Chapter V: Part 5

"Long ago," he said, "when I was a boy, our family were living very happily in what was then one of the best parts of old Edinburgh. My father was a man of substance and gave us all a good schooling and a trade. Of my mother I shall only say that she was to me the most wonderful and the most beautiful woman in the world. I had a twin brother John and we were very much alike in appearance. When we were fourteen years old our mother died. We mourned as only boys of that age can mourn, with deep grief too poignant for words. Within three years father married again. Our stepmother was an excellent woman and kind to us, and I know now my father did right. But we couldn't bear to have anyone else in our own mother's place. Loyal in our love to her we grew embittered towards our father. There were no "words," but when about seventeen years old we ran away from home, tramped south to London, and there, being Edinburgh tradesmen, soon found work. A year or so and then we got an inkling that father had traced us. Determined not to go back we enlisted in the Rifle Brigade and to hide our identity gave our names as John and George McDonald, our mother's maiden name. You see where our hearts were. Within the year our unit left for Canada, and we had been in barracks at Halifax, Nova Scotia, only a few months when we were paraded one day before the commanding officer, Col. Lawrence. He took us into his own room and there he spoke to us as a friend. He had received a letter eloquent with a father's love for his two wandering laddies. Father had traced us by our Christian names, and our likeness to each other. I think, too, the name McDonald, which we thought would baffle him, only made him more certain. Col. Lawrence read the letter aloud to us, and it moved us deeply. Money enough was enclosed to buy our discharge and pay our passage home. The officer urged us to return. At first we were inclined to yield, but some dour devil of bitterness took control of our hearts and we said we would not go, would accept no money, and wished to have no further communication with our father. Such was the unrelenting reply the colonel would have to send back to Edinburgh. How many, many times has remorse punished me for that unkind decision. Yet we blindly thought that love and loyalty to the mother we had lost made it right that we should turn our backs on our father's outstretched arms. We never heard from him again, and we have lost all trace of our relatives in Scotland.

"You can easily construct the rest of my story. After serving some years more we left the army for a time. I was married to your mother, Mary Cowan, at Murray Harbor South, Prince Edward Island. Shortly after we re-enlisted under our army name in the Royal Canadian Rifles, then a newly organized regiment, with which I served until I finally gave up the soldier life, and settled in Galt under my right name. My service was sufficient to get me a medal and a pension. The pension comes addressed as you have seen, and the medal is similarly inscribed. It is the regimental number that identifies me and the money and medal are rightfully mine. But a thousand pensions can never ease my heart of regrets for the suffering we needlessly inflicted on our father who loved us and whom we loved."

* * * * *

This was the homely story told in my father's words to those kiltie lads that summer afternoon under the apple trees in an alien land. They listened and understood, for every true Scottish heart responds to these stories of our own folk and our homeland.

From the lone shieling of the misty island
Mountains divide them, and a waste of seas,
But still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland,
And they in dreams behold the Hebrides.

And it's all the same whether they are from the east coast or the west, the Highlands, or the Islands, or the Borders, city or country-born, the Scot never knows the place Scotland has in his affections until he becomes an exile.

I slipped away after saying farewell, and, with my faithful henchman Macpherson, climbed up on a waiting lorry and was off down the dusty road towards Boulogne, homesick for the men I left behind me.

SEQUEL

It was my privilege to spend the winter of 1919-20 in Edinburgh taking lectures at New College, a glorious year. I had searched the city for traces of my father's people without success, and had almost given up hopes of ever finding them. One day early in the session I was standing in the Common Hall of the college chatting with other students, when one of them named Scott asked me if he might enquire why my father went to Canada, for I had been saying he came from Edinburgh. I gave him a few details and he seemed much interested. Further explanations and his eyes lighted up with excitement. I soon found what caused it. Several eager questions and answers back and forth and I knew that one of my great ambitions had been realized. I had found one of the old Edinburgh Pringles from whom we had been estranged so many years. His mother was a Pringle, the daughter of an older brother of my father's. It was one of the supreme occasions of my life. In our hand-clasp in that college hall under the shadow of the Castle, the separation of nearly a century was ended. Some of you can guess how deeply I was stirred. Fancy or fact, I was certain he had my father's voice and eyes. We opened our hearts to each other and it was pleasant talk. I had reason to be proud of my new-found cousin. He was then assistant-minister in one of the noblest of Edinburgh's many fine churches, "Chalmer's Territorial United Free," commonly called "The West Port." My first sermon in my father's city was preached from his pulpit, and in it I could not forbear telling the congregation of the strange and happy meeting with their minister.

_XIII._

_Last Chance_

For three months in the fall of 1918 I served with the 1st Canadian Tanks. Canada had two tank battalions organized late in the war. Neither of them had the good fortune to get to France. The first was composed of volunteer recruits drawn largely from the Universities of Ontario and Quebec, and they were a remarkably keen lot of soldiers. Quite a number of the officers belonged to the faculties of these colleges and many of the men were graduates or undergraduates.

