperial decoration on his breast, which
told me he was Lord Selkirk.
I remember when the huge salvers and platters were cleared away, I
was placed on the table to execute the sword dance. I must have
acquitted myself with some credit; for the gentlemen set up a
prodigious clapping, though I recall nothing but a snapping of my
fingers, a wave of my cap and a whirl of lights and faces around my
dizzy head. Then my uncle took me between his knees, promising to let
me sit up to the end if I were good, and more wine was passed.
"That's enough for you, you young cub," says my kinsman, promptly
inverting the wine-glass before me.
"O Uncle MacKenzie," said I with a wry face, "do you measure your
own wine so?"
Whereat, the noble Earl shouted, "Bravo! here's for you, Mr.
MacKenzie."
And all the gentlemen set up a laugh and my uncle smiled and called to
the butler, "Here, Johnson, toddy for one, glass of hot water, pure, for
other."
But when Johnson brought back the glasses, I observed Uncle
MacKenzie kept the toddy. "There, my boy, there's Adam's ale for
you," said he, and into the glass of hot water he popped a peppermint
lozenge.

"Fie!" laughed Sir Alexander to my uncle's right, "Fie to cheat the little
man!"
"His is the best wine of the cellar," vowed His Lordship; and I drank
my peppermint with as much gusto and self-importance as any man of
them.
Then followed toasts, such a list of toasts as only men inured to tests of
strength could take. Ironical toasts to the North-West Passage, whose
myth Sir Alexander had dispelled; toasts to the discoverer of the
MacKenzie River,