DOWN THE MACKENZIE RIVER 19 



unanimous request of the passengers and crew of our 

 steamer he had to change his clothes at once when he 

 came back from this adventure. I believe there is a way 

 of getting rid of skunk odor from clothing; but our 

 clergyman was so mortified that he took no advice from 

 any one on that point, put all his garments in a bundle 

 and dropped them overboard into the river when no one 

 was looking. I think this was his clerical suit, and that 

 it was his only clerical suit. However, the Indians of 

 the lower Mackenzie were not at that time sticklers for 

 form, and probably did not know whether they belonged 

 to the High or Low Church, so that his being without 

 clerical garments may not have proved a serious handicap 

 when he got to his field of work. 



One of the great sights as we went down the river in 

 1906 was the burning gas well at Pelican Rapids. The 

 whole Mackenzie valley, of which the Athabasca is a 

 part, has since been shown to be a country of many oil 

 prospects, and oil wells are now actually flowing in some 

 places. At that time we had indications of this by get- 

 ting our boots smeared with what we called mineral tar 

 when we walked along the river bank. 



The Pelican Rapids gas well was a spectacular demon- 

 stration of the power and wealth that may lie under the 

 surface. Some years before, a party had been there drill- 

 ing for oil and had struck natural gas instead. The gas 

 has been flowing ever since. Some one had set fire to it 

 and it was now burning as a torch, with flames shooting 

 some ten or fifteen feet into the air. At night it illumined 

 with a flickering light the broad Athabasca on one side 

 and the forest on the other. I was poetical in those days 

 and wrote in my diary that this was the torch of science 