After arrival from Canada they were under canvas for a week or two at Rhyll in Wales, but soon moved into permanent quarters on the Bovington farm in Dorset county. Bovington was a great tank camp. A number of Imperial tank units along with ours were located there for training, with large machine-shops and many auxiliary units. The country immediately around the huts swarmed with soldiers and "herds" of noisy tanks.

I joined the battalion for duty about mid-August and stayed with them until after the Armistice. Those were very happy weeks. Everyone was good to me. Besides I had just come from the turmoil of France, and the quaint, quiet, pastoral beauty of Dorset seemed a haven of peace. I had pleasant times in camp. Then there were exhilarating walks to take with my good friends, Somerville, Smith, Macfarlane, Bobbie Kerr and others, over the downs through miles of purple heather, and along deep hedge-lined country roads to some old-fashioned thatch-roofed village, where we would have tea and a rest before returning. Or of a morning we would walk down the six miles to Lulworth Cove on the coast, three miles of our journey between hedges of giant rhododendron, with the limbs of oak, pine and beech trees forming a leafy arch over our heads. At the Cove hotel we would enjoy one of their famous boiled-lobster dinners, with potatoes, water-cress and lettuce, and a rice-custard dessert. Dorset, too, is a country filled with stirring, historic association recalling frequent battles fought against sea-borne invaders, and many also were the smugglers' stories we heard of this shore so near to France and so filled with coves and caves. There is romance as well as adventure. Thomas Hardy found inspiration in the Dorset folklore for his masterpiece, "Tess of the D'Urbervilles." The most imposing castle-ruin I have seen is there, Corfe Castle, visible for miles against the sky. It recalls fierce attack and prolonged siege in the days of Cavalier and Roundhead.

By the beginning of November the battalion was through its training, taking in its written examinations the highest marks in the camp. Soon after came the eagerly-awaited order to mobilize for France. In a few days we had our lorries parked, our kits ready, our fighting "colors" up on our tunics, and our final letters from England sent off home. The day was set, I think Nov. 14th, for our embarkation at a channel port for France.

They would have done great deeds in battle these fine bright lads, but they were not to be given the opportunity. Nov. 11th, 1918, was a dismal day for the Canadian Tank Corps. At eleven o'clock the order, "Cease fire," sounded along our whole line in France and the Armistice emerged into history, blasting their hopes of active service. On a Sunday following I had to preach a sermon of rejoicing to the battalion. It was a parade service so that I had a congregation of 900 men who gave me a perfect hearing, but all the same the sermon was a failure. I knew it would be even if I had been eloquent, and in my heart I was glad that these Canadian boys could not rejoice with me. They were disgusted with their fate. Another day or two and they would have got to France, and that would have been something, even if they hadn't been fortunate enough to get into battle.

From their standpoint it was no occasion for hilarity. They fired no guns, they beat no drums, and generally were a very gloomy-looking lot of fellows. I am enough of a barbarian to like them all the better for it. Later in the week I tried to relieve the situation a little for some of them by telling in the rest-hut one evening what I knew of the naming of one of the famous Klondike creeks.

* * * * *

There is a well-known creek in the North called Last Chance and I shall try to tell you something of its story. It may help you to feel that while you missed the real fighting in France there's still lots of chance of adventure in life for you all. Last Chance is a tributary of Hunker Creek, fifteen miles in the hills back of Dawson. In the rush days a road-house was put up there and named after the creek. Later it was assumed that the creek had got its name from the road-house, and this had been so named because it was the "last chance to get a drink" outward bound on that trail. But here's the real story.

"Old Yank" was the man who gave the creek its name. He was a gambler of that kind who go out into the wilds among giant mountain-peaks, and in far-off, unnamed valleys alone with their pick-axe, shovel, and gold-pan stake their lives on the chance that there is gold in rock or gravel. Who can quarrel with such gambling? There are no marked cards in that game. If they win they win clean, and if they lose, well they've lived a glorious, free life filled with health, hope, and work without a master, and the companionship of a few choice friends.

The old man had come to the time when he knew that shortly his prospecting days would be ended. Then he would land in some Old Man's Home unless he could make a clean-up soon and have enough to save him from that baleful finish. He had made several "stakes" when he was younger in the southern mountains, but he had either thrown his wealth away in the purchase or development of worthless claims, on further prospecting expeditions, or had lost it in a gold camp where he had been fleeced by some of the various kinds of human vultures which always flocked to the gold-diggings, when they proved rich, to prey upon the miners.

