The Arctic Prairies | Page 6

north
folk have a habit (not known elsewhere) of improving the incident.
Very soon it was known all along the river that the Indian's leg was
broken, and I had set and healed it in three days. In a year or two, I
doubt not, it will be his neck that was broken, not once, but in several
places.
Grand Island yielded a great many Deermice of the arctic form, a few

Red-backed Voles, and any number of small birds migrant.
As we floated down the river the eye was continually held by tall and
prominent spruce trees that had been cut into peculiar forms as below.
These were known as "lob-sticks," or "lop-sticks," and are usually the
monuments of some distinguished visitor in the country or records of
some heroic achievement. Thus, one would be pointed out as
Commissioner Wrigley's lob-stick, another as John MacDonald's the
time he saved the scow.
The inauguration of a lob-stick is quite a ceremony. Some person in
camp has impressed all with his importance or other claim to notice.
The men, having talked it over, announce that they have decided on
giving him a lob-stick. "Will he make choice of some prominent tree in
view?" The visitor usually selects one back from the water's edge, often
on some far hilltop, the more prominent the better; then an active
young fellow is sent up with an axe to trim the tree. The more
embellishment the higher the honor. On the trunk they then inscribe the
name of the stranger, and he is supposed to give each of the men a plug
of tobacco and a drink of whiskey. Thus they celebrate the man and his
monument, and ever afterwards it is pointed out as "So-and-so's
lob-stick."
It was two months before my men judged that I was entitled to a
lob-stick. We were then on Great Slave Lake where the timber was
small, but the best they could get on a small island was chosen and
trimmed into a monument. They were disappointed however, to find
that I would by no means give whiskey to natives, and my treat had to
take a wholly different form.
Grand Rapids, with its multiplicity of perfectly round pot-hole boulders,
was passed in four days, and then, again in company with the boats, we
entered the real canyon of the river.
Down Athabaska's boiling flood Of seething, leaping, coiling mud.


CHAPTER III
HUMAN NATURE ON THE RIVER

Sunday morning, 26th of May, there was something like a strike among
the sixty half-breeds and Indians that composed the crews. They were
strict Sabbatarians (when it suited them); they believed that they should
do no work, but give up the day to gambling and drinking. Old John,
the chief pilot, wished to take advantage of the fine flood on the
changing river, and drift down at least to the head of the Boiler Rapids,
twenty miles away, The breeds maintained, with many white swear
words, for lack of strong talk in Indian, that they never yet knew
Sunday work to end in anything but disaster, and they sullenly scattered
among the trees, produced their cards, and proceeded to gamble away
their property, next year's pay, clothes, families, anything, and
otherwise show their respect for the Lord's Day and defiance of old
John MacDonald. John made no reply to their arguments; he merely
boarded the cook's boat, and pushed off into the swift stream with the
cooks and all the grub. In five minutes the strikers were on the twelve
big boats doing their best to live up to orders. John said nothing, and
grinned at me only with his eyes.
The breeds took their defeat in good part after the first minute, and their
commander rose higher in their respect.
At noon we camped above the Boiler Rapids. In the evening I climbed
the 400- or 500-foot hill behind camp and sketched the canyon looking
northward. The spring birds were now beginning to arrive, but were
said to be a month late this year. The ground was everywhere marked
with moose sign; prospects, were brightening.
The mania for killing that is seen in many white men is evidently a relic
of savagery, for all of these Indians and half-breeds are full of it. Each
carries a rifle, and every living thing that appears on the banks or on the
water is fusilladed with Winchesters until it is dead or out of sight. This
explains why we see so little from the scows. One should be at least a
day ahead of them to meet with wild life on the river.
This morning two Bears appeared on the high bank--and there was the
usual uproar and fusillading; so far as could be learned without any
effect, except the expenditure of thirty