Sad is the lot of the Indian woman of the North.  Fated always to play a secondary part in the family drama, it is hard to see what of pleasure life holds for her.  The birth of a girl baby is not attended with joy or thankfulness.  From the beginning the little one is pushed into the background.  The boy babies, even the dogs, have the choicer bed at night, and to them are given the best pieces of the meat.  The little girl is made to feel that she has come into a world that has no welcome for her and her whole life seems to be an apology.  You read it in the face of every Indian girl or woman you meet, from the shrinking pathetic little figure in the camp to the bent old crone, whose upturned face with its sadly acceptive look gives you the flicker of a smile.

Storm-stayed at Wrigley Harbour at the entrance to Great Slave Lake, we have some splendid fishing,—­jackfish, whitefish, loche, inconnu, “and here and there a lusty trout and here and there a grayling.”  Within an hour I get fifteen graylings to my own rod.  Collectively they weigh just a little over thirty pounds.  Swimming against the current, they take the fly eagerly; and one cannot hope to land a more gaudy or more gamy fish.  Its big dorsal fin is rainbow-tinct, the tail an iridescent blue, and the scales pure mother-of-pearl.  Mr. Keele has had “The Complete Angler” for two years with him in the fastnesses, and as he helps us prepare the catch for our evening meal over the coals, quotes blithely that the grayling is eating fit only for “anglers and other honest men.”

The traverse of Great Slave Lake in the teeth of a wind is not without its interest, for the new steamer has yet to be tried in the waters of what practically amounts to an open sea.  She behaves well, and brings us dry-shod into Fort Rae.

[Illustration:  The First Type-writer on Great Slave Lake]

We are the first white women who have penetrated to Fort Rae, and we afford as much interest to the Indians as they afford us.  Lone Fort Rae, clinging to the Northern Arm of Great Slave Lake, was noted in the past as a “meat-post.”  It supplied the Mackenzie District with dried caribou-meat, and formed an outfitting point for the few big game hunters who trended east from here into the Barren Grounds seeking the musk-ox.  Its foundation dates back to some time before the year 1820.  We cross a bridge of clever Indian construction and sit for a while to muse on a flat boulder of primal rock.  This stands as bell-tower to a quaint bell cast in Rome and bears an inscription to some dead and gone Pope.  The missionary priest over half a century ago paddled in here bringing the Gospel to the Dog-Ribs.

[Illustration:  The Bell at Fort Rae Mission]