Gratitude seems an unknown feeling among these folk; you may give
presents and help and feed them all you like, the moment you want
a slight favour of them they demand the uttermost cent. In attempting
to analyse this I was confronted by the fact that among themselves
they are kind and hospitable, and at length discovered that their
attitude toward us is founded on the ideas that all white men are
very rich, that the Indian has made them so by allowing them to
come into this country, that the Indian is very poor because he
never was properly compensated, and that therefore all he can get
out of said white man is much less than the white man owes him.

As we rounded a point one day a Lynx appeared statuesque on a stranded
cake of ice, a hundred yards off, and gazed at the approaching
boats. True to their religion, the half-breeds seized their rifles,
the bullets whistled harmlessly about the "Peeshoo"--whereupon he
turned and walked calmly up the slope, stopping to look at each
fresh volley, but finally waved his stumpy tail and walked unharmed
over the ridge. Distance fifty yards.

On May 28 we reached Fort MacMurray.

Here I saw several interesting persons: Miss Christine Gordon, the
postmaster; Joe Bird, a half-breed with all the advanced ideas of
a progressive white man; and an American ex-patriot, G------, a
tall, raw-boned Yank from Illinois. He was a typical American of
the kind, that knows little of America and nothing of Europe; but
shrewd and successful in spite of these limitations. In appearance
he was not unlike Abraham Lincoln. He was a rabid American, and
why he stayed here was a question.