As we walked up the street I counted the buildings: two general stores, two eating-houses, one garage, two dancehalls, the office of the justice of the peace, and the old saloon, which now does duty as a soft-drink place and pool-hall. At other times cows walk unmolested through the street, but to-day the place was alive with people.

The rodeo is an annual event, with three days of broncho-busting, bullriding, calf-tying, and horse-races down the middle of the street, and every night a dance that lasts until morning.

The eating-house was newly built and unpainted. Across the front in huge black letters was a sign, "Meals, fifty cents." On a bench at the end of the porch stood a wash-basin and a

pail of water; on a nail above hung a towel.

"She 's shore been popular," remarked the puncher as he wiped his face on a blue bandana; but later, while we sat comfortably on the porch and waited for the second table, others came who were not nearly so particular.

He

Flies were plentiful in the diningroom, but the meal was very good: fresh beef and cabbage, potatoes, stringbeans, and hot biscuits and syrup, or "lick," as the punchers called it. A tourist asked the puncher and me if we had ever been to Cheyenne or Pendleton, Oregon. Neither of us had. liked Payson, he said, as everything was real. He was driving through to the Grand Cañon, and had meant to stop only long enough to find out what the excitement was. He had never heard of the place before, but now he was going to stay until the rodeo was

over.

In the afternoon there were more horse-races down the street and more calf-tying. One event was for men over fifty. As Cline's father came down the street with his horse on the dead run, the puncher standing beside me said:

"Them Cline boys take to their ropin' honestly."

The bull-riding came next. Down in the corral, by much prodding and pulling, a bull was dragged into the shute. The surcingle was buckled on. The rider eased down off the corral fence and mounted. The shute opened, and out they came, the rider spurring his mount high in the neck, while the bull bellowed and bucked and tried to kick himself in the chin. As they headed straight into the line of cars, a puncher whirled his rope. His horse sat up, and the bull was caught. A

rider on a buckskin horse roped him by the hind feet. As the rope tightened, the bull fell to the ground. The surcingle was unbuckled, and, still bellowing and hooking at the horses, he was led back to the corral.

One of the bulls was ridden with a saddle. The rider was thrown the third jump. Still pitching and bawling, the empty stirrups popping above his back, the frantic animal was finally caught. The rider limped back to the corral, holding his side. Two of his ribs were broken.

The event for boys under eighteen was won by a gangling youth of about sixteen. He wore high-heeled boots, long-shanked spurs, and on his head a small, black derby hat. "Derby Jim," the puncher called him. While he waited for his turn to ride, he sat on the corral fence and munched an ice

cream cone. That evening I saw him walking with a girl. In front of an ice-cream stand they stopped. As the stage came in from Globe I saw him again. His long-shanked spurs trailed in the dust, and as he walked he munched another cone.

After supper a crowd gathered at the general store and waited for the mail.

"See you at the dance," said the slit-eyed puncher as he went to feed his horse. In front of the old saloon Ace Gardner and Jimmy Cline were roping three calves apiece for a side bet. It was sprinkling and nearly dark when the last calf was tied; the street was almost deserted.

The dance-hall was a huge, unpainted affair and, like the eatinghouse, was newly built. On a platform in the middle sat the orchestra.

Built against the wall on each side was a long wooden bench. On the floor in one corner eight babies slept, wrapped in their various-colored quilts, while their fond parents danced. The tourist was there, and Derby Jim, and the bull-rider with the broken ribs. The slit-eyed puncher made me acquainted with his girl. Every one danced. Between dances the women sat on the narrow bench around the hall. A woman beside me held a baby in her arms. When the music started, she danced, while the baby slept peacefully on the narrow bench. At At intervals the men walked outside on the porch and smoked. A few of the more fortunate walked deeper into the shadows, where some "anti-Volstead white mule" was hidden. At midnight the count of babies on the floor had reached fifteen. A tall puncher, after eying them gravely, finally selected a small bundle that was wrapped in a sky-blue quilt.

"Guess this one 's mine," he said, with a grin.

He carefully stowed the bundle under the bench.

"Some of 'em 's liable to get stepped on the way the crowd 's a-millin' here."

Every other dance was a tag. A man well over sixty, with snow-white hair, danced by, his boot-heels popping on the floor. He never missed a dance. At two A. M. I found the tourist and the slit-eyed puncher sitting on the porch. The tourist had been ready to go for an hour, he said, but could n't get his wife to leave. The slit-eyed puncher bewailed a blister on his heel and cursed the new boots he wore; but as the music started, he hobbled inside.

"I ain't missin' nothin'," he said, "even if my feet is afire."

At four A. M. the crowd still milled. Five babies still slept peacefully in their corner on the floor. On the porch the tourist dozed. The sliteyed puncher had slowed up somewhat, but the rest of the dancers were going strong.

