Timber along the Athabasca has suffered much from forest fires.  What we see is largely second growth,—­Banksian pine, fir, spruce, birch, and aspen.  The aspen is the first deciduous tree to leaf.  Tall, slender, delicate, its bole is clean as an organ-pipe and its terraced feathery branches seem to float in air.

Across the roaring water swallows are nesting in the clayey cliffs:—­

“This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven’s breath
Smells wooingly here:  no jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendant bed and procreant cradle: 
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed,
The air is delicate.”

We learn that half-breeds share the Scottish superstition that it is unlucky to disturb bank-swallows.

Others of the migrant host travel in upper air more quickly than we on water, and have left us far behind,—­swans, the Canada goose, great flocks of brant, waveys by the millions, followed by their cousins of the duck tribe,—­spoon-bill, canvas-back, mallard, pin-tail, ring-neck, wood duck, and merganser.  The geese will not stop until they have passed the Arctic Circle.  Why people use the word “goose” as synonym for stupidity is beyond the ken of the ordinary observer.  The text-books tell us tritely that the goose lives to be a hundred years.  If she does, she may exclaim with the Churchmen, “Yet are my years but labour and sorrow.”  The little chaps who have their birthday parties among sub-Arctic reeds are surrounded with enemies from the first day they crack their baby shells.  Lynx and raccoon prey upon them by land, eagles and owls swoop upon them as they swim; and as with one eye they scan the sky above them, a greedy pike is apt to snap their web-feet from under them and draw them to a watery grave.

The cadets of the Hudson’s Bay Company exchange courtesies with the Mounted Police, each considering himself a distinct cut above the other.  One Mounted Policeman, whose duty it had been to escort the crazed Russian Doukhobortsi on one of their “altogether” pilgrimages, is hailed across the circle, “Here, lend us your knife, you nursemaid to the Douks.”  “Who spoke?” yawned the Policeman.  “Was it that fur-pup of the Hudson’s Bay?” “Yes,” retorted the first, “and I’m glad I’m it; you couldn’t pay me to wear a red coat and say ‘Sir’ to a damned little Frenchman, even if you are going to blaze a trail to Hudson Bay.”

Some one asks Sergeant Joyce to tell his Bible story.  He says, “Oh, about Coal-Oil Johnnie!  It was the cub’s first year in the service, and he got off with some civilians and was drunk for a week.  When he was in the Guard Room awaiting court-martial he had lots of time ’to sit in clink, admirin’ ‘ow the world was made.’  Likewise he was very dry.  There was nothing for him to amuse himself with but a paper of pins.  He took the pillow of his cot and used the whole bunch