“Jimminy Christmas!” interrupted the Boy, sitting up very straight.  “Is that Buffer you quoted a good authority?”

“First-rate,” Mac snapped out defiantly.

“Good Lord! then the Garden o’ Eden was up here.”

“Hey?”

“Course! This was the cradle o’ the human race.  Blow the Ganges!  Blow the Nile!  It was our Yukon that saw the first people, ’cause of course the first people lived in the first place got ready for ’em.”

“That don’t follow.  Read your Bible.”

“If I’m not right, how did it happen there were men here when the North was first discovered?”

“Sh!”

“Mac’s got the floor.”

“Shut up!”

But the Boy thumped the table with one hand and arraigned the schoolmaster with the other.

“Now, Mac, I put it to you as a man o’ science:  if the race had got a foothold in any other part o’ the world, what in Sam Hill could make ’em come up here?”

“We’re here.”

“Yes, tomfools after gold.  They never dreamed there was gold.  No, Sir_ee!_ the only thing on earth that could make men stay here, would be that they were born here, and didn’t know any better.  Don’t the primitive man cling to his home, no matter what kind o’ hole it is?  He’s afraid to leave it.  And these first men up here, why, it’s plain as day—­they just hung on, things gettin’ worse and worse, and colder and colder, and some said, as the old men we laugh at say at home, ’The climate ain’t what it was when I was a boy,’ and nobody believed ’em, but everybody began to dress warmer and eat fat, and—­”

“All that Buffon says is—­”

“Yes—­and they invented one thing after another to meet the new conditions—­kaiaks and bidarras and ivory-tipped harpoons”—­he was pouring out his new notions at the fastest express rate—­“and the animals that couldn’t stand it emigrated, and those that stayed behind got changed—­”

“Dry up.”

“One at a time.”

“Buffon—­”

“Yes, yes, Mac, and the hares got white, and the men, playin’ a losin’ game for centuries, got dull in their heads and stunted in their legs—­always cramped up in a kaiak like those fellas at St. Michael’s.  And, why, it’s clear as crystal—­they’re survivals!  The Esquimaux are the oldest race in the world.”

“Who’s makin’ this speech?”

“Order!”

“Order!”

“Well, see here:  do you admit it, Mac?  Don’t you see there were just a few enterprisin’ ones who cleared out, or, maybe, got carried away in a current, and found better countries and got rich and civilised, and became our forefathers?  Hey, boys, ain’t I right?”

“You sit down.”

“You’ll get chucked out.”

“Buffon—­”

Everybody was talking at once.

“Why, it goes on still,” the Boy roared above the din.  “People who stick at home, and are patient, and put up with things, they’re doomed.  But look at the fellas that come out o’ starvin’ attics and stinkin’ pigsties to America.  They live like lords, and they look at life like men.”