He gained a smattering of the Cree, so as to make himself understood at a pinch. For instance, he and Susa, Samson's brother, were once camped in the woods near Pigeon Lake. When retiring for the night, Mr. Woolsey wanted to arrange an early start next morning, and spoke thus: "Susa, ke-yah ne-yah wa-buh-ke we-butch a-wass," (You me to-morrow soon get out); and Susa understood, and acted accordingly.
Like my father, Mr. Woolsey never presumed on a knowledge of the language, never gave the shortest or simplest kind of an address or sermon without an interpreter, never made the too frequent mistake of attempting to speak of sacred and important matters in an unknown tongue. He was considerable of a medicine man, too, and many a poor Indian was relieved and aided by his hearty help in this way. Among the Hudson's Bay Company's employees he had quite a name as a kind physician.
I have been Mr. Woolsey's interpreter, guide, and general "roust-about," his confidante and friend, for the past two years, and now he has gone into a far country; and as I look upon the valley, the scene of our association under strange and sometimes exciting circumstances, I feel a twinge of melancholy. But here are mother and sisters four, and little brother, and the evening passes quickly as we recount to each other the experiences of the summer.
The next day I started back with some fresh horses, and met our party coming along famously. For picking a road Peter is a genius, and all hands worked willingly in chopping out the road, brushing swamps, and bridging creeks. Late in the evening of the next day we rolled down the hill into the beautiful valley of the Saskatchewan at Victoria, ours the first carts to ascend the north side of that great river so far west as this point. Slowly the star of empire was moving in the line of destiny.
Fifty-six travelling days from Fort Garry--stock all right, carts sound, goods dry, and twenty-five pounds of flour still left in the bag we began on when we left the Red River settlements--such was our record, and father was pleased; and because he was pleased I was happy. I took the flour in to mother, and she and the children and Larsen luxuriated in hot rolls for supper. We unloaded the four sacks I had brought with me, and everybody felt good, for this seemed to us a great quantity at the time; though really, for our large party, taking into consideration, too, the fact that our house was the only one for miles, and that the Hudson's Bay Company officers and men, and brother missionaries, as well as occasional travellers and fur traders, stopped with us as they passed to and fro; that sometimes we had from five hundred to fifteen hundred Indians beside us, and more or less coming and going all the time, with many sick among these,--I say, when one thought of all this, the item of four hundred and nine pounds of flour for twelve months did not seem much. It was, however, the first time in the history of the place and vast surrounding country that so much breadstuff had been stored. Why, when you arithmetically calculated it, there was actually one and one-quarter pounds per day! No wonder mother saw a Christmas pudding, and no end of cake for the many sick folks to whom she so much delighted to minister. No wonder my sisters laughed, and the little baby brother gleefully shouted, "Cake! plenty cake!" If some of the pampered among men in centres of civilization, jaded with the ennui of plenty, had visited that lone mission on the evening of our arrival, they would have learned a lesson in the luxury of happiness that comes from contentment with little.