A. De Herries Smith
Life and career
Augustus De Herries Smith was an Irish-born writer who settled in Canada and became associated with stories of the northern wilderness. He worked for the Edmonton Bulletin and supplied news as well as fiction. His adventure writing appeared in magazines including North-West Stories, Argosy and Adventure, and his novel Drums of the North was published in 1928 after serialization. The Arctic Legions belongs to this wider career in northern adventure fiction. The settings draw on a recognizable Canadian geography, while the plots belong to a popular literary tradition of danger, endurance and contested authority rather than serving as straightforward records of northern life.
Landscape controlling the encounter
The moving caribou constrain both adversaries, making the environment an active force rather than an atmospheric backdrop. Possessing a weapon does not settle a contest when neither man can move freely. This arrangement concentrates the adventure’s physical and psychological pressures. At the same time, the narration’s unequal treatment of its characters remains part of the period fiction’s construction of authority and menace.
The Arctic Legions
Corporal Conroy and Yeyik occupy a precarious refuge on a boulder while migrating caribou stream around them. Yeyik has the policeman's revolver, but the surrounding animals make escape dangerous for either man and turn possession of the weapon into only one part of the struggle. Conroy watches for an opening while using conversation, provocation, and the relentless sound of hooves to unsettle his opponent. The confined space gives this northern adventure the intensity of a duel, with physical endurance and psychological pressure closely linked. Its portrayal of the Indigenous antagonist uses the racial stereotypes of period frontier fiction. The distinctive suspense comes from the landscape's refusal to remain a passive backdrop: the migration controls the men's movement, time, and available choices. English story from Argosy All-Story Weekly, March 2, 1929.
Separate danger from stereotype
Track what the animals prevent each man from doing. Compare that concrete restriction with the assumptions the narrative attaches to identity. Conroy’s provocations operate through speech as well as physical endurance, so the pauses and continuing sound of movement matter. The geographical setting does not make the portrayal of an Indigenous antagonist documentary evidence about northern people or their lives.