WILD
NORTHLAND
GER. SIR WM. BUTLER
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THE WILD NORTHLAND:
BEING THE STORT OF A WINTER
JOURNET, WITH DOG, ACROSS
NORTHERN NORTH AMERICA
By GEN. SIR WILLIAM FRANCIS
JUTLER, K.C.B.
Author ot "Liteot General Gordon"
♦*The Great Lone Land" etc., etc.
fFITH A ROUTE MAP
NEW AMSTERDAM BOOK COMPANY
PUBLISHERS: NEW YORK, 1903
Copyright, 1903, by
NEW AMSTERDAM BOOK COMPANY
A'-
PREFACE.
People are supposed to have au object in
every journey they undertake in this world.
A man goes to Africa to look for the Nile,
to Rome to see the Coliseum or St. Peter's;
and once, I believe, a certain traveller tramped
all the way to Jerusalem for the sole purpose
of playing ball against the walls of that city.
As this matter of object, then, seems to be
a rule with travellers, it may be asked by
those who read this book, what object had the
writer in undertaking a journey across the
snowy wilderness of North America, in win-
ter and alone? I fear there is no answer to
be given to the question, save such as may
be found in the motto on the title-page, or in
the pages of the book itself.
About eighteen mouths ago I was desirous
of entering upon African travel. A great ex-
plorer had been lost for years in the vast
lake-region of Southern Central Africa, and
the British Nation — which, by the way, be-
comes singularly attached to a man when he
is dead, or supposed to be dead — grew anx-
ious to go out to look for him.
PREFACE.
As the British Nation could not all go out
at once, or together, it endeavoured to select
one or two individuals to cairy out its wislies.
It will l)e only necessary to state here, that
the I'.ritisli Nation did not select the writer
of this book, who forthwith turned his atten-
tion from African tropic zones to American
frigid ones, and started out upon a lonely
cruise.
Many tracks lay before me in that immense
region I call "The Wild North Land."
Former wandering had made me familiar with
the methods of travel pursued in these coun-
tries by the Indian tribes, or far-scattered
fur-hunters. Fortunate in recovering posses-
sion of an old and long-tried Esquimau dog
— the companion of earlier travel — I started
in the autumn of 1872 from the Ketl River
of tlie North, and, reaching Lake Athabasca,
completed half my journey by the first week
of March in the following year. From Atha-
basca I followed the many-winding channel
of the frozen Peace River to its great caiion
in tlie Rocky Mountains, and, journeying
through this pass — for many reasons the
most remarkable one in the whole range of
the Rocky Mountains — reached the north of
British Columbia in the end of May. From
thence, following a trail of '^^)0 miles through
tlie dense forests of New Caledonia, I emerged
on tlie 3rd of June at the frontier station of
PREFACE.
Quesnelle on the Frazer Eiver, still 400 miles
north of Victoria.
In the en.suing pages the story of tliat long
tramp — for it was mostly jx'iformed on foot
■ — will be duly set forth Written by camp
fire, or in caiion, or in the little log-house
of a northern fnr fort, when dogs and men
rested for a day or two in the long icy run,
that narrative will be found, I fear, to bear
many indications of the rough scenes 'mid
which it has been penned ; but, as, on a former
occasion, many critics passed in gentle silence
over the faults and failings of another story
of travel in the Great Lone Land, so now it
may be my fortune to tell to as kindly an
audience, this record of a winter's walk
through more distant wilds — for in truth
there has been neither time for revision nor
correction.
Fortune, Avhich eighteen months ago de-
nied me African adventure, offers it now with
liberal hand.
I reached the Atlantic from the Pacific
shore to find an expedition starting from
England against Ashantee ; and long ere this
story finds a reader I hope to be pushing my
way through the mangrove swamps which lie
between the Gold Coast and Coomassie. To
others even must fall the task of correcting
proofs, while I assume my part in the correc-
tion and revision of King Koffi Kancalli, and
V
PREFACE.
the administration to his subjects of that
l»roof ol' ]5iitish i)rowess Avhich it has been
deemed desiraijle to give them.
iVreantime, my ohl friends Chief Kar-ka-
konias, Kalder, and Cerf-vola, will be absent
from this new field: but, nevertheless, there
will be present many companions of former
travel, and one Chief under whose command
I first sought the Great Lone Land as the
threshold to remoter regions.
W. F. Butler.
Loxijox, Sept em her 21st, 3873.
INTRODUCTION.
Among the thousand? of books sent out
month after month by the ever-busy presses
of the world, only an occasional one is fitted
to survive. Books of travel in particular are
seldom read a generation after their produc-
tion; they must contain something of almost
universal interest, otherwise they are speed-
ily relegated to a forgotten shelf to accumu-
late the dust of neglect. While this is true
of the great majority of such publications it
is not true of all; an occasional volume, like
"The Wild Northland," by virtue of some
inherent quality very hard to adequately
specify, is sought for year after year; edition
after edition of it comes from the press, and
still the demand for it by the great reading
public remains unsatisfied For this reason
General Butler's masterpiece is reprinted iu
the Commonwealth Library.
The author of " The Wild Northland " has
risen high in the British service since his
great book was written. Grade after grade
was reached, from Ensign of the 69th Regi-
vii
THE WILD NOKTH LAND.
nieiit in 1858, to Major-General commanding
the Ilouie Department of the Southwest,
witli headquarters at Devonport in 1900.
He served his country in Canada, in Ashan-
cee, in Egypt, in the Soudan, and in South
Africa. During all these years of service
he accomplished considerable literary work.
The list of his books includes : " The Great
Lone Land," "The Wild :N'orthland," "Akim
Foo," "Far Out: Rovings Retold," "Red
Cloud, the Solitary Sioux," "The Campaign
of the Cataracts," "Life of General Gor-
don," "Life of Sir Charles Napier," etc.
]>orn in the County of Tipperary, Ireland,
in 1838, of a good Irish family, Butler was
educated in Dublin and entered the Army in
1858. In 1877 he married the distinguished
painter. Miss Elizabeth Thompson.
General Butler's connection with American
exploration began very soon after his regi-
ment landed iu Canada. In 1870-1 he was
dispatched on a special mission to the Sas-
katcliewan Territories. Almost immediately
after his return he started on the solitary and
lonely journey through the interior of tlie
Continent — a journey which will associate his
name with pioneer work in the North Ameri-
can Continent for all lime.
The " Wild Korlliland " of General Butler
is that portion of North America where the
region of forest terminates, and that of the
viii
INTRODUCTION.
frozen barren lands commences. Its grand
and desolate scenery, its lakes and forests,
its lofty mountains and profound ravines, are
admirably described; the incidents of travel
keep the reader's attention well sustained, as
he is carried in imagination across the wildest
portions of the North. General Butler's
wanderings led him from Fort Garry on the
Red River to the Athabaska Lake, and
thence up the Peace River, and through u
wild gorge in the Rockies to British Columbia
Fort Chipewyan on this route is a place of
peculiar interest; for it is a station whence
several famous Arctic land expeditions of
former days have taken their departure. It
was from this point that Mackenzie set forth
to explore the great northern river which
bears his name. It was from here also that
Simpson started on his expedition to examine
the coast-line of the Arctic Ocean. Franklin
and Richardson rested on the shores of Atha-
baska before they struck deeper into the heart
of the Great North.
The route across the Rocky Mountains by
following the ravines of the Peace River, as
described by General Butler, passes through
^scenery of marvelous grandeur. Most of the
streams which feed the Great Slave Lake and
the Mackenzie take their rise in the Western
side of the range, and force a passage through
it, The Peace River cleaves the main chain
ix
THE WILD NORTH LAXD.
of the Eockies through a cliasin with steep
perpeudiciUar cliffs of great height on either
side, and the current floAvs silently under the
immense precipice without a break. This
awful gorge was the route by which Sir Alex-
ander Mackenzie, over a hundred years ago,
crossed the mountains to the Pacific Coast. I
believe I am correct in saying that the pro-
jected extension of the Grand Trunk Rail-
way of Canada is to reach British Columbia
through this pass.
The Peace River, with the ranges on the
south and north of it, make the dividing line
between the temperate and strictly Arctic
fauna. Here, too, is the land of the moose,
and the author gives an interesting account
of the skill and cunning with Avhich the great
deer strives to elude his pursuers, and of the
superior intelligence, aided by long experi-
ence, which enables the Indian hunter to cir-
cumvent him.
Very fascinating is General Butler's vivid
description of the higher mountains, " their
lower ridges clothed in forests of spruce,
poplar, and birch; their middle heights cov-
ered with dense thickets of spruce alone; their
summits cut with a thousand varied peaks,
bearing aloft into the sunshine 8,000 feet
above us the glittering crowns of snow."
Butler excels in these descriptions of scenery,
and the imagination of the reader is kept
INTRODUCTION.
constantly stretched not to miss anything
material in the magnificent panorama.
Such scenes as these, however, were not
visited in the early days Avithout the exercise
of much hardihood and daring, without the
endurance of hardship and the facing of dan-
gers. Xature reserves the enjoyment of her
grandest scenes only for the bravest and most
resolute of the sons of men. Such men are
not often gifted with the art of conveying
some portion of their pleasure, at second
hand, to their brethren. It is very rarely in-
deed that the restless wanderer, whose love
of adventure leads him into the wildest re-
cesses of distant mountains, can reproduce
his impressions with the skill and power that
are shown in "The Wild Northland." It
is the wide recognition of this fact which has
placed this notable book among the classics.
Egbert Waite.
New York, December, 1903.
xi
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
The Situation at Home— The "West Again — A
Land of Silence, 1
CHAPTER II.
Powder Terms Primroses — Tlie American
Lounger — "Home, Sweet Home," . . 6
CHAPTER III.
Civilization and Savagery — Fort Garry Under
New Aspects — Social Societies — An Old
Friend — " Pony " the Perverse, . . .10
CHAPTER IV.
The Wilderness— A Sunset Scene— A White
Savage— Cerf-Vola the Untiring- Dogger-
el for a Dog— The Hill of the Wolverine
—The Indian Paradise — I Plan a Surprise
— Biscuits and Water, . . . .20
CHAPTER V.
The Forks of the Saskatchewan — A Perverse
Parallel— Diplomatic Bungling— Its Re-
sults, 35
xiii
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VI.
PAGE
Uur "Winter Home— A Welcome— I Start Again
— Tlie Hunter's Camp— In Quest of Buffa-
lo on tlie Plains — "Lodge-poling" Leads
to Love, 41
CHAPTER Vn.
An Ocean of Grass— The Red Man — Whence
Comes He? — The Buffalo — Puritans and
Pioneers- The Red Man's Friend, . . 4G
CHAPTER Vni.
Buffalo Hunts — A Pictuie Once Seen Long Re-
memljered — L'Homme Capable — A Won-
derful Lake — The Lost Indian — An Appari-
tion — We Return Home, . . . .54
CHAPTER IX.
Strange Visitors — At-tistighat The Philosopher
— Indian Converts — A Domestic Scene —
The Winter Packet — Adam and his Dogs, 67
CHAPTER X.
A Tale of AVarfare — Dog-sleds — A Missing
Link — The North Sea — " Winterers " —
Samuel Hearne, 80
CHAPTER XL
A Dog of No Character — The Green Lake — Lac
He a la Crosse — A Cold Day — Fort He a la
Crosse— A Long lost Brother — Lost Upon
xiv
k
CONTENTS.
PACE
the Lake — Unwelcome Neighlxmrs — Mr.
Roderick Mrtclurlaue — "A Beautilul Morn-
ing " — Marble Features, . . , ,1)3
CHAPTER XII.
The Clearwater — A Bygone Ocean — A Land of
Lakes — The Athabasca River — Who is
He ? — Chipewyan Indians — Echo — Major
Succumbs at Last — Mai de Raquette, . 115
CHAPTER XIII.
Lake Athabasca — Northern Lights — Chipe-
wyan— The Real Workers of the World, . 131
CHAPTER XIV.
A Hudson's Bay Fort — It Comes at Last —
News From the Outside World — Tame and
Wild Savages — Lac Clair — A Treacherous
Deed— Harper, ... . . 140
CHAPTER XV.
The Peace River — Volcanos — M. Jean Batiste
St. Cyr — Half a Loaf is Better Than no
Bread— An Oasis in the Desert — Tecumseh
and Black Hawk, 155
CHAPTER XVI.
The Buffalo Hills— A Fatal Quarrel— The Ex-
iled Beavers — "At-tal-loo" Deplores His
Wives — A Cree Interior — An Attractive
Camp — I Camp Alone — Cerf-vola Without
a Supper — The Recreants Return — Dunve-
gan— A Wolf-hunt, 168
XV
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XVII.
PAGE
Alexander Mackenzie — The First Sign of Spring
— Spanker the Suspicious — Cerf-vola Con-
templates Cutlets — An Indian Hunter —
"Encumbrances" — Furs and Finery — A
"Dead Fall "—The Fur Trade at Both
Ends— An Old Fort— A Night Attack—
Wife-lifting— Cerf-vola in Difficulties and
Boots— The Rocky Mountains at Last, . 188
CHAPTER XVIII.
The wild Animals of the Peace River— Indian
Method of Hunting the Moose — Twa-poos —
The Beaver— The Bear— Bear's Butter— A
Bear's Hug and How it Ended — Fort St.
John — The River Awakes — A Rose With-
out a Thorn — Nigger Dan — A Threatening
Letter — I Issue a Judicial Memorandum —
Its Effect is all That Could be Desired—
Working up the Peace River, . . . 203
CHAPTER XIX.
Start From St. John's — Crossing the Ice — Ba-
tiste le Fleur — Chimeroo — The Last Wood-
buffalo — A Dangerous Weapon — Our Raft
Collapses — Across the Half-way River, . 233
CHAPTER XX.
Hudson's Hope — A Lover of Literature — Cross-
ing the Peace — An Unskilful Pilot — We
are Upset — Our Rescue — A Strange Vari-
ety of Arms— The Buffalo's Head — A Glo-
rious View. 233
xvi
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XXI.
rA«E
Jciccjues, the Ficncli Miner — A I'Varfiil Altyss
— Tlie Great Cafiou of tlie Peace River —
We Are oil" on our Western Way — L'nfor
tunate Indians — A Burnt Baby — "The
Moose Tliat Walks," 244
CHAPTER XXII.
Still Westward — The Dangers of the Ice — We
Enter the Main Range — In the Mountains
— A Grizzly — The Death of tlie Moose —
Peace River Pass — Pete Toy — The Omini-
ca— -'Travellers" at Home, . . .260
CHAPTER XXIII.
The Black Canon — An Ugly Prospect — The
Vanished Boat — We Struggle on — A For-
rorn Hope — We Fail Again — An Unhoped-
for Meeting and a Feast of Joy — The
Black Canon Conquered, .... 276
CHAPTER XXIV.
The Untiring Over-estimates his Powers — He
is not Particular as to the Nature of his
Dinner — Toil and Temper — Farewell to
the Ominica — Germansen — The Mining
Camp— Celebrities, 292
CHAPTER XXV.
