DEATH OF PROF. MACOUN 293 



before. This was a good example of a settler's appetite and 

 amused Prof. Macoun very much. "I wonder how much he would 

 eat when he is hungry?" he queried. 



"Long experience in the open, without the comforts of home 

 life, made him very impatient to any fuss or complaints that 

 ordinary mortals might make over the inconveniences of camp 

 life. He would accept the inevitable without the slightest show 

 of discomfort and would disdain any attempts to smooth out any 

 ruffles that he considered trifles, and would bear them with a 

 patience bordering on stoicism. An example of this occurred at 

 Oak River, when he appealed to Atkinson (who was a wizard in 

 the way of turning his hand to anything) to have a sharp tooth 

 reduced that was cutting into his gums and making eating very 

 difficult. Now, the files that a taxidermist carries, as you know, 

 are of a very coarse cut, but, with one of these, Atkinson started, 

 with Prof. Macoun reclining on a folding chair which we carried, 

 and rasped down the sharp projection with a noise similar to a 

 boy running a stick along a picket fence. He never batted an 

 eyelid and pronounced the job excellent, while our own teeth were 

 all on edge. Atkinson declared that he himself felt every rasp 

 go through him to the quick. 



"Prof. Macoun's extreme activity was a very striking part of 

 his make-up, so much so that deliberate or systematic methods 

 that made movement slow were very irritating to him. Used as 

 he was, in the early days, to travel with Red River carts, when 

 they would pick up their trappings and throw them all in and be 

 off, perhaps, in fifteen minutes, Atkinson's methods of carefully 

 packing all our camping outfit on the two democrat wagons and 

 roping them on for rapid travel was too much for him in the morn- 

 ings and he usually would start to walk out on the trail a half 

 hour or more ahead of us as well as to pick up anything of interest 

 along the way. At Fort Ellice, he started out as usual, but the 

 old trails about here were badly cut up, and disconnected, and 

 difficult to follow, We had travelled so far that we should have 

 overtaken him and, seeing nothing in sight, decided to turn back 

 and spread out in an effort to find which trail he had taken. It 

 was an hour later before we located him sleeping peacefully under 



