96 REINDEER LAKE AND FORT DU BROCKET 



comprising a house, a trading store, and an assort- 

 ment of outhouses stands dominant on the 

 highest ground on the extreme east of the knoll. 

 To the west, strange to say, is a tiny Catholic 

 mission and church ; the latter cross-planned, as 

 is the Roman custom, notwithstanding its insigni- 

 ficant size and crude workmanship. At some 

 little distance from the mission is the Trading 

 Store of the " French Company " (Revillion 

 Brothers), rival traders to the Hudson Bay Com- 

 pany, who here established a footing some ten 

 years ago. There are six cabins in the settle- 

 ment occupied by part-blood or full-blood Indians, 

 who are at intervals in summer and winter em- 

 ployed in the transport of furs and stores for the 

 trading companies. White fungus-like tents, 

 in awkward discord with natural colours, are 

 pitched here and there along-shore. They are 

 the temporary shelters of the ever wandering 

 Chipewyans, for alas ! the days of the mahogany- 

 coloured, smoke-soiled deer-skin (caribou or 

 moose-skin) teepees have almost gone, and their 

 peaked pyramid forms range no more in native 

 beauty along the shore-front. 



There is little stir of life around the cabins 

 during the long summer's day, for the men are 

 commonly away fishing or hunting or " freight- 

 ing " for the Company, and the few squaws, 

 with their half -wild children about them, keep 

 chiefly to their dwellings. Occasionally the dogs 

 of the Post, which form the greater part of the 

 population, give voice to vicious quarrel or howls 

 of deep-rooted melancholy ; but, as a rule, they are 

 to be seen curled up in slumber here, there, and 



