or a rock to relieve its appalling monotony. Just a desert of gray moss, rolling in waves away from us, as far as the eye could see.

We were sitting round a little fire which we constantly fed with small dry twigs picked up here and there on the beach, when we saw across the river, on the horizon, a small yellow streak which seemed to be moving toward us. It looked exactly like a huge caterpillar creeping on the ground. We watched it intently. The yellow streak, little by little, grew in length and width until suddenly, in a second, it spread into a large spot, which, widening and widening on either side, still kept moving in our direction. It reminded me then of a swarm of locusts, such as one sees in South America, spreading over the fields after dropping to earth in a cloud from the sky.

In a few minutes the yellow patch had grown to such a size that we realized, far as we were from it, that it covered many acres. After that we began to see in the mass of yellow hundreds and thousands of tiny dots which moved individually. Then we knew what it was. It was a great herd of reindeer, the Barren Land caribou, migrating south.

Spellbound, we remained beside our camp fire, watching probably the most stupendous sight of wild game in North America since the bygone days of the buffalo.

On and on the horde came, straight for the narrows of the river where we were camped. While the flanks of the herd stretched irregularly a mile or so on each side of the head, the latter remained plainly pointed in the same direction. One felt instinctively the unswerving leadership which governed that immense multitude. For two hours we sat there, looking and looking, until the caribou were only a few yards from the water's edge,

VOL. 139 - NO.3

B

right across the river from where

we were.

An old doe, nearly white, led by twenty lengths; then came three or four full-grown bucks, walking side by side. After them started a column of animals of all sizes and descriptions. That column widened like a fan until it lost itself on either side of a swarm of caribou, so closely packed together that acres and acres of gray moss were completely hidden by their moving bodies. And the noise of their hoofs and the breathing of their lungs sounded like far-away thunder.

When the old doe reached the water, she stopped. The bucks joined her on either side. Little by little, right and left, thousands of animals lined the bank for over a mile. Behind them thousands more, which could not make their way through the closed ranks in front of them, stopped. Then all their heads went up, bucks, does, yearlings, fawns, and, motionless, they looked at the Kazan River. Not a sound could be heard. My eyes ached under the strain. Beside me I could feel one of my Indians trembling like a leaf in his excitement. I started counting and reached three thousand. Then I gave it up. There were too many.

After what seemed to us an interminable pause, the leading doe and the big bucks moved forward. Unhesitatingly they walked slowly down the bank, took to the water, and started to swim across, straight for our little sandy cove.

In an instant the whole herd had moved, and with a roar of clattering hoofs, rolling stones, and churning waters, all the animals were pouring down the bank and breasting the icy current until the river foamed. On and on they came, swimming madly to the nearest point of the opposite shore. Nothing could stop them. Nothing could make them swerve.

As soon as they landed they raced up the bank, giving way to the next ones behind them. We were standing up, then, behind our fire. The first ones saw us from the water, but they never changed their direction until they touched bottom. Then they scattered slightly on either side, giving us room. The next ones followed suit. And for what seemed to us an eternity we were surrounded by a sea of caribou galloping madly inland.

Finally the last one went by, a very small fawn, his mouth open and his tongue hanging out. Then silence reigned supreme again. The Barren Lands resumed their aspect of utter desolation. And nothing was left to show that the great herd of caribou had passed, save countless tracks on the sand and millions of gray hairs floating down the river to the sea.

V

We were waiting for two Eskimo dog trains to haul us across Hekwa-Leekwa Lake. It was the tenth of July and the ice of the lake was still solid, lying unbroken from shore to shore. Eighty miles long, twenty-five miles wide, it was still sleeping under its white winter covering. Around it, on land, it was already summer, with little flowers showing their heads between the stones, stray willow clumps waving their new green leaves in the breeze, and countless birds singing and flitting about beside their nests. Walking inland, I decided to climb the highest hill which could be seen in those parts. It rose about three miles from the river and lake and towered above the surrounding country, very much in the shape of a pyramid.

The weather was bright and clear and the heat of the sun radiated from the rocks, but every puff of wind blowing over the ice of the lake was

like the frozen breath of the Arctic itself.

I toiled slowly up and up the steep incline, zigzagging among boulders and through coulees of loose stones, watching the horizon receding gradually from me, obeying unconsciously the call which comes to all white men in the wilderness and which bids them go on and on, through forest, up or down rivers, across lakes, over mountains, searching, ever searching for something new.

