The Magnetic North Part 20

Father Wills stood up, smiling, to reply.

_"Friends"_ (the Boy thought the keen eyes rested a fraction of a moment longer on Mac than on the rest),--_"I think in some ways this is the pleasantest House-Warming I ever went to. I won't take up time thanking the Colonel for the friendly sentiments he's expressed, though I return them heartily. I must use these moments you are good enough to give me in telling you something of what I feel is implied in the founding of this camp of yours.

"Gentlemen, the few white dwellers in the Yukon country have not looked forward"_ (his eyes twinkled almost wickedly) _"with that pleasure you might expect in exiles, to the influx of people brought up here by the great Gold Discovery. We knew what that sort of craze leads to. We knew that in a barren land like this, more and more denuded of wild game every year, more and more the prey of epidemic disease--we knew that into this sorely tried and hungry world would come a horde of men, all of them ignorant of the conditions up here, most of them ill-provided with proper food and clothing, many of them (I can say it without offence in this company)--many of them men whom the older, richer communities were glad to get rid of. Gentlemen, I have ventured to take you into our confidence so far, because I want to take you still farther--to tell you a little of the intense satisfaction with which we recognise that good fortune has sent us in you just the sort of neighbours we had not dared to hope for. It means more to us than you realise. When I heard a few weeks ago that, in addition to the boat-loads that had already got some distance up the river beyond Holy Cross--"_

"Going to Dawson?"

"Oh, yes, Klond.y.k.e mad--"

"They'll be there before us, boys!"

"Anyways, they'll get to Minook."

The Jesuit shook his head. "It isn't so certain. They probably made only a couple of hundred miles or so before the Yukon went to sleep."

"Then if grub gives out they'll be comin' back here?" suggested Potts.

_"Small doubt of it,"_ agreed the priest. _"And when I heard there were parties of the same sort stranded at intervals all along the Lower River--"_

"You sure?"

He nodded.

_"And when Father Orloff of the Russian mission told us that he was already having trouble with the two big rival parties frozen in the ice below Ikogimeut--"_

"Gos.h.!.+ Wonder if any of 'em were on our s.h.i.+p?"

_"Well, gentlemen, I do not disguise from you that, when I heard of the large amount of whiskey, the small amount of food, and the low type of manners brought in by these gold-seekers, I felt my fears justified.

Such men don't work, don't contribute anything to the decent social life of the community, don't build cabins like this. When I came down on the ice the first time after you'd camped, and I looked up and saw your solid stone chimney"_ (he glanced at Mac), _"I didn't know what a House-Warming it would make; but already, from far off across the ice and snow, that chimney warmed my heart. Gentlemen, the fame of it has gone up the river and down the river. Father Orloff is coming to see it next week, and so are the white traders from Anvik and Andreiefsky, for they've heard there's nothing like it in the Yukon. Of course, I know that you gentlemen have not come to settle permanently. I know that when the Great White Silence, as they call the long winter up here, is broken by the thunder of the ice rus.h.i.+ng down to the sea, you, like the rest, will exchange the snow-fields for the gold-fields, and pa.s.s out of our ken. Now, I'm not usually p.r.o.ne to try my hand at prophecy; but I am tempted to say, even on our short acquaintance, that I am tolerably sure that, while we shall be willing enough to spare most of the new-comers to the Klond.y.k.e, we shall grudge to the gold-fields the men who built this camp and warmed this cabin."_ (His eye rested reflectively on Mac.) _"I don't wish to sit down leaving an impression of speaking with entire lack of sympathy of the impulse that brings men up here for gold. I believe that, even with the sort in the two camps below Ikogimeut--drinking, quarrelling, and making trouble with the natives at the Russian mission--I believe that even with them, the gold they came up here for is a symbol--a fetich, some of us may think. When such men have it in their hands, they feel dimly that they are laying tangible hold at last on some elusive vision of happiness that has. .h.i.therto escaped them. Behind each man braving the Arctic winter up here, is some hope, not all ign.o.ble; some devotion, not all unsanctified. Behind most of these men I seem to see a wife or child, a parent, or some dear dream that gives that man his share in the Eternal Hope. Friends, we call that thing we look for by different names; but we are all seekers after treasure, all here have turned our backs on home and comfort, hunting for the Great Reward--each man a new Columbus looking for the New World. Some of us looking north, some south, some"_--he hesitated the briefest moment, and then with a faint smile, half sad, half triumphant, made a little motion of his head--_"some of us ... looking upwards."_

But quickly, as though conscious that, if he had raised the moral tone of the company, he had not raised its spirits, he hurried on:

