FORT SMITH AND THE SOCIAL QUEEN 87 



tiring person is Speaker Cannon ; this on the first bench 

 is Lloyd-George, or that with the piercing eyes is 

 Aldrich, the uncrowned King of America. So it was 

 a frequent and delightful experience to meet with 

 men whose names have figured in books of travel for 

 a generation. This was Roderick MacFarlane, who 

 founded Fort Anderson, discovered the MacFarlane 

 Rabbit, etc. ; here was John Schott, who guided Cas- 

 par Whitney; that was Hanbury's head man; here 

 was Murdo McKay, who travelled with Warburton 

 Pike in the Barrens and starved with him on Peace 

 River; and so with many more. 



Very few of these men had any idea of the interest 

 attaching to their observations. Their notion of val- 

 ues centres chiefly on things remote from their daily 

 life. It was very surprising to see how completely 

 one may be outside of the country he lives in. Thus 

 I once met a man who had lived sixteen years in north- 

 ern Ontario, had had his chickens stolen every year by 

 Foxes, and never in his life had seen a Fox. I know 

 many men who live in Wolf country, and hear them at 

 least every week, but have never seen one in twenty 

 years' experience. Quite recently I saw a score of folk 

 who had lived in the porcupiniest part of the Adiron- 

 dacks for many summers and yet never saw a Porcu- 

 pine, and did not know what it was when I brought one 

 into their camp. So it was not surprising to me to find 

 that although living in a country that swarmed with 

 Moose, in a village which consumes at least a hundred 

 Moose per annum, there were at Fort Smith several of 

 the Hudson's Bay men that had lived on Moose meat 



