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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

SEPTEMBER, 1927

THE NEW HOMESTEAD

LETTERS FROM FORT VERMILION

BY HILDA ROSE

[IN the Atlantic for April 1927 we left Hilda Rose, with her seventy-year-old husband and her nine-year-old son, camping out in a tent, in latitude 50° north, on the Peace River, somewhere between Fort Vermilion and the Great Slave Lake. The new letters, from which we have made a selection, describe her journey into that northern wilderness, and the vicissitudes which have beset her since she began to prove up her claim to the new homestead. -THE EDITORS]

FORT VERMILION, ALBERTA July 10, 1926

DEAR DOCTOR-LADY:

I am now on the steamer going north and will land very soon, so this will be a short letter so I can get it ready and leave it here on the steamer to take back to civilization. We will land at L. Point, which is ten miles before we come to the trading post. There is only one white settler there and he is on the boat. He has fifteen children is a very large, fine-looking, jovial man. His father was a missionary and the first white man here. He has taken a great fancy to Daddy, and as he is a very rich man his word is law on the VOL. 140-NO. S

A

river. The boat was crowded and we had no berths and night was coming on. He called the purser and told him to give us a good stateroom and look after Mr. Rose, as he looked tired and needed rest. Say, I never saw a man jump around so swiftly. The best stateroom was given to us and we had every attention as if we were rich. Daddy was eight days in the freight car and was in a dreadful state when he arrived. I took him to a hotel and gave a woman a dollar to carry me four pails of water from the creek and heat two cans of it, and then I bathed the poor dear and put him to bed. He could n't even eat for exhaustion. He was just a helpless baby.

I'm so glad Mr. L. has taken charge of us. Now everything will be all right and I've quit worrying. Boy is the only child on the boat and is very happy. Everybody wants him, and from the captain, who coaxes him up into his tower and lets him use his telescopes, to the engineer and deck hands, he surely has a good time.

Leaving Edmonton, the freight that Daddy was on lost twelve cars just behind him. They turned turtle and piled up on the track so that my train

was delayed eleven hours. Finally we got going again and we had a wreck, but our car was left standing on the track. This was in a swamp and we were there six hours at night, and the mosquitoes descended on us and Boy almost lost his mind, though I wrapped his legs in my jacket and fanned him constantly. Finally they rustled up an old locomotive and a freight car and took us to Peace River Town. It was very crowded and the first-class passengers were horrified when they had to ride with us emigrants. Three in a seat and on the floor, just as tight as could be. No lights, and they sang songs as we rode along, for most of us were happy to be going again through the dark hills to safety.

I have no time to write more. The land looks green, lovely, and lonesome. I am a little homesick. Just a tearful feeling.

July 25, 1926

The boat came up this morning and brought me your letter, and this is just a hasty scrawl that I hope will catch the boat if someone here at the L. ranch goes down to the shore. I love it here, but see hardships ahead. Getting ready for winter will be a big job. Daddy is poorly. I kept him in bed all day yesterday and he felt stronger to-day, but not able to do anything. But God will see me through and I am happier than I've been for several years.

It grows here--everything grows, though the season is so short one must hustle to get it planted and harvested. There is wood a plenty to burn, but it takes work to get it ready for winter. There is plenty of water in the majestic river if wells fail. Happy, dear heart! I have reached the garden of Eden. But, there is the winter and the cold, the hard work, the loneliness. I'll get my mail once a month, I think, for

some breed or somebody will come by surely. I repeat the Twenty-third Psalm each day.

