266 THE FUR TRADE OF AMERICA 



leave the body and go on to the fort lest the wolves should molest 

 the dead. 1 



The arrival of the mail packet is one of the most welcome breaks 

 in the monotony of life at the fur post. When the mail comes, 

 all white habitants of the fort take a week's holidays to read letters 

 and news of the outside world. 



Railways run from Lake Superior to the Pacific ; but off the 

 line of railways mail is carried as of old. In summer-time over- 

 land runners, canoe, and company steamers bear the mail to the 

 forts of Hudson Bay, of the Saskatchewan, of the Rockies, and 

 the MacKenzie. In winter, scampering huskies with a running 

 postman winged with snow-shoes dash across the snowy wastes 

 through silent forests to the lonely forts of the bay, or slide over 

 the prairie drifts with the music of tinkling bells and soft crunch- 

 crunch of sleigh runners through the snow crust to the leagueless 

 world of the Far North. 



Forty miles a day, a couch of spruce boughs where the racquets 

 have dug a hole in the snow, sleighs placed on edge as a windbreak, 

 dogs crouched on the buffalo-robes snarling over the frozen fish, 

 deep bayings from the running wolf-pack, and before the stars 

 have faded from the frosty sky, the mail-carrier has risen and is 

 coasting away fast as the huskies can gallop. 



Another picturesque feature of the fur trade was the long caravan 

 of ox-carts that used to screech and creek and jolt over the rutted 

 prairie roads between Winnipeg and St. Paul. More than 1500 

 Hudson's Bay Company carts manned by 500 traders with tawny 

 spouses and black-eyed impish children squatted on top of the 

 load, left Canada for St. Paul in August and returned in October. 

 Carts were made without a rivet of iron. Bent wood formed 

 the tires of the two wheels. Hardwood axles told their woes to the 

 world in the scream of shrill bagpipes. Wooden racks took the 

 place of cart box. In the shafts trod a staid old ox guided from 



1 It need hardly be explained that it is the prairie Indian and not the forest Ojibway who 

 places the body on high scaffolding above the ground ; hence the woman's dilemma. 



