OF FOXES, MANY AND VARIOUS 263 



trapper the way to the fortune of a silver fox is the 

 same as the road to fortune for all other men by the 

 homely trail of every-day work. Cheers from the fort 

 gates bid trappers setting out for far Northern fields 

 God-speed. Long ago there would have been a firing of 

 cannon when the Northern hunters left for their dis 

 tant camping-grounds; but the cannon of Churchill lie 

 rusting to-day and the hunters who go to the sub- 

 Arctics and the Arctics no longer set out from Church 

 ill on the bay, but from one of the little inland Mac- 

 Kenzie Eiver posts. If the fine powdery snow-drifts 

 are glossed with the ice of unbroken sun-glare, the 

 runners strap iron crampets to their snow-shoes, and 

 with a great jingling of the dog-bells, barking of the 

 huskies, and yelling of the drivers, coast away for the 

 leagueless levels of the desolate North. Frozen river 

 beds are the only path followed, for the high cliffs 

 almost like ramparts on the lower MacKenzie shut 

 off the drifting east winds that heap barricades of 

 snow in one place and at another sweep the ground so 

 clear that the sleighs pull heavy as stone. Does a 

 husky fag? A flourish of whips and off the laggard 

 scampers, keeping pace with the others in the traces, a 

 pace that is set for forty miles a day with only one 

 feeding time, nightfall when the sleighs are piled as a 

 wind-break and the frozen fish are doled out to the 

 ravenous dogs. Gun signals herald the hunter s ap 

 proach to a chance camp; and no matter how small and 

 mean the tepee, the door is always open for whatever 

 visitor, the meat pot set simmering for hungry travel 

 lers. When the snow crust cuts the dogs feet, buck 

 skin shoes are tied on the huskies; and when an occa 

 sional dog fags entirely, he is turned adrift from the 