[No date]

The talk now is only 'fur' and 'dogs.' In another month there won't be a breed or Indian within one hundred and fifty miles, nor anybody, as all will be on the trap lines and we won't see a soul till spring. Yet, I don't dread it. Yesterday a large wolf — and they are immense - came within three hundred yards of our tent. From the ground to the top of the middle of their back is thirty-six inches. Take a yardstick and measure the biggest dog you know and you'll get some idea of them. Some are black and some are gray and some are mixed. The bounty is eight dollars and the best skins bring twenty-five dollars. You know we are on a bend of the river. The wolves have a trail right across the neck at our back, so we can see them as they streak across. I have six wolf traps and I shall set them out as soon as my bait is rotten enough. It takes an awful stink to lure them to your traps, unless you have a dead horse or something to set your traps around. The largest wolves stand as high as forty inches to the back up here. I haven't got a decent rifle for them. Nothing but old muzzle loaders that Daddy's forefather used in the Revolutionary War and a good little 22 rifle.

If I can get them once into a trap I'll kill them with a club and 'shabbynacky' myself a good 30.30 rifle. 'Shabby-nacky' means 'trade' in here. The only white people to come 'in' this year besides us were two priests to take the place of two old priests going 'out.' One at the Catholic Mission and one at the English Church Mission. So we are very well known by hundreds of breeds and savages, as they have

what I call 'moccasin telegraph' service here. It travels very fast by moccasin and canoe. If someone gets a new dog we all know it and all about it very quickly. Our dog is known to hundreds that have never seen it.

To save my candles I am writing this by the stove. By taking off one lid I get a fitful light that barely enables me to see to write. It makes me think of Lincoln's early life. We are still living in a tent, but it's getting pretty cold nights. It was twenty degrees above zero in the tent last night and I won't be able to get a log cabin this year, as good logs are too far away. So we are going to take what is handy, which is poplar pole trees, and cover the tent and put a roof on it of poles and put hay and dirt on it. This pioneering is tough, all right, but I expected it and a merry heart goes a long way. Though not a day passes that I don't question myself whether I have done right in coming so far away. But no one could help me where I was, and I wanted to keep my self-respect and raise the boy to be a real man, and I did n't have a show there.

Boy has a very small Indian pony looks like a small Shetland pony, but has the toughness and pep so necessary down here. Our rivers flow down to the Arctic here. When Daddy came he stopped at the last drug store in civilization to get a box of salve. The kindly little gray-haired lady who waited on him asked him, 'Whither bound?' and he said, 'Fort Vermilion.' 'That's my grave,' said she sadly. 'Why, were you ever down there?' says Daddy. 'Yes, I wintahed one yeah on the Great Slave Lake.' 'Did n't you like it?' asked Daddy. 'No,' says she. "Too fah from a doctah.' 'Well,' said Daddy, 'she's quite close to a "doctah" now, for her husband is one and runs that little drug store.'

When Boy comes riding on his pony

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back over the hills, now you see him, then he's out of sight in a gully, now he's riding up the slope, gone again, and then comes racing home on a gallop. Well, it's like looking at a Wild-West movie show, only it's real. He and his pony are one all the brother he has except his big black shepherd dog. I must get some dogs, but not this year. Only dogs are used here in winter. You lie down on your sled wrapped in a feather quilt and the river is the road. A trapper offered me a trained female dog, but I have too much on my hands yet awhile. A bunch of wild pups would drive me crazy. A husky is half wolf; a malamute is a husky bred back to a wolf. They make fine sled dogs, but have to be well fed or they'll turn on you and eat you up. I have too many to feed now, but I'll have a bunch of trained dogs after a while.

One of the breeds says he'll take Boy out on the trap line when he gets big enough. The trap line is from one to five hundred miles off and lies over a big country where only Indians live, well watered with unknown rivers and lakes. Each trapper chooses his line, which runs through the bush along these rivers, creeks, and lakes, and he builds a cabin at the end of each day when he goes over it the first time. Six cabins is the rule. So it takes a week to go over his route, and he travels thus all winter long, back and forth. In the spring he comes out to the trading posts with his catch and trades it for what he needs or sees at the post; wastes his substance on whiskey, cards, and foolishness; goes in debt to the post for a grubstake for the next winter, and then there is the hardship and loneliness of the trap line ahead of him again.

All the talk now is 'dogs' and 'fur.' 'Saw some fur last night,' says Peter R., a half-breed. 'What was it?' I asked.

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