t to be a stagnation of ideas as well as of aspirations, which tends
more or less to develop the physical, and to stunt the spiritual, part
of our nature.

So thought MacSweenie as he sat one fine spring morning on a rude chair
of his own making in front of the outpost on Great Bear Lake which he
had helped to build.

The Scottish Highlander possessed a comparatively intellectual type of
mind. We cannot tell precisely the reach of his soul, but it was
certainly "above buttons." The chopping of the firewood, the providing
of food, the state of the weather, the prospects of the advancing
spring, and the retrospect of the long dreary winter that was just
vanishing from the scene, were not sufficient to appease his
intellectual appetite. They sufficed, indeed, for his square, solid,
easy-going, matter-of-fact interpreter, Donald Mowat; and for his chief
fisherman, guide, and bowman, Bartong, as well as for his other men, but
they failed to satisfy himself, and he longed with a great longing for
some congenial soul with whom he might hold sweet converse on something
a little higher than "buttons."

Besides being thus unfortunate in the matter of companionship, our
Highlander was not well off as to literature. He had, indeed, his
Bible, and, being a man of serious mind, he found it a great resource in
what was really neither more nor less than banishment from the world;
but as for light literature, his entire library consisted of a volume of
the voyages of Sir John Franklin, a few very old numbers of _Chambers's
Edinburgh Journal_, and one part of that pioneer of cheap literature,
_The Penny Magazine_. But poor MacSweenie was not satisfied to merely
imbibe knowledge; he wished also to discuss it; to philosophise and to
ring the changes on it.

He occasionally tried his hand on Mowat, who was undoubtedly the most
advanced of his staff intellectually, but the results were not
encouraging. Donald was good-natured, amiable, ready to listen and to
accord unquestioning belief, but, not having at that time risen above
"buttons," he was scarcely more able to discuss than an average
lamp-post.

Occupying the position of a sort of foreman, or confidential clerk, the
interpreter had frequent occasion to consult his superior on the details
of the establishment and trade.

"I'm thinking, sir," said he, approaching his master on the spring
morning in question, "that we may as well give the boat an overhaul, for
if this weathe