THE GREATEST FUR COMPANY OF THE WORLD 197 



been too hard for her to bury her husband, and she was 

 afraid to leave the body and go on to the fort lest the 

 wolves should molest the dead.* 



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 

 takes 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 overland runners, canoe, and company 

 steamers bear the mail to the forts of Hudson Bay, 

 of the Saskatchewan, of the Rockies, and the MacKen- 

 zie. In winter, scampering huskies with a running post 

 man 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 wind break, dogs crouched on the buffalo- 

 robes snarling over the frozen fish, deep hayings 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 

 creak and jolt over the rutted prairie roads between 



* 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. 