Mr. Rufus Sylvester — Tlie Untiring Developes
a New Sphere of Usefulness — Mansen — A
Last Landmark 302
xvii
CONTENTS
CHAPTER XXVI.
PAGB
British Columbia — Bouudaiics Again — Juau dc
Fu(;ii — Carver — The Sliiuing Mountains —
Jacob Astor — The Monarch of Salmon —
Oregon — " Riding and Tying " — Nation
Lake— The Pacific, 308
CHAPTER XXVn.
The Look-out Mountain— A Gigantic Tree —
The Untiring Retires Before Superior Num-
bers — Fort St. James — A Strange Sight in
the Forest— Lake Noola — Quesnelle — Cerf-
vola in Civilized Life — Old Dog, Good-
bye! 325
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
CHAPTER I.
The Situation at Home — The West Again —
A Land of Silence.
There had never been so many armies in
England. There was a new army, and there
was an old army ; there was an army of mili-
tia, an army of volunteers, and an army of
reserve ; there were armies on horse, on foot,
and on paper. There was the army of the
future — of which great things were predicted
— and far away, lost in a haze of history (but
still more substantial than all other armed
realities, present or future), there lay the
great dead army of the past.
It was a time when everybody had some-
thing to do with military matters, everybody
on the social ladder, from the Prime Minister
on the topmost round to the mob-mover on
the lowest.
Committees controlled the army. Depart-
ments dressed it, Radicals railed at it, Lib-
1
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
erals ler-tured upon it, Conservatives con-
demni'd it, Teeis wrote pamphlets upon it,
Dukes denounced it, I'rinces paraded it, and
every member of Parliament who could put
together half a dozen words with tolerable
grammatical fluency had something to say
about it
Surely such a period must have been one
in which every soldier would have recognized
the grandeur and importance of his profes-
sion, and clung with renewed vigour to a life
which seemed of moment to the whole Bitish
nation. But this glowing picture of the great
"nation of shop-keepers," suddenly fired by
military ardour, had its reverse.
The stream of advancement slowly stag-
nating under influences devised to accelerate
it, the soldier wearied by eternally learning
from masters the lesson he could have taught,
the camp made a place of garrison routine
and not of military manoeuvre, the uniform
harness Avhicli had galled a Burton, a Pal-
grave, a Ruxton, and a Hayward, from ranks
Avhere the spirit of adventurous discovery
sickened under chilling regulation — this har-
ness made more unrelaxingly irksome ; a sys-
tem of promotion regulated by money — the
offspring, it is true, of foul corruption, but
which had become not a little purified by
lapse of time; this system, supplanted by
one of selection theoretically pure, but des-
2
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
tined to fall into that lowest of all corrup-
tions, the influence of jwlitical jobbery : all
this formed the leading features in that order
of things, old and new, which the spectacle
of a neighbouring nation, struck suddenly to
the ground by a mighty army, had caused the
l)anic-stricken British people to overhaul and
to reconstruct.
Taken any way one can, an army on paper
is not a satisfactory profession. It is subject
to sudden and unlooked-for bursts of military
zeal ; it is so bent upon nervously asserting
itself fit for anything ; it is from its nature so
much akin to pen, ink, and envelope of a
common-place type ; it has such disagreeable
methods at garrisoning the most pestilential
spots upon the earth, and abandoning to re-
publican bluster whole continents called colo-
nies; those who shape its destinies are so
ready to direct it against matchlock monarchs
and speared soldier}^ ; while arms are folded
before those conflicts which change the past
and future of the centuries ; all these consid-
erations go a great way towards making the
profession of arms, on paper, at any time an
anomaly.
But when there was also present to the
memory of one who thus regarded the new
order of military life, the great solitudes, the
inland oceans, the desolate wilds, the gloomy
forests of a far-away land, through which his
3
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
fonnei' wanderings had carried liini ; wlien
thought re-sought again those vast regions of
the earth where Kature has graven her image
in characters so colossal, that man seems to
move slowly amidst an ocean frozen rigid
by lapse of time, frozen into those things
we name mountains, rivers, prairies, forests;
man a mere speck, powerless so far to mark
his presence, in blur of smoke, in noise of
city, in clash of crank, or whirl of wheel:
when these things came back in pictures
touched by the soft colours Memory loves to
limn with, there were not wanting dull pro-
fessional outlooks and dearth of service to
turn the footsteps gladly into the old regions
again, there to trace new paths through the
almost exhaustless waste which lies between
the lonely prairies of the Saskatchewan and
the icy oceans of the Xorth.
What shall we call this land to those who
follow us into its depths?
It has prairies, forests, mountains, barren
wastes, and rivers ; rivers whose single lengths
roll through twice a thousand miles of shore-
land ; prairies over which a rider can steer
for months without resting his gaze on aught
save the dim verge of the ever-shifting hori-
zon; mountains rent by rivers, ice-topped,
glacier-seared, impassable; forests whose
sombre pines darken a region half as large as
Europe ; sterile, treeless wilds whose 400,000
4
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
square miles lie spread in awful desolation.
How shall it all be called?
In summer, a land of sound, a land echo-
ing with the voices of birds, the ripple of
running water, the mournful music of the
waving pine-branch ; in winter, a land of si-
lence, a land hushed to its inmost depths by
the weight of ice, the thick-falling snow, the
intense rigor of a merciless cold — its great
rivers glimmering in the moonlight, wrapped
in their shrouds of ice ; its still forests rising
weird and spectral against the Aurora-lighted
horizon ; its notes of bird or brook hushed as
if in death ; its nights so still that the mov-
ing streamers across the northern skies seem
to carry to the ear a sense of sound, so mo-
tionless around, above, below, lies all other
visible nature.
If then we call this region the land of still-
ness, that name will convey more justly than
any other the impress most strongly stamped
upon the winter's scene.
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
CHAPTER II.
Powder versus Primroses — The American Lounger
— "Home, Sweet Home."
It was just time to leave London. The
elm-trees in the parks were beginning to put
forth their earliest and greenest leaves; in-
numerable people were flocking into town
because custom ordained that the country-
must be quitted when the spring is at its
finest ; as though the odor of primroses had
something pestilential about it, and anything
in the shape of violets except violet powder
was terribly injurious to feminine beauty.
Youthful cosmopolites with waxed mous-
taches had apparently decided to compromise
with the spring, and to atone for their aban-
donment of the country by making a minia-
ture flower-garden of their button-holes. It
was the last day of April, and ere the sum-
mer leaves had yellowed along the edge of the
great sub- Arctic forest, my winter hut had to
be hewn and built from the pine-logs of the
far-distant Saskatchewan.
In the saloon or on the after-deck of a
Cunard steamship steering west, one sees
perhaps more of America's lounging class
6
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
than can be met with on any other spot in the
world ; the class is a limited one, in fact it
may be a matter of dispute, whether the
pure and simple lounger, as we know him in
Piccadilly or Pall ]Mall, is to be found in the
New World; but a three, or six, or twelve
months' visit to Europe has sufficiently de-
veloped the dormant instincts of the class in
the New Vork or Boston man of business, to
give color to the assumption that Columbia
possesses a lounger.
It is possible that he is a lounger only for
the moment. That one glimpse of Bunker,
one echo of "Wall Street, will utterly banish
for ever the semblance of lounging ; but for
the present the Great Pyramid /ninns Bun-
ker's Hill, the Corso /« //^ //*- Wall Street, have
done something toward stamping him with
the air and manner of the idler. For the
moment he sips his coffee, or throws his ci-
gar-end overboard, with a half-thoughtful,
halt-bhtse air ; for the moment he has discov-
ered that the sun does not rise and set exclu-
sively in the United States, and that there
were just a few shreds and patches of history
in the world prior to the declaration of Ameri-
can independence: still, when the big ship
has steamed on into the shallow waters Avhich
narrow into Sandy Hook or Plymouth Sound,
and the broad panorama twixt Long Island
and Staten, or Plymouth and Nahant opens
7
THE "WILD NORTH LAND.
on the view, the old feeling comes back with
the old scenes again.
" Sir, the Bay of New York closely resem-
bles the Bay of Naples." There is not the
slighest use in telling him that it is quite
as like the Bey of Tunis, or the Hospodar of
Bulgaria — so we let it be
"There, sir, is Bunker's Hill."
" Ah, indeed I " drawled a genuine British
lounger, with that superb ignorance only to
be attained after generations of study, as he
(piietly scanned the ridge through his lazilj'-
arranged eye-glass. "Bunker — who was
J*)unker? and what did he do on his hill?"
Yet, ere we hasten away to the North,
another word anent our cousin. These things
are, after all, the exception; the temptation
to tell a good story, or what we may deem
such, must not blind us to the truth ; the
other side of the question must not be forgot-
ten. An English traveller in America will
have so much to thank American travel for
that he can well afford to smile at such
things.
It was an American who painted for us the
last scenes of Moorish historj^, with a colour-
ing as brilliant as that which the Hall of the
Lions could boast of in tlie old days of Gre-
nada's glory. To-day an American dwelling
in Home recalls for us in marble the fierce
voluptuous beauty of the Egyptian Queen.
8
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
Another catches the colouring of Claude, in
his ''Twilight in the Wilderness." And if,
as I have somewhere heard, it is to the writer
of the ballad-song that true poetic fame be-
longs, that song which is heard at lonely
camp-fires, which is sung by sailors at the
wheel as the canvas-clouded ship reels on
under the midnight gloom through the tum-
bling seas — the song which has reached the
heart of a nation, and lives forever in the
memory of a people — then let us remember,
when we listen to those wondrous notes on
whose wings float the simple words, " Be it
ever so humble, there is no place like home;"
let us remember the land whose memory called
them forth from the heart of an American
exile.
And now we must away.
THE AVILD NORTH LAND.
CHAPTER III.
Civilization and Savagery — Fort Garry under New
Aspects — Social Societies — An Old Friend —
" Pony" the Perverse.
The long, hot, dusty American simimer
was drawing to a close. The sand-fly had
had his time, the black-fly had run his round
the mosquito had nearly bitten himself to
death, and during that operation had ren-
dered existence unbearable to several millions
of the human race. The quiet tranquil fall-
time had followed the fierce wasting summer,
and all nature seemed to rest and bask in the
mellow radiance of September.
In old tales, written I know not by whom,
but read chiefly by youthful eyes, we are told
of those who seek through lands infested by
goblins and demons, by monstrous and un-
couth forms of man and beast, for some fair
realm of rest and happiness. He who to-day
would seek the great solitudes of North
America must pass through a somewhat
similar ordeal.
Civilization, or what we term such, rolls
with queer strides across the American con-
tinent. Far in advance of the last i-eal city
10
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
lies a land of terrible savagery, a desolate
realm in which ruffianism and rowdyism hold
sway. Here, in an expansion which is ever
shifting, ever moving west and northwest,
stand congregated the civilizers of the
New World — the navvy, the gambler, the
rowdy, the saloon-keeper, tlie tramster, the
murderer.
To civilize a new land is the easiest of
tasks if we but set about it after the American
model. Here is the recipe. Given a realm
from which the red man has been banished,
tricked, shot, or hunted out ; from which the
bison and elk have been chased ; a lonely,
tenantless land, with some great river flowing
in long winding reaches silently through its
vast plains and mountain gorges: here, then,
is what you have to do :
Place on the river a steamboat of the rudest
construction . Wherever the banks are easy
of ascent, or where a smaller stream seeks
the main river, build a drinking-house of
rough-hewn logs; let the name of God be
used only in blasphemy, and language be a
medium for the conveyance of curses. Call a
hill a "bluff," a valley a "gnlch," a tire-fly
a "lightning bug," a man "a cuss," three
shanties a "city." Let every man chew
when he isn't smoking, and spit when he
isn't asleep; and then — when half a dozen
persons have come to violent ends — when
U
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
killing has literally become " no murder " —
3^our new land will be thoroughly civilized.
Poor, wild man of the West! scalper,
war-raider, savage dweller in woods and on
prairies; believer in manitous and dream-
omens, painted and eagle-feathered; crafty,
stealthy, and treacherous to foe, utterly
hopeless to the man-tamer : this is the state
of things which supplants thy savagery.
This is civilization as it comes to thee from
the East Whenever thy wandering bands
roam in from the great West, this is the
sight they see in lands but lately their own.
I know not how it is, but in Avild glen or
lonely prairie, amidst races whose very names
are supposed to be synonymous with all tliat
is wild, lawless, or barbarous, I have known
many a bond of sympathy, many a link t'wixt
their lives and mine own. Nay, when man
has been far distant, and nought but the lone
spaces lay around me, and tlie gaunt pine-
tree stretched its arms athwart the icy sky, I
have felt companionship and friendship for
the very dogs that drew my load; but for
this band of civilizers, for these brutal
pioneers of Anglo-American freedom, in their
many stages between unblackened boots and
diamond breast-pins, I liave felt nothing but
loathing and disgust.
It was late in the month of September,
1872, when, after a summer of travel in
13
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
Canada and the United States, I drew near
the banks of the Red lliver of the North.
Two years had worked many changes in scene
and society ; a railroad had reached the river ;
a " city " stood on the spot where, during a
former visit, a midnight storm had burst upon
me in the then untenanted prairie. Three
steamboats rolled the muddy tide of the
winding river before their blulf, ill-shapen
bows. Gambling-houses and drinking-sa-
loons, made of boards and brown paper,
crowded the black, mud-soaked streets. A
stage-coach ran north to Fort Garry two
hundred and fifty miles, and along the track
rowdyism was rampant. Horse-stealing was
prevalent, and in the "city" just alluded to
two murderers walked quietly at large. In
tine, the land which borders the Red River,
Minnesota, and Dakota, had been thoroughly
civilized.
But civilization had worked its way even
deeper into the Northwest. The place for-
merly known as Fort Garry had civilized into
the shorter denomination of " Garry ; " the
prairie around the Fort had corner lots which
sold for more hundreds of dollars than they
possessed frontage-feet; and society was di-
vided in opinion as to whether the sale which
called forth these prices was a " bogus " one
or not.
Representative institutions had been estab-
THE WILD XOT^TIT LAND.
lished in the new province of Manitoba, and
an election for members of Parliament had
just been concluded. Of this triumph of
modern liberty over primeval savagery, it is
sufficient to say, that the great princij)le of
freedom of election had been fully vindicated
by a large body of upright citizens, who, in
the freest and most independent manner, had
forcibly possessed themselves of the poll-
books, and then fired a volley from revolvers,
or, in the language of the land, "emptied
their shooting-irons " into another body of
equally upright citizens, who had the temer-
ity to differ with them as to the choice of a
political representative.
It was gently rumored that some person or
persons were to be arrested for this outburst
of constitutional patriotism, but any proceed-
ing so calculated to repress the individual in-
dependence of the citizen Avould have been
utterly subversive of all representative in-
stitutions.
Civilization had also developed itself in
other ways. Several national societies had
been founded, and were doing prosijerously.
There was a St. George's Society and a St.
Andrew's Society, and, I think, also a St.
