he Mercredi as he now signs
it.

Throughout the journals of the last forty years we run across such
entries as these:--"Wyllie at the forge," "Wyllie making nails," "Wyllie
straightening the fowling-pieces," "Wyllie making sled-runners," "This
day Wyllie made a coffin for an Indian." We step into the old man's
smithy, and he turns to greet us with an outstretched hand and a "Good
mornin'," in richest Doric. The date 1863 cut into the wooden foundation
of his forge marks the year when Wyllie came to Chipewyan. He was born
in the Orkneys, and had never seen a city in the Old World. Coming out
to America in a sailing vessel of The Company by way of Hudson Bay, he
threaded the inland waterway which brought him to Chipewyan without
seeing a city in America. Torontonians think the hub of the universe is
their capital on Lake Ontario. A smart young man from Toronto filtered
in one day to Chipewyan, and asked the old blacksmith, "Came from the
Old Country, didn't you? What did you think of Toronto?" "Naething, I
didna see the place."

Mr. Wyllie has never seen an electric light nor a railway train nor a
two-story building nor a telegraph wire nor a telephone. In the
forty-five years in which he has presided over this forge, the limits of
his wanderings have been McMurray on the south, Fort Smith on the north,
Fond du Lac on the east, the Chutes of the Peace on the west. To him
these are innocuous days of ease, in which we are falling into
luxuriousness with all its weakening influence. "It was much better in
the old days when we had only dried meat and fish-oil. Nowadays, when we
have flour and tinned meats and preserved fruits, all my teeth are
coming out!"

No one feels like smiling a smile of superiority in talking with old Mr.
Wyllie. He has taught himself the gentle arts of gunsmithing and
blacksmithing. The tools that we see all around us are marvels of
mechanical skill and would be the joy of a modern Arts and Crafts
Exhibition. His sledges and augurs, planes and chisels have been made by
the old man out of pig iron which came as ballast in the holds of those
old sailing ships which beat their way into Fort Churchill through
Hudson Strait. The hand-made tools are set into convenient handles of
moose-horn and bone. Clever indeed is the workmanship that Wyllie has
done with them. The last triumph from this unique forge was the welding
of the broken shaft of the little tug _Primrose_. The steamer _Grahame_
was built at