The Forest | Page 6

wilds--these things matter not a particle. In the symbol of this little
town you loose your hold on the world of made things, and shift for
yourself among the unchanging conditions of nature.
Here the faint forest flavour, the subtle, invisible breath of freedom,
stirs faintly across men's conventions. The ordinary affairs of life
savour of this tang--a trace of wildness in the domesticated berry. In the
dress of the inhabitants is a dash of colour, a carelessness of port; in the
manner of their greeting is the clear, steady-eyed taciturnity of the
silent places; through the web of their gray talk of ways and means and
men's simpler beliefs runs a thread of colour. One hears strange,
suggestive words and phrases--arapajo, capote, arroyo, the diamond
hitch, cache, butte, coulé, muskegs, portage, and a dozen others coined
into the tender of daily use. And occasionally, when the expectation is
least alert, one encounters suddenly the very symbol of the wilderness
itself--a dust-whitened cowboy, an Indian packer with his straight,
fillet-confined hair, a voyageur gay in red sash and ornamented
moccasins, one of the Company's canoemen, hollow-cheeked from the
river--no costumed show exhibit, but fitting naturally into the scene,
bringing something of the open space with him--so that in your
imagination the little town gradually takes on the colour of mystery

which an older community utterly lacks.
But perhaps the strongest of the influences which unite to assure the
psychological kinships of the jumping-off places is that of the Aromatic
Shop. It is usually a board affair, with a broad high sidewalk shaded by
a wooden awning. You enter through a narrow door, and find yourself
facing two dusky aisles separated by a narrow division of goods, and
flanked by wooden counters. So far it is exactly like the corner store of
our rural districts. But in the dimness of these two aisles lurks the spirit
of the wilds. There in a row hang fifty pair of smoke-tanned moccasins;
in another an equal number of oil-tanned; across the background you
can make out snowshoes. The shelves are high with
blankets--three-point, four-point--thick and warm for the out-of-doors.
Should you care to examine, the storekeeper will hook down from aloft
capotes of different degrees of fineness. Fathoms of black tobacco-rope
lie coiled in tubs. Tump-lines welter in a tangle of dimness. On a series
of little shelves is the ammunition, fascinating in the attraction of mere
numbers--44 Winchester, 45 Colt, 40-82, 30-40, 44 S. & W.--they all
connote something to the accustomed mind, just as do the numbered
street names of New York.
An exploration is always bringing something new to light among the
commonplaces of ginghams and working shirts, and canned goods and
stationery, and the other thousands of civilized drearinesses to found in
every country store. From under the counter you drag out a mink skin
or so; from the dark corner an assortment of steel traps. In a loft a
birch-bark mokok, fifty pounds heavy with granulated maple sugar,
dispenses a faint perfume.
For this is, above all, the Aromatic Shop. A hundred ghosts of odours
mingle to produce the spirit of it. The reek of the camp-fires is in its
buckskin, of the woods in its birch bark, of the muskegs in its sweet
grass, of the open spaces in its peltries, of the evening meal in its
coffees and bacons, of the portage trail in the leather of the tump-lines.
I am speaking now of the country of which we are to write. The shops
of the other jumping-off places are equally aromatic--whether with the
leather of saddles, the freshness of ash paddles, or the pungency of
marline; and once the smell of them is in your nostrils you cannot but
away.
The Aromatic Shop is always kept by the wisest, the most

accommodating, the most charming shopkeeper in the world. He has all
leisure to give you, and enters into the innermost spirit of your buying.
He is of supernal sagacity in regard to supplies and outfits, and if he
does not know all about routes, at least he is acquainted with the very
man who can tell you everything you want to know. He leans both
elbows on the counter, you swing your feet, and together you go over
the list, while the Indian stands smoky and silent in the background.
"Now, if I was you," says he, "I'd take just a little more pork. You won't
be eatin' so much yourself, but these Injuns ain't got no bottom when it
comes to sow-belly. And I wouldn't buy all that coffee. You ain't goin'
to want much after the first edge is worn off. Tea's the boy." The Indian
shoots a few rapid words across the discussion. "He says you'll want
some iron shoes to fit on canoe