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II
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IN QUEST OF TREASURE
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THE PERFECT FOOL
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It was an ideal day and the season and the country were in keeping. Soon the trading posts faded from view, and when, after trolling around Fishing Point, we entered White River and went ashore for an early supper, everyone was smiling. I revelled over the prospect of work, freedom, contentment, and beauty before me; and over the thought of leaving behind me the last vestige of the white man's ugly, hypercritical, and oppressive civilization.
Was it any wonder I was happy? For me it was but the beginning of a never-to-be-forgotten journey in a land where a man can be a man without the aid of money. Yes ... without money. And that reminds me of a white man I knew who was born and bred in the Great Northern Forest, and who supported and educated a family of twelve, and yet he reached his sixtieth birthday without once having handled or ever having seen money. He was as generous, as refined, and as noble a man as one would desire to know; yet when he visited civilization for the first time—in his sixty-first year—he was reviled because he had a smile for all, he was swindled because he knew no guile, he was robbed because he trusted everyone, and he was arrested because he manifested brotherly love toward his fellow-creatures. Our vaunted civilization! It was the regret of his declining years that circumstances prevented him from leaving the enlightened Christians of the cities, and going back to live in peace among the honest, kindly hearted barbarians of the forest.[Pg 35]