We had just passed Fort Norman when the sharp eyes of an Indian deck-hand saw three figures on the beach ahead.  Pulling in at the point where the Gravel River joins the Mackenzie, we find a regular Robinson Crusoe group,—­Mr. J. Keele, of the Dominion Government Survey, and his two associates.  Going in on the Yukon side, Mr. Keele’s task has been to cross the Divide between the Yukon and the Mackenzie, mapping the rocks.  The only white man they had seen in sixteen months was a French priest who had passed yesterday, and whose knowledge of current events in Canada and Europe was scanty.  They were glad to see us.  A moose-skin boat showed how they had run the rough Gravel; the meat of two moose smoked over the camp-fire; their dogs were fat.  These are men who know the woods—­no hard-luck story here.  It needs only Friday’s funny fat umbrella to complete the picture, with the goat scampering in the middle distance.

Coming on board, the surveyors are greedy for newspapers, and we in return learn somewhat of that great slice of land which they are the first to traverse.  The Gravel River is two hundred and fifty-five miles long, with “white water” all the way.  The force of the current may be appreciated from the fact that it is forty-four hundred feet above the sea-level at the Height-of-Land, and only four hundred feet here where it enters the Mackenzie.  All along the banks of the Gravel are moose, mountain sheep, and caribou.  The winter cabin of the party was built on the Ross River and there, during the past winter, they experienced a temperature of 54 deg. below.  A party of this kind must be to a large extent self-supporting, as it would be impossible to carry from the outside food for such a long sojourn.  Speaking with Mr. Keele, one is forcibly struck with the fact that what the technical schools teach their students forms but a small part of the equipment of the man who would do field work in Northern Canada—­packing, tracking, hunting, and breaking trail,—­each man must do his share of these.

The Keele party on the great watershed, as they travelled east, crossed two families of Mackenzie River Indians going westward to hunt, on the west side of the ridge, the marten and the beaver.  It was 32 deg. below, and cold.  The whole families were on the march, a little baby tucked in the curve of the sled, and tottering on foot an old, old woman, bent and wrinkled and scarcely able to move.  As the Indians were on their return journey toward the Mackenzie in spring, the Keele party saw them again.  But the old woman was not there.  Under some lonely mound where snow falls in winter and the leaves of birch and cottonwood flutter down in the shrieking winds of autumn rest the bones of the old woman, her many journeys ended.  The wearer of a costly fur coat in the glittering capitals of the Old World seldom stops to conjecture how much of hardship, patient suffering, and loneliness go to the making of that luxurious garment.  In order that one might be warmly clad, many have gone cold, more than one sad, tired, old head has lain down for the last time by the lonely camp-fire.