He told me a story of how once in the early days in the Caribou he was sitting in a card game with a number of strangers. He had lost half his spring clean-up to them when the police raided the road-house and took them all "in" to stand trial before Judge Begbie. Begbie was a man noted for his swift, stern methods and his keen penetration in court. He didn't interfere with what he called "square" card gambling among a group of miners, but he was a terror to the professional card-sharper. Next day every man pleaded that he was a working miner and had just come in from the hills. Where all were dressed alike in rough clothes it seemed impossible to decide who were telling the truth. Begbie never hesitated. "Show me the palms of your hands," he said, and the constable made them line up with their hands held up, palms out. The judge inspected them rapidly, ordered two men detained and dismissed the others. Those released had callouses on their hands that you can get only by the use of pick and shovel. The two detained, questioned, and sent to penitentiary in New Westminster were soft-handed.

When I first met Yank the sinews of his right hand were so drawn up and stiffened by the jar of the pick through years of work that he could not open his hand. The way he got his fingers around the pick-handle was by shoving the end of it in with his left hand through the curve of thumb and forefinger on his right.

He was busy prospecting in a valley near the Klondike at the time those wonderful gold-fields were discovered. He was only a divide or two away. A squaw-man passing with three Indians on his way to the mouth of the Klondike to fish salmon had stopped a day with him. He advised the man to "pan" here and there, where there was rim-rock showing, as they went along in the creek-bottoms. He himself was getting light prospects and it might be better closer in to the Klondike basin. He asked and was promised that, if they struck anything good, one of them would come back and let him know. They followed his advice and found rich pay on Rabbit Creek, but they failed to keep their promise to the old man whose advice had so enriched them. Yank never knew of the Klondike stampede, until the next year when two strangers, who had got lost, wandered into his valley and told him the amazing news. He put on his pack and left forthwith but he was too late. Hundreds of men from Stewart and Forty-Mile were now located on the best ground and the stream of stampeding "cheechacos" from the outside world was already commencing to flood in. There was nothing left that he thought worth staking. He crossed the ridge from Rabbit Creek, (now called Bonanza), with a heavy heart, heading back to his lonely cabin. Off the divide he came into a narrow gulch which he followed. It widened into a good-sized valley. He was surprised as he went along to see neither cabins nor claim-stakes. He travelled its whole length indeed and found none. Although right in the rich region it had been overlooked. When he got to the mouth of the gulch he saw why, in those first days of hurried staking it had been left untouched, for the valley narrowed into a very small opening where it entered the larger Hunker creek. The stampeders passing up and down Hunker would rarely see the scarcely noticeable break in the hills hidden by the trees, or if they saw it would not think it worth exploring. He lost no time in going back up the creek to the wider part. There he put down a hole near the rim where it was only a few feet to bed-rock and found excellent prospects. He now set about staking Discovery claim. With his axe he cut, about five feet from the ground, a smooth four-inch face on four sides of a small tree in the centre of the valley, and then pencilled on the down-stream side this inscription, "No. 1 Post. Discovery claim. I, Joe. Chronister, claim fifteen hundred feet down-stream, and from base to base, for placer mining purposes," signed his name with date and hour, and the number of his miner's certificate. Then he stepped off five hundred paces roughly downstream through the brush and then "blazed" his second tree as before, marking it, "No. 2 Post, Discovery claim," and writing as on No. 1, with "down-stream" changed to "up-stream."

He camped that night on his claim, and before he lay down on his spruce-bough bed to sleep, he sat awhile by the dying fire dreaming old dreams again. Perhaps this time it would be very rich; it prospected fine but "prospects" were only prospects. "Well," he mused, "old-timer, you're near the end of the game. If there's nothing good under the muck here it will be 'over the hill to the poorhouse' for you. It's your last chance, last chance."

It was with this thought running through his mind that next day he entered the recording office in Dawson, with his good friend the stalwart Capt. Jim McLeod at his side to see that he got square treatment, and recorded discovery on his creek which was named on the government records, "Last Chance," at his request.

It is good to know that Yank's claim was rich. Providence had been kind to the old man. He saved his clean-ups and lived in comfort the rest of his days in a snug log-cabin in Dawson, near the wild waters of the turbulent Klondike, where they rush into the depths of the mighty Yukon.

_XIV._

_A Moose Hunt_

It was my good fortune to be in London on "leave" the day the Armistice was signed. At 11 o'clock in the morning the multitude of giant "siren" whistles, used for warning the approach of enemy air-craft, broke into a wild chorus of deafening howls, and Londoners knew that Germany, the aggressor, had accepted the lowly seat of the vanquished. The sounds of public rejoicing commenced immediately and by the late afternoon the celebration was in full swing. It was a celebration in which I could not be content with a spectator's part. I entered into it with all my heart. The whole outburst, for the first day at least, was the spontaneous and natural expression of joy at a glad release from the curse of war, which had lain heavily upon the Old Land for four long, black, bitter years.

