. Its current is about five or six
miles an hour. The less said about its colour the better. At
Athabasca Landing they use the water as a top-dressing for the land.

I get on well with Mr. O'Kelly because he does not mind answering
questions, and I am rather stupid and do not understand irony, a fact
now published for the first time.

Mr. Patrick O'Kelly started on "his own" thirty years ago in Manitoba.
His name isn't really O'Kelly, but in this country a name is neither
here nor there. He homesteaded one hundred and sixty statute acres,
but to be a farmer one had to possess a capacity for waiting and he
didn't possess it. After this, he became a prospector. Now, in
prospecting, a man does not have to wait: his money is always
discernible to the eye of faith. Mr. O'Kelly still holds his on this
unnegotiable, spiritualistic plane. In the meanwhile he is boss of a
big lumber camp over Prince Albert way. He used to be a captain on
this river, but he doesn't captain any more. Some of these days he
intends to take a wander back home. He hears that northern folk are
foreigners in the South. This last remark is made with a rising
inflection as if an answer were expected.

Who would have thought such a pathetic fear to be lurking under so
confident and so square-shouldered an exterior? I can see now why Mr.
O'Kelly finds it hard to get away. Without letting him know that his
secret is suspected, I try to explain how it is the northerners who
have changed. We pioneers talk of going home but we really never go
back--that is the person who went away. This may be equally true of
all migrants who go into a far country, whether it be Abraham who went
into Ur of Chaldea, or Reginald of Oxford who goes into Saskatchewan.

There are several scribes on board, and one of them, "a editor in human
form," gives us greeting and joins our company. He is a thin, straight
young fellow with a likeable face, but his hair is shockingly awry.

"So you are an editor," says Mr. O'Kelly. "Your unpeaceable tribe has
committed much damage in this country."

"What do you mean by calling us a tribe? I conceive that you are an
old fool and perhaps a liberal in politics. Although I am an editor,
and by no means proud, I consider myself to be much better than you."

"Young person! you mean you are no worse," answers Mr. O'Kelly, "but,
in faith, I meant no offence and I am not a liberal."

Being thus reassured, the editor proceeds