When a schoolboy takes to his bosom a _fidus Achates_, the first thing he does is to offer to show his birds' nests; so Miss Gordon introduces us to her find,--nests of the Gambel sparrow. We take two views, one of a nest of five eggs and another of the nesting mother.
During the past winter Miss Gordon has fed the Indians in families, as they had "made little fur," entertaining them as courteously as you would your special friends at an afternoon of pink tea and pink thoughts. Visiting the sick, trading fur, cultivating her little garden, bringing wolf pups and bear cubs up by hand, thus this plucky woman passes her days. It takes the adaptability and dour determination of a Scot to fit into this niche. Your Irishwoman would last in McMurray just about three days.
A new duty has been taken on by Miss Gordon,--the reading of the rain-gauge just installed by the Canadian Government. Slyly taking a peep into her records, we feel that they will have to be adjusted to the latitude of Ottawa when they get there, for with a true Northern contempt for fractions she has made all the decimals read as full fractions. The outside world which feasts on blue-books is apt in the future to be startled at the generous precipitation accorded Fort McMurray! Miss Gordon's ambitions run in other lines than the mathematical. Holding us by both hands as we bade good-by, she said, "Oh, that I were young again, I would learn, learn, learn. I would learn medicine so that I could help these poor creatures." Her tone of unselfish sincerity we carry with us as we make our way back to the scows, bearing with us, as token of good-will from the Gordon garden, radishes and lettuce for an evening salad.
Next morning we start bird-hunting on our own account, and get a pair of pictures as striking as those we have Miss Gordon to thank for--a Foxsparrow on the nest, then the baby sparrows but one day old. If any one thinks it easy to find and photograph birds' nests in the heart of the ancient wood on Athabascan banks in mosquito time he has "another guess coming." The mosquito here is not a joke, not a theorem, but a stinging entity. During the five days we are at Fort McMurray the potatoes in Miss Gordon's garden have grown as many inches, literally an inch a day. Wood violets, wild roses, false Solomon-seal, and the wild sarsaparilla are everywhere; the air is full of the scent of growing things.