334 THE FUR TRADE OF AMERICA 



old half-breed woman in Hamilton's Inlet. Good night, God bless us all 

 and send us prosperity. 



"Yours ever true, 



"Lydia Campbell." 



"We are going to have an evening worship, my poor old man is tired, 

 he has been a long way today and he shot 2 beautyful white partridges. 

 Our boy heer shot once spruce partridge." 



"Caplin so plentiful boats were stopped, whales, walrusses and white 

 bears." 



"Muligan River, May 24, 1894. — They say that once upon a time 

 the world was drowned and that all the Esquimaux were drownded but one 

 family and he took his family and dogs and chattels and his seal-skin boat 

 and Kiak and Komaticks and went on the highest hill that they could see, 

 and stayed there till the rain was over and when the water dried up they 

 descended down the river and got down to the plains and when they could 

 not see any more people, they took off the bottoms of their boots and took 

 some little white [seal] pups and sent the poor little things off to sea and they 

 drifted to some islands far away and became white people. Then they 

 done the same as the others did and the people spread all over the world. 

 Such was my poor father's thought. . . . There is up the main river a 

 large fall, the same that the American and English gentlemen have been 

 up to see. [Referring to Mr. Bryant, of Philadelphia, who visited Grand 

 Falls.] Well there is a large whirlpool or hole at the bottom of the fall. 

 The Indians that frequent the place say that there is three women — 

 Indians — that lives under that place or near to it I am told, and at times 

 they can hear them speaking to each other louder than the roar of the falls." 

 [The Indians always think the mist of a waterfall signifies the presence of 

 ghosts.] 



"I have been the cook of that great Sir D. D. Smith that is in Canada 

 at this time. [In the days when Lord Strathcona was chief trader at 

 Hamilton Inlet.] He was then at Rigolet Post, a chief trader only, now 



