Bringing in our daily treasure-trove of flowers we can scarcely realise that at Fort Smith we are in latitude 60 deg.  North, the northern boundary of the Province of Alberta and in the same latitude as St. Petersburg.  One day we gathered careopsis, pretty painted-cups, the dandelion in seed, shinleaf (Pyrola elliptica), our old friend yarrow, and golden-rod.  Another day brought to the blotting-pads great bunches of goldenrod, a pink anemone, harebells of a more delicate blue than we had ever seen before, the flower of the wolf-berry, fireweed, and ladies’-tresses.  The third day we identified the bear-berry or kinnikinic-tobacco (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi) with its astringent leaves, and that dear friend of lower latitudes and far-away days, the pink lady-slipper.  The last time we had seen it was in a school-room in far-off Vancouver Island where in early April the children had brought it in, drooping in their hot little fists.  This same evening, watching a night-hawk careering in mid-air by the rapids of the Slave and enjoying its easy grace in twisting and doubling as with hoarse cry it fell and rose again, we were fortunate in literally running to ground its nest.

[Illustration:  A Transport between Fort Smith and Smith’s Landing]

[Illustration:  Lord Strathcona, Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company]

Fort Smith, as places go in this country, is an infant in age, having been established only thirty-four years.  Resting on the edge of the high bank of the Slave, it enjoys an eternal outlook on those wonderful rapids.  The river here is a mile wide.  The sweep and eddy-wash of ages have cut out a deep bay, on the inner shore of which stand the buildings of The Company, the little Roman Church, the houses of the priests.  Back of the permanent structures rise, this glorious July day, the tepees of the Chipewyans, Slavis, and Dog-Ribs who have come in from the hunting-grounds for their treaty money.  Fort Smith struck us as being more “dead” than any northern post.  But it is on the verge of great things.  Mr. Brabant has announced that this place is to succeed Fort Simpson as headquarters for the Northern fur-trade, and his personality will soon send unction into the dry bones of the valley.

At the foot of the high hill looms a monument to the initiative and commercial enterprise of the H.B.  Company,—­a modern steamship in the waters of a wilderness-country.  Ours is to be the honor of making in her the initial journey to the Mackenzie mouth.  It is impossible coming from the South to navigate the Slave River rapids by steam.  Any boat ambitious to ply on the waters lying northward between Fort Smith and the Arctic must be either taken in in sections or built on the ground.  With enterprise and pluck, the Hudson’s Bay Company has just completed the construction at Fort Smith of the steamship, The Mackenzie River.  Its great boilers and engines made in far factories of the south came in over the Athabasca trail on sleighs in winter.  Down that whole distance of ninety miles of Athabascan rapids they floated on scows as we floated, and while human ingenuity is bringing north the iron bowels, skilful hands out of native timber are framing the staunch body to receive them.