At the same time Ojeeg might prefer ethyl alcohol to all the dead chiefs in heathendom. Ethyl can persuade the owner of graves that he is a greater man than any of his ancestors. Nothing like ethyl to put a rosy face on facts, and it is the approved business means of eliminating backward races decently. The chief difficulty was the boy. The boy was anxious to cure his father, and expected his new friend to help. The boy had even seemed to be expecting him. How could this be? Why had the boy addressed him as the Bear? Chapter 41. Columbium Meantime Jean and her father were spending their four precious hours on Bay-quah-de-nah-shing. They drove from one point to another through the hardwood and the clearings, now stopping to shake hands with some old friend, now pausing to survey some pleasant prospect. At four o’clock they reached the top of the mountain, whence both Canada and Michigan could be seen. At their feet lay the long southern end of the island, miles on miles of treetops. Beyond it, under the shadows of the flying clouds, a score of smaller islands were visible, and across them the sunlight dreamed of violets. At the first touch of all this beauty poor Jean felt the tears coming, and glanced back to see if she must hide them from the driver. But he had disappeared. She drew closer to her father’s side, and he clasped her with one arm. He had been there with surveyors whose only interest was to increase the lines of division. He had been there with a historian to show him where the British flag had floated for thirteen years after the peace of Ghent ought to have hauled it down. He had been there with Ojeeg, who could stand for a long time in silence to survey his ancient homeland, but who would be sure at last to say something bitter about the trading posts where his ancestors were deliberately made drunkards. But the old man had ceased from bitterness. He felt it useless to lament the passing of fox or hunter. He felt it equally useless to lament men’s hunger for land. Here he had stood with bowed head thinking of forty youths whom he had slain when land hunger plunged Columbia into civil war. He had done what he thought was right, but that could not save him from the infinite pity of it. He could no more reverse the deed than he could whiten an unhappy mulatto or darken him again to a happy negro. He had been there in 1879, the year when this boundary was first endangered by the seal question. Till that time men had been content to round up young bulls and knock them on the head, but thereafter women were to be richly clad with skins of mothers. For a time it looked as if this river would be run red with blood of boys disputing the right to kill the unborn, but in 1893 the danger passed, and both sides proceeded to exterminate the race of seals.