But in any case life was too serious in those days for effeminate luxury, or for aught but proper pride in defending the country, and in work well done.
And it is just this stern life which must be lived, sooner or later, not only in the wilds of Athabasca, but in facing everywhere the great problems of race-stability--the spectres of retribution--which are rapidly rising upon the white man's horizon.
For the rest, and granting the manhood, the future of Athabasca is more assured than that of Manitoba seemed to be to the doubters of thirty years ago.

In a word, there is fruitful land there, and a bracing climate fit for industrial man, and therefore its settlement is certain.

It will take time.

Vast forests must be cleared, and not, perhaps, until railways are built will that day dawn upon Athabasca.

Yet it will come; and it is well to know that, when it does, there is ample room for the immigrant in the regions described.
The generation is already born, perhaps grown, which will recast a famous journalist's emphatic phrase, and cry, "Go North!" Well, we came thence! Our savage ancestors, peradventure, migrated from the immemorial East, and, in skins and breech-clouts, rocked the cradle of a supreme race in Scandinavian snows.