"Think, every morning where the sun peeps through The dim, leaf-latticed windows of the grove, How jubilant the happy birds renew Their old, melodious madrigals of love! And when you think of this, remember too _'Tis always morning somewhere_, and above The awakening continents, from shore to shore, Somewhere the birds are singing evermore."
How do the people of Macpherson divide into day and night their largesse of light? By common consent four o'clock in the morning seems to be bedtime, and by four in the afternoon people are busying themselves with breakfast. _In Polar Circles, do as the Polars do_, is good advice, and we follow suit. Individuality is strongly marked at this metropolis on the Peel. Every one you meet is a mine of interest, and sharp contrasts present themselves. Mrs. Macdonald discusses fur and deer-meat with Jack Johnson. He is a trapper who plays the game alone and who last year was reduced to killing his favourite dog for food. Current report credits him with having "killed his man in the Yukon." Mrs. Macdonald is a Loucheux woman who, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, married Archdeacon Macdonald of the English Church and for eight long years afterwards assisted him in his life work of translating the Gospels into the Loucheux language. She has come all the way from Winnipeg to the Arctic Circle to spend the summer visiting her people. We lose our hearts to her two sons, splendid fellows both.
It is the Eskimo who brings both missionary and trader to Fort McPherson. Are these Eskimo, Christians? Are they _civilised_? These are the questions that confront us when we speak of these Farthest North Canadians. It is an age of classification. You cannot find a flower nowadays that some one has not tacked a Latin name to, and it goes by inverse ratio--the smaller the flower the longer the name. Every bird you hear sing, even though it stop but an hour to rest its tired pinion on its northern migration, has an invisible label pinned under its coat. How can a man, a tribe, a people, hope to escape? In the northeast of Canada the Eskimo is a disciple of the Moravian missionary. In Alaska, on the extreme northwest of the continent, the Greek Church takes him to its bosom. In between these two come the people we are studying. The Episcopalians through the years have made some sporadic attempt to influence these people, but so far as I know these Eskimo are not Episcopalians. What then must we call these splendid fellows so full of integrity and honour, whose every impulse is a generous one? Heathens? The question sets us thinking.