:MA:NniALs of xortiierx caxada -2:9 



set out to trace the coast-line of the Arctic Ocean, and, earlier than 

 either, it was from Pond du Lac, at the eastern end of Lake 

 Athabasca, that Samuel Hearne wandered forth to reach the polar 

 sea. At times Fort Chipewyan has been the scene of strange 

 excitements. Men came from afar and pitched their tents awhile 

 on these granite shores ere they struck deeper into the heart of 

 the Great Xorth. Mackenzie and Simpson, and Franklin, Back, 

 Richardson, King and Rae rested here before piercing farther into 

 unknown wilds, where they flew the red-cross flag o'er seas and 

 isles upon whose shores no human foot had pressed a sand-print. 

 Chipewyan is emphatically a lonely spot in winter, but when the 

 wanderer's eye meets the red flag, which we all know and love so 

 well, flying above the clustered buildings in the cold north blast, 

 it is on such occasions as this that he turns to it as the emblem of 

 a home which distance has enshrined deeper in his heart. But 



" Eight hundred thousand pounds sterling sunk In the Arctic Sea/' 

 will exclaim my calculating friend behind the national counter; 

 "nearly a million gone forever!" Xo, head cash-keeper, you are 

 wrong; that million of money will bear interest higher than all 

 your little speculations in times not far remote in the misty future. 

 In hours when life and honour lie at different sides of the "to do " 

 or " not to do," men will go back to times when other men, battling 

 with nature or with man, cast their vote on the side of honour, 

 and by the white light thrown into the future from the great dead 

 past they will read their roads where many paths commingle. 

 To-day it is useful to recall these stray items of adventure from 

 the past In which they lie buried. It has been said by someone 

 that a nation cannot be saved by a calculation — neither can she 

 be made by one. If to-day we are what we are it is because a 

 thousand men in bygone times did not stop to count the cost. 



These, out of many available and interesting extracts, 

 will now end with one from a former noted Winnipeg divine, 

 the Eev. D. il. Gordon, D.D., now Principal of Queen's 

 University, Kingston. 



Indeed, it is difficult to discover what attractions many of the 

 agents of the Company find in their secluded and lonely life. 

 Familiar, in many instances, in earlier days with comfortable and 

 even luxurious homes, and able to procure positions in civilized 

 life where a competence, if not a fortune, was assured, they have 

 chosen instead a life that in many cases cuts them off for a large 

 portion of the year from any intercourse with the outer world, or 