I then started out early in the evening, mingling with the immense crowds down Southampton Row and Kingsway to the Strand, along to Trafalgar Square, then up to Piccadilly, and home after midnight by way of Regent and Oxford Streets. All those great thoroughfares and squares were filled from side to side with whirlpools of people. Everywhere were groups of dancers or singers, all sorts of foolish processions big and little, all sorts of bands, noisemakers and fireworks. Workmen standing on ladders, surrounded by thousands of madly cheering observers, were taking the light-shields off the street-lamps. This meant that London streets would be lighted for the first time since 1914. In the immense moving crowds huge circles would form as if by magic, then everyone in it, all strangers to one another, would join hands and dance up and down, and in and out, to some old song. I got into one of these happy groups by chance in front of Nelson's monument in Trafalgar Square, where we all danced up to the centre and back singing, "Here we go gathering nuts in May," and then commenced to circle round to the chorus of "Ring-a-ring-a-rosy." We were just like a throng of happy children at a picnic. Then the formation dissolved, and its members disappeared into the singing, shouting, noisy crowds.

I fell in with an English officer, and he and I joined forces with an English bugler wearing an Australian soldier's hat. He had lost his own cap and had picked this one up somewhere. We three marched along arm-in-arm; the bugler would blow a call, then pass the bugle to us and we would each make some hideous noises upon it. I had my Cameron glengarry on and as we crushed along with the crowd, every now and then, out of the clamor, I could hear voices calling to me, "Well done, Jock," "Good old Scotty." Don't think we were at all conspicuous, for nearly everyone was doing things quite as foolish. We felt compelled to shout, cheer, sing, or do something to express our overflowing joy that the war was past at long last. These people of the Old Country knew the deep tragedy, the terrible heart-breaking, nerve-racking strain of the war as Canada could not know it. "It was meet that they should make merry and be glad." I saw practically no drinking nor roughness. It was a remarkable demonstration free, that night, from all the artificiality of pre-arrangement.

Next day I attended the Thanksgiving Service at St. Paul's Cathedral. The King and Queen were there and many personages of note, but it was common folk who filled the vast building and crowded the streets for blocks around. There was no sermon. There could not have been any sermon or preacher adequate to such an occasion. The fortieth chapter of Isaiah was read, and how mystically and beautifully it expressed our thoughts, short prayers were said, and then the people stood up to sing, led by a great military massed band and the Cathedral organ. The instrumental music alone was enough to thrill one's soul, but when those thousands joined, with heart and voice, in melodious thanksgiving to God for release from the abundant travail of the bitter years, filling the glorious old temple full with a glad tumultuous harmony, the effect was indescribable. Hundreds were so moved they could find no voice for song, and could only lift their faces to heaven with tears of joy running down their cheeks. In all the history of the Empire there never was a moment when the whole British people were so stirred and held by such high and tense emotion. The glad, loud song of thankfulness had also the minor note vibrant with sorrow, there was the echo of a sob in it. This great nation, rejoicing in righteous victory, kept sad and sacred memories of her million slain.

While in London for these few wonderful days I stayed at the West Central Hotel, and there, one afternoon later in the week, I was delighted to meet an old "tillicum" of the trails, Tom Patton. For three rare days we companied together and talked about old friends and other days. We revelled in memories of the glorious years we spent together in the far-off northland. In imagination we travelled again many a well-known mile, and memorable experiences we had in common were recalled. I was sorry when the last day of my leave came, for Patton was one of the very best of my old Yukon friends and "there are no friends like the old friends after all." That last evening three other old Klondikers, whom we had discovered in London, foregathered with us in my room and enjoyed a Yukon evening. There were many interesting stories told that night. Each had his own contribution, and there were some yarns in whose spinning we all lent a hand. There was one in which Patton and I had equal share, one I had often told to my comrades in France to while away a weary hour. It described a hunting trip up the Yukon river he and I took one fall to get some wild-fowl. We ran on bigger game and that is why I call it a Moose Hunt.

* * * * *

In 1906, late in the autumn, when every night brought sharp frost, and fish and fowl were heading for the sea and the south to escape the icy-fingers of on-coming winter, Patton and I planned a fortnight's holiday up the Yukon to shoot ducks.

We hired a rowboat at Dawson, and put it aboard a river steamboat on which we had taken passage up-stream about a hundred miles to the mouth of White River. There the steamer slowed up enough to let us launch our boat and get into it with our outfit, leaving us then on the great river to our own devices.

We decided to make camp immediately for it was getting on in the day. So we pulled across to the left bank, tied up our boat, and commenced to look about us. I noticed a well-marked trail in the brush which I followed for a few yards and came on a cabin. I knocked at the door and it was quickly opened by the occupant. I told him who I was and he asked me in. The place was dark, dirty, and smelly, nor was I taken with the man's personal appearance, for his hair was long and tangled, and his face almost hidden by an untrimmed beard. His welcome was genuine, however, and when I grew accustomed to the dim candle-light I noticed that he had clear, kindly eyes. He was glad to see me. I was his first visitor in three months. He had staked some gold-bearing rock, and there he had lived alone for a year trying to uncover it enough to prove it a real ledge, and to prospect it sufficiently so that he might interest "capital" in it. He had absolute faith in the value of his find, talking with assurance of the day when he would sell it for thousands.

