130 THE STOEY OF THE TEAPPER 



lered crest etched against the white glare. The snow 

 stretches away in a sea of billowed, white drifts that 

 seem to heave and fall to the motions of the runner, 

 mounting and coasting and skimming over the un 

 broken waste like a bird winging the ocean. And 

 against this endless stretch of drifts billowing away to 

 a boundless circle, of which the man is the centre, his 

 form is dwarfed out of all proportion, till he looks no 

 larger than a bird above the sea. 



When the sun rises, strange colour effects are 

 caused by the frost haze. Every shrub takes fire; for 

 the ice drops are a prism, and the result is the same as 

 if there had been a star shower or rainfall of brilliants. 

 Does the Indian trapper see all this ? The white man 

 with white man arrogance doubts whether his tawny 

 brother of the wilds sees the beauty about him, because 

 the Indian has no white man s terms of expression. 

 But ask the bronzed trapper the time of day; and he 

 tells you by the length of shadow the sun casts, or the 

 degree of light on the snow. Inquire the season of the 

 year; and he knows by the slant sunlight coming up 

 through the frost smoke of the southern horizon. 

 And get him talking about his Happy Hunting- 

 Grounds; and after he has filled it with the imple 

 ments and creatures and people of the chase, he will 

 describe it in the metaphor of what he has seen at sun 

 rise and sunset and under the Northern Lights. He 

 does not see these things with the gabbling exclama- 

 tories of a tourist. He sees them because they sink 

 into his nature and become part of his mental furni 

 ture. The most brilliant description the writer ever 

 heard of the Hereafter was from an old Cree squaw, 

 toothless, wrinkled like leather, belted at the waist 