Patrick's Society. Indeed the memory of
these saints appears to be held in consider-
able reputation in the New World. Accord-
ing to the prospectus and programme of these
14
THE WILD NOKTII LAND.
societies, cliarity aijpears to be the vital ])i'in-
cii)le of each association: sick Scotchiucn,
emigrating Eiiglisli, and indigent Irish, were
all requested to come forward and claim relief
at the hands of the wealthier sous of St. An-
drew, St. George, and St. Patrick. Charity,
which is said to begin at home, and which,
alas! too frequently ends there also, having
thus had its commencement in the home
circle, seemed determined to observe all home-
like institutions; and the annual dinner was
of necessity a very important item in the
transactions of each society. Indeed it would
be difficult to find a place Avhere, in the
present day, one could witness "fichting for
Chairlie," "Scots wha haeing," "Manning
for a' that," and those other peculiar customs
of the Celtic race, carried out wdth better
effect than in the meeting which annually
gathers to do justice to the memory of the
Apostle of the Picts in the New World.
Amidst all these changes of scene and so-
ciety there was one thing still unchanged on
the confines of the Red Eiver. Close to the
stream, at the place known as the Point of
Frogs, an old friend met me with many tokens
of recognition. A tried companion Avas he
through many long days of wintry travel.
There, as fresh and hearty as when I had
parted from him two years before, stood Cerf-
vola, the Esquimau dog who had led my
15
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
train from Cumberland, on tlie Lower Sas-
katchewan, across t.lie ice of the great Lakes.
Of the four dogs lie alone remained. Two
years is a long time in the life of any dog,
but still a longer period in that of a hauling-
dog; and Cerf-vola's comrades of that date,
Muskeymote, Cariboo, and Tigre, had gone
the way of all earthly things.
To become the owner of this old friend
again and of his new companions Spanker
and Fony, was a work of necessity ; and I
quitted the Point of Frogs by the steamboat
" Selkirk " with three hauling-dogs in my
possession. Strong and stout as of yore;
clean-limbed, long-woolled, deep-chested ;
with ears pointed forward and tail close
curled over his broad back, Cerf-vola still
stood the picture of an Esquimau.
Of the other two dogs, Fony was a half-
breed, and Spanker, sharp, keen, and rest-
less, was like his leader, a pure Husky ; but,
unlike the older dog, his nature was wild
and fierce : some malignant guardian of his
youth had despoiled him of the greater part
of his tail, and by doing so had not a little
detracted from his personal appearance.
As these three animals will be my constant
companions during many months, through
many long leagues of ice and snow, I have
here sketched their outward semblance with
some care. Civilization and a steamboat ap-
16
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
peared to agree hut i)oorly with my new
friends. Spanker, failing in making his teeth
emancipate his own neck, turned all his at-
tention toward freeing his companion, and
after a deal of toil he succeeded in gnawing
Pony loose. This notable instance of canine
abnegation (in which supporters of the Dar-
winian theory will easily recognize the con-
necting link between the Algerme captives
assisting each other to freedom, etc., after
the manner of the Middle Ages), resulted in
the absconding of the dog Pony, who took
advantage of the momentary grounding of
the steamer to jump on shore and disappear
into the neighboring forest.
It was a wild, tempestuous night; the
storm swept the waters of the Red River
until at length the steamboat was forced to
seek her moorings against the tree-lined
shore. Here was a chance of recovering the
lost dog. Unfortunately the boat lay on
the Dakota side, and the dog was at large
somewhere on the Minnesota shore, while
between the stormy water heaved in inky
darkness. How was the capture to be
effected?
As I stood on the lower deck of the steam-
boat, pondering how to cross the dark river,
a man paddled a small skiff close to the boat's
side. " Will you be good enough to put me
across the river? " I asked.
2 17
THE AVTI.D XORTIT LAND.
"I've no darned time to lose a night like
this," lie answered, "but if you want to cross
jump in." The lantern which lie carried
showed tlie skilf to be half-filled with Avater,
but the chance was too good to be lost. I
sprang in, and we shot away over the rough
river. Kneeling in the bottom of the boat I
held the lantern aloft, while my gruff com-
rade paddled hard. At last we touched the
shore ; clambering up the wet, slippery bank,
I held the light amidst the forest ; there, not
twenty paces distant, stood Pony.
" Pony, poor fellow, good dog, come. Pony,
cess, cess, poor old boy." Alas! all the al-
luring doggisms by which we usually attract
the animal were noAv utterly useless, and the
more I cried "Here, here," the more the
wretch went there, there. Meanwhile my
boating friend grew impatient; I could hear
him above the storm shouting and cursing at
me with great volubility : so I made my way
back to the shore, gave him his lantern, and
went back into the forest, while he shot out
into the darkness of the river.
Every now and again I heard the brute
Pony close to me in the brushwood. Por
some time I wandered on ; suddenly a light
glimmered through the wet trees: a})p]'oach-
ing the liglit I found it to issue from an In-
dian wigwam, and at my summons two or
three half-clad creatures came out. There
18
THE Wir.D NOKTII LAND.
was a dog lost in the woods, would tliey get
lights and help me to catch hiui? a dollar
wouhl be the reward. Tlie dollar threw a
new light upon the matter. lUiruing l)rands
were instantly brought forth from the wig-
wam fire, but with little result ; the vagabond
Pony, now utterly scared out of all semblance
of dog wit, sought safety in the deepest re-
cesses of the forest, from whence he poured
forth howls into the night. I returned to
the river, and with the aid of my wigwam
friends regained the steamboat. Half an
hour later the man on watch saw a dark
object swimming around the boat ; it was the
lost dog. Cerf-vola, tied in the rain as a
lure, had continued to howl without inter-
mission, and the vagrant Pony had evidently
come to the conclusion that there were worse
])laces on a wet autumnal night than the
warm deck of the steamboat " Selkirk."
In the earliest days of October all phases
of civilization were passed with little regret ;
and at the Rat Creek, near the southern
shore of Lake Manitoba, I bid good-bye to
society. The party was a small one — a
member of the Imperial Legislature, Avell
known in Ireland, now en route to get a
glimpse of the great solitudes ere Avinter had
closed in, his servant, mine own, five horses,
and two carts.
19
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
CHAPTER IV.
The Wilderness — A Suuset Scene — A White Savage
— Cerf-vola the Untiring — Doggerel for a Dog
— The Hill of the Wolverine — The Indian Para-
dise — I Plan a Surprise — Biscuits and Water.
It was the 4th of October, bright with the
warmth of the fading summer — that quiet
glow which lingers over the face of nature,
like the hectic flush upon a dying beauty, ere
the wintry storms come to kill.
Small and insignificant, the Musk-Rat
Creek flows on toward Lake Manitoba amidst
bordering thickets of oak and elm trees On
each side, a prairie just beginning to yellow
under the breath of the cold night wind; be-
hind, towards the east, a few far-scattered
log-houses smoke, and a trace of husbandry ;
the advanced works of that army whose rear-
guard reaches to the Vistula ; before, toward
the west, the sun going down over the great
silent wilderness. How difficult to realize
it! HoAV feeble are our minds to gauge its
depths !
He who rides for months through the vast
solitudes sees during the hours of his daily
travel an unbroken panorama of distance.
The seasons come and go; grass grows and
30
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
flowers die ; the lire leaps with tiger bounds
along the earth ; the snow lies still and quiet
over hill and lake ; the rivers rise and fall,
but the rigid features of the wilderness rest
unchanged. Lonely, silent, and impassive;
heedless of man, season, or time, the weight
of the Infinite seems to brood over it. Once
only in the hours of day and night a moment
comes when this impassive veil is drawn from
its features, and the eye of the wanderer
catches a glimpse of the sunken soul of the
wilderness ; it is the moment which follows
the sunset; then a deeper stillness steals over
the earth, colors of wondrous hue rise and
spread along the western horizon. In a deep
sea of emerald and orange of fifty shades,
mingled and interwoven together, rose-colored
isles float anchored to great golden threads ;
while, far away, seemingly beyond and above
all, one broad flash of crimson light, the
parting sun's last gift, reddens upward to the
zenith. And then, when every moment
brings a change, and the night gathers closer
to the earth, and some waveless, nameless
lake glimmers in uncertain shore-line and in
shadow of inverted hilltop ; when a light that
seems born of another world (so weirdly dis-
tant is it from ours) lingers along the western
sky, then hanging like a lani}) over the tomb
of the sun, the Evening Star gleams out upon
the darkening wilderness.
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
It may be only a fancy, a conceit bred from
loneliness and long wandering, but at such
times the great solitude has seemed to me to
open its soul, and that in its depths I read
its secrets.
Ten days dawned and died ; the Mauvais
Bois, the Sand Ridges, western shore of au
older world's immense lake, the Pine Creek,
the far-stretching hills of the Little Sas-
katchewan rose, drew near, and faded behind
us. A wild, cold storm swept down from
the north, and, raging a day and a night,
tore the yellow leaves from the poplar thick-
ets, and scared the wild fowl far southward
to a warmer home.
Late on the 10th of October we reached
the Hudson's Bay Company's post of Beaver
Creek, the western limit to the travels of my
friend. Here, after a stay of three days and
a feast of roasted beaver, we parted ; he to
return to Killarney, St. Stephen's, and De-
nominational Education — a new name for the
old feud between those great patriot armies,
the Ins and the Outs ; I to seek the lonely
lands where, far beyond the distant Sas-
katchewan, the great L^nchagah, j)arent of
a still mightier stream, rolls through remote
lakes and whispering pines its waters to the
Polar Seas.
With one man, three horses, and three
dogs, and all those requisites of food, arms,
83
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
and raiment witli -which a fonuer journey
liad familiarized me, I started on the 14tli of
(October bound for the North-west. I was
virtually alone; my companion was a half-
breed taken at chance from the wigwam at
the scene of the dog Pony's midnight esca-
pade on the Red River. Chance had on this
occasion proved a failure, and the man had
already shown many symptoms of worthless-
ness. He had served as a soldier in an
American corps raised by a certain Hatch, to
hold in check the Sioux after the massacre of
Minnesota in 1862. A raid made by nine
troopers of this corps, against an Indian tent
occupied by some dozen women and children,
appears to have been the most noteworthy
event in the history of Hatch's Battalion.
Having surrounded the wigwam in the night,
these cowards shot the miserable inmates,
then scalping and mutilating their bodies
they returned to their comrades, bearing the
gory scalp-locks as trophies of their prowess.
Hatch is said to have at once forwarded to
Washington a despatch, announcing "a de-
cisive victory over the Sioux by the troops
under his command." But a darker sequel
to the tale must remain in shadow, for, if the
story told to a Breton missionary rests on a
base of truth, the history of human guilt may
;be searched in vain for a parallel of atrocity.
J had other companions besides this ci-
33
THE WILD NORTH LAND
devant trooper, of a far more congenial na-
ture, to share ni}^ spare time with. A good
dog is so much a nobler beast than an indif-
ferent man that one sometimes gladly ex-
changes the society of one for that of the
other.
A great French Avriter has told us that ani-
mals were put on earth to show us the evil
effects of passions run riot and unchecked.
But it seems to me that the reverse woukl be
closer to the truth. The humanity which
Napoleon deemed a dog taught to man on
Bassano's battle-field is not the only virtue
Ave can learn from that lower world which is
bound to us by such close ties, and yet lies
so strangely apart from us Be that as it
may, a man can seldom feel alone if he has a
dog to share his supper, to stretch near him
under the starlight, to answer him with tail
Avag, or glance of eye, or prick of ear
Day after day Cerf-vola and his comrades
trotted on in all the freedom which summer
and autumn give to the great dog family in
the north. Now chasing a badger, who in-
variably popped into his burrow in time to
save his skin ; now sending a pack of prairie
grouse flying from the long grass; now wad-
ing breast-deep into a lake where a few wild
ducks still lingered, loath to quit their sum-
mer nesting-haunts
Of all the dogs I have known, Cerf-voU
24
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
possessed the largest share of tact. He
never fought a pitched battle, yet no dog
dared dispute his supremacy. Other dogs
had to maintain their leadership by many a
deadly conflict, but he quietly assumed it,
and invariably his assumption was left un-
challenged; nay, even upon his arrival at
some Hudson Bay fort, some place wherein
he had never before set foot, he was wont to
instantly appoint himself director-general of
all the Company's dogs, whose days from
earliest puppyhood had been passed within
the palisades. I have often watched him at
his work, and marvelled by what mysterious
power he held his sway. I have seen two or
three large dogs flee before a couple of bounds
merely made by him in their direction, while
a certain will-some-one-hold-me-back? kind
of look pervaded his face, as though he was
only prevented from rending his enemy into
small pieces by the restraining influence
which the surface of the ground exercised
upon his legs.
His great weight no doubt carried respect
with it. At the lazy time of the year he
weighed nearly one hundred pounds, and his
size was in no way diminished by the im-
mense coat of liair and fine fur which en-
veloped him. Had Sir IJoyle Roche known
this dog he would not liave given to a biid
alone the faculty of being iii two places at
THE WILD NORTH LAND
once, for lu) nioital eye could measure the
interval between Cerf-vola's demolishnient of
two pieces of dog-meat, or pemmican. flung
in different directions at the same moment.
Thus we journeyed on. Sometimes when
the sheen of a lake suggested the evening
camp, while yet the sun was above the hori-
zon, my three friends Avould accompany me
on a ramble through the thicket-lined hills
At such times, had any Indian watched from
sedgy shore or bordering willow copse the
solitary wanderer who, with dogs follow-
ing close, treaded the lonely lake shore, he
would probably have carried to his brethren
a strange story of the "white man's medi-
cine." He would have averred that he had
heard a white man talking to a big, busliy-
tailed dog, somewhere amidst the Touchwood
Hills, and singing to him a " great medicine
song" when the sun went down.
And if now we reproduce for the reader
the medicine song which tlie white man
strung together for his bushy-tailed dog, we
may perhaps forestall some critic's verdict
by prefixing to it the singularly appropriate
title of
DOGGEREL.
And so, old friend, we arc nit-t aifjiin, comiianion.s
still to Ix',
Across the waves of drifted snow, across the prairie
seu.
36
TlfE WILD NORTH LAND.
•Again we'll tread the sik'iil lake, the frozen swamp,
the fen.
Beneath the snowcrown'd sombre pine we'll build
our cam]) again :
And long before the iey dawn, while hush'd all na-
ture lies,
And weird and wan the white lights Hash across the
northern skies;
Thy place, as in past daysthou'lt take, the leader of
the train,
To steer until the stars die out above the dusky plain ;
Then on, thro' space by wood and hill, until the
wintry day
In pale gleams o'er the snow-capped ridge has worn
itself away.
And twilight bids us seek the brake, where midst
the pines once more
The tire will gleam l)efore us, the stars will glimmer
o'er.
There stretch'd upon the snow-drift, bef(jre the pine
log's glare,
Thy master's couch and supper with welcome thou
wilt share.
To rest, unless .some prowling wolf .should keep thee
watchful still.
While lonely tlirough the midnight sounds his wail
upon the hill.