I informed him that I had a partner and called to Patton who came along. We told him what we were out for. He advised us to stay the night there, and in the early morning we would be sure to get some sport in the marshes, ponds, and slack-water where the White joins the Yukon. He wouldn't hear of us making camp for ourselves, and we had to accept his hospitality. He was very lonely, he said, and it did him a whole lot of good to see us and have some talk.

Late in the afternoon we went out to examine the ground and arrange our morning shoot. We heard a strange noise coming from beyond the distant northern skyline of the river valley. It sounded like the far-off cackling of barn-yard geese. Soon the source of it appeared in the north. It was the advance guard of a great flight of sandhill cranes on their journey to the south coast. They are toothsome birds, about the size of a small turkey but standing higher. They are very shy and it is all but impossible to get them within range of a shot-gun. I am not exaggerating when I say that they flew for two hours in a continuous, clamorous stream of arrow-shaped formations from our northern horizon, until they disappeared from view over the southern hills. There were thousands of them in that one contingent.

The old-timer, "Alabama Bill" he was called, served for supper that night a meat-stew composed of porcupine, moose-meat and other things. I ate my share and kept it. Patton is more sensitive that way than I am, and on this occasion he proved traitor to the good old British maxim, "What we have, we hold." I don't blame him. One had need of keen appetite and strong digestion to enjoy and profit by that mysterious mixture. "Alabama" made us talk far on into the morning, but at last we rolled into our bunks. We slept uneasily for various causes, and were glad to get out in the early morning to be ready in position for daylight and our birds.

To make a long story short, we had good luck the next ten days as we floated downstream towards Dawson, tying up and camping when and where we wished, and hunting in likely places. The sloughs and little lakes were alive with ducks and geese, and we had our boat half-full of them before we reached Indian river. From that point it was an easy day's run to Dawson.

We made camp on the shore at Indian in the afternoon, and went back into the thick woods on the extensive flats behind us to explore. We came on a pond and got a few more ducks. This pond was peculiar in that at one side a trail led down to it, and the shore was trampled as if herds of cattle were accustomed to water there. It was a "moose-lick," a place to which for years, at certain seasons, the moose came at night from miles around, because the water and soil had in them some salty substance which they liked or needed.

We weren't hunting big game and so had brought only one rifle for emergencies, but here was a chance right under our noses that we couldn't pass, although we knew it was rather late in the season for moose to visit the lick. At the edge of the pond we picked a good-sized tree that we could climb and find secure footing in. Then we went back the half-mile to the shore and had supper.

When it grew dark we went out to our tree and climbed up in it, to watch for the possible coming of the moose. For four long, miserably cold hours we clung to our perch. It was pitch dark and absolutely silent, save for the dull murmur of the Yukon, and the "plunk, plunk" of some little diving duck at long intervals in the pond. Half-a-dozen times we were inclined to abandon our vigil, but one encouraged the other and we hung on. About midnight we were rewarded by hearing, through the darkness, a sound like the breaking of a branch away on the mountain slope. It startled us, coming on us out of the night when we were tense with prolonged listening to unbroken silence. Soon there was no mistaking the approach of the monarch of the woods. It seemed as if some great boulder were crashing down the hillside through the trees. Every now and then there would be a minute of complete stillness, and we could imagine him standing, with lordly, lifted head and wide-branching antlers, listening and sniffing the air for strange noises or smells. He seemed satisfied that no danger lurked in the woods, for he came straight across from the foot of the mountain. At last by the noise we knew he was nearing our tree. Nearer he came and very near, leisurely now, probably feeding. In the dense darkness we could see nothing of him as yet until we heard something scrape against our tree. Looking down with straining eyes, I marked his dark, slowly-moving outline in the brush. I could have dropped on the animal's back had I been so minded. The proverbial "salt" might easily have been placed on his tail. The time for action had come. I had the rifle. In the darkness I couldn't see the barrel, so real aiming was impossible, but the moose was that near I felt I couldn't miss him anyway. I fired where I judged his shoulder should be. I regret to tell you that the flame of the gun showed that the bullet had gone an inch over his back, and I had missed him altogether! My left arm was around a limb and so the second shot was a trifle slow, but after the first, it seemed as if the moose jumped into the air, turned, and was fifty feet away in the timber on his back-trail when he lit! We heard him going at head-long speed and fired at the noise, but he went on until the sound died away in the distance.

We crawled down to the ground, stiff with cold, and dumb with disappointment. I knew it was a complete miss, but "hope springs eternal in the human breast," and we lighted matches and searched the ground and leaves for bloodstains. We searched his trail thus for twenty yards, then gave up, went back to camp and under our blankets. Patton was very decent about it. He knew how I felt. Once only did he make reference to my failure. The next day we were nearing Dawson, where our friends would come and inspect our "bag," when he said, "Well, George, wouldn't it be pleasant to pull into Dawson with a fine moose lying between us in the boat?" "Don't say another word, Tom," I replied, "or I'll burst into tears!"

