Читать книгу Forest, Lake and Prairie. Twenty Years of Frontier Life in Western Canada—1842-62 онлайн

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I am now in my ninth year, and, as father says, quite a help.

We rented a small one-roomed house from an Indian, and into this we moved from the steamboat. Whiskey was king here. Nearly all the Indians were drunk the first night of our arrival. Such noise and din! We children were frightened, and very glad when morning dawned.

Things became more quiet, and now we went to work to build a mission house, a church, and a school-house.

Father was everywhere—in the bush chopping logs, among the Indians preaching the Gospel, and fighting the whiskey traffic. I drove the oxen and hauled the timber to its place. I interpreted for father in the home and by the wayside. My brother and myself fished, picked berries, did anything to supplement our scanty fare, for father's salary was only $320, and prices were very high. In our wanderings after berries I had to be responsible for my brother. The Indian boys would go with us. Every little while I would shout, "David, come on!" They would take it up, "Dape-tic-o-mon!" This was how the sounds came to their ears. This they would shout; and this they named my brother, and the name still sticks to him in that country.