The builders of the big boat have had disasters which would have daunted any but the dogged Company of Fur-Traders.  Two land-slides threatened to slice off and carry into the river the partially-made boat, a fire burned up the blacksmith shop and with it all the imported doors, window-sashes and interior finishings, so that she sails to-morrow with carpenters still at work.  While the hull of this carefully modelled vessel is necessarily of light construction, with special steel to enable her to navigate safely the waters of the Mackenzie River, longitudinal strength has been adequately provided in the form of five lattice girders and by numerous hog-posts and ties, and the diagonal bracing of the bulkheads will provide ample transverse strength.  The bow also has been made especially strong to resist the impact of ice, snags, etc.  The hull is one hundred and twenty-five feet in length, twenty-six feet broad at the water-line, and five and one-third feet deep to the structural deck.  The strength and safety of the hull are increased by five water-tight compartments.  Propulsion is effected by a pair of modern stern paddle-wheel engines capable of being worked up to over two hundred and fifty horse power, giving her a speed of ten miles an hour.  She has stateroom accommodation for twenty-two passengers, draws three and a half feet of water aft, and eats up half a cord of wood an hour.  She will carry to the northern posts their trading-goods for the year.

Within a day’s ride of Fort Smith grazes a herd of four to five hundred wood bison, the last unconfined herd of buffalo in the world.  Doubtless the wood buffalo were originally buffalo of the plains.  Their wandering northward from the scoured and hunted prairies has not only saved them from extinction but has developed in them resistance and robust vitality.  These bison appear darker and larger than their pictured cousins of the past.  Probably the inner hair of these is finer and of thicker texture, a difference which the change of habitat to more northern latitudes would easily account for.  The bison have two enemies:  the grey wolf and the Indian, one an enemy in esse, the other in posse.  The Government of Canada has prohibited the killing of the buffalo, and my opinion is that this law, as all other Canadian laws, is obeyed in the North.  I questioned every one I talked with who lives on the rim of the buffalo-habitat, and the concensus of testimony of priests, H.B. men, settlers, traders, and Mounted Police, is that the Indians do not molest these animals.  The arch-enemy of the wood buffalo is the timber wolf.

[Illustration:  The World’s Last Buffalo]