I felt my almost inexcusable failure very keenly, for I made three separate trips, alone, to Indian river, and hunted there persistently, and very uncomfortably too, for that moose, but he never gave me another chance.

_XV._

_An Old Prospector_

The good ship _Araguaya_ of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Line was under commission during the war as a Canadian hospital ship on the North Atlantic. She and her sister ship the _Essequibo_, with the _Llandovery Castle_ and _Letitia_, composed the fleet used to convey our wounded from the old land to Canada. The _Letitia_ was wrecked in a fog on the rocks near Halifax with no loss of lives. The _Llandovery Castle_ was sunk by a submarine while returning empty to England. Mostly all the ship's officers, M.O.'s, nurses, and crew were drowned or shot by the fiend who commanded the U-boat. The chaplain, Capt. McPhail, was killed. By strange chance his body, with life-belt, was carried towards France and months afterwards was found on the beach and buried.

Thank God all the German submarines were not run by such as sank the _Llandovery_. I have a snapshot taken from the deck of the _Essequibo_ of a U-boat which stopped that ship, searched her thoroughly but courteously and then let her go unharmed.

I spent ten months as chaplain on the _Araguaya_ and a happy time it was. That was the "cushiest" job I have ever had. We were under cover all the time, had abundance of good food and luxuries for everyone, and every device that money could buy to entertain our patients on their nine-day trip across. Besides, in my special work I had a flock which never strayed far from me. They couldn't!

Practically all the staterooms had been taken out, only sufficient being left for M.O's, nurses, and ship's officers. This made fine, large, airy wards for the bed cases, fitted with swinging cots so that they did not feel the roll of the vessel. I had a comfortable room all to myself, for Col. Whidden and later Col. Murray were both very considerate of my comfort.

You will be interested to know that at the celebration of the completion of the Kiel Canal, the _Araguaya_ was loaned by the R.M.S.P. Co. to the Kaiser for use as his private yacht during the regatta, as a token of British goodwill. The suite of rooms our O.C. used had been the Kaiser's, and mine was one of those that "Little Willie" had occupied!

The ship's officers and crew were all first-class seamen of heroic stuff. The majority of them had been through the dread experience of being torpedoed, some two or three times, and had seen many of their mates shot down or drowned. Yet here they were from stoke-hold to pilot-house carrying on as cheerfully as ever.

Capt. Barrett, the skipper, a short, stout, ruddy-faced Englishman sat at the head of the table, with our O.C. and officers to his right and his own officers to his left. Many a merry meal we had together there. I can hear Major Shillington's steadying voice when he thought he saw trouble ahead in our arguments, Gunn with the happy laugh, Langham bringing us down to cold, hard facts, and the others good men all, with whom I companied those days. Tell your choicest funny story and you'd hear Capt. Johnson's stage-whisper, "I kicked the slats out of my cradle the first time I heard that!" I often wore my tartan uniform for "old-time's" sake, and the Cameron trousers always started the skipper bemoaning that now we'd have a stormy night since the padre had put on his "tempestuous pants." Of course we frequently fought the question out around the table. I based my claim to wear Highland garb, blow high or blow low, not only on my connection with the 43rd, but because I was a thorough-bred Scot. I carried the war into the enemy's country by maintaining that it was wrong to let anyone wear it but those of Scottish extraction. My own Camerons were nearly all Scots, this I know from careful official census taken in France. We had ten or fifteen per cent. who did not belong to "the elect," but they became fine fellows from being continually in such good company, and I find no fault with them for wearing the kilts. But the principle is wrong. Suppose on the field of battle a fierce and haughty Prussian surrendered to a kilted man whom he thought to be a Scot, only to find on getting back to the corral that his captor was a peaceful Doukhobor in kilts. What a humiliation and what cruelty! I actually met an officer in France belonging to a Canadian Kiltie battalion (not ours) who asked me the meaning of the words "Dinna Forget," the title of a book which lay before him on the table. I asked him what he thought it was. He said "I suppose the name of a girl, the heroine of the story, 'Dinna' maybe a local way of spelling 'Dinah,' and 'Forget' is her surname. That's my guess." He was in full, Scottish, regimental field-uniform when he spoke these words! I was dumb for a little before I could tell him what the words really meant. It is not the claim of superiority of race but simply a matter of honest practice. The tartan costume has become the recognized badge of Scottish birth or ancestry. It is therefore perpetrating a fraud upon the public for a man of any other race to parade in this distinctively national garb.

It would fill too many pages even to outline the varied aspects of our life aboard the boat. Matron Shaw and her noble band of nurses should have a page to themselves. We carried about nine hundred patients each trip and after two days out, when they became able to hear "The Return of the Swallow" recited without getting pale around the gills, everything went along with a hum. There were lectures, concerts, movies, shovelboard and deck tennis tournaments, dozens of phonographs and all sorts of parlor games and books, and on Sunday our religious services. The boys were all glad to be going home to Canada and they were easily entertained.