_"Before I sit down, gentlemen, just one word more. I must congratulate you on having found out so soon, not only the wisdom, but the pleasure of looking at this Arctic world with intelligent eyes, and learning some of her wonderful lessons. It is so that, now the hardest work is finished, you will keep up your spirits and avoid the disease that attacks all new-comers who simply eat, sleep, and wait for the ice to go out. When I hear cheechalkos complaining of boredom up here in this world of daily miracles, I think of the native boy in the history-cla.s.s, who, called on to describe the progress of civilisation, said: 'In those days men had as many wives as they liked, and that was called polygamy. Now they have only one wife, and that's called monotony.'"_

While O'Flynn howled with delight, the priest wound up:

_"Gentlemen, if we find monotony up here, it's not the country's fault, but a defect in our own civilisation."_ Wherewith he sat down amid cheers.

"Now, Colonel, is Mac goin' to recite some Border ballads?" inquired the Boy, "or will he make a speech, or do a Highland fling?"

The Colonel called formally upon Mr. MacCann.

Mac was no sooner on his legs than Kaviak, determined not to lose his grasp of the situation, climbed upon the three-legged stool just vacated, and resumed his former relations with the friendly coat-tail.

Everybody laughed but Mac, who pretended not to know what was going on behind his back.

"Gentlemen," he began harshly, with the air of one about to launch a heavy indictment, "there's one element largely represented here by numbers and by interests"--he turned round suddenly toward the natives, and almost swung Kaviak off into s.p.a.ce--"one element not explicitly referred to in the speeches, either of welcome or of thanks. But, gentlemen, I submit that these hitherto unrecognised Natives are our real hosts, and a word about them won't be out of place. I've been told to-day that, whether in Alaska, Greenland, or British America, they call themselves _Innuits,_ which means human beings. They believed, no doubt, that they were the only ones in the world. I've been thinking a great deal about these Esquimaux of late--"

"Hear, hear!"

"About their origin and their destiny." (Mac was beginning to enjoy himself. The Boy was beginning to be bored and to drum softly with his fingers.) "Now, gentlemen, Buffon says that the poles were the first portions of the earth's crust to cool. While the equator, and even the tropics of Cancer and of Capricorn, were still too boiling hot to support life, up here in the Arctic regions there was a carboniferous era goin' on--"

"Where's the coal, then?" sneered Potts.

"It's bein' discovered ... all over ... ask him" (indicating Father Wills, who smiled a.s.sent). "Tropical forests grew where there are glayshers now, and elephants and mastodons began life here."

"Jimminy Christmas!" interrupted the Boy, sitting up very straight. "Is that Buffer you quoted a good authority?"

"First-rate," Mac snapped out defiantly.

"Good Lord! then the Garden o' Eden was up here."

"Hey?"

"Course! _This_ was the cradle o' the human race. Blow the Ganges! Blow the Nile! It was our Yukon that saw the first people, 'cause of course the first people lived in the first place got ready for 'em."

"That don't follow. Read your Bible."

"If I'm not right, how did it happen there were men here when the North was first discovered?"

"s.h.!.+"

"Mac's got the floor."

"Shut up!"

But the Boy thumped the table with one hand and arraigned the schoolmaster with the other.

"Now, Mac, I put it to you as a man o' science: if the race had got a foothold in any other part o' the world, what in Sam Hill could make 'em come up here?"

"_We're_ here."

"Yes, tomfools after gold. They never dreamed there was gold. No, Sir_ee!_ the only thing on earth that could make men stay here, would be that they were born here, and didn't know any better. Don't the primitive man cling to his home, no matter what kind o' hole it is?

He's _afraid_ to leave it. And these first men up here, why, it's plain as day--they just hung on, things gettin' worse and worse, and colder and colder, and some said, as the old men we laugh at say at home, 'The climate ain't what it was when I was a boy,' and n.o.body believed 'em, but everybody began to dress warmer and eat fat, and--"

"All that Buffon says is--"

"Yes--and they invented one thing after another to meet the new conditions--kaiaks and bidarras and ivory-tipped harpoons"--he was pouring out his new notions at the fastest express rate--"and the animals that couldn't stand it emigrated, and those that stayed behind got changed--"

"Dry up."

"One at a time."

"Buffon--"

"Yes, yes, Mac, and the hares got white, and the men, playin' a losin'

game for centuries, got dull in their heads and stunted in their legs--always cramped up in a kaiak like those fellas at St. Michael's.

And, why, it's clear as crystal--they're survivals! The Esquimaux are the oldest race in the world."