And wIkui the storm raves around, and thick and
blinding snow
Comes whirling in wild eddies around, above, below;
Still all immoved thou 'It keep thy pace as manfully
as when
Thy matchless mettle tirst I tried in lone I'uscpiia's
glen.
Thus day by day we'll pierce the wilds where rolls
the Arctic stream,
S7
THE WILD NORTH LAXD.
Where Athabasca's silent lakes, thi-ough whispering
pinetrees gleam.
Until, where far Unchagah's flood by giant cliffs is
crown'd,
Thy bells will feed the echoes, long hungering for a
sound.
Old dog, they .say thou hast no life beyond this earth
of ours,
That toil and truth give thee no place amidst Ely-
sian bowers.
Ah well, e'en so, I look for thee when all our dan-
ger's past,
That on some liearth-rug, far at home, thou 'It rest
thy limbs at last.
A long distance of rolling plain, of hills
fringed with thickets, of treeless waste, and
lakes spreading into unseen declivities,
stretches out betAveen the Qu'Appelle and
Saskatchewan rivers. Roamed over by but
few bands of Indians, and almost bereft of
the larger kind of game, whose bleached
bones cover it thickly, this expanse lies in
unbroken solitude for more than three hun-
dred miles. Through it the great trail to the
north lays its long, winding course ; but no
other trace of man is to be found ; and over
lake and thicket, hill and waste, broods the
loneliness of the untenanted.
Once it was a famous field of Indian fight,
in the old days when Crees and Assineboinc
strove for mastery. Now it has almost lost
the tradition of battle, but now and again a
28
THE WILD NOirni LAND.
hill-top or a rivoi-couvse, whos(>. Fiencli or
English luiiiie faintly echoes the Indian mean-
ing, tells to the traveller avIio eares to look
below the surface some story oi tight in by-
gone times.
The hill of the Wolverine and the lonely
Spathanaw Watchi have witnessed many a
deed of Indian daring and Indian perfidy in
days not long passed away, but these deeds
are now forgotten, for the trader as he un-
yokes his horses at their base, and kindles
his evening fire, little recks of such things,
and hails the hill-top only as a landmark on
his solitary road.
Alone in a vast waste the Spathanaw
Watchi lifts his head, thickets and lakes are
at his base, a lonely grave at top, around
four hundred miles of horizon ; a view so
vast that endless s})ace seems for once to find
embodiment, and at a single glance the eye
is satiated with immensity. There is no
mountain range to come up across the sky-
line, no river to lay its glistening folds along
the middle distance, no dark forest to give
shade to foreground or to fringe perspective,
no speck of life, no track of man, nothing
but the wilderness. Reduced thus to its
own nakedness, space stands forth with al-
most terrible grandeur. One is suddenly
brought face to face with that enigma which
we try to comprehend by giving to it the
29
THE ^yILn xoirni land.
names of endless, interminable, measureless;
that (lark inanity Avhich broods ujjon a waste
of moorland at dusk, and in wliich faney see
the spectral and the shadowy.
Yet in this view from the Spathanaw there
is nothing dimly seen ; the eye travels to the
farthest distance Avithout one effort of vision,
and, reaching there, rests untired by its long
gaze. As the traveller looks at this wonder-
ful view he stands by the grave of an Indian,
and he sees around him for four hundred
miles the Indian Paradise. It was from
scenes such as this, when the spring had cov-
ered them with greensward, and the wild
herds darkened them by their myriads, that
the shadowy sense of a life beyond the tomb
took shape and form in the Red man's mind.
It was the 25th of October when I once
more drew near to the South Saskatchewan.
Amidst its high wooded banks the broad
river rippled brightly along, as yet showing
no trace of that winter now so close at hand.
Two years before, all but a few days, I had
reached this same river, then shored by dense
masses of ice ; and now, as I looked from the
southern shore, the eye had no little difficulty
in tracing through the lingering foliage of the
summer the former point of passage, where
on the cold November morning my favourite
horse had gone down beneath the ice-locked
river.
30
THE WILD Noirm land.*
Crossing to the soutlioin slioi'e I tuniod
eastward tlirougli a ricli uiululating land, and
I'idiiig liard for one day reached tlie little
mission station of Prjnee Albert, midway be-
tween the Red lliver and the liocky Moun-
tains
Those who have followed me through
former wanderings may remember a spot
where two large rivers unite after man}^ hun-
dred miles of prairie wandering, and form one
majestic current on the edge of the Great
Northern Forest. To this spot, known as
the "Grand Forks of the Saskatchewan," I
was now journeying, for there, while the
autumn was yet younger, two friends had
preceded me to build at the point of conflu-
ence a hut for oar residence during the early
winter.
The evening of the 28th of October found
me pushing hastily through a broad belt of
firs and pines which crosses the tongue of
land between the rivers some ten miles from
their junction ; beyond this belt of trees the
country opened out, but, as it finally nar-
rowed to the point of confluence, the dark
pine-clumps, outliers of the dense Northern
Forest, again rose into view. With these
features a previous visit had made me ac-
quainted; but the night had now closed in
ere yet the fir forest had been passed, and
the rain, which all day had been ceaseless,
31
THE WILD NORTH LAND
settled down with darkness into a still heavier
toi'rent. As we emerged from the pines my
baggage-cart suddenly Ijroke down, and there
only remained the alternative of camping by
the scene of the disaster, or ])ushing on for
the river junction on foot.
Unfortunately the prospect of unexpectedly
walking in upon my friends, housed in the
depths of the wilderness, amidst the wild
rain-storm of the night, proved too strong a
temptation ; and having secured the cart as
best we could against weather and wolves, we
set out into the darkness. For more than an
hour we walked hard through undulating
ground intermixed with swamps and beaver
dams, until at length the land began to de-
cline perceptibly.
Descending thus for nearly a mile we came
suddenly upon a large, quick-running river,
whose waters chafed with sullen noise against
boulder-lined shores, and his.sed under the
wild beating of the rains. With cautious
steps we groped our way to the edge and cast
a dry branch into the flood ; it floated towards
the left; the river, then, must be the South
Saskatchewan. Was the junction of this
river with the northern branch yet distant?
or was it close at hand? for if it was near,
then my home was near too-
Making our way along the shore we held
on for some time, until suddenly there rose
32
TTTE WILD NOHTII LAND.
before us a steop bank, at the base of which
the current ran in whirling eddies. To climb
up a high bank on our left, and tlius flank
this obstacle, next became our toil ; soon we
found ourselves in a dense wood where innu-
merable fallen trees lay in endless confusion.
For another hour we groped our way through
this labyrinth in a vain attempt to reach the
upper level, until at last, exhausted by hours
of useless toil, wet, hungry, and bruised, I
gave the reluctant word to camp.
To camp, what a mockery it seemed with-
out blankets or covering save our rain-soaked
clothes, without food save a few biscuits.
The cold rain poured down through leafless
aspens, and shelter there was none. It was
no easy matter to find a dry match, but at
length a fire was made, and from the sur-
rounding wood we dragged dead trees to feed
the flames. There is no necessity to dwell
upon the miserable hours which ensued ! All
night long the rain hissed down, and the fire
was powerless against its drencliing torrents.
Towards morning we sunk into a deep sleep,
lying stretched upon the soaking ground.
At last a streak of dawn broke over the
high eastern shore, the light struggled for
mastery with the surrounding darkness and
finally prevailed, and descending to the river
showed the broad current sweeping on to the
north-east. Quitting without regret our
3 33
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
cheerless bivouac, we climbed with stiff limbs
the high overhanging bank, and gained the
upper level. Far away the river still held
its course to the north-east, deep sunken 300
feet below the prairie level: we were still
distant from the Forks.
Retracing our steps through miles of fallen
timber Ave reached the cart, but the morning
had worn on to midday before our long-
wished-for breakfast smoked in the kettle.
Three hours later on, during an evening
which had cleared sufficiently to allow the
sun to glint through cloud rifts on pine forest
and prairie, I reached the lofty ridge which
overlooks the Forks of the Saskatcliewan.
34
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
CHAPTER V.
The Forks of the Saskatchewan — A Perverse Parallel
—Diplomatic Bungling — Its Results.
Two hundred and fifty feet above water
level, the narrow tongue of laud rises over
the junction of the two Saskatchewan rivers.
Bare and level at top, its scarped front de-
scends like a wall to the rivers ; but land-slip
and the wear of time have carried down to a
lower level the loose sand and earth of the
plateau, and thickly clustering along the
northern face, pines, birch, and poplar shroud
the steep descent. It is difficult to imagine
a wilder scene than that which lay beneath
this projecting point.
From north-west and from south-west two
broad rivers roll their waters into one com-
mon channel, two rivers deep furrowed below
the prairie level, curving in great bends
through tree-fringed valleys. One river has
travelled through eight hundred miles of rich
rolling landscape; the other has rnn its
course of nine hundred through waste and
arid solitudes; both have had their sources
in mountain summits where the avalanche
thundered forth to solitude the tidings of
35
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
their birth. And here at this point, like tAvo
lives, which, coming from a distance, are
drawn together by some mysterious sympa-
thy, and blended into one are henceforth to
know only the final separation, these rivers
roll their currents into one majestic stream,
which, sinking into a deep gorge, sweeps
eastward through unbroken pine forest. As
yet no steamboat furrows the deep water ; no
whistle breaks the sleeping echoes of these
grim scarped shores ; the winding stream
rests in voiceless solitude, and the summer
sun goes down beyond silent river reaches,
gleaming upon a virgin land.
Standing at this junction of the two Sas-
katchewan rivers, the traveller sees to the
north and east the dark ranks of the great
sub-Arctic forest, while to the south and
west begin the endless prairies of the middle
continent. It is not a bad position from
whence to glance at the vast region known to
us as British North America.
When the fatal error at Saratoga had made
room for diplomatists of Old and New Eng-
land, and removed the arbitrament of rebel-
lion from the campaign to the council, those
who drew on the part of Great Britain the
boundary-lines of her transatlantic empire,
bungled even more conspicuously in the
treaty-chamber than her generals had failed
in the field. Geographical knowledge ap-
36
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
pears ever to have been deemed superfluous
to those whose business it was to shape the
destinies of our colonial dominions, and if
something more tangible than report be true,
it is not many months since the British mem-
bers at a celebrated conference stared blankly
at each other when the free navigation of a
river of more than two tJiousand miles in
length was mooted at the Council Board.
But then, Avhat statesman has leisure to mas-
ter such trifles as the existence of the great
river Yukon, amid the more important brain
toil of framing rabbit laws, defining com-
pound householders, and solving other equally
momentous questions of our Imperial and Pa-
rochial politics? However to our subject.
When in 1783 the great quarrel between
Britain and her Colonies was finally adjusted,
the northern boundary of the United States
was to follow the 49th parallel of latitude
from the north-west angle of the Lake of the
Woods to the river Mississippi, and thence
down that river, &c., &c.
Nothing could possibly have been more
simple, a child might comprehend it; but un-
fortunately it fell out in course of time that
the 49tli parallel was one of very considera-
ble latitude indeed, not at all a parallel of
diplomatic respectability, or one that could
be depended on, for neither at one end nor the
other could it be induced to approach the
37
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
north-west angle of the Lake of the Woods
or the river Mississippi Do all that sex-
tant, or quadrant, or zenith telescope could,
the 49th parallel would not come to terms.
Doggedly and determinedly it kept its own
course ; and, utterly regardless of big-wig or
diplomatic fogie, it formed an offensive and
defensive alliance Avith the Sun and the Pole
Star (two equally obstinate and big-wig dis-
respectful bodies), and struck out for itself
an independent line.
Beyond the Mississippi there lay a vast
region, a region where now millions (soon to
be tens of millions) draw from prairie and
river flat the long-sleeping richness of the
soil. Then it Avas a great wilderness, over
which the dusky bison and his wilder master
roamed, in that fierce freedom which civiliza-
tion ends forever.
To the big-wigs at the Council Board this
region was a myth — a land so far beyond the
confines of diplomatic geography that its very
existence was questioned. Not so to the
shrewd solicitor, admiral, auctioneer, general
conveyancer, and Jack-of-all-trades in one,
who guided the foreign policy of the United
States.
Unencumbered by the trappings of diplo-
matic tradition, he saw, vaguely perhaps, but
still with prescient knowledge, the empire
which it was possible to build in that western
38
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
wild ; and as every shifting scene in the out-
side workl's politics called iq) some new occa-
sion for boundary rearrangement, or treaty
rectification, he grasped eagerly at a fresh
foothold, an additional scrap of territory, in
that land which was to him an unborn em-
pire, to us a half-begotten wilderness. Louis-
iana, purchased from Napoleon for a trifle,
became in his hands a region larger than
European Russia, and the vast water-shed of
the Missouri, passed into the Empire of the
United States.
Cut off from the INIississippi, isolated from
the Missouri, the unlucky boundary traversed
an arid waste until it terminated at the Rocky
Mountains.
Long before a citizen of the United States
had crossed the Missouri, Canadian explorers
had reached the Rocky Mountains and pene-
trated through their fastnesses to the Pacific ;
and British and Canadian fur traders had
grown old in their forts across the Continent
before Lewis and Clark, the pioneers of
American exploration, had passed the Mis-
souri. Discovered by a British sailor, ex-
plored by British subjects, it might well have
been supposed that the great region along the
Pacific slope, known to us as Oregon, be-
longed indisputably to England ; but at some
new treaty "rectification," the old story was
once more repeated, and the unlucky 49th par-
39
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
allel again selected to carry across the Moun-
tains to the Pacific Ocean, the same record of
British bungling and American astuteness
which the Atlantic had witnessed sixty years
earlier on the rugged estuary of the St. Croix.
For the present our business lies only with
that portion of British territory east of the
Rocky Mountains, and between them, the
Bay of Hudson and the Arctic Ocean.
From the base of the great range of the
Rocky Mountains, the Continent of British
America slopes towards North and East,
until, unbroken by one mountain summit, but
in a profound and lasting desolation, it dips
its shaggy arms and ice-bound capes into a
sea as drear and desolate.
•Two great rivers, following of necessity
this depression, shed their waters into the
Bay of Hudson. One is the Saskatchewan,
of which we have already spoken ; the other,
that river known by various names — " Eng-
lish," because the English traders first en-
tered the country by it ; '' Beaver, " from the
numbers of that animal trapped along it in
olden time ; " Churchill, " because a fort of
that name stands at its estuary; and " Mis-
sinipi," or "much water," by the wild races
who dwell upon it The first river has a
total length of 1,700 miles; the last runs its
course through worthless forest and 2)rimeval
rock for 1,200 miles
40
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
CHAPTER VI.
Our Winter Home — A Welcome — I Start Again—
The Hunter's Camp — In Quest of Buffalo on
the Plains — " Lodge-poling " Leads to Love.
At the foot of the high ridge which marks
the junction of the two Saskatchewaus, deep
in pines and pojjlars, through which vistas
had been cut to give glimpses along the con-
verging rivers, stood the winter hut of whioh
I have already spoken. From its chimney
blue smoke curled up amongst the trees into
the lower atmosphere, and the sound of wood-
cutting came ringing from below, a token of
labour not yet completed in our wild and
secluded resting-place.