The great event was, of course, our first sight of land and then the disembarkation. The later trips we unloaded at Portland, Maine, and I cannot recollect having seen a more magnificent demonstration of public good-will than was given us by those Yankees. The first time we put in there, while the boat was still twenty feet away from the dock the thousands of people on the wharf commenced to cheer and the bands to play, and we were bombarded with candies, cigars, cigarettes and fruit. Much of it fell into the water. When we tied up a score of committees came aboard and almost submerged us under endless quantities of oranges, apples, bananas, grapes, dough-nuts, cake, sandwiches, ice-cream, tea, coffee and soft drinks, and expensive candies and everything else that we could eat or drink, that the law would allow, in superabundance. They took our hundreds of letters and many telegrams and sent them without costing us a penny. The latest newspapers, bouquets, of choice flowers for everyone, concert parties, and indeed everything good that kind hearts could think of was showered upon us. I remember a western bed-patient asked me if I thought they would get him a plug of a special brand of chewing tobacco. He hadn't been able to buy it in four years overseas and it was his favorite. "Sure thing," one of them said and in half-an-hour two men came aboard lugging along enough of that tobacco to stock a small store! I cannot go further into details. Enough to say that every trip it was the same, except that their hospitality became more systematized. Probably fifteen thousand wounded Canadian soldiers passed through Portland on their way home, and I know they will find it hard to forget the free-handed, warm-hearted welcome they got in that city. This memory will surely be a leaven working towards the maintenance and development of peace and good-will between Canada and the United States.

But I must tell my story of the North. One trip Major Dick Shillington persuaded me to give them a Klondike evening. We gathered down below in "H" Mess and there I told something of the life-story of my old friend of by-gone days, a trail-blazer and prospector, Duncan McLeod.

* * * * *

When first I met Duncan McLeod, "Cassiar Mac" he was commonly called, he and his partner, John Donaldson, both old men, were working far up a tributary of Gold Bottom Creek which had not yet been fully prospected. Each liked to have his own house and do his own cooking, and so they lived within a few yards of each other in the creek bottom at the foot of the mountain summit that rose between them and Indian River. My trail over to the other creeks passed across their ground, and when we became friends I seldom failed to arrange my fortnightly trip over the divide so as to reach their place about dusk. I would have supper with one or the other and stay the night.

McLeod was an old-country Scot, Donaldson born of Scottish parents in Glengarry county, Ontario. I am not using their real names, but they were real men. One of them, Donaldson, is still living in the wilds of the Yukon, still prospecting. He was the first white man the Teslin Indians had seen and known. They looked upon him as their "Hi-yu-tyee," a sort of super-chief, during the years he lived near them. He had been just and kind with them, and his consequent influence saved occasional serious friction between the Indians and whites from becoming murder or massacre.

After supper we would all three gather in one of the cabins and I would hear good talk until far towards midnight. Then there would be a pause and McLeod would say, "Well, Mr. Pringle, I think it is time we were getting ready for our beds." I knew what he meant. "Yes, it is," I would reply. The Bible would be handed me, I would read a chapter and we would kneel in prayer to God. Then to our bunks for a good sleep and early away in the morning for me to make the twenty-five miles over the heights to Gold Run before dark.

What great talks those were I used to hear. I was only a boy then, and these old men had seen so much of the wild free life of the West of long ago days. What stirring adventures they had had! They came west before the railways by way of the American prairies, and, lured by gold discoveries, had entered the mountains, and then following the prospector's will-o-the-wisp, the better luck that lies "just over the divide," they had gone farther and farther north. They had met and become partners in the Caribou camp, and had been together nearly forty years, in the Cassiar, on the Stewart, at Forty-Mile and now the Klondike.

Donaldson had a wonderful native power of description. When story-telling he would pace slowly back and forth in the shadow beyond the dim candle-light and picture with quiet, resonant voice scenes and events of the past. How vivid it seemed to me! How the soul of the young man thrilled as he listened! Often there was a yearning at my heart when under his spell to lay aside my mission and go out into the farthest wilds, seeking adventure and living the free, fascinating life they had lived. How I wish I had written down these stories as they were told to me. But maybe they wouldn't have "written," for much of the interest lay in the personality of the story-teller.

McLeod's part was usually to help with dates or names when Donaldson's memory failed to recall them, but often he too would spin a yarn, and when he did there was always in its telling a gentleness, I can think of no better word, that gave a charm often missing in Donaldson's rougher style.

They were both big men physically, but McLeod had been magnificent. He was now nearly eighty years old and broken with rheumatism, but in the giant frame and noble face and head crowned with its snow-white hair I saw my ideal of what a great Highland Chieftain might have been in the brave days of old.

