are precious. Once, in drilling here, our men came upon black sand with a showing of gold, but it petered out, after a couple of inches. It was with great difficulty they were persuaded to go on with the drilling instead of going to town to file on claims.
Already there are several towns along this lakefront—that is to say, towns consisting of three or four tents or houses. In the earlier days of the North each settlement was commenced with a fort, now it is begun with a railway station. The next building to be erected is the station agent's house, which is quickly followed by a restaurant, and a general store with a post-office. This is the axis from which the homesteaders radiate into the surrounding country, and, presto! before you know it, there is a bank, an implement shop, a church, a hotel, and the other conveniences of modern civilization including mortgages.
Already you may see trails like long black welts across the land—trails that appear to fare forth without any preconceived plan and to hold a lure in their far reaches for happy-go-idlers like you and me. There is no telling what we might find on them a goodish way off. The only straight trails made in this North land are made by the engineers, and as you look down the lines you may readily see that they lead into the sky. I like greatly the unthanked, unknown engineers who beat out these paths for the people who are to come after. No trumpets herald their coming, or announce the leagues they have herded behind, but I tell you these fellows are a commonwealth of kings, and we may as well stop here for a moment and stand at salute.
And after the engineers came the builders with their sinews of steel to bind the trail. It is this steel strength that makes the land to bud and blossom. It is creative. Well and truly has a builder said that the land without population is a wilderness, and the population without land is a mob. Yes! it is a steel idol we worship in this country and not one of gold, and we do refuse to grind it to powder and drink thereof, no matter what any Moses or Aaron may say.
This last hour I have been in mind-to-mind talk with a young Englishman who does not think much of Canada. He speaks of our dismal respectability, our tombstone virtues, and our provincial small-mindedness. We call our gardens yards, and have no manners to speak of. Indeed, nothing but a major operation could remedy our boorishness.
Now, all he says is quite true but I don't believe it; besides, his English-sure way of summing us up is irritating to my sense of patriotism.
In some places up here he has had to sleep in puppy's parlours, which means with his clothes on. This must have been uncomfortable in that he still wears leather puttees which are the true hall-mark of men from the British Isles. He talked about our cold winters and how unbearable they were, just as if the cold were not the sepia the North shoots forth to protect herself from joyous loafers. I did not say this, for one cannot be polite and patriotic at the same time, and it is well to be polite … only I remarked that one of these cold days we will shut off the Gulf Stream instead of sending it out to heat up England.
I have no doubt he has private means, for he has travelled widely and is a well-educated man. He came here to have a go at homesteading. "Have you succeeded?" I ask. He does not reply except to ejaculate, "Farming—my hat!" whereupon we both laugh, he at the Canadians and I at the English.
The average youth from England finds it trying to be stripped of precedent, and there is nothing approximating Canadian homestead life in London. We too often forget this and so fail to make allowances for his prejudices and lack of adaptability. Our government mounts him and puts his foot in the saddle, but he must set the pace himself. One can hardly expect the government to do more, but yet, it seems a pity so much excellent material is annually lost to the Dominion because we have not the time or means to work it up. It will take some years to manipulate the crude European immigrants into the mental and physical trim of this Britisher and to inculcate them with equally high political standards. We do not recognize this, or maintain an easy passivity to it, until at some election crises our hearts fail us for fear because of the preponderance of the foreign vote in educational and moral matters.
And the Englishman and I speak of subjects of grave import, and of how it is not seemly that we trade too freely with foreign peoples (especially with the States of the American Union), neither is it loyal to our most Christian King, George V. "Wealth at the expense of loyalty is not a thing to be desired," says the Englishman, "and Colonials do well to preserve the integrity of the Empire," to which dictum I make no reply, not being able to gainsay him. I could wish though that he tell me how we are to avoid so doing.
This dear lad would go into literary work if we read anything in Canada besides statistics, sporting news, and crop forecasts. In the contemplation of our sordid practicability, he is lost in astonishment. "No, madam, I shall not do it, and I shall tell you my reason," says he. "If you write with a sense of life or colour along will come some weighty, grim fellows whose business it is to write stock quotations—leaden creatures, believe me—and they will distinctly sniff and sneeze out the word 'impressionistic,' by which they mean fanciful. Sons of bats! If once they tried to frame an impression in black and white they might have some proper comprehension of the word. Any uncouth man can state facts, but it is the telling what the facts stand for that hurts. A coarse man cannot take impressions except from a closed fist, which impression he would probably describe as a 'dint in the pro-file.' Such an one hears no farther than his ears, although, in not a few cases, this might be no inconsiderable distance."
"No, I will not become the local littérateur," continues the lad, "to be received by the community with a mingling of pride and sarcasm. I tell you what I will do: it is better to be a real-estate broker, in that all conditions tend to what you Colonials call 'a dead sure thing.' It is the only business in which a man reaps where he does not sow. I will surely be a real-estate man. This I will be."
We are come to Edson now—the terminus of the passenger route—but I am going to describe it in another chapter, for it would be ungrateful to bulk it with other events because of the sense of adventure I enjoyed from my visit thereto.
CHAPTER II
A FRONTIER POST.
The new world which is the old.—TENNYSON.
Have I told you about Edson and its prospects? No! ah, well, never mind, I shall do so by and by, when I have talked to the citizens.
While biding my time for a seat at the lunch-counter, I will walk up and down the station platform. Every minute men are arriving to await the out-going train to the city. They come and come, apparently from nowhere, till there are quite a hundred of them. Of course, they really come from up the street (I should have said from the streets, for there are two, or, perhaps, three streets), having recently arrived from the grading camps somewhere up in the mountains. We are going there to-morrow, or maybe the next day, and then we shall see the habitat of these battling, brown-throated fellows who nose the stream of flesh-pots and feed on hunks of brawn.
The men philander about, or sit on the platform planks, and loll lazily against the sun-warmed wall. They count their money, smoke, and talk, but on the whole they are quiet. Also they stare at me like they were gargoyles and whisper the one to the other. This is not because of rudeness—not at all! Even the white armoured Sir Galahad would find it difficult to be knightly in the circumstances. For months they have done naught save stake out and measure up, shovel gravel, dig ditches, set transits, sweat and swear, for a railway, you may have heard, is built with heavier implements than batons, pens, or golfsticks. No woman has come near them except certain will-o'-the wisps whom the Mounted Police did straightway turn back to town. Their lives have been filled full of contest, hardship, and loneliness, so that every mother's son desires, above all else, that some woman (she may be either saint or sinner) put her hands upon him and tell him he is a truly fine fellow and worthy to be greatly loved. This is why they will give her all their money and not because they are of the earth very earthy.
Do you waggle your head at me! Do you? Then I care not a straw. It only means you do not comprehend the ways of men at our frontier