Chapter 11 - Page 2

under him, ready to rise in one surge.

This time while I watched assemblies seated, men in hotels and
passers-by, I fancied that he kept this habit of semi-tenseness at home
among his own; that it was the complement of the man's still
countenance, and his even, lowered voice. Looking at their footmarks on
the ground they seem to throw an almost straight track, neither splayed
nor in-toed, and to set their feet down with a gentle forward pressure,
rather like the Australian's stealthy footfall. Talking among
themselves, or waiting for friends, they did not drum with their
fingers, fiddle with their feet, or feel the hair on their faces. These
things seem trivial enough, but when breeds are in the making everything
is worth while. A man told me once--but I never tried the
experiment--that each of our Four Races light and handle fire in their
own way.

Small wonder we differ! Here is a people with no people at their backs,
driving the great world-plough which wins the world's bread up and up
over the shoulder of the world--a spectacle, as it might be, out of some
tremendous Norse legend. North of them lies Niflheim's enduring cold,
with the flick and crackle of the Aurora for Bifrost Bridge that Odin
and the Aesir visited. These people also go north year by year, and drag
audacious railways with them. Sometimes they burst into good wheat or
timber land, sometimes into mines of treasure, and all the North is
foil of voices--as South Africa was once--telling discoveries and making
prophecies.

When their winter comes, over the greater part of this country outside
the cities they must sit still, and eat and drink as the Aesir did. In
summer they cram twelve months' work into six, because between such and
such dates certain far rivers will shut, and, later, certain others,
till, at last, even the Great Eastern Gate at Quebec locks, and men must
go in and out by the side-doors at Halifax and St. John. These are
conditions that make for extreme boldness, but not for extravagant
boastings.

The maples tell when it is time to finish, and all work in hand is
regulated by their warning signal. Some jobs can be put through before
winter; others must be laid aside ready to jump forward without a lost
minute in spring. Thus, from Quebec to Calgary a note of drive--not
hustle, but drive and finish-up--hummed like the steam-threshers on the
still, autumn air.

Hunters and sportsmen were coming in from the North; prospectors with
them, their faces foil of mystery, their pockets full of samples, like
prospectors the world over. They had already been wearing wolf and coon
skin coats. In the great cities which work the year round,
carriage--shops exhibited one or two seductive nickel-plated