I reached the summit at last, just a few square feet of level ground, - and there I found an Eskimo grave. Five feet high, seven feet long, it was entirely made out of loose rocks which had been brought up there by hand, one by one, and neatly piled one on top of the other, over the dead. Thus it formed a solid block on which, one would think, neither weather nor time could make the slightest impression. Forming part of the landscape itself, that grave seemed to be there for all eternity.

At the head of it, a few feet away, a spear stood erect, stuck deep in the ground and solidly wedged in at the base between heavy rocks. The point was of native copper. From it fluttered, in rags, the remains of a deerskin coat.

At the foot lay, side by side, a kayak with its paddle and harpoon and a twenty-foot sleigh with its set of dog harness and a snow knife. Both kayak and sleigh were held down by stones carefully placed along their entire length.

On the grave itself I found a rifle, a small kettle with a handful of tea leaves inside, a little wooden box containing ten cartridges, a pipe, a plug of tobacco, matches, a knife, a small telescope, and a neatly coiled rawhide belt. One could see that everything had been lying there a few weeks only. No inscription of any sort. But the

weapons showed that it was a man who had been buried in that lonely spot.

As I leaned against the grave, my eyes wandered around. I tried to picture to myself the faithful companions of the deceased hunter struggling up that hill, bearing on their shoulders the rigid body of their dead; their search for those hundreds of rocks, and the work of piling them, one by one, for hours and hours, until the mound was able to defy the efforts of the wild animals and the incessant pressure of the years to come; finally the long descent to the camp, to bring up again, one by one, the precious belongings of the deceased.

To me, there alone, leaning on that grave on the top of that immense hill, the whole undertaking seemed incredible. The more I thought, the more I marveled, searching for the motive which had prompted those natives, not only to choose that almost inaccessible spot to lay their dead at rest, but to abandon unhesitatingly on his grave that wealth of articles which I knew represented an immense value to them, in their constant bitter struggle for mere existence.

Pagans they were - pagans they still remain. Although they have a certain code to which they are faithful, unlike the old Indians they have no form of worship. Still that grave, those weapons, those articles of daily use, of absolute necessity, carefully laid near the body from which the spirit has just flown - all these must have had a meaning, must prove that somewhere in the innermost part of their hearts there exists a hope, a belief in after life, something to look forward to when the last day comes.

And while I thought those thoughts I pulled out my pipe and filled it slowly. It was time for me to go; the icy wind from the lake made me shudder with cold. As I turned for a last

look at the grave, my eyes fell on the little wooden box. Then an impulse struck me. I opened the box, took a handful of tobacco out of my pouch, and laid it carefully inside, closing the lid securely.

VI

The long, long trail was nearly over as far as the Barren Lands were concerned. We were on Ennadai Lake, halfway across already, and our canoe ploughed its way through water as still as a mirror.

It was August, and one already felt the unmistakable touch of the fall. Long strings of duck were flying in all directions, while on land we could see small herds of caribou already migrating to the south. Everything was still. The splash of our paddles as they dipped into the clear water of the lake seemed all out of proportion to the dead silence which surrounded us, while our voices brought out long muffled echoes from the nearest hills.

Hour after hour we glided on, intent on reaching the end of the lake before dark. Little by little the sun went down behind us. Just before sunset we went through the last narrows and entered the southern bay into which the Kazan River flows. And then suddenly the first trees since we had entered the Barren Lands two months before came into view. The rays of the dying sun fell, slanting, on their green branches, and to our tired eyes the first spruces and tamaracks of the Canadian forest seemed to welcome us home.

Instinctively we stopped paddling, letting our canoe drift slowly forward, while we looked back for the last time on the bleak northern land through which we had toiled for weeks.

The sun was setting, like a huge ball of fire, and the lake far away to the north was beginning to flame. Around us the water had lost its tinge of blue, streaks of purple appearing here and there on its glassy surface. The hills glowed pink where they faced the sunset, while the other side was lost in deep shadows.

A mile away from us, on the extreme southern point of a ridge of rocks, four human figures stood motionless, silhouetted black against the crimson of the sky. The last Eskimos of the Barren Lands, watching us go south toward the unknown country of plenty, where lives the white man!

From where I sat in my canoe I sent

them a mute good-bye. Those four tiny dots appeared to me very forlorn and pathetic.