I stood for a moment looking down on this
scene — a home in the great wilderness— and
then a loud shout echoed into the valley to
carry tidings of our arrival to the inmates of
the hut. In an instant it was answered from
below, and the solitudes rang with many a
note of welcome, while half a dozen dogs
bayed furious defiance at my pack, already
become boisterouslj' jubilant on the ridge
above. When friends meet thus, after long
travel and separation, there are many ques-
41
THE AYILD NUKTII LAND.
tious to ask and to answer, and the autumn
evening had worn to midnight ere the pine-
log lire threw its light upon a silent hut.
The winter season was now at hand ; our
house was nearly completed, our stores put
away, our dogs kennelled ; but one most press-
ing want had yet to be supplied — our winter
stock of meat had to be gathered in, and
there was no time to lose about obtaining it.
It was the last of October, just one day
after my arrival at the Forks, when we turned
our faces westward in quest of buffalo. They
Avere said to be a long Avay off— 200 miles
nearer to the setting sun — out somewhere on
that great motionless ocean, Avhere no tree,
no bush breaks the vast expanse of prairie ;
land to which the wild men of the west and
those who lead wild lives there have turned
for many an age in search of that food Avhich
nature once so generously scattered over the
plains of Central North America.
Journeying slowly towards the west — for
already the snow had begun to fall in many
storms, and the landscape had become wrapt
in its winter mantle — we reached in live days
one of those curious assemblages of half-breed
hunters which are to be found in winter on
the borders of the great plains.
Huts promiscuously crowded together;
horses, dogs, women, cliildren, all intermixed
in a confusion worthy of Donnybrook Fair;
43
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
•half-breed hunters, ribboned, tasselled, and
capoted, lazy, idle, and, if there is any spirit
in the camp, sure to be intoxicated; rem-
nants and wrecks of buffalo lying everywhere
around; robes stretched and drying; meat
piled on stages ; wolf-skins S})read over frame-
work; women drawing water and carrying
wood ; and at dusk from tlie little hut tlie
glow of tirelight through parchment windows,
the sound of fiddle scraped with rough hunter
hand, and the quick thud of hunter heel as
Louison, or Batiste, or Gabriel foot it cease-
lessly upon the half -hewn floors.
Unquestionably these French half-breeds
are wild birds— hunters, drinkers, rovers, ras-
cals if you will — yet generous and hospitable
withal; destined to disappear before the
white man's footprint, and ere that time has
come owing many of their vices to the pioneer
American, whose worst qualities the wild
man, or semi-wild man, has been ever too
sure to imitate.
After a delay of three days in this hunter's
camp, which by some strange anomaly was
denominated "la mission," its sole claim to
that title being the residence of a French
priest in the community, we started on our
journey further west.
The winter had now regularly set in ; the
broad South Saskatchewan was rolling thick
masses of ice down its half-closed channel,
43
THE WILD NORTH LAN'D.
the snow-covering had deepened on the land- ,
scape, the wmd blew keenly over the prairie.
Many of our horses had been too poor to take
upon this journey, and the half-breed whom
I had brought from Red River, dreading the
exposure of the plains, had taken advantage
of the hunter's camp to desert our service;
so another man liad been engaged, and, with
three fresh horses and an urchin attendant in
the shape of a little half-breed, designated
by our new man as 'Thomme capable," and
for whose services he demanded only the
moderate sum of hve shillings per diem, we
held our course along the South Saskatche-
wan towards the Great Prairie.
Xavier Batoche was a fair sample of his
class. The blood of four nationalities min-
gled in his veins. His grandfather had been
a French Canadian, his grandmother a Crow
squaw ; Englisli and Cree had contributed to
his descent on his mother's side. The cere-
mony of taking a wife in the early days of
the nortli-west fur trade was not an elaborate
performance, or one much encumbered by
social or religious preliminaries. If it did
not literally fulfil the condition of force im-
plied by the word "taking," it usually de-
veloped into a question of barter; a horse,
a flint gun, some white cloth and beads, could
purchase the hand and heart of the fairest
squaw in Prairie land. If she did not love
44
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
after one of these valuable " presents " had
been made to her father, the lodge-poles were
always handy to enforce that obedience neces-
sary to domestic happiness — admirable idea,
the roof-tree couti-ibiited to the peace of the
hearth-stone, and jealousy fled before a
" lodge-poling. " To return to Batoche ; Crow
and Cree, French and English, had contrived
to produce a genial, good-humoured, hand-
some fellow ; the previous year had been one
of plenty, buffalo had once more appeared in
vast herds on the prairies of the Saskatche-
wan; wolf-skins, robes, and pemmican had
fetched high prices, and Batoche was rich
and prosperous.
Two days' journeying brought us to the
edge of the great prairie ; silent, vast, and
desolate it spread away into unseen space ;
the snow but scantily covered the yellow
grass, and the November wind sighed mourn-
fully through the wrecks of summer vegeta-
tion as it sped along its thousand leagues of
unmeasured meadow. At the last copse of
poplar and willow we halted for a day, to
bake bread and cut Avood sufficient for a
week's food and fuel, and then we launched
our ocean ships — horses and sleds — out into
the great meadow.
45
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
CHAPTER VII.
An Ocean of Grass — The Red iVIan — Wlience Comes
HeV — Tlie Buffalo — Puritans and Pioneers — The
Red Man's Friend.
The general term " prairie " comprises
many varieties of open landscape. There
are the level, alluvial prairies of Illinois,
long since settled and colonized; there are
the low, fertile prairies of the Red River,
where the rich black mould, fallow under
five months of snow, puts forth the rank
luxuriance of a hot-bed during the half tropic
heat of summer; there are the sandy prairies
of the Assineboine and Qu'Appelle, inter-
mixed with clusters of aspen and of willow,
and broken by lakes and saline ponds : but
above each and all — exceeding all other prai-
ries and open spaces — wild, treeless, and
ocean-like in everything save motion, there
stands forth in dreary grandeur the Great
Prairie.
What the Irish Sea, the Channel, the Bal-
tic, and the Mediterranean are to the Atlan-
tic, so are these various outlying regions of
plain to the vast rigid ocean of the central
continent. It is true that on the Red River,
46
THE WILD XORTIT LAND.
on the Qii'Ai)pello, or along tlie lin(^ T liave
lately passed, one may frequently "get out
of siglit of land; " tluMe a're spaces where no
tree or bush breaks the long monotony of the
sky-line ; but all these expanses are as noth-
ing compared to the true prairie.
The unending vision of sky and grass, the
dim, distant, and ever-shifting horizon ; the
ridges that seem to be rolled upon one another
in motionless torpor; the effect of sunrise
and sunset, of night narrowing the vision to
nothing, and morning only expanding it to a
shapeless blank; the sigh and sough of a
breeze that seems an echo in unison with the
solitude of which it is the sole voice; and,
above all, the sense of lonely, unending dis-
tance which comes to the voyaginir when day
after day has gone by, night has closed, and
morning dawned upon his onward progress
under the same ever-moving horizon of grass
and sky.
Only two wild creatures have made this
grassy desert their home.
Back, since ages at whose birth we can
only guess, but which in all human proba-
bility go deeper into the past than the reign
of Arab in Yemen, or Kirghis in Turkestan,
the wild red man has roamed these wastes :
back into that dark night which liangs for-
ever over all we know or shall know of early
America. " The time before the white man
47
TFTE WILD NORTH LAND.
came," Aviiat a measureless eternity lies hid-
den under the words ! Tliis prairie was here
when the stones of the pyramid were unhewn,
and the site of Babylon was a river meadow
— here as it is to-day, treeless, desolate, and
storm-swept. But where and whence came
the wild denizens of the waste? Who shall
say? Fifty writers have broached their vari-
ous theories, a hundred solutions have been
offered. The missionary claims them as the
lost tribes of Israel, one ethnologist finds in
them a likeness to the Tartar, another sees
the Celtic eye, another the Roman nose,
another traces them back to Japan, or China,
or Australasia; the old world is scarcely
large enough to give them room for their
speculations. And what say we? Nothing;
or if aught, a conjecture perhaps more vague
and shadowy than the rest. It has seemed
to us when watching this strange, Avild
hunter, this keen, untutored scholar of na-
ture, this human creat\ire that sickens beneath
our civilization, and dies midst our prosperity
— it has seemed to us that he was of a race
older and more remote than our own, a stock
coeval with a shadowy age — a remnant, per-
chance, of an earlier creation which has van-
ished from the earth, preserved here in these
wilds — a waif flung by the surge of time to
these later ages of our own.
This New World is older than our old one.
48
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
Its 30,000 feet in depth of Azoic rock tell us
of ail age when nought of living form moved
over the iron earth. And here, probably
lirst of all, the molten sands rose above the
boiling floods, and cooled and crusted into a
chaotic continent.
These are but idle speculations; still the
antiquity of the Indian race rests upon other
foundations. Far to the south, where the
prairies rise into the lofty plateau of New
Mexico, ruined monuments, weed-grown, and
hidden beneath ivy and trailing parasites,
stand like spectres from the tomb of time.
Before these mouldering rock-hewn cities
conjecture halts; the past has drawn over
them a veil that no research can pierce, no
learning solve. Inscrutable as the vestiges
of an earlier earth they stand, the lonely,
ruined wrecks of the Red man's race.
So much for the earlier existence of the
human dweller on the prairie ; to us he is but
a savage — the impediment to our progress —
the human counterpart of forests which have
to be felled, mountains which must be tun-
nelled, rivers whose broad currents are things
to conquer ; he is an obstacle, and he must be
swept away. To us it matters not whether
his race dwelt here before a Celt had raised
a Druid altar. The self-styled heirs to all
the centuries reck little of such things.
And now let us turn for a moment to that
4 49
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
other Avild creature which has made its dw ell-
ii)g on the Great Prairie.
Over the grassy ocean of the west there
has moved from time immemorial a restless
tide. Backwards and forwards, now north,
now south — now filling the dark gorges of
the Rocky Mountains — now trailing into the
valleys of the Rio del Norte — now pouring
down the Avooded slopes of the Saskatchewan,
surged millions on millions of dusky bisons.
AVhat led them in their strange migrations
no man could tell, but all at once a mighty
impulse seemed to seize the myriad herds,
and they moved over the broad realm which
gave them birth as the waves of the ocean
roll before the storm. Nothing stopped them
on their march ; great rivers stretched before
them with steep, overhanging banks, and
beds treacherous with quicksand and shifting
bar; huge chasms and earth-rents, the work
of subterraneous forces, ci'ossed their line of
march, but still the countless thousands
swept on. Through day and night the earth
trembled beneath their tramp, and the air
was filled with the deep bellowing of their
unnumbered throats.
Crowds of wolves and flocks of vultures
dogged and hovered along their way, for
many a huge beast, half sunk in quicksand,
caught amidst whirling ice floe, or bruised
and maimed at the foot of some steep preci-
se
THE WH-I) NOHTH I.AXD
])ico, inaiked tlieiv line of luarcli, like the
wrecks lying spread beliiiid a routed army.
Nearly two millions of s(|uare miles formed
their undivided domain ; on three sides a
forest boundary encircled it, on the fourth a
great mountain range loomed up against the
western sky. Through this enormous area
countless creeks and rivers meandered through
the meadows, where the prairie grass grew
thick and rank, and the cottonwoods spread
their serpentine belts. Out in the vast prai-
rie the Missouri, the Platte, the Sweet
Water, the Arkansas, the South Saskatche-
wan, the Big Horn, the Yellowstone, rolled
their volumes towards the east, gathering a
thousand affluents as they Howed.
Countless ages passed, tribe warred and
Avandered, but the life of the wilderness lay
deep beneath the waves of time, and the roll
of the passing centuries disturbed not its
slumber.
At last the white man came, and soon from
south and uorth the restless adventurers of
Latin Europe pierced the encircling forests,
and beheld the mighty meadows of the Cen-
tral Continent. Spaniards on the south,
Frenchmen on the north, no one in the cen-
tre ; for the prudent Plymouth Puritan was
more intent on flogging witches and gather-
ing riches than on penetrating the tangled
forest which lay westward of his settlement,
51
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
Ko; his was not tlie work of adventure and
discovery. Others might go before and brave
the thousand perils of food and forest; lie
would follow after, as the Jew jtedlar follows
the spendthrift, as the sutler dogs the foot-
steps of the soldier.
What though he be in possession of the
wide dominion now, and the names of France
and Spain be shrunken into a shapeless
dream; tJiat only proves what Ave knew be-
fore, that the men who lead the way to a
great future are fated never to reap the golden
harvest of their dreams.
And ever since that advent of the Avhite
man the scene has changed ; the long slumber
of the wilderness was broken, and hand in
hand with the new left death moved amidst
the wild denizens of the Prairies. Human
life scattered over a vast area, animal life
counted by tens of millions, take a long time
to destroy; and it is only to-day — 370 years
after a Portuguese sailor killed and captured
a band of harmless Indians, and 350 since a
Spanish soldier first beheld a herd of buffa-
loes beyond the meadows of the Mississijjpi
— that the long, ho])eless struggle of the wild
dwellers of the wilderness may be said to
have reached its closing hour.
In thus classing together the buffalo and
the red man as twin dwellers on the Great
Prairie, I have but followed the Indian idea.
53
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
" What shall we do? " said a young Sioux
warrior to an American officer on the Upper
Missouri some fifteen years ago. " What
sliall we do? tlie buffalo is our only friend.
When lie goes, all is over with the Dacotahs.
I speak thus to you because like me you are
a Brave."
It was little wonder that he called the
buffalo his only friend. Its skin gave him a
house, its robe a blanket and a bed, its un-
dressed liide a boat, its short, curved horn a
l)owder-flask, its meat his" daily food, its
sinew a string for his bow, its leather a lariat
for his horse, a saddle, bridle, rein, and bit.
Its tail formed an ornament for his tent, its
inner skin a book in which to sketch the
brave deeds of his life, the *' medicine robe "
of his history. House, boat, food, bed, and
covering, every want from infancy to age,
and after life itself had i)assed, wrapt in his
buffalo robe the red man waited for the dawn.
58
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
CHAPTER VIIT.
Buflfak) Hunts — A Picture Once Seen Long Remem-
bered — L'Homme Capable — A Wonderful Lake
— The Lost Indian — An Apparition — We Return
Home.
It was mid-Xovember before we reached
the buffalo; tlie snow had deepened, the coUl
had become intense, and our horses under the
influence of travel, cold, and exposure, had
become miserably thin. To hunt the herds
on horseback Avould have been an inij)ossi-
bility ; the new-fallen snow hid the nuirder-
ous badger holes that covered the prairie sur-
face, and to gallop weak liorses over such
ground must have been certain disaster.
l^uft'alo hunts on horseback or on foot have
frequently been tlie tlieme of travellers'
story. Eu.xton and Palliser, and INlayne
Reid and Catlin, have filled many a page
witli glowing deseriptions of charge and
countercharge, stalk and stampede. Wash-
ington Irving has lighted with liis genius the
dull records of western wandeiings, and to
sketch now the ])ursuit of that huge beast (so
soon to l)e an extinct giant) would be lo repeat
a thrice-tohl tale.
