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In this distance of the long water trail one sees and hears s It is life It is adventure It is mystery and romance and hazard Its tales are so many that books could not hold them In the faces of raves so old that the forest trees grow over theht to live! And as one goes farther north, and still farther, just so do the stories of things that have happened change
For the world is changing, the sun is changing, and the breeds ofin July there are seventeen hours of sunlight; at Fort Chippewyan there are eighteen; at Fort Resolution, Fort Simpson, and Fort Providence there are nineteen; at the Great Bear twenty-one, and at Fort McPherson, close to the polar sea, from twenty-two to twenty-three And in Deceht and darkness es And Pierre and Henri and Jacquesthe old songs, enshrining the old loves, dreaods They listen with the love of adventure
The thunder of rapids and the howlings of storrapple with it, wrestle joyously with it, and are glorious when they win Their blood is red and strong Their hearts are big Their souls chant themselves up to the skies Yet they are sis which children fear For in those hearts of theirs is superstition--and also, perhaps, royal blood For princes and the sons of princes and the noblest aristocracy of France were the first of the gentlemen adventurers who came with ruffles on their sleeves and rapiers at their sides to seek furs worth o, and of these ancient forebears Pierre and Henri and Jacques, with their Maries and Jeannes and Jacquelines, are the living voices of today
And these voices tell many stories Sometimes they whisper them, as the ould whisper, for there are stories weird and strange that es The trees listen to thelad sunshine of day Soh the generations, epics of the wilderness, remembered fros to pass from mouth to mouth, from cabin to cabin, from the lower reaches of the Mackenzie to the far end of the world at Athabasca Landing For the three rivers are always edy, of adventure The story will never be forgotten of how Follette and Ladouceur swairl aited at the other end, or of how Caht the whole of a great brigade in his effort to run aith a scow captain's daughter