There they were, at the edge of their native land, but looking south, as if straining for something which was not theirs to have. To me it looked as if they realized that they could come up to where they were but no farther, that an unwritten law forbade them to follow our footsteps, and that the gates of Paradise, the gates of the rich Country of Trees, were closed to them forever.

SHE could see her husband from the window of their bedroom as she changed from her work dress into a thin cotton. Her husband was a bent figure of a man, dwarfed by the distance between the house and the narrow brook skirting their farm. She knew that he was propping up the banks of the brook with stones, a chore that he had on his mind all summer. His blue shirt was a mere spot in the green of the meadow between them. He would be down there until milking time. So she would pass him on the way over to Kate's.

She was going to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of their wedding over in Kate's kitchen, drinking tea, and having the first gossip with her sister that she had given herself time for in weeks.

'Kate says I'm not to can all day on my wedding day,' she had announced

at breakfast to the girls. They had risen to clear the table. They looked their consternation.

'Pa, it's Mother's wedding day and we never bought her a single thing!' His answer had given her a satisfaction that her daughters did not guess. 'Well, I don't know that she would be any happier.'

'It's your wedding day too, Pa!' Sally, the younger daughter, had given her father a poke on his thick shoulders.

Myra was glad that she had spoken out her mind. 'If your father wants to have tea with Kate and me he can come, and he knows it.'

He would n't come - not with his mind set on his work. He had worked all day when Sally had graduated. He probably would n't take time for his own funeral. A bent solid figure of a man she would find him, passing in her

afternoon dress, her blue spotted gown that she had worn to Sally's commencement two years ago.

Heavens, how the girls had worked this last week with the canning! She smiled sometimes, as now, at her fear that college degrees would take them away from her or make them dislike the common work of the house. Their father had said, 'Well, I'd wait and see. I guess you are doing the right thing by them.' That was what she was wanting to do always - the right thing. Certainly she wasn't going to let them put in every summer on the farm. If Ruth had the notion that the

United States could n't give her all she wanted to know, and study in England was absolutely necessary - well, it might be a kink in her mind, but it was a worth-while kink. And the girl ought to be using vacation time for making money to take her across. As for Sally, that child had wanted to go to Europe ever since she was learning geography in the district school. How she had saved all the post cards one of the boarders, old Doctor Hays, had given her! There was no use in letting her dream about it all her life. She would set her to planning definitely.

Her eyes snapped as she fastened up her hair. Sally's birthday was in November. She would send her a tendollar gold piece and a letter with one line in it: 'This will start you to Europe.' It was Sally's kink that she must never indulge herself. In Sally's mind were endless dutiful summers on the farm.

Her eye swept the farm land to be seen from the window - the cornfields with the blue of the hills beyond them, the pasture, the meadow on the other side of the brook, the rich depth of the woods on the road to her sister's. There might be a worse place to spend one's time, but if you were hankering for the uttermost parts of the earth you

might as well go there. And why should n't girls have the chances of boys? Had n't she managed to send Charles away when he was n't getting what he was wanting? She and his father had worked themselves to death for three summers. But the Ford they went about in was from Charles, and he had paid off the last cent of the mortgage they had put on the place to send the girls away. Wasn't it better to have him love the place than hate it? What was the use of being afraid to do the thing right on top of you to be done?

She went down the stairs that led into the kitchen steep, crazy stairs, the work of Grandfather Duffy, who had built the older portion of the house more than a hundred years ago. The door at the bottom was open. She saw Sally and Ruth filling jars with tomatoes. Great kettles were boiling on the stove. The slippery red skins of the tomatoes were moist piles on the table and in two pans. Some of the skins were smearing the floor.

'Well, if you girls want to slide around on tomato skins - ' she said to them.

The girls looked at their mother instead of at the unsightly floor.

'Has n't Mother done her hair prettily, the way I showed her?' asked Sally.

And Ruth said, 'It's good you have put on your blue dress. Aunt Kate telephoned there was a surprise over there for you.'

'It's a Mr. Quails that's the surprise, Mother,' said Sally. 'He dropped down on her, bag and baggage, though she has her house full of boarders and she can only put him in the tent. She says this Mr. Quails - Ed Quails, as she calls him is one of your old beaus.' Ruth laughed. 'Mother, what is he like?'

She said crisply, 'I've not laid eyes