Wlio has not seen in pencil sketch or peu
54
TflK AVILI) XoKTir T.AXD.
Story tlie image of tlie huge, sliaggy beast
careering madl3'- before an eagle-feathered
red man, wliose horse decked like its rider
with the feathered troj^hy, launches liimself
swiftly over the prairie'/ The full-drawn
bow, the deadly arrow, the stricken aninuil,
the wild confusion of the flying herd, the
wounded giant turning to bay — all these have
been described a thousand times; so also has
the stalk, the stealthy approach under the
wolf-skin covering, the careful shot and the
stupid stare of the startled aninuils as they
pause a moment to gather consciousness that
this thing which they deemed a wolf in the
grass is in reality their most deadly enemy,
man. All these have found record from pen
and pencil ; but I much doubt me if it be
possible to place before a reader's mental
vision anything like a true picture of the
sense of solitude, of endless space, of awful
desolation which at times comes to the travel-
ler's mind as he looks over some vast prairie
and beholds a lonely herd of bisons trailing
slowly across that sn()w-wrai)t, endless ex-
panse, into the shadows of the coming night.
Such a sight I have beheld more than once,
and its memory returns at times with the sigh
of the south wind, or the waving of a pine
branch. It is from moments such as these
that the wanderer draws the recompense of
his toil, and reaps in aftertime the harvest of
50
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
his hardship. No book has told the story,
no picture has caught the colouring of sky and
plain, no sound can echo back the music of
that vuitainted breeze, sighing so mournfully
through the yelloAv grass, but all the same
the vision returns Avithout one effort of re-
membrance : the vast plain snow-wrapt, the
west ablaze Avith gold, and green, and saf-
fron, and colours never classed or catalogued,
while the horizon circle from north to east
and south grows dim and indistinct, and, far
off, the bison herd in long, scattered file
trails sloAvly across the blue-Avhite snoAV into
the caverns of the sunset.
We carried with \is a leather tent of eight
skins, small of its kind, but capable of shel-
tering the five individuals comprising our
party. This tent, pitched in some hollow at
sunset, formed the sole speak of life amidst
the vast solitude. Ten poles resting on the
ground, and locked together at the top, sup-
ported the leather covering. An open space
at the apex of the tent Avas supposed to alloAV
the smoke to escape, but the smoke usually
seemed to consider itself under no restraint
AA'hatever in the dim interior of our lodge,
and seldom or neA'er took advantage of the
means of fieedom so liberally provided for it.
Our stock of fuel was very limited, and
barely sufficed to Ixtil a kettle and fry a dish
of pemmioau at the opening or close of each
THE WIIJ) NORTH LAND.
day. When the evening meal was finished,
we sat awhile grouped around the small fire
in the centre. " L'homnie capable " ran round
our line of traps, returning with a couple of
kit foxes, the fattest of which he skinned and
roasted for his supper. Then we gathered
the blankets close together, and lying down
slept until the dawn came struggling through
the open roof, and cold and hungry we sat
again around the little fire. Thus we jour-
neyed on.
Scattered over the wide prairie which lies
between the South Saskatchewan and the
Eagle Hills roamed many herds of buffalo.
But their numbers were very far short of
those immense herds which, until a few years
ago, were wont to cover the treeless regions
of the west. Yet they were numerous enougli
to make the onlooker marvel how they still
held their own against the ever-increasing
odds arrayed against them.
Around the wide circle of this prairie ocean
lay scattered not less than 15,000 wild peo-
ple, all preying with wasteful vigour upon
these scattered herds ; but the niimbers killed
for the consumption of these Indian or half-
Indian men formed but a small item in the
lists of slaughter. To the north and east
the denizens of the remote parts of tlie great
regions locked in savage distance, the land
of fur, the laud ^^'hieh stretches to the win-
57
THE WILD NORTH LAND
try shores of the Bay of Hudson, and the
storm-swept capes of the Arctic Ocean, looked
for their means of summer transports to these
wandering herds in the, to them, far distant
Saskatchewan. What food w^as it that the
tired voyayeur munched so stolidly at night-
fall by the camp fire on some long I'tortarje of
the Winnipeg, the Nelson, or the Beaver
Rivers, or ate with so much relish ere the
morning sun Avas glinting along the waves of
far Lake Athabasca; and his boat, rich laden
with . precious fur, rocked on the secluded
shore of some nameless bay? It was buffalo
pemmican from the Saskatchewan. And
wdiat food Avas it tliat these dozen hungry
dogs devoured with such haste by that lonely
camp fire in the dark pine forest, Avhen all
nature lay in its mid-Avinter torpor frozen to
the soul ; Avhen the i)ine-log flared upon some
snoAv-sheeted lake, or ice-bound river in the
great Avilderness of the north? It Avas the
same hard mixture of fat and dried buffalo-
jueat pounded down into a solid mass Avhich
the Indians called " pemmican." Small Avon-
der then that the great herds had dwindled
doAvn to their present numbers, and that noAV
the once wide domain of the buffalo had
shrunken inio the limits of the great prairie.
Yet, even still, the numbei'S annually
killed seem (juite iiicredil)le ; 12,000 are said
to fall to the Blackfeet tribes alone ; in a
5«
THE WILD NOI^TII LAXD.
single liunt the French half-breeds, whose
winter camp we had lately visited, liad killed
GOO cows. The forts of the Hudson's Bay
Company were filled with many thousand
bags of pemmican, and to each bag two ani-
mals may be counted ; Avhile not less than
30,000 robes had already found their way to
the lied River, and fully as many more in
skins of parchment or in leather had been
traded or consumed in the thousand wants of
savage life ; and all are ruthlessly killed —
young and old, calves and cows, it matters
little; the Indian and the half-breed know
no such quality as forethought. Kor, looking
at this annual havoc, and seeing still in spite
of all the dusky herds yet roaming over the
treeless waste, can we marvel that the Red
man should ascribe to agencies other than
mortal the seemingly endless numbers of his
favourite animal?
South-west from the Eagle llills, far out
in the i)rairie, there lies a lake whose waters
never rest; day and night a ceaseless mur-
mur l)reaks the silence of the spot.
"See," says the Red man, ''it is from
under that lake that our buffalo comes. You
say they are all gone ; but look, they come
again and again to us. We cannot kill them
all — they are there under that lake. Do you
hear the noise which never ceases? It is the
buffalo fighting with each other far down
50
THE WILD NORTH LAXD.
undei- the ground, and striving to get out
upon the prairie — where else can they come
from? "
We may well ask the question where can
they come from? for in truth the vast ex-
panse of the great prairie seems too small to
save them from their relentless foes.
The creek of the Eagle Hills winds through
the prairie in long, lazy bends. The beaver
has made his home under its banks ; and in
some of the serpentine bends the bastard
maple lifts its gnarled trunk, and the willow
copses grow thickly. It is a favourite ground
for the hunter in summer ; but now, in mid-
Xovember, no sign of man was visible, and
we had the little thicket oasis all to ourselves.
It was in this spot, some two years ago,
that the following event occurred. In a
band of Crees travelling over the plains there
happened to be a blind Indian. Following
the band one day he lagged behind, and the
party dipping over a ridge on the prairie be-
came lost to sound. Becoming suddenly
alarmed at having thus lost his friends, he
l^egan to run swiftly in hope of overtaking
them ; but now his judgment was at fault,
and the direction of his run was the wrong
one — he found himself alone on the immense
plains. Tired at last b^- the speed to Avhich
feverish anxiety had urged him, he sat down
to think over his chances. It was hopeless
60
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
to attempt to regain his party; he was far
out ill the grassy ocean, and south, west, and
east, hiy hundreds of miles of inuhihiting
plain ; to the north many days' journey, but
still near, in relative distance, lay the forts
of the white man, and the trail which led
from one to the other . He would steer for
the north, and Avould endeavour to reach one
of these forts. It was midsummer; he had
no food but the carcasses of lately killed buf-
falo were, he knew, numerous in that part of
the prairie, and lakes or ponds were to be
found at intervals.
He set out, and for three days he journeyed
north. " How did he steer? " the reader will
ask ; " for have you not told us the man was
blind? " Nevertheless, he steered with accu-
racy towards the north. From sunrise he kept
the warm glow on his naked right shoulder;
six hours later the heat fell full upon his back ;
towards evening the rays were on his left side ;
and when the sun had gone, and the damp
dew began to fall, he lay down for the night:
thus he held a tolerably correct course. At
times the soft mud of a lake shore cloyed his
feet; but that promised water, and after a
drink he resumed his way ; the lakelet was
rounded and the course pursued. There was
no food ; for two days he travelled on pa-
tiently, until at last he stumbled over the
bones of a buffalo. He felt around ; it had
ei
THE WILD Noirni LAND.
been killed some time, and tlie wolves had
left scant pickings on ribs or legs, but on the
massive head the skin was yet untouched,
and his knife enabled him to satisfy his hun-
ger, and to carry away a few scraps of skin
and flesh.
Thus recruited he pressed on . It was draw-
ing towards evening on the fifth day of his
weary journe}' when he found himself reduced
to starvation, weak from protracted hunger
and faint from thirst; the day had been a
warm one, and no friendly lake had given
him drink. His scanty food had been long
exhausted, and there seemed but little hope
that he could live to feel the warm sun again.
Its rays were growing faint upon his left
shoulder, when his feet suddenly sank into
soft mud, and the reeds and flags of a swamp
brushed against his legs: here was water, he
lay down and drank a long, long drauglit.
Then he bethought him. Was it not better to
stay here while life lasted? Here he had at
least water, and of all the pangs that can
afflict the lost wanderer that of thirst is the
hardest to bear. He lay down midst the
reeds, determined to wait for death.
Some few miles distant to the north-east
lay the creek of the Eagle Hills. That even-
ing a party of hunters from the distant fort
of A la Corne, had appeared on the wide
prairies which surrounded this creek; they
62
THE WTT.D NOPvTII LAND.
were in search of Imlfalo, it wanted an lioiir
of sunset. The man in eharge h)oke(l at tlif
sinking sun, and he bethought him of a
cauiping-place.
" Go to such and such a bend of the creek, ''
he said to his hunters, "unyoke the horses
and make the camp. I will ride to yonder
hill and take a look over the plains for buf-
falo; I will rejoin you at the camp."
The party separated, and their leader
pushed on to the hill-top for a better survey
of the plains. When he reached the summit
of the ridge he cast a look on every side ; no
buffalo Avere to be seen, but to his surprise,
his men, instead of obeying his orders as to
the route, appeared to be steering in a differ-
ent direction from the one he had indicated,
and were already far away to the south.
When he again overtook them they were in
the act of camping on the borders of a
swampy lake, a long way from the place he
had intended; they had mistaken the track,
they said, and seeing water here had camped
at sunset.
It was not a good place, and the officer felt
annoyed at their stupidity. While they
spoke together thus, a figure suddenly rose
from the reeds at the further side of the lake,
and called loudly for assistance. For a mo-
ment the hunters were amazed at this sudden
apparition ; they were somewhat startled too,
63
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
for the Blackfeet l)an(ls were said to be on
the war-trail. But presently they saAv that
there was only a solitary stranger, and that
he Avas blind and helpless: it was the lost
Cree. He had long before heard the hunters'
approach, but not less deadly Avas the fear of
Blackfeet than the dread of death by starva-
tion. Both meant death ; but one meant
scalping, therefore dishonour in addition. It
was only Avhen the Avelcome sounds of the
Cree language fell on his ear that he could
reveal his presence in the reed-fringed lake.
I have told this story at length just as I
heard it from the man who had been in charge
of the party of hunters, because it brings
home to the mind of the outsider, not only
the power of endurance Avhich the Indian dis-
plays in the face of physical difficulties, but
also the state of society produced by the
never-ending wars among the Indian tribes.
Of the mistake which caused the hunters to
alter their course and pitch their camp in
another direction than that intended by their
leader I have nothing to say ; chance is a
strange leader people say. Tables are said
to be turned by unseen powers seemingly like
the stars in the song, "because they've noth-
ing else to do ; " but for my part I had rather
believe that men's footsteps are turned south
instead of west under other Guidance than
that of chance, when that change of direc-
64
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
tion, heedless tliough it be, saves some lost
wanderer who has lain down to die.
It was the oid. of December, when with
thin and tired, horses, we returned to the
Forks of the Saskatchewan. We found our
house wholly completed; on the stage in
front safe from dogs and w^olves the produce
of the hunt was piled, the weary horses were
turned loose on the ridge above, and with a
few books on a shelf over a rude but com-
fortable bed, I prepared to pass the next two
months of winter.
It was full time to reach home ; the snow
lay deep upon the ground ; the cold, which
had set in unusually early, had even in mid-
November fallen to thirty degrees below zero,
and some of our last buffalo stalks had been
made under a temperature in which frozen
fingers usually followed the handling, with
unmittened hands, of rifle stock or gun
trigger.
Those who in summer or autumn visit the
great prairie of the Saskatchewan can form
but a faint idea of its winter fierceness and
utter desolation. They are prone to paint
the scene as wanting only the settler's hut,
the yoke of oxen, the waggon, to become at
once the paradise of the husbandman. They
little know of what they speak. Should they
really wish to form a true conception of life
in these solitudes, let them go out towards
5 a
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
the close of November into the treeless waste ;
tJien, midst tierce storm and biting cold, and
snowdrift so dense that earth and heaven
seem wrapped together in indistinguishable
chaos, they will witness a sight as different
from their summer ideal as a mid-Atlantic
mid-winter storm varies from a tranquil
moonlight on the ^Egean Sea.
During the sixteen days in which we tra-
versed the prairie on our return journey, we
had not seen one soul, one human being mov-
ing over it; the picture of its desolation was
complete.
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
CHAPTER IX.
Strange Visitors — At-tistighat tlie Philosopher — In-
dian Converts — A Domestic Scene — The Winter
Packet — Adam and His Dogs.
December passed away, the new year
came, the cold became more mtense. The
snow deepened and the broad rivers lay
hushed under their sparklmg covering; wide
roadways for our dog sleighs. At times
there came a day of beautiful clearness, the
sun shone brightly, the sky was of the deep-
est blue, and the earth sparkled in its spot-
less covering. At night the moon hung over
the snow-wrapt river and silent pines with
the brilliancy of a fairy scene ; but many a
day and night of storm and bitter tempest
passed, and not unfrequently the thermome-
ter placed against the hut wall marked full
70 degrees of frost.
Towards the end of the year four of our
horses died, from the depth and hardness of
the snow. The others would have soon fol-
lowed if left to find their own sustenance, but
a timely removal to the Fort A la Corne,
twenty miles lower down the river, saved
them.
