EDMONTON TO LESSEE SLAVE LAKE 41 



The old Indian, Peokus, heading the Police line, was a 

 study. His garb was a pair of pants toned down to the 

 colour of the grime they daily sank in, a shirt and corduroy 

 vest to match, a faded kerchipf tied around his head, an 

 Assomption sash, and a begrimed body inside of all — a 

 short, squarely built frame, clad with rounded muscles — 

 nothing angular about him I — but the nerves within tireless 

 as the stream he pulled against. On the lead, in harness, 

 his long arms swung like pendulums, his whole body leant 

 forward at an acute angle, the gait steady, and the step solid 

 as the tramp of a gorilla. Some coarse black hairs clung 

 here and there to his upper lip; his fine brown eyes were 

 embedded in wrinkles, and his swarthy features, though 

 clumsy, were kindly — a good-humoured face, which, at a 

 cheerful word or glance, lit up at once with the grotesque 

 grin of an animated gargoyle. This was the typical old-time 

 tracker of the North; the toiler who brought in the pro- 

 ducts of man's art in the East, and took out Nature's returns 

 — the Indian's output — ever since the trade first penetrated 

 these endless solitudes. 



The forest scenery now became very striking; primeval 

 masses of poplar and birch foliage, which spread away and 

 upward in smoothest slopes, like vast lawns, studded with 

 the sombre green of the pine tops which towered above them. 

 Here and there the bends of the river crossed at such angles 

 as to enclose a lake-like expanse of water. The river also 

 took a fine colouring from its tributaries, a sort of greenish- 

 yellow tinge, and now became flecked with bubbles and thin 

 foam, so that we feared the freshet, which would have been 

 disastrous. 



At mid-day we reached Shoal Island — Pakwao Ministic — 

 and here the poles were got out and the trackers took the 

 middle of the river for nearly a mile, until deep water was 

 reached. Placer miners had evidently been at work here, 

 but with poor results, we were told. Below Baptiste Creek, 

 however, the yield had been satisfactory, and several miners 



