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Show Indian Ingenuity. In his preface to "Antarctic Dayo," Sir Ernest Shackleton tells an amusing amus-ing little story of northern Canada. A government geologist, with infinite infi-nite labor, had collected some very Interesting In-teresting geological specimens In a region far beyond civilization. Most of the collecting was done on the barren bar-ren ground 280 miles northeast of the Great Bear lf.ke. The scientific man and the porters of the party carried the rocks on their backs to the Great Bear lake, paddled 300 miles across the lake, and alternately paddled and portaged 1,500 miles up the Mackenzie, Macken-zie, Slave and Athabasca rivers. The last portage was half a milo long at the Grand Rapids ot the Atha basca, and It was done by Indian employes em-ployes of the Hudson's Bay company The Indians were ingenious men, and they still tell with pride how they saved much labor by emptying all the heavy bags and boxes at the lower end A Greenhead Fly. of the rapids, and filling them agalc at the upper end with rocke of similar simi-lar weight. By this means they saved half a milo of dilllcult carrying The substitution was found out a year later in Ottawa. |