the kings of the earth when they come in from far countries with
their precious cargoes of furs. And they no longer swagger and
tell loud-voiced adventure, or sing their wild river songs in the
same old abandon, for there are streets at Athabasca Landing now,
and hotels, and schools, and rules and regulations of a kind new
and terrifying to the bold of the old voyageurs.

It seems only yesterday that the railroad was not there, and a
great world of wilderness lay between the Landing and the upper
rim of civilization. And when word first came that a steam thing
was eating its way up foot by foot through forest and swamp and
impassable muskeg, that word passed up and down the water-ways for
two thousand miles, a colossal joke, a stupendous bit of drollery,
the funniest thing that Pierre and Henri and Jacques had heard in
all their lives. And when Jacques wanted to impress upon Pierre
his utter disbelief of a thing, he would say:

"It will happen, m'sieu, when the steam thing comes to the
Landing, when cow-beasts eat with the moose, and when our bread is
found for us in yonder swamps!"

And the steam thing came, and cows grazed where moose had fed, and
bread WAS gathered close to the edge of the great swamps. Thus did
civilization break into Athabasca Landing.

Northward from the Landing, for two thousand miles, reached the
domain of the rivermen. And the Landing, with its two hundred and
twenty-seven souls before the railroad came, was the wilderness
clearing-house which sat at the beginning of things. To it came
from the south all the freight which must go into the north; on