88 THE ARCTIC PRAIRIES 



all their lives and yet had never seen a live Moose. It 

 sounds like a New Yorker saying he had never seen a 

 stray cat. But I was simply dumfounded by a final 

 development in the same line. 



Quite the most abundant carpet in the forest here 

 is the uva-ursi or bear-berry. Its beautiful evergreen 

 leaves and bright red berries cover a quarter of the 

 ground in dry woods and are found in great acre beds. 

 It furnishes a staple of food to all wild things, birds 

 and beasts, including Foxes, Martens, and Coyotes; it 

 is one of the most abundant of the forest products, and 

 not one hundred yards from the fort are solid patches 

 as big as farms, and yet when I brought in a spray to 

 sketch it one day several of the Hudson's Bay officers 

 said: "Where in the world did you get that? It must 

 be very rare, for I never yet saw it in this country." 

 A similar remark was made about a phoebe-bird. 

 "It was never before seen in the country"; and yet 

 there is a pair nesting every quarter of a mile from 

 Athabaska Landing to Great Slave Lake. 



Fort Smith, being the place of my longest stay, was 

 the scene of my largest medical practice. 



One of my distinguished patients here was Jacob 

 McKay, a half-breed bom on Red River in 1840. He 

 left there in 1859 to live 3 years at Rat Portage. 

 Then he went to Norway House, and after 3 years 

 moved to Athabaska in 1865. In 1887 he headed a 

 special government expedition into the Barren Grounds 

 to get some baby Musk-ox skins. He left Fort Rae, 

 April 25, 1887, and, travelling due north with Dogrib 

 Indians some 65 miles, found Musk-ox on May 10, and 



