IN THE FAR NORTH

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 280, 16 February 1928, Page 11

IN THE FAR NORTH

WOMAN-WRITER’S LIFE MANY MILES FROM RAILWAY Sitting in sub-Arctic Canada, in 60 degrees of frost, and writing poems about spring sunsets in an English garden, to ease her homesickness, is one of the strange memories brought back to slushy London by Mrs. Rourke, who recently returned from a Hudson's Bay outpost 240 miles north of the nearest railway point. Mrs. Rourke, who is “L. DickersonWatkins,” the well-known writer in children’s periodicals; went to Canada to be married to a Hudson's Bay accountant stationed at Fort Chipewyan. At Fort Chipewyan she continued her literary work and regularly dispatched articles and stories from the frozen wastes to London by dog-mail. . Letters Through Ice “Once we lost the mail through all our letters falling into an ice-hole.” she told a “Daily Chronicle” representative recently. “AVe had to fish them out and dry them. “From September onwards the dogmail usee, to visit us once a month so long as the ice would bear. From May to September a steamer came up the lake at regular intervals. “I have never longed for anything so much as to catch a first glimpse of the steamer in May, and the sight of the last boat departing in September was the queerest and saddest sight I have ever known. “I have an extraordinarily good Indian maid, who used to come each morning with her baby strapped to her back. She spoke Cree and Chipewyan (two Indian dialects) as well as French and English. She told me a lot of the old Indian stories and folklore which are usually withheld from white people. I naturally find this material very useful in my work. “In summer a fair number of American tourists travel up north. 'They fo back loaded up with what they believe to be Eskimo beadwork, but

which is really manufactured in Francisco and sent wholesale t» ** Eskimos to sell on commission. ‘'The Indians will do almost thing to get drink. Many of the ag breeds have their own little pot-w* where they make spirit with potato* and anything else they can get. The “Wine” Goes Red **My boy once got into my and drank the greater part of my cious lavender-water! Another tun®, drank a lot of my husband’s red **»■ apparently in the belief that it some sort of liqueur.” Illness caused Mrs. Rourke to fi** 3 * to England. „ “I was ill for iwo months,’ 'No doctor could get near. _ nursed devotedly by the Grey of the Catholic Mission—’worn*®*' cheerfully give their lives to nursing and generally caring i Indians and half-breeds 1,1 Jie - ment. They are wonderful won*