142 THROUGH THE MACKENZIE BASIN 



This was a half-breed family, the head of which, a shrivelled 

 old fellow, was busy making a paddle with his crooked knife, 

 the materials of a birch-bark canoe lying beside him — and 

 most beautifully they make the canoe in this region. His 

 wife was standing close by, a smudged hag of most sinister 

 aspect; also a son and his wife. On stages, and on the 

 shrubs around, were strewn nets, ragged blankets, frowsy 

 shawls, and a huddle of other shreds and patches; and, 

 everywhere else, a horde of hungry dogs snarling and pounc- 

 ing upon each other like wolves. Filth here was supreme, 

 and the mise en scene characteristic of a very low and very 

 rare type of Wahpooskow life indeed — a type butted and 

 bounded by the word " fish." An attempt was made to photo- 

 graph the group, but the old fellow turned aside, and the old 

 woman hobbled into the recesses of a tepee, where we heard 

 her muttering such execrations in Cree as were possible to 

 that innocent tongue. The hands of the woman at the cabin 

 door were a miracle of grime and scrofula. Her sluttish 

 locks, together with two children, hung around her; one of 

 the latter chewing a muddy carrot up into the leaves, an 

 ungainly little imp ; the other was a girl of singularly beauti- 

 ful features and of perfect form, her large luminous eyes of 

 richest brown reflecting the sunlight from their depths like 

 mirrors — a little angel clad in dirt. Why other wild things 

 should be delicately clean, the birds, the fishes she lived on, 

 and she be bred amidst running sores and vermin, was one 

 of the mysteries I pondered over when we took to our canoes. 

 For such a pair of eyes, for those exquisite features, some 

 scraggy denizen of Vanity Fair would have given a king's 

 ransom. Yet here was a thing of beauty, dropped by a vile 

 freak of Nature into an appalling environment of filth and 

 ignorance; a creature destined, no doubt, to spring into 

 mature womanhood, and lapse, in time, into a counterpart 

 of the bleared Hecate who mumbled her Cree philippics in 

 the neighbouring wigwam. 



On our return trip some detours were made, one of which 