WOKE, to look into Matamek's face

I WOKE, to look into Matamek's face

smiling through a cloud of pipesmoke, which the morning was too lazy to blow away. He was sitting by a new-laid fire, a very small one. Behind him shone the glare of a day already in its teens, a lusty, hot youth of a day that had set out to frizzle the country in its own juices.

"Why did n't you wake me, Matamek?"

"You were having a good sleepfeast. It is not good to wake with your sleep undigested."

"I had only four hours at that." "It is enough for the bow paddle," said my guide. He was in good spirits.

"Here goes for a swim. That 'll make it five hours." A cold bath is as good as an extra nap, and the Mistassini was cold despite the sun's best efforts.

I wish people knew how to get intoxicated aright. I am not speaking of whisky, with its groundless egotisms, its poisons that rob Peter to pay some outsider, Paul, its senile leerings, and its inevitable tragedy. I'm speaking of the normal senses, lifted off the common ground, by the sudden sight of snow-clad peaks, by the handwriting on an envelop, by even a cold plunge in a savage Eden.

Beaudelaire knew better than he practised. His dictum was, "One should always be in a state of drunkenness-either with wine or poetry or virtue." Delete "always" and write

"sometime,” delete "wine" and write "health," and you will sing at your work, dream happily, and come to your life's harvest with assurance. God had poured the elixir of life into my bath that morning.

The appearance of the Mistassini betokens no divine connections; in fact, it is the most God-deserted river that ever wandered disconsolately across a landscape. We labored against a sullen current and around curves for breezeless hours. If any one wishes a complete knowledge of sand-banks, or how a broiling summer's day acts on a shadeless river, or what motheaten trees look like, I then advise the lower Mistassini.

We were content to make our camp that night just below the junction of three rivers, the Rat, the Mistassini, and the Mistassibi.

Above the great cascades sat the tiny village of Mistassini, where the Trappists have a monastery. Notwithstanding the strange suggestions which the dim walls at dusk aroused in us, we were soon sound asleep.

The next morning, within an hour of dawn, the sun began to scorch everything in sight that was not nimble enough to escape. No leaf on the birch above us stirred. Matamek, my guide, was lying on his blanket, his shirt half off, like a Tait McKenzie sculpture. I ransacked my mind for a manly excuse for postponing those portages. Matamek was more skilful

at that, for he pointed to the Monastery St. Michel de Mistassini in the glowing distance and said:

"They have been up since one o'clock."

repeated incredulously.

The Indian nodded.

"What on earth for?"

"What in heaven for, monsieur," said Matamek; "it is their religion." "Let's investigate it," I suggested. "Perhaps we may want to join them, Matamek."

The broadest smile that had yet divided his firm lips swept the boy's fine face.

"Perhaps," he said; "but we look first."

The village of Mistassini owes its existence to l'ordre de la Trappe. I doubt that any other village in the flat-lands of Canada has a location more charmingly designed by nature. Meadows rise to wooded hills, rivers lull the passing hours to sleep with crooning waters, cascades lift the heart with their wild motion, and the silences of the endless North still it again.

82

In 1891, when the first monks sought a life of seclusion north of Lake St. John, they must have congratulated themselves on this desert. Aside from the passings of the Indians down the river and the music of the owls at night, there was nothing to interrupt them in the exercise of their perpetual contrition. The Government gave them six thousand acres, almost as unnecessary, however, as awarding air to windmills. Forty miles to the south lay Roberval's unadventurous village; to the north lay most of the 450,000,000 acres that constitute the

by, the agricultural bustle near, must have been a picture cozily human, too human, perhaps, for these monks, who in the name of Christ had set about mortifying their bodies and repressing all their senses. So they built a grim three-story house, of a style suited to cities, on the saddle of a hill that struck hands with all the winds, and under this roof, bristling with the cross, continued their career of abstinence. At the door, shortly before noon, I knocked, Matamek following. We had heard of the hospitality of the Trappists, and judged that a meal with them would be an interesting, if not a nourishing, affair.

The door was opened by a cenobite, dressed in the garb projected by John the Baptist-a long whitish robe with a girdle, and looking the costume cenobitic par excellence. We were invited into a strait-sided room, where I explained our visit. During my stay under that roof I determined to keep myself in a sympathetic frame of mind, but my flesh crawled, so silent, so gloomy was the interior compared with the friendly day outside.

Yet the appearance of our host should have allayed uneasiness. His hair was tonsured into an invisible halo. His countenance had much of the Christ-like in it, whether from much pondering on His image or from fasting or from the inner cultivation of the fundamentals of Christian precept; but there was something missing which separated this countenance from Christ's.