



Produced by Marcia Brooks, Ross Cooling and the Online
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  ON CANADA'S FRONTIER

  Sketches

  OF HISTORY, SPORT, AND ADVENTURE AND OF THE INDIANS, MISSIONARIES
  FUR-TRADERS, AND NEWER SETTLERS OF WESTERN CANADA

  BY

  JULIAN RALPH

  ILLUSTRATED

  [Illustration]

  NEW YORK

  HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE

  1892




  Copyright, 1892, by Harper & Brothers.

  _All rights reserved_.




  TO

  THE PEOPLE OF CANADA

  THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR WHO, DURING MANY LONG
  JOURNEYS IN THE CANADIAN WEST WAS ALWAYS AND EVERYWHERE TREATED WITH AN
  EXTREME FRIENDLINESS TO WHICH HE HERE TESTIFIES BUT WHICH HE CANNOT
  EASILY RETURN IN EQUAL MEASURE




  PREFACE


If all those into whose hands this book may fall were as well informed
upon the Dominion of Canada as are the people of the United States,
there would not be needed a word of explanation of the title of this
volume. Yet to those who might otherwise infer that what is here related
applies equally to all parts of Canada, it is necessary to explain that
the work deals solely with scenes and phases of life in the newer, and
mainly the western, parts of that country. The great English colony
which stirs the pages of more than two centuries of history has for its
capitals such proud and notable cities as Montreal, Quebec, Toronto,
Halifax, and many others, to distinguish the progressive civilization of
the region east of Lake Huron--the older provinces. But the Canada of
the geographies of to-day is a land of greater area than the United
States; it is, in fact, the "British America" of old. A great
trans-Canadian railway has joined the ambitious province of the Pacific
<DW72> to the provinces of old Canada with stitches of steel across the
Plains. There the same mixed surplusage of Europe that settled our own
West is elbowing the fur-trader and the Indian out of the way, and is
laying out farms far north, in the smiling Peace River district, where
it was only a little while ago supposed that there were but two seasons,
winter and late spring. It is with that new part of Canada, between the
ancient and well-populated provinces and the sturdy new cities of the
Pacific Coast, that this book deals. Some references to the North are
added in those chapters that treat of hunting and fishing and
fur-trading.

The chapters that compose this book originally formed a series of
papers which recorded journeys and studies made in Canada during the
past three years. The first one to be published was that which describes
a settler's colony in which a few titled foreigners took the lead; the
others were written so recently that they should possess the same
interest and value as if they here first met the public eye. What that
interest and value amount to is for the reader to judge, the author's
position being such that he may only call attention to the fact that he
had access to private papers and documents when he prepared the sketches
of the Hudson Bay Company, and that, in pursuing information about the
great province of British Columbia, he was not able to learn that a
serious and extended study of its resources had ever been made. The
principal studies and sketches were prepared for and published in
Harper's Magazine. The spirit in which they were written was solely that
of one who loves the open air and his fellow-men of every condition and
color, and who has had the good-fortune to witness in newer Canada
something of the old and almost departed life of the plainsmen and
woodsmen, and of the newer forces of nation-building on our continent.




  CONTENTS

                            PAGE

   I. Titled Pioneers          1

  II. Chartering a Nation     11

 III. A Famous Missionary     53

  IV. Antoine's Moose-yard    66

   V. Big Fishing            115

  VI. "A Skin for a Skin"    134

 VII. "Talking Musquash"     190

VIII. Canada's El Dorado     214

  IX. Dan Dunn's Outfit      290




 ILLUSTRATIONS

                                                            PAGE

  _The Romantic Adventure of Old Sun's Wife_        Frontispiece

  _Dr. Rudolph Meyer's Place on the Pipestone_                 2

  _Settler's Sod Cabin_                                        3

  _Whitewood, a Settlement on the Prairie_                     4

  _Interior of Sod Cabin on the Frontier_                      5

  _Prairie Sod Stable_                                         7

  _Trained Ox Team_                                            9

  _Indian Boys Running a Foot-race_                           31

  _Indian Mother and Boy_                                     36

  _Opening of the Soldier Clan Dance_                         39

  _Sketch in the Soldier Clan Dance_                          43

  _A Fantasy from the Pony War-dance_                         47

  _Throwing the Snow Snake_                                   51

  _Father Lacombe Heading the Indians_                        61

  _The Hotel--Last Sign of Civilisation_                      69

  _"Give me a light"_                                         73

  _Antoine, from Life_                                        79

  _The Portage Sleigh on a Lumber Road_                       83

  _The Track in the Winter Forest_                            87

  _Pierre from Life_                                          91

  _Antoine's Cabin_                                           93

  _The Camp at Night_                                         97

  _A Moose Bull Fight_                                       101

  _On the Moose Trail_                                       103

  _In sight of the Game--"Now Shoot"_                        105

  _Success_                                                  109

  _Hunting the Caribou--"