67
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
When tlie year was diawiiig to its close,
two Indians pitched tlieir lodge on the oppo-
site side of the North River, and finding our
stage pretty well stocked with food they be-
gan to starve immediately. In other words,
it was easier to come to us for buffalo meat
than to hunt deer for themselves: at all
hours of the day they were with us, and fre-
quently the whole family, two men, two
squaws, and three children, would form a
doleful procession to our hut for food. An
Indian never knocks at a door; he lifts the
latch, enters quietly, shakes hands with every
one, and seats himself, without a word, upon
the floor. You may be at breakfast, at din-
ner, or in bed, it doesn't matter. If food be
not offered to him, he will wait until the
meal is finished, and then say that he has
not eaten for so many hours, as the case may
be. Our stock of food was not over suifi-
cient, but it was impossible to refuse it to
them even though they would not hunt for
themselves; and when the three children
were paraded — all pretty little things from
four to seven years of age — the argument of
course became irresistible.
It was useless to tell them that the winter
was long, that no more buffalo could be ob-
tained; they seemed to regard starvation as
an ordinary event to be calculated upon, that
as long as any food was to be obtained it was
68
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
to be eaten at all times, and that when it was
gone — well then the best thing was to do
without it.
January drew to a close in very violent
storms accompanied by great cold. Early
one morning " At-tistighat, " or as we called
him, Bourgout No. 1, arrived Avith news that
his brother had gone away two days before,
that he had no blanket, no food ; and that,
as it had not been his intention to stay out,
he concluded that he had perished. " At-
tistighat " was a great scoundrel, but never-
theless, as the night had been one of terrible
storm, we felt anxious for the safety of his
brother, who was really a good Indian.
"Oo," we said to him, "look for your
brother ; here is pemmican to feed you during
your search." He took the food, but coolly
asserted that in all probability his brother
had shot himself, and that consequently there
was no use whatever in going to look for
him; "or," he said, "he is dead of cold, in
which case it is useless to find him."
While he spoke a footstep outside an-
nounced an arrival, the door opened, and the
lost Bourgout No. 2 entered, bearing on his
back a heavy load of venison.
At-tistighat' s line of argument was quite
in keeping with the Indian character, and
was laughable in its selfish logic. If the
man was alive, he would find his own way
69
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
home ; if dead, there was nothing more to be
done in the matter : but in any case pemmi-
ean was not to be despised.
But despite their habits of begging, and
their frequently unseasonable visits, our Cree
neighbours aiforded us not a little food for
amusement in the long winter evenings. In-
dian character is wortli the stud}^, if we will
only take the ti'ouble to divest ourselves of
the notion that all men should be like our-
selves. There is so much of simplicity and
cunning, so much of close reasoning and
child-like suspicion ; so much natural quick-
ness, sense of humour, credulousness, power
of observation, faith and fun and selfishness,
mixed up together in the Red man's mental
composition ; that the person who will find
nothing in Indian character worth studying
will be likely to start from a base of nullity
in his own brain system.
In nearly all the dealings of the white
man with the red, except perhaps in those of
the fur trade, as conducted by the great fur
companies, the mistake of judging and treat-
ing Indians by European standards has been
made. From the earliest ages of American
discovery, down to the present moment, this
error has been manifest; and it is this error
which has rendered the whole missionary
labour, the vast machinery set on foot by the
charity and benevolence of the various reli-
70
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
gious bodies during so many centuries, a
practical failure to-day.
When that Christian King Francis the
First commissioned Cartier to convert the In-
dians, they were described in the royal edict
as " men without knowledge of God, or use
of reason ; " and as the speediest mode of
giving them one, and bringing tliem to the
other, the Quebec chief savage was at once
kidnapped, carried to France, ba})tized, and
within six months was a dead man. We
may wonder if his wild subjects had imbibed
sufficient " reason " during the absence of the
ship to realize during the following season
the truth of what they were doubtless told,
that it was better to be a dead Christian than
alive savage; but no doubt, under the cir-
cumstances, they might be excused if they
" didn't quite see it." Those who would imag-
ine that the case of Memberton could not now
occur in missionary enterprise are deceived.
Memberton, who is said to have been a de-
vout Christian in the early days of Acadie,
was duly instructed in the Lord's Prayer; at
a certain portion of the prayer he was wont
to append a request that "fish and moose
meat " might also be added to his daily bread.
And previous to his death, whicli occurred
many years after his conversion, he is said
to have stoutly demanded that the savage
rites of sepulture should be bestowed upon
71
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
his bodj^, in order that he might be well pre-
pared to make vigorous war upon his euemies
in the next world. This is of the past; yet
it is not many years since a high dignitary
of the Church was not a little horrified by a
request made by some recently converted
Dog-Rib Chiefs that the rite of Baptism
should be bestowed upon three flaming red
flannel shirts, of whicli they had for the first
time in their lives become the joint possessors.
But all this is too long to enter upon here ;
enough that to me at least tlie Indian charac-
ter is worth the trouble of close examination.
If those, whose dealings religious and politi-
cal with the Red man ai-e numerous, would
only take a leaf from Goldsmith's experience
when he first essayed to become a teacher of
English in France, ("for I found," he writes,
"that it was necessary I should previously
learn French before I could teach them Eng-
lish,") very much of the ill success which
had attended labours projected by benevo-
lence, and prosecuted with zeal and devotion,
might perhaps be avoided.
Long before ever a white man touched the
American shore a misty idea floated through
the red man's brain that from far-off lands a
stranger would come as the messenger of
peace and plenty, where both were so fre-
quently unknown. In Florida, in Norem-
bega, in Canada, the right hand of fellowship
72
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
was the Jji-fit proffered to the new-comer; and
when Cartier entered the palisaded village
where now the stately capital of Canada
spreads out along the base of the steep ridge,
which he named Royal after that master
whose " honour " had long been lost ere on
Pavia's field he yielded up all else, the dusky
denizens of Hochelaga brought forth their sick
and stricken comrades "as though a God had
come among them."
Three centuries and a half have passed
since then ; war, pestilence and famine have
followed the white man's track. Whole
tribes have vanished even in name from the
continent, yet still that strange tradition of
a white stranger, kind and beneficent, has
outlived the unnumbered cruelties of ages;
and to-day the starving camp and the shiver-
ing bivouac hear again the hopeful yet hope-
less story of " a good time coming. "
Besides our Indians Ave were favoured with
but few visitors, silence reigned around our
residence ; a magpie or a whisky-jack some-
times hopped or chattered about our meat
stage ; in the morning the sharp-tailed grouse
croaked in birch or spruce tree, and at dusk,
when every other sound was hushed, the
small grey owl hooted his lonely cry. Pleas-
ant was it at night when returning after a
long day on snow shoes, or a dog trip to the
ueai'est fort, to reach the crest of the steep
73
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
ridge that surrounded our valley, and see be-
low the firelight gleaming through the little
window of our hut, and the red sparks flying
upward from the chimney like fire-flies amidst
the dark pine trees; nor was it less pleasant
when as the night Avore on the home letter
was penned, or the book read, while the
pine-log fire burnt brightly and the dogs slept
stretched before it, and the light glared on
rifle-barrel or axe-head and showed the skin-
hung rafters of our lonely home.
As January drew towards a close, it became
necessary to make preparations for a long
journey. Hitherto I had limited my wan-
derings to the prairie region of the Saskatche-
wan, but these wanderings had only been a
preliminary to further travel into the great
northern wilds.
To pierce the forest region lying north of
the Saskatchewan valley, to see the great
lakes of the Athabasca and that vast extent
of country which poui-s its waters into the
Frozen Ocean, had long been my desire ; and
when four months earlier I had left the banks
of the Red River and turned away from the
last limit of civilization, it was with the hope
that ere the winter snow had passed from
plain and forest my Avanderings would have
led me at least 2,000 miles into that vast
wilderness of the Xortli.
But many preparations had to be made
74
THE AVILD NORTH LAND.
against cold and distance. Dogs liad to be
fattened, leather clothing got ready, harness
and sleds looked to, baggage reduced to the
very smallest limit, and some one found will-
ing to engage to drive the second dog sled,
and to face the vicissitudes of the long north-
ern road. The distance itself was enough to
make a man hesitate ere for hire he embarked
on such a journey. The first great stage was
750 miles, the second was as many more, and
when 1,500 miles had been traversed there
still must remain half as much again before,
on the river systems of the North Pacific, we
could emerge into semi-civilized ways of
travel.
Many were the routes which my brain
sketched out during the months of autumn,
but finally my choice rested between two
rivers, the Mackenzie rolling its waters into
the Frozen Ocean, the Peace River piercing
the great defiles of the Rocky Mountains
through the canons and stupendous gorges of
Northern British Columbia. A chance meet-
ing decided my course.
One day at the end of October I had
camped during a snow-storm for dinner in
the Touchwood Hills. Suddenly through
the drift a horseman came in sight. He
proved to be an officer of the Hudson's Bay
Company from the distant post of Dunvegan
on the Peace River : of all men he was the
75
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
one I most wished to see. Ninety clays
earlier he had left his station ; it was far
away, but still with dogs over the ice of
frozen rivers and lakes, through the snow of
long leagues of forest and muskey and prairie,
I might hope to reach that post on Upper
Peace River in sixty days ; twenty days more
might carry me through the defiles of the
liocky Mountains to Avaters which flow south
into the Pacific.
"Good-bye, ban voyiujey'' and we went our
different ways ; he towards Red River, I for
Athabasca and the Peace River.
And now, as I have said, the end of Janu-
ary had come, and it was time to start; all
my preparations Avere completed, Cerf-vola
and his companions were fat, strong, and
hearty. Dog shoes, copper kettles, a buffalo
robe, a thermometer, some three or four
dozen rounds of ammunition, a little tobacco
and pain-killer, a dial compass, a pedometer,
snow shoes, about fifteen pounds of baggage,
tea, sugar, a little flour, and lastly, the in-
evitable pemmican ; all were put together,
and I only waited the arrival of the winter
packet from the south to set out.
Let me see if I can convey to the reader's
mind a notion of this winter packet.
Towards the middle of the month of De-
cember there is unusual bustle in the office
of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Garry
7t>
TPIE WILD NORTH LAND.
oil tlie Red River; the winter packet is being
made ready. Two oblong boxes are iilled
with letters and papers addressed to nine
different districts of the northern continent.
The limited term district is a singularly un-
appropriate one ; a single instance will suffice.
From the post of the Forks of the Athabasca
and Clear Water Rivers to the Rocky Moun-
tain Portage is fully 900 miles as a man can
travel, yet all that distance lies within the
limits of the single Athabasca district; and
there are others larger still. From the Fort
Resolution on the Slave River to the ram-
parts on the Upper Yukon, 1,100 miles lay
their lengths within the limits of the Mac-
kenzie River district.
Just as the days are at their shortest, a
dog sled bearing the winter packet starts
from Fort Garry; a man walks behind it,
another man some distance in advance of the
dogs. It holds its way down the Red River
to Lake Winnipeg; in about nine days'
travel it crosses that lake to the north shore
at Norway House ; from thence, lessened of
its packet of letters for the Bay of Hudson
and the distant Churchill, it journeys in
twenty days' travel up the Great Saskatche-
wan River to Carlton House. Here it under-
goes a complete readjustment ; the Saskatche-
wan and Lesser Slave Lake letters are
detached from it, and about the 1st of Feb-
77
THE AVILD NORTH LAND.
ruaiy it starts ou its long journey to the
north.
During the succeeding months it holds
steadily along its northern way, sending off
at long, long intervals branch dog packets to
right and left; finally, just as the sunshine
of mid-May is beginning to carry a faint
whisper of tlie coming spring to the valleys
of the Upper Yukon, the dog train, last of
many, drags the packet, now but a tiny bun-
dle, into the enclosure of La Pierre's House.
It has travelled, nearly 3,000 miles; a score
of different dog teams have hauled it, and it
has camped for more than a hundred nights
in the great northern forest.
The end of January had come, but con-
trary to the experience of several years, had
brought no packet from Fort Garry, and
many were the surmises afloat as to the
cause of this delay. The old Swampy Indian
Adam who, for more than a score of years
had driven the dog packet, had tumbled into
a water-hole in the ice, and his dogs had
literally exemplified one portion of the popu-
lar saying of following their leader through
fire and water; and the packet, Adam, and
the dogs, lay at the bottom of the Saskatche-
wan River. Such was one anticipated cause
of this non-appearance.
To many persons the delay was very vexa-
tious, but to me it was something more.
78
THE WILH NOIITIT LAND.
Time was a precious article : it is true a
uortheru winter is a long one, but so also was
the route I was about to follow, and I hojjed
to reach the upper regions of the Eoeky
Mountains while winter yet held with icy
grasp the waters of the Peace River Canon.
The beginning of February came, and I
could wait no longer for the missing packet.
On the 3rd, at mid-day, I set out on my
journey. The day ^vas bright and beautiful,
the dogs climbed defiantly the steep high
point, and we paused a moment on the sum-
mit ; beneath lay hut and pine wood and pre-
cipitous bank, all sparkling with snow and
sunshine ; and beyond, standing motionless
and silent, rose the Great Sub-Arctic Forest.
79
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
CHAPTER X.
A Tale of Warfare — Dog-sleds — A ]Missing Link —
Tlic North Sea — "AViuterers" — Samuel Hearne.
During the three months which had
elapsed since liis arrival at the Forks, Cerf-
vola had led an idle life; he had led his
train occasionally to Fort A la Corne, or
hauled a light sled along the ice of the frozen
rivers, but these were only desultory trips,
and his days had usually passed in peace and
plenty
Perhaps I am wrong in saying peace, for
the introduction of several strange dogs had
occasioned much warfare, and although he
had invariably managed to come off victori-
ous, victory was not obtained without some
loss. I have before remarked that he pos-
sessed a very large bushy tail. In time of
war this appendage was carried prominently
over his back, something after the manner of
the plumes upon casque of knight in olden
times, or the more modern helmet of dragoon
in the era of the Peninsular War.
One day, while he was engaged in a des-
perate struggle with a bumptious new-comer,
a large ill-conditioned mongrel which had
80
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
iilready been vanquished, seeing his victor
fully occupied, deemed it an auspicious mo-
ment for revenge, and springing upon the
bushy tail proceeded to attack it with might
and main. The unusual noise brought me to
the door in time to separate the combatants
while yet the tail was intact, but so unlocked
for had been the assault that it was found
upon examination to be considerably injured.
With the aid of a needle and thread it was
repaired as best we could, Cerf-vola appar-
ently understanding what the surgical opera-
tion meant, for although he indulged in
plenty of uproar at every stitch, no attempt
at biting was made by him. He was now,
however, sound in body and in tail, and he
tugged away at his load in blissful ignorance
that 1,500 miles of labour lay before him.
I know not if my readers are acquainted
with the manner in which dogs are used as
draught animals in the great fur regions of
the North. A dog sled is simply two thin
oak or birchwood boards lashed together with
deer-skin thongs : turned up in front like a
Norwegian snowshoe, it runs when light over
hard snow or ice with great ease ; its length
is about nine feet, its breadth sixteen inches.
