The bits of impedimenta look unfamiliar as we take our first inventory,
but we are to come to know them soon by their feel in the dark, to
estimate to an ounce the weight of each on many a lonely portage.

[Illustration: The Golden Fleece of Saskatchewan]

At seven in the morning the stage pulls up for us, and it rains--no
gentle sizzle-sozzle, but a sod-soaker, yea a gully-washer! The
accusing newness of those raincoats is to come off at once. Expansive
Kennedy looks askance at the tenderfoots who climb over his wheel. His
Majesty's Royal Mail Stage sifts through the town picking up the other
victims. We are two big stage-loads, our baggage marked for every point
between Edmonton and the Arctic Ocean. Every passenger but ourselves
looks forward to indefinite periods of expatriation in the silent
places. We alone are going for fun. Our one care is to keep those
precious cameras dry. This is the beginning of a camera nightmare which
lasts six months until we again reach Chicago.

And the fellow-passengers? Law is represented, and medicine, and the
all-powerful H.B. Co. With us is Mr. Angus Brabant going in on his
initial official trip in charge of H.B. interests in the whole Mackenzie
River District, and with him two cadets of The Company. On the seat
behind us sit a Frenchman reading a French novel, a man from Dakota, and
a third passenger complaining of a camera "which cost fifty pounds
sterling" that somehow has fallen by the way. Sergeant Anderson,
R.N.W.M.P., with his wife and two babies are in the other stage.

Kennedy, the driver, is a character. Driving in and out and covering on
this one trail twelve thousand miles every year, he is fairly soaked
with stories of the North and Northmen. The other stage is driven by