Donaldson told me one night, while his partner was making a batch of bread in his own cabin, what he knew of McLeod's history. "I have never known a man," he said, "that would measure up to my partner. None of us want our record searched too closely but it wouldn't make any difference to him. Nothing, nobody, seemed to have any power to make Mac do anything crooked or dirty. Whisky, gambling, bad women--he passed them up without apparent effort. Very strange too, even the few good women we have met in these camps never won anything from him but wholesome admiration. He had only to say the word and he could have had any one of them, but he didn't seem to care that way. What his experience had been before we met I do not know, he has never spoken much about it to anyone. But he and I have lived together as partners for nearly half a century, through the crazy, wicked days of all these gold camps, and Mac never did anything that he would be ashamed to tell his own mother."

A fine tribute. Perhaps under the circumstances the finest thing that could be said of any man, for you cannot imagine the thousand almost irresistible temptations that were part of the daily life of the stampeders in those northern camps. Enough for me to say that many men of really good character back East, where they were unconsciously propped up by influences of family, church, and community, failed miserably to keep their footing when they came to the far north where all these supports were absent and temptation was everywhere. I do not judge them. God only knows the fight they had before they surrendered. So it was an arresting event to meet a man who had seen it all and whose partner of forty years told me he had lived clean.

I often wondered what McLeod's story was. I had known him for three years before I ventured to ask him details about his home in Scotland, and why he left it to come so far away. I knew he had been reared in a village south of Edinburgh, in a good home with good parents, and much else he had told me, but there had always been a reticence that made you certain there was something else held back.

One winter night when we were alone in his cabin, he opened his heart to me. He was an old-fashioned Scot. I was his "minister" and he knew me well. Besides he was coming to the end of the trail, and he needed a confidant.

He said his story was hardly worth while bothering me with, I knew most of it, but what he could never tell anyone was about the lassie he had loved and lost. He had fallen in love with the brown eyes and winsome face of Margaret Campbell, a neighbour's daughter. They had gone to the same school, had taken their first communion together, and had both sung in the village church choir. When he revealed his love to her she told him she had guessed his secret and had lang syne given her heart to him. They were betrothed and very happy. But Margaret took ill in the fall and died before the new year. Early in the year he sailed from Leith for Canada, hoping that new scenes would soften his grief. As the years passed he kept moving west and then north. He grew to like the free life of the prospector and had not cared to leave the mountains and the trails.

Time had healed the wound but his love for the sweetheart of his youth was just as true and tender as ever. From a hidden niche at the head of his bed he took down a small box, brought it to the table near the candle and unlocked it. He showed me his simple treasures. His rough, calloused hands trembled as he lifted them carefully from the box. There was a small photo so faded I could barely see the face on it. "You'll see she was very beautiful," he said, for he saw with the clear vision of loving memory what was not for my younger but duller eyes to discern. There was her gold locket with a wisp of brown hair in it. "She left me this," he said, "when she died." Last, there was an old letter, stained and worn, the only love-letter she had ever written him, for he had only once been far enough or long enough away to need letters. He had spent a week in Glasgow after they became engaged and she had written to him. This was all.

Somehow I felt as if I were on sacred ground, that the curtain had been drawn from before a Holy Place, and I was looking upon something more beautiful than I had ever seen before. As the old man put the box away his eyes were shining "with a light that never was on sea or land." Mine were moist, and for a little I couldn't trust my voice to speak as I thought of the life-time of unswerving fealty to his dead lassie. Such long, lonely years they must have been!

We did not say much more that night but the words we spoke were full of understanding and reverence. When it grew late and he handed me the Bible I hesitated in choosing a chapter, but not for long. The comfort and rejoicing of the twenty-third Psalm were all we wanted.

One morning, not long afterwards, Donaldson came into my cabin on Hunker creek in evident distress. McLeod hadn't come out as usual to his work that morning, and he had gone to see what was wrong and found him in his bunk hardly able to speak. He had taken "a stroke." A neighbouring miner watched by the sick man while Donaldson hitched up his dogs and raced to Dawson for medical aid. Donaldson went off down the trail and I hurried up the gulch to my old friend. He lingered for two or three days. The doctor could do nothing for him but to ease his last moments.

I stayed near him until the end came. When he tried to speak his utterance was indistinct and what few words I could make out showed that his mind was wandering. Sometimes he was on the trail or in the camp, but oftenest he was home again in the far away land he loved, and in boyhood days among folk we did not know save one, known only to me, whose name was continually on his lips.

He had a lucid interval just before he died and for a minute or two he thought and spoke clearly. I told him that death was near. Was there anything that we could do for him? "Not very much," he said, "I want Donaldson to have all I own. He's been a good partner. Bury my box with me. I'm not afraid to go now. It's just another prospecting trip to an unknown land and I have a Great Guide. He won't forsake an old prospector. He was one Himself, I'm thinking, when He came seeking us. He will keep a firm grip of me now that the trail is growing dark. I'm not afraid."