Hay River has never been explored.  It is supposed to head near the source of the Nelson and to flow northeast for three hundred miles before emptying, as we see it, into Great Slave Lake.  This river marks the limit of those grassy plains which extend at intervals all the way from Mexico northward.  Bishop Bompas, years ago, descended a long stretch of the river, discovering not far back from where we stand a majestic cataract, which he named the “Alexandra Falls” after the then Princess of Wales.  He describes it as a perpendicular fall one hundred feet high, five hundred feet wide, and of surpassing beauty.  “The amber colour of the falling water gives the appearance of golden tresses twined with pearls.”

Crossing Great Slave Lake, we think of Chant-la, Chief of the Slavis at Hay River.  Bishop Reeves was anxious to convert him to the Christian faith, but had great difficulty in giving Chant-la a proper conception of the Trinity.  The old man would not say he believed or understood what was inexplicable to him.  Setting out once on a long journey, the cleric adjured the Chief to struggle with the problem during his absence.  The Bishop returning, Chant-la came out in his canoe to meet him, eagerly reporting that all now was clear.  “It is like Great Slave Lake,” said the old man.  “It is all water now, just like the Father.  When winter comes it will be frozen over, but Great Slave Lake just the same; that is like the Son.  In the spring when the ice breaks and the rain makes the snow into slush, it is still Great Slave Lake; and that is like the Holy Ghost.”

Beyond Great Slave Lake, forty-five miles down the Mackenzie, we reach Fort Providence, as strongly French in its atmosphere as Hay River is British.  Our coming is a gala day.  The hamlet flies three flags, the free trader sports his own initials “H.N.,” the Hudson’s Bay Company loyally runs the Union Jack to the masthead, over the convent floats the tri-colour of France.  Fort Providence is hot.  We walk to the convent and are hospitably received by the nuns.  They call their Red flock together for us to inspect and show us marvellous handwork of silk embroidery on white deerskin.  The daintiest of dainty slippers calls forth the question, “Where are you going to find the Cinderella for these?” A blank look is my answer, for no one in Providence Convent has ever heard of Cinderella!  But then, convents are not supposed to be the repositories of man-knowledge (although a half-breed, on our passage across the lake, did whisper a romantic story of a Klondiker who assailed this very fortress and tried to carry off the prettiest nun of the north).  The garden of the Sisters is a bower of all the old-fashioned flowers—­hollyhocks, wall-flower, Canterbury bells, and sweet-William—­and down in the corner a young girl of the Dog-Ribs discovers to us a nest of fledgling chipping sparrows.