ing. The arrival of the Athabasca
traders was the signal for tremendous activity. An army returning from
victory could not have been received with greater acclaim. _Bourgeois_
and clerks tumbled promiscuously from every nook in the fort and rushing
half-dressed towards the gates shouted welcome to the men, who had come
from the outposts of the known world. They were a shaggy, ragged-looking
rabble, those traders from mountain fastnesses and the Arctic circle.
With long white hair, hatless some of them, with beards like oriental
patriarchs, and dressed entirely in skins of the chase, from fringed
coats to gorgeous moccasins, the unkempt monarchs of northern realms had
the imperious bearing of princes.

"Is it you, really you, looking as old as your great grandfather? By
Gad! So it is," came from one quondam friend.

"Powers above!" ejaculated another onlooker, "See that old Father
Abraham! It's Tait! As you live, it's Tait! And he only went to the
Athabasca ten years ago. He was thirty then, and now he's a hundred!"

"That's Wilson," says another. "Looks thin, doesn't he? Slim fare! He's
the only man from Great Slave Lake that escaped being a meal for the
Crees,--year of the famine; and they hadn't time to pick his bones!"

A running fire of such comments went along the spectators lining each
side of the path. There was a sad side to the clamorous welcomes and
handshakes and surprised recognitions. Had not these men gone north
young and full of hope, as I was going? Now, news of the feud with the
Hudson's Bay brought them out old before their time and more like the
natives with whom they had traded than the white race they had left.
Here and there, strong men would fall in each other's arms and embrace
like school-girls, covering their emotion with rounded oaths instead of
terms of endearment.

All day the confusion of unloading boats continued. The dull tread of
moccasined feet as Indians carried pack after pack from river bank to
the fort, was ceaseless. Faster than the clerks could sort the furs
great bundles were heaped on the floor. By noon, warehouses were crammed
from basement to attic. Ermine taken in mid-winter, when the fur was
spotlessly white, but for the jet tail-tip, otter cut so deftly scarcely
a tuft of fur had been wasted along the opened seam, silver fox, which
had made the fortune of some lucky hunter--these and other rare furs,
that were to minister to the luxury of kings, passed from tawny carrie