DOWN THE MACKENZIE RIVER 33 



The Roman Catholics at Providence showed us straw- 

 berries and various garden flowers in front of the build- 

 ings, and to one side of them waving fields of wheat and 

 barley. Potatoes are cultivated with great success as 

 far north as Fort Good Hope, just south of the arctic 

 circle. They could be raised farther north, but under 

 present conditions it pays the down river traders better 

 to buy their potatoes from Good Hope and have them 

 brought in by boat. 



The trading posts of the Mackenzie River are on the 

 average about two hundred miles apart. Every one of 

 them has a series of buildings belonging to the Hudson's 

 Bay Company. Some of them have churches or other 

 mission buildings and many of them have the stores and 

 residences of the so-called Free Traders. 



The name Free Trader comes from the old days when 

 the country was not free to trade in by any one except 

 the Hudson's Bay Company, and when adventurers used 

 to brave the penalty of what was then law and defy the 

 Company by trading within its domain. When the Com- 

 pany in 1869 sold its sovereignty to the Dominion of Can- 

 ada, these Free Traders made a rush for the deeper in- 

 terior. At first they fared rather badly, for the Indians 

 of that time had been born and brought up under the 

 guardianship of the Great Company and were not easy 

 to alienate. By the time of my journey this stage was 

 over and some of the Free Traders did as extensive a 

 business as the Company itself. 



Up to 1906 it had been the policy of the Company not 

 to help the Free Traders in any way — they would not 

 carry them as passengers on the Company's ships nor 

 carry their freight at any recognized tariff. This was a 

 shortsighted policy, for it compelled the Free Traders to 



