MEETING OF THE WILD MEN 183 



dogs and eighteen sleds were blocking the spaces between the 

 trees. 



NORTHERN MAIL SERVICE 



Chief Factor Thompson was the "real thing," and therefore 

 not at all the kind of Hudson's Bay officer that one ever meets 

 in fiction. For instead of being a big, burly, "red-blooded 

 brute," of the "he-man" type of factor — the kind that springs 

 from nowhere save the wild imaginations of the authors who 

 have never lived in the wilderness ... he was just a real 

 man . . . just a fine type of Hudson's Bay factor, who 

 was not only brother to both man and beast, but who knew 

 every bird by its flight or song; who loved children with all his 

 heart — flowers, too — and whose kindly spirit often rose in song. 

 Yes, he was just a real man, like some of the men you know — but 

 after all, perhaps he was even finer — for the wilderness does 

 nothing to a man save make him healthier in body and in 

 soul; while the cities are the world's cesspools. He was rather 

 a small, slender man, with fatherly eyes set in an intelligent 

 face that was framed with gray hair and gray beard. 



After the Chief Factor and his men had been refreshed with 

 bannock, pork, and tea, pipes were filled and lighted and for 

 a time we talked of all sorts of subjects. Later, when we were 

 alone for a little while, I found Mr. Thompson a man richly 

 informed on northern travel, for he had spent his whole life in 

 the service of the Hudson's Bay Company, and at one time or 

 another had been in charge of the principal posts on Hudson 

 Bay, Great Slave Lake, and the Peace, the Churchill, the 

 Athabasca, and the Mackenzie rivers. Among other subjects 

 discussed were dogs and dog-driving; and when I questioned 

 him as to the loading of sleds, he answered : 



"Usually, in extremely cold weather, the Company allots 

 dogs not more than seventy-five pounds each, but in milder 

 weather they can handily haul a hundred pounds, and toward 



