first
becomes aware of it. Where religion and decency have not been
faithfully inculcated there is no bound to it at all--it is complete.
Presently, as his superior intellectual inheritance begins to manifest
itself, as he grows up into consciousness that he is different from, and
in many ways superior to, the Indians around him, he is naturally drawn
to such white society as comes his way.

[Sidenote: THE LOW-DOWN WHITE]

In this book a good deal has been said, and, it may be thought by the
reader, said with a good deal of asperity, about the whites who frequent
Indian communities and come most into contact with the native people;
yet the more the author sees of this class, the less is he disposed to
modify any of the strictures he has put upon it. "The Low-Down White" is
the subject of one of the most powerful and scathing of Robert Service's
ballads, those most unequal productions with their mixture of strength
and feebleness, of true and forced notes, the best of which should
certainly live amongst the scant literature of the North. And, indeed,
the spectacle of the man of the higher race, with all the age-long
traditions and habits of civilisation behind him, descending below the
level of the savage, corrupting and debauching the savage and making
this corrupting and debauching the sole exercise of his more intelligent
and cultivated mind, is one that has aroused the disgust and indignation
of whites in all quarters of the world. Kipling and Conrad have drawn
him in the East; Robert Louis Stevenson in the South Sea Islands; any
army officer will draw him for you in the Philippines, which lack as yet
their great delineator; Service has not overdrawn him on the Yukon.

Now, it is to this man's society, for lack of other white society open
to him, that the young half-breed who feels his father's blood stirring
within him is drawn and is made welcome. He finds standards even lower,
because more sophisticated, than the standards of the Indians
themselves. He finds that honesty and morality are a sham, religion a
laughing-stock. He finds the chastity of women and the honour of men
sneeringly regarded as non-existent. He is taught to curse and swear, to
talk lewdly, to drink and gamble. He is taught that drunkenness and
sensuality are the only enjoyments worth looking forward to, and he soon
becomes as vile as his preceptors. The back room of the Indian trader's
store is often the scene of this tuition--barroom, assign