II 



IN QUEST OF TREASURE 



THE PERFECT FOOL 



IT WAS an ideal day and the season and the country were in 

 keeping. Soon the trading posts faded from view, and when, 

 after trolling around Fishing Point, we entered White River 

 and went ashore for an early supper, everyone was smiling. 

 I revelled over the prospect of work, freedom, contentment, 

 and beauty before me; and over the thought of leaving behind 

 me the last vestige of the white man's ugly, hypercritical, and 

 oppressive civilization. 



Was it any wonder I was happy? For me it was but the be- 

 ginning of a never-to-be-forgotten journey in a land where a 

 man can be a man without the aid of money. Yes . . . 

 without money. And that reminds me of a white man I knew 

 who was born and bred in the Great Northern Forest, and who 

 supported and educated a family of twelve, and yet he reached 

 his sixtieth birthday without once having handled or ever hav- 

 ing seen money. He was as generous, as refined, and as noble 

 a man as one would desire to know; yet when he visited civili- 

 zation for the first time in his sixty-first year he was reviled 

 because he had a smile for all, he was swindled because he knew 

 no guile, he was robbed because he trusted everyone, and he was 

 arrested because he manifested brotherly love toward his fellow- 

 creatures. Our vaunted civilization! It was the regret of his 

 declining years that circumstances prevented him from leaving 

 the enlightened Christians of the cities, and going back to live in 

 peace among the honest, kindly hearted barbarians of the forest. 



34 



