The Three Rivers--the Athabasca, the Slave,
and the Mackenzie, all joining in one great two-thousand-mile
waterway to the northern sea--were athrill with the wild impulse
and beat of life as the forest people lived it. The Great Father
had sent in his treaty money, and Cree song and Chipewyan chant
joined the age-old melodies of French and half-breed. Countless
canoes drove past the slower and mightier scow brigades; huge York
boats with two rows of oars heaved up and down like the ancient
galleys of Rome; tightly woven cribs of timber, and giant rafts
made tip of many cribs were ready for their long drift into a
timberless country. On this two-thousand-mile waterway a world had
gathered. It was the Nile of the northland, and each post and
gathering place along its length was turned into a metropolis,
half savage, archaic, splendid with the strength of red blood,
clear eyes, and souls that read the word of God in wind and tree.
And up and down this mighty waterway of wilderness trade ran the
whispering spirit of song, like the voice of a mighty god heard
under the stars and in the winds.
But it was an hour ago that David Carrigan had vividly pictured
these things to himself close to the big river, and many things
may happen in the sixty minutes that follow any given minute in a
man's life.
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