NO. 1405. MAMMALS OF NORTHWEST TERRITORIES— MACFARLANE. 761 



It is almost needless to mention that the presence and work of both 

 Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries in Red River (the former 

 first appeared in 18 IS and the latter in 1820), and elsewhere, have also 

 been very important factors in the foregoing beneficial connection. 



Gen. Sir William F. Butler, who had visited and sojoui-ned for a 

 brief time at many of the company's inland posts, thus wrote in 1878: 



Wild, desolate, and remote are tliese isolated tradinij; posts of tlie vast interior, \'et 

 it is difficult to describe the feelings with which one beholds them across some ice- 

 bound lake or silent river as the dog trains wind slowly amidst the snow. Coming 

 in from the wilderness, from the wrack of tempest and the bitter cold, wearied with 

 long marches, foot-sore or frozen, one looks upon the wooden dwelling house as some 

 place of rest and contentment. 1 doubt if it be possible to know uiuic acute com- 

 fort, for its measure is exactly the measure of that other extremity of discomlttrt 

 which excessive cold and hardship have carried with them. Nor does this feeling 

 of home and contentment lose aught'for want of a welcome at the threshold of the 

 lonely resting place. Nothing is held too good for the wayfarer — the best l>e<l and 

 the best supper are his. He has perhaps brought letters or messages from long and 

 absent friends, or he comes with news of the outside world; but be he tlie bearer of 

 such things or only the chance carrier of his own fortunes, he is still a wek'ome vis- 

 itor at the Hudson's Bay post. 



Sir William further writes that — 



In early days Fort Chipewyan, on Lake Athabasca, was an important center of the 

 fur trade, and in later times it has been made the starting point of many of the 

 exploratory parties to the northern coast. From old Fort Chipewayan Mackenzie 

 set forth to explore the great northern river, and to the same place he returned when, 

 first of all men north of the fortieth parallel, he had crossed in the summers of 

 1792-93 the American continent to the Pacific Ocean. It was from new Fort Chipew- 

 yan that Simpson set out to trace the coast line of the Arctic Ocean, and, earlier 

 than either, it was from Fond du Lac, at the eastern end of Lake Athabasca, that 

 Samuel Hearne wandered forth to reach the polar sea. At times Fort Chipewyan 

 has been the scene of strange excitements. Men came from afar and pitched their 

 tents awhile on these granite shores ere they struck deeper into the heart of the 

 Great North. Mackenzie and Simpson, and Franklin, Buck, Richardson, King, 

 and Rae rested here before piercing farther into unknown wilds, where they flew 

 the red-cross flag o'er seas and isles upon whose shores no human foot had pressed a 

 sand print. Chipewyan is emphatically a lonely spot in winter, but when the 

 wanderer's eye meets the red flag, which we all know and love so well, flying above 

 the clustered buildings in the cold north blast, it is on such occasions as this that he 

 turns to it as the emblem of a home which distance has enshrined deeper in his 

 heart. But " Eight hundred thousand pounds sterling sunk in the Arctic Sea," will 

 exclaim my calculating friend behind the national counter; " nearly a million gone 

 forever!" No, head cash keeper, you are wrong; that million of money will bear 

 interest higher than all your little speculations in times not far remote in the 

 misty future. In hours when life and honor lie at different sides of the "to do" 

 or "not to do" men will go back to times when other men, battling with nature or 

 with man, cast their vote on the side of honor, and by the white light tlirown into 

 the future from the great dead past they will read their roads where many paths 

 commingle. To-day it is useful to recall these stray items of adventure from the 

 past in which they lie buried. It has been said by some one that a nation can not 

 be saved by a calculation — neither can she be made by one. If(o-<l(ii/ we arc irJiat we 

 are it is because a thousand men in hi/gone times did not stop to coioit the cnM. 



