His Store Of Anecdote Was Unbounded And
His Sense Of Humour Ever Present, If Broad And Simple.
He talked
in English, French, and Cree, and knew a good deal of Chipewyan.
Many of his personal adventures would have fitted admirably into
the Decameron, but are scarcely suited for this narrative.
One
evening he began to sing, I listened intently, thinking maybe I
should pick up some ancient chanson of the voyageurs or at least
a woodman's "Come-all-ye." Alas! it proved to be nothing but the
"Whistling Coon."
Which reminds me of another curious experience at the village of
Fort Smith. I saw a crowd of the Indians about a lodge and strange
noises proceeding therefrom. When I went over the folk made way for
me. I entered, sat down, and found that they were crowded around
a cheap gramophone which was hawking, spitting and screeching some
awful rag-time music and nigger jigs. I could forgive the traders
for bringing in the gramophone, but why, oh, why, did they not
bring some of the simple world-wide human songs which could at least
have had an educational effect? The Indian group listened to this
weird instrument with the profoundest gravity. If there is anything
inherently comic in our low comics it was entirely lost on them.
One of Rob's amusing fireside tricks was thus: He put his hands
together, so: (illustration). "Now de' tumbs is you and your fader,
de first finger is you and your mudder, ze next is you and your
sister, ze little finger is you and your brudder, ze ring finger
is you and your sweetheart. You and your fader separate easy, like
dat; you and your brudder like dat, you and your sister like dat,
dat's easy; you and your mudder like dat, dat's not so easy; but
you and your sweetheart cannot part widout all everything go to
hell first."
Later, as we passed the American who lives at Fort McMurray, Jiarobia
said to me: "Dat man is the biggest awful liar on de river. You
should hear him talk. 'One day,' he said, 'dere was a big stone
floating up de muddy river and on it was tree men, and one was
blind and one was plumb naked and one had no arms nor legs, and de
blind man he looks down on bottom of river an see a gold watch, an
de cripple he reach out and get it, and de naked man he put it in
his pocket.' Now any man talk dat way he one most awful liar, it
is not possible, any part, no how."
CHAPTER XLIV
THE RIVER
Now we resumed our daily life of tracking, eating, tracking,
camping, tracking, sleeping. The weather had continued fine, with
little change ever since we left Resolution, and we were so hardened
to the life that it was pleasantly monotonous.
How different now were my thoughts compared with those of last
Spring, as I first looked on this great river.
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