But Canada has a third dimension, a diameter that cuts through the Belt of Wheat and Belt of Fur, beginning south at the international boundary and ending where in his winter-igloo the Arctic Eskimo lives and loves after his kind and works out his own destiny.  This diameter we are to follow.  To what end?  Not, we hope, to come back like him who went from Dan to Beersheba to say “All is barren,” but to come near to the people, our fellow-Britons, in this transverse section of a country bigger than Europe.  We want to see what they are doing, these Trail-Blazers of Commerce, who, a last vedette, are holding the silent places, awaiting that multitude whose coming footsteps it takes no prophet to hear.

We will take the great waterways, our general direction being that of all the world-migrations.  Colonization in America has followed the trend of the great rivers, and it has ever been northward and westward,—­till you and I have to look southward and eastward for the graves of our ancestors.  The sons and grandsons of those who conquered the St. Lawrence and built on the Mississippi have since occupied the shores of the Red, the Assiniboine, and the Saskatchewan.  They are laying strong hands upon the Peace, and within a decade will be platting townships on the Athabasca, the Mackenzie, and the Slave.

There has always been a West.  For the Greeks there was Sicily; Carthage was the western outpost of Tyre; and young Roman patricians conquered Gaul and speculated in real estate on the sites of London and Liverpool.  But the West that we are entering upon is the Last West, the last unoccupied frontier under a white man’s sky.  When this is staked out, pioneering shall be no more, or Amundsen must find for us a dream-continent in Beaufort Sea.

Kipling speaks of “a route unspoiled of Cook’s,” and we have found it.  Going to the office of Thos.  Cook & Son, in Chicago, with a friend who had planned a Mediterranean tour, I gently said, “I wonder if you can give me information about a trip I am anxious to take this summer.”  The young man smiled and his tone was that which we accord to an indulged child, “I guess we can.  Cook & Son give information on most places.”  “Very well,” I said, “I want to go from Chicago to the Arctic by the Mackenzie River, returning home by the Peace and the Lesser Slave.  Can you tell me how long it will take, what it will cost, and how I make my connections?” He was game; he didn’t move an eyebrow, but went off to the secret recesses in the back office to consult “the main guy,” “the chief squeeze,” “the head push,” “the big noise.”  Back they came together with a frank laugh, “Well, Miss Cameron, I guess you’ve got us.  Cook’s have no schedule to the Arctic that way.”  They were able, however, to give accurate information as to how one should reach Hudson Bay, with modes of travel, dates, and approximate cost.  But this journey for another day.

Leaving Chicago one sizzling Sunday in mid-May, we (my niece and I) stop for a day to revel in bird and blossoms at Lake Minnetonka in Minnesota, then silently in the night cross the invisible parallel of 49 deg. where the eagle perches and makes amorous eyes at the beaver.