108 RECREATION 
occasion to go to the water-hole in the 
river fifty yards or so from the cabin. It 
was early morning and stars were still 
bright in the heavens. As she reached the 
river bank, set her pail down in the snow 
and prepared to cut the ice which had 
formed during the night, a pack of timber 
wolves, perhaps seven or eight in number, 
broke from the forest across the river and 
swept like huge gray ghosts down the white 
expanse before her. I asked her if she was 
long in getting to cover. She looked at me 
in frank surprise. ‘‘Do you think I would 
run from those brutes when I’d an axe in 
my hands?” she rejoined, and then added, 
“They had easier game afoot I fancy—a 
moose most likely—for they never even 
noticed me, and they came pretty close, 
too.” 
Many were the tales the Gregorys told 
me of kindred happenings in their little 
world. One in particular which interested 
me was of an English woman and her three 
robust daughters who had gone to their 
little claim in the next township in the dead 
of winter on snowshoes, dragging their 
household goods behind them on improvised 
sledges. 
Here two of the girls had done all the 
work of clearing the two acres necessary 
for a foothold, while the other, with all a 
hunter’s skill, had supplied the table. They 

GREGORY’S CABIN ON THE BLANCHE 
were now proud of one of the most valuable 
grants in the region. 
After a brief stay in this settler’s house- 
hold the increasing cold warned me I must 
escape before the relentless winter of the 
North gripped the waters that now would 
bear me swiftly homeward. 
Amid the slowly falling flakes of an early 
snowstorm Tom and I paddled southward 
toward the frontier. A backward glance at 
the cabin in the clearing gave an unforget- 
able picture of hearty, vigorous children 
shouting in a frolic in the snow, a proud 
mother standing by and a pale blue shaft of 
smoke rising above the home of a settler’s 
hope and faith. 
I left the Blanche with reluctance; for I 
had seen men and women who are good to 
know, whose lives and ambitions are tonic 
examples. I had seen sufficient to bring 
home the proud conviction that there is 
still enough of pioneer vigor and enterprise 
in the race, enough of courage and good, 
wholesome, primitive impulses, to offset 
those decadent tendencies for which we 
are arraigned. And I am optimistic enough 
to believe that, just as long as there remains 
on this great continent of ours a habitable 
wilderness to conquer, there will be evolved 
from out the nation the good red blood, 
the firm and steadfast will and the aggres- 
sive force with which to conquer it. 
—— 
Note the large Canada lynx hanging from the left-hand corner of the roof—moose-skin drying to the right 
a 
