Down the Mackenzie through the Great Lone Land by Fullerton Waldo (review)

REVIEWS OF BOOKS 361 matter he has an admirable opportunity to give us an addition to his excellentblend of law and politics. W. P. M. KENNEDY Hunters of the Great North. By VILHJAHMURSTEFANSSON,London: GeorgeG. Harrap & Company. [1923.] Pp. 288; illustrations. MR. STEFANSSON hasmadeanotherbook. After relating the experiences and geographicalresultsof his secondand third Arctic expeditions,in workspublishedin 1913and 1921respectively,he now goesback to his firstexpeditionof 1906-7andgivesa detailednarrative ofwhat happened to him during that winter. He seemsto have composedit from the entriesin hisdiary, but he givesfew dates,and it readslike a free compositionfrom factsand eventsnotedrather than a chronologicalaccount of an expedition. Like all Mr. Stefansson's bookson the Arctic regions it is interesting and full of curiousinformation on the habits and mental characteristics of the Eskimos. Some stories may excite a healthy scepticism,as when he says that he was told, and believed, that a Eskimo child of eight years "had been awake continuouslyfor five days and nights, playing all the time" (p. 80). There is considerable repetition from the author'searlierbooksin the descriptionof Eskimopeculiarities and pursuits, and even whole paragraphsand pagesare taken over verbatim,as for instancethe accountsof how to avoid having one'sface frozen,and how to hunt seals. The illustration,too,oppositepage236, entitled "Autumn campof caribouhuntersa hundredmilesnorth of the Arctic Circle", has already done duty as "Camp in woodsof Horton river" in My Life with theEskimo. H. H. LANGTON Down the Mac. kenzie throughthe Great Lone Land. By FULLERTON WALDO. New York: The Macmillan Company. 1923. Pp. xii, 251. THIS is an accountby an energeticAmerican globe-trotter of a journey in the summer of 1922 from Edmonton to Fort McPherson on the Mackenzie River delta. We are wont to regard the Mackenzie district as almost untouchedby the hand of man; but what would Alexander Mackenzie have thought of this traveller's tale of villages, oil-wells, mission-schools, vegetablegardens,traders,and prospectors along the courseof his lonely river? The first three hundred miles td Waterways are coveredby rail "at an averageof not quite nine miles an hour" Thence there is continuousnavigation by steamboat for almost 1,1500 miles,exceptfor onebreakat Fitzgeraldonthe SlaveRiver, whererapids necessitatea long portageand transshipmentto another boat. It is a trip which few touristscan have made for the pleasureof seeingnew lands, though there are no specialhardshipsinvolved apart from mos- 362 THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW quitoes,voraciousbull-dog flies,and starved Indian dogs. The book is no more than goodjournalism, filled with numerous"interviews" with promisingcharactersrangingin rank from the saintly BishopGrouard to the Eskimo murdererOmiak, and illustrated with admirablephotographs . But it hasdistincthistoricalvalue asa vivid and sympathetic picture of life in the Canadiannorthland in 1922; and it will be usedby future historianswhencivilizationhasadvanced,just aswe arenowusing the journals of travellers in Ontario a hundredyearsago. H. HUME WRONG Indian Days in the Canadian Rockies. By MARIUS BARBEAU. Illustrations by W. LANGDON KIUN. Toronto: The Macmillan Co. of Canada. 1923. Pp. 208. ' TuIs is an attractive book,both in its outward appearanceand its inner content. It is a relief to read of Indian life depicted by sucha master of all its detailsasMr. Barbeau,after the imaginary impossibilities that the writers of fictionprovidefor the public. Mr. Barbeauis a trained investigator; he has gone deeply down into aboriginal cultureswith sympathyand keendiscernment, and hebringsall his sympatheticideas to popularize his subject, for the book is evidently intended to appeal to the general reader. It should succeed. Such life stories as that of the Indian seer, Beeny, and the Stony usurper, Tchatka, contain so muchof humannature that they are interestingfrom this quality alone. But'when there is addedthe interest of the Indian milieu describedwith unerringtouches,and the motivesfor action, set forth with real understanding , these sketchesbecomehighly important. Mr. Barbeau has not failed to observethe strange blend made by the fusion of pagan notionswith the teaching of the early missionaries or with rumoursof suchteachings. The tone in which the sketchesare written is regretful; the comparisonis betweena former freedomand a presentbondage: a tonethat it is difficult to avoid if one sympathizeswith Canada's native population . But there is constantevidencethroughout thesepagesthat the years beforethe white man camewere not all serene,and that Indian life wassubjectto desperatevicissitudes. Regretsare due for the disappearanceof a native culture sowell designedfor the needsof...