FORT DU BROCHET 95 



Fort. Night settled down to death-like silence. 

 . . . The Spirit of the North was in the air, and 

 in the solitude of the lonely Post. 



. • . * • 



After rounding an island promontory Fort Du 

 Brochet is approached, where its scanty settle- 

 ment of miniature dwellings stands grave and 

 grey in one of those hidden inlet bays so common 

 to all waterways of the rugged North. The small 

 gathering of teepees and cabins shows suddenly 

 and at close range before the vision of the voya- 

 geur, and he welcomes them, after his long, hard 

 journey through unpeopled country, as an unex- 

 pected find. He exclaims with pleasure at the sight 

 of habitations, and excitedly anticipates the joy 

 of conversation with the white or half breed 

 trader at the Fort. It is the way of men on the 

 outer trails to be delighted with such rare meetings 

 with mankind, for as they gain the freedom of the 

 wilderness the mind looks ever back to its harvest 

 of memories of companionship, and looking back 

 grows ever hungrier for the voices of their kind. 

 Those primitive shelters, artless and somewhat 

 uncompromising in line and colour, are therefore 

 as welcome to the traveller as at other times 

 might be the comfortable bungalow of a civilised 

 home. Indeed, it is possible they are more wel- 

 come, for in the Silent Places men learn a greater 

 appreciation than in a world of ease. 



The small, log-hewn, square-built cabins are 

 weather-beaten and grey like time-worn boulders 

 on the wayside, and stand solitary as sentinels 

 on a bare, treeless, grass-grown knoll. The Fort 

 — the buildings of the Hudson Bay Company, 



