Once when the northland was very young, the social and were alike for their and their . When the burden of domestic duties grew grievous, and the fireside mood expanded to a constant protest against its loneliness, the adventurers from the Southland, in lieu of better, paid the prices and took unto themselves native wives. It was a foretaste of Paradise to the women, for it must be confessed that the white rovers gave far better care and treatment of them than did their Indian copartners. Of course, the white men themselves were satisfied with such deals, as were also the Indian men for that matter. Having sold their daughters and sisters for cotton blankets and rifles and traded their warm furs for flimsy calico and bad whisky, the sons of the soil and cheerfully to quick consumption and other swift diseases correlated with the of a superior civilization.  
It was in these days of Arcadian simplicity that Cal Galbraith journeyed through the land and fell sick on the Lower River. It was a in the lives of the good Sisters of the Holy Cross, who gave him shelter and medicine; though they little dreamed of the hot infused into his by the touch of their soft hands and their gentle ministrations. Cal Galbraith, became troubled with strange thoughts which clamored for attention till he laid eyes on the Mission girl, Madeline. Yet he gave no sign, his time patiently. He strengthened with the coming spring, and when the sun rode the heavens in a golden circle, and the joy and of life was in all the land, he gathered his still weak body together and departed.
 
Now, Madeline, the Mission girl, was an . Her white father had failed to give a bald-faced the trail one day, and had died quickly. Then her Indian mother, having no man to fill the winter cache, had tried the experiment of waiting till the -run on fifty pounds of flour and half as many of bacon. After that, the baby, Chook-ra, went to live with the good Sisters, and to be thenceforth known by another name.
 
But Madeline still had kinsfolk, the nearest being a dissolute uncle who his vitals with quantities of the white man's whisky. He strove daily to walk with the gods, and incidentally, his feet sought shorter trails to the grave. When sober he suffered torture. He had no conscience. To this ancient vagabond Cal Galbraith duly presented himself, and they consumed many words and much tobacco in the conversation that followed. Promises were also made; and in the end the old heathen took a few pounds of dried salmon and his birch-bark canoe, and paddled away to the Mission of the Holy Cross.
 
It is not given the world to know what promises he made and what lies he told—the Sisters never gossip; but when he returned, upon his swarthy chest there was a crucifix, and in his canoe his niece Madeline. That night there was a grand wedding and a potlach; so that for two days to follow there was no fishing done by the village. But in the morning Madeline shook the dust of the Lower River from her moccasins, and with her husband, in a poling-boat, went to live on the Upper River in a place known as the Lower Country. And in the years which followed she was a good wife, sharing her husband's hardships and cooking his food. And she kept him in straight trails, till he learned to save his dust and to work . In the end, he struck it rich and built a cabin in Circle City; and his happiness was such that men who came to visit him in his home-circle became restless at the sight of it and envied him greatly.
 
But the Northland began to mature and social to make their appearance.
 
Hitherto, the Southland had sent its sons; but it now forth a new —this time of its daughters. Sisters and wives they were not; but they did not fail to put new ideas in the heads of the men, and to elevate the tone of things in ways peculiarly their own. No more did the squaws gather at the dances, go roaring down the center in the good, old Virginia reels, or make merry with jolly 'Dan Tucker.' They fell back on their natural stoicism and uncomplainingly watched the rule of their white sisters from their cabins.
 
Then another exodus came over the mountains from the Southland.
 
This time it was of women that became in the land. Their word was law; their law was steel. They frowned upon the Indian wives, while the other women became mild and walked . There were cowards who became ashamed of their ancient with the daughters of the soil, who looked with a new distaste upon their dark-skinned children; but there were also others—men—who remained true and proud of their ............