Along its outer edges runs a leather lashing,
through the loops of which a long leather
line is passed, to hold in its place whatever
may be placed ujjon it. From the front, close
6 81
THE WTT.D XORTn LAND.
to the turned ])ortion, tlie traees for drauglit
are attaclied. The dogs, usually four in luini-
ber, stand in tandem fashion, one before the
other, the best dog generally being ])laeed in
front, as "foregoer," the next best in rear as
" steer-dog. " It is the business of the fore-
goer to keep the track, however faint it may
be, on lake or river. The steer dog guides the
sled, and prevents it. from striking or catch-
ing in tree or root. An ordinary load for
four dogs weighs from 2 to 400 lbs. ; laden
with 200 lbs., dogs will travel on anything
like a good track, or on hard snow, about
thirty or thirty-live miles in each da3^ In
deep or soft snow the pace is of necessity
slow, and twenty to twenty-tive miles will
form a fair day's work.
If any one should ask what length of time
dogs will thus travel day after day, I refer
them to the following chapters, wherein the
fortunes of Cerf-vola and his brethren, start-
ing out to-day on a long journey, are duly
set forth.
Some feAV miles west of the mission station
called Prince Albert I parted from my friend
Captain M , Avho thus far had accomi)a-
nied me. He was to return to Red River
and Canada, via Cumberland and the lakes,
I to hold my way across the frozen continent
to the Pacific. For many months each day
would place a double day's distance between
«3
THE WILD NOirni LAND.
us, but wo still looked forward to anotlier
meeting, even though between us and tliat
})rospeet there lay the breadth of all the sav-
age continent.
A couple of days later I reached the Ihul-
soii's Bay Company's fort of Carlton, the
great rendezvous of the winter packets be-
tween north and south. From north and
west several of the leading agents of the fur
company had assembled at Carlton to await
the coming of the packet bearing news from
the outer world. From Fort Simpson on the
far jNlackenzie, from Fort Chipewyan on the
lonely lake Athabasca, from Edmonton on
the Upper Saskatchewan, from Isle a la
Crosse, dogs had drawn the masters of these
remote establishnients to the central station
on the middle Saskatchewan. But they
waited in vain for the arrival of the packet ;
with singular punctuality had their various
trains arrived within a few days of each other
from starting-points 2,000 miles apart; yet
after a few days' detention these officers felt
anxious to set out once more on their journey,
and many a time the hillside on which the
packet must first appear was scanned by
watchers, and all the boasted second sight
and conjuring power of haggard squaw and
medicine man was set at Avork to discover the
whereabouts of the " missing link " between
the realms of civilization and savagery. To
83
THE WILD NORTH LAXD.
me the delay, except for the exigencies of
time and distance, was not irksome. I was
in the society of gentlemen whose lives liad
been passed in all portions of the great north,
on the frozen shores of Hudson's Bay, in the
mountain fastnesses of the Chipewyan range,
or midst the savage solitudes that lie where,
in long, low-lying capes, and ice-piled prom-
ontories, the shore of America stretches out
to meet the Avaves of the Northern Ocean.
There was one present who in the past
seven months had travelled by horse and
canoe, boat and dog train, full 4,000 miles;
and another, destined to be my close com-
panion during many weeks, whose matchless
determination and power of endurance had
carried him in a single winter from the Lower
Mackenzie Kiver to the banks of the Missis-
sippi.
Here, while we await the winter packet,
let me sketch with hasty and imperfect touch
the lives of those who, as the " winterers " of
the great Company of Adventurers trading
into Hudson's Bay, have made their homes
in the wilderness.
Two hundred and sixty-two years ago, a
French adventurer under the banner of
Samuel de Champlain wintered with an In-
dian tribe on the shores of the Upper Ottawa.
In the ensuing spring he returned to Mont-
real, recounted his adventures, and became
84
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
the hero of an hour. Beyond the country of
the Ottawas he described a vast region, and
from the uttermost sources of the Ottawa a
large river ran towards the north until it
ended in the North Sea. He had been there,
he said, and on the shore lay the ribs of an
English vessel wrecked, and the skeletons of
English sailors who had been drowned or
murdered. His story was a false one, and
ere a year had passed he confessed his du-
plicity ; he had not been near the North Sea,
nor had he seen aught that he described.
Yet was there even more than a germ of
truth in his tale of wreck and disaster, for
just one year earlier in the same North Sea,
a brave English sailor had been set adrift in
an open boat, with half a dozen faithful sea-
men; and of all the dark mysteries of the
merciless ocean, no mystery lies wrapt in
dee})er shadow than that which hangs over
the fate of Hudson.
But the seventeenth century was not an
age when wreck or ruin could daunt the spirit
of discovery. Here in this lonely North
Sea, the palm of adventure belonged not to
France alone. Spain might overrun the rich
regions of the tropics, Richelieu (prototype
of the great German chancellor of to-day)
might plant the fleiii'-de-Us along the mighty
St. Lawrence, but the north — the frozen
north — must be the land of English enter-
85
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
prise and English daring. The years that fol-
lowed the casting away of the fearless Hud-
son saw strange vessels coasting the misty
shores of that weird sea; at lirst, to seek
through its bergs and ice floes, its dreary
cloud-wrapt fiords and inlets, a passage to
the land where ceaseless sunshine glinted on
the spice-scented shores of fabulous Cathay ;
and later on, to trade with the savages who
clad themselves in skins, which the fairest
favourites of Whitehall or the Louvre (by a
strange extreme wherein savagery joined
hands with civilization) would be proud to
wrap round their snoAvy shoulders.
Prosecuted at first by desultory and chance
adventurers, this trade in furs soon took defi-
nite form and became a branch of commerce.
On the lonely seashores wooden buildings
rose along the estuaries of rivers flowing from
an unknown land. These were honoured by
the title of fort or factory, and then the ships
sailed back to England ere the autumn ice
had closed upon the waters ; while behind in
Eupert's Fort, York Factory, Churchill, or
Albany (names which tell the political his-
tory of their day), stayed the agents, or
"winterers," whose Avork it was to face for a
long season of hardship, famine, and disease,
a climate so rigorous that not unfrequently,
wlien the returning vessel rose upon the dis-
tant sea line, scarce half the eyes that had
«6
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
seen her vanish were tlieie to watch her re-
turn. And they had other foes to contend
with. (Jver the height of land, away by the
great lakes, and along the forest shores of
the St. Lawrence, the adventurers of another
nation had long been busy at the mingled
work of conc^uest and traffic. The rival Sul-
tans of France and England could, midst the
more pressing cares of their respective ha-
rems, find time occasionallj^ to scribble
" Henri " or " Charles " at the foot of a parch-
ment scroll which gave a continent to a com-
pany; it little mattered whether Spaniard,
Frenchman or Briton had first bestowed the
gift, the rival claimants might light for the
possession as they pleased. The geography
of this Kew World was uncertain, and where
Florida ended or Canada began was not mat-
ter of much consequence. lUit the great car-
dinal, like the great chancellor, was not likely
to err in the matter of boundaries. " If
there should be any doubt about the parts,
we can take the whole," was probably as
good a maxim then as now ; and accordingly
we find at one sweep the whole northern con-
tinent, from Florida to the Arctic Circle,
handed over to a company of which the
priest-soldier was the moving spirit.
Tlius began the long strife between France
and England in North America — a strife
which ended only under the walls of Quebec.
«7
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
The story of their bravery, their endurance,
their constancy, their heroism, has been
woven into deathless history by a master-
hand.' To France belongs the glory of tlie
Great West — not the less her glory because
the sun has set forever upon her empire.
Nothing remains to her. Promontory or
lonely isle, name of sea-washed cape, or
silent lake, half mistily tells of her former
dominion. In the deep recesses of some
north-western lake or river-reach the echoes
still waken to the notes of some old French
chanson, as the half-Indian voyageur, igno-
rant of all save the sound, dips his glistening
paddle to the cadence of his song. But of
all that Cartier and Champlain, De Monts,
La Salle, Marquette, Frontenac, and Mont-
calm lived and died for — nothing more re-
mains.
Poor France ! In the New World and in
the Old history owes thee much. Yet in
both hast thou paid the full measure of thy
people's wrong.
But to return. The seventeenth century
had not closed ere the sea of Hudson became
the theatre of strife, the wooden palisades of
the factories were battered or burnt down;
and one fine day in August, 1697, a loud
cannonade boomed over the sullen waters,
and before the long summer twilight had
' Fraucis P^rkman.
88.
THE WILD XORTII LAND.
closed, the "Hampshire," with her fifty-two
guns on high poop or lofty forecastle, lay
deep beneath the icy sea, her consorts tlie
Frenchman's prize. Nor had she gone down
before a foe more powerful, but to the single
frigate of Le Moyne d' Iberville, a child of
Old and New France, the boldest rover that
e'er went forth upon the Northern Seas.
Some fifteen years later France resigned her
claim to these sterile shores. Blenheim, Ra-
ni ilies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet had given
to England the sole possession of the frozen
North.
And now, for nigh seventy years, the Eng-
lish Company pursued unmolested its trade
along the coast. A strong fort, not of wood
and lath and stockade, but of hard English
brick and native granite hewn by English
lumds, rose near the estuary of the Churchill
River. To this fort the natives came annu-
ally along the English river bearing skins
gathered far inland, along the shores of the
Lake of the Hills, and the borders of the
great river of the nortli.
With these natives wandered back an Eng-
lishman named Samuel Hearne ; he reached
the Lake Athabasca, and on all sides he
heard of large rivers, some coming from south
and west, others flowing to the remotest
north. He Avandered on from tribe to tribe,
reached a great lake, descended a great river
89
THE WILD NORTH LxiND.
to the north, and saw at last the Arctic
Sea.
Slowly did the Fur Company establish it-
self in the interior. It was easier to let the
nativ^es bring down the rich furs to the coast
than to seek them in these friendless regions.
But at last a subtle rival appeared on the
scene ; the story of the North -AVest Fur Com-
pany has often been told, and in another
place we have painted the effects of that con-
flict ; here it is enough to say that when in
1822 the north-west became merged into the
older corporation, posts or forts had been
scattered throughout the entire continent,
and that henceforth from Oregon to Ungava,
from Mingan to the Mackenzie, the countless
tribes knew but one lord and master, the
Company of Adventurers from England trad-
ing into Hudson's I^ay.
What in the meantime was the work of
those wintering agents whose homes Avere
made in the wilderness? God knows their
lives were liard. They came generally from
the remote isles or higlilands of Scotland,
they left home young, and the mind tires
when it thinks upon the remoteness of many
of their fur stations. Dreary and monotonous
beyond words was their home life, and hard-
ship was its rule. To travel on foot 1,000
miles in winter's darkest time, to live upon
the coarsest food, to see nought of bread or
90
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
sugar for long months, to lie down at night
under the freezing branches, to feel cold such
as Englishmen in England cannot even com-
prehend, often to starve, always to dwell in
exile from the great world. Such was the
routine of their lives. The names of these
northern posts tell the story of their toil.
"Resolution," "Providence," "Good Hope,"
"Enterprise," "Keliance," "Confidence;"
such were the titles given to these little forts
on the distant Mackenzie, or the desolate
shores of the Great Slave Lake. Who can
tell what memories of early days in the far
away Scottish isles, or Highland glen, must
have come to these men as the tempest swept
the stunted pine-forest, and wrack and drift
hurled across the frozen lake — when the
dawn and the dusk, separated by only a few
hours' day-light, closed into the long, dark
night. Perchance the savage scene was lost
in a dreamy vision of some lonely Scottish
loch, some Druid mound in far away Lewis,
some vista of a fireside, when storm howled
and waves ran high upon the beach of Storno-
way.
n
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
CHAPTER XI.
A Dog of No Character — The Green Lake — Lac He a
la Crosse — A Cold Day — Fort He a la Crosse —
A Long-lost Brother — Lost upon the Lake — Un-
welcome Neighbours — Mr. Roderick Macfarlaue
—"A Beautiful Morning" — Marble Features.
On the night of the 11th of February,
under a brilliant moonlight, we quitted Fort
Carltou; crossing the Saskatchewan, we
climbed the steep northern bank, and paused
a moment to look back. The moon was at
its full, not a cloud slept in the vast blue
vault of heaven, a great planet burned in the
western sky ; the river lay beneath in spot-
less lustre ; shore and prairie, ridge and low-
land, si)arkled in the sheen of snow and
moonlight. Then I sprung u])on my sled,
aud followed the others, for tlie music of
their dog-bells was already getting faint.
The two foHowiug days saw us journeying
on through a rich and fertile land. Clumps
of poplar interspersed with pine, dotted the
undulating surface of the country. Lakes
were numerous, and the yellow grass along
their margins still showed above the deep
snow.
Six trains of dogs, twenty-three dogs in all,
93
THE WILD NORTH LAND,
made a goodly show ; the northern ones all
beaded, belled, and ribboned, were mostly
large powerful animals. Cree, French, and
English names were curiously intermixed,
and as varied were the tongues used to urge
the trains to fresh exertions. Sometimes a
dog would be abused, vilified, and cursed, in
French alone; at others, he would be im-
plored, in Cree, to put forth greater efforts.
" Kuskey-taj-o-atim-moos," or the little
" black dog " would be appealed to, " for the
love of Heaven to haul his traces." He
would be solemnly informed that he was a
dog of no character ; that he was the child of
very disreputable parents; that, in fact, his
mother had been no better than she should
have been. Generally speaking, this infor-
mation did not appear to have much effect
upon Kuskey-tay-o-atim-moos, who was
doubtless well satisfied if the abuse hurled
at him and his progenitors exhausted the ire
of his driver, and saved his back at the ex-
pense of his relations.
Four days of rapid travelling carried us
far to the north. Early on the third day of
travel the open country with its lakelets and
poplar ridges, was left behind, and the forest
region entered upon for the first time.
Day had not yet dawned when we quitted
a deserted hut which had given us shelter for
the night ; a succession of steep hills rose be-
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
fore lis; and when the highest had been
gained, the dawn had In-oken upon the dull
grey landscape. Before us the great Sub-
Arctic Forest stretched away to the north, a
line of lakes, its rampart of defence against
the wasting fires of the prairie region, lay be-
neath. This was the southern limit of that
vast forest whose northern extreme must be
sought where the waters of the Mackenzie
mingle with the waves of the Arctic Sea.
We entered this forest, and in four days
reached the southern end of the Green Lake,
a long narrow sheet of water of great depth.
The dogs went briskly over the hard snow on
the surface of the ice-covered lake, and ere
sun set on the 15th of February we were
housed in the little Hudson's Bay post, near
the northern extremity of the lake. We had
run about 150 miles in four days.
A little more than midway between Carl-
ton and Green Lake, the traveller crosses the
height of land between the Saskatchewan
and Beav^er Eivers; its elevation is about
1,700 feet above the sea level, but the rise
on either side is barely perceptible, and be-
tween the wooded hills, a network of lakes
linked together by swamps and muskegs
spreads in every direction. These lakes
abound with the finest fish; the woods are
fairly stocked with fur-bearing animals, and
the country is in many respects fitted to be
94
THE WII.D NORTH LAND.
made the scene of Indian settlement, upon a
plan not yet attempted by Ameiioan ov Cana-
dian governments in their dealings with the
red man.
On the morning of the 17th of February
we quitted the Green Lake, and continued on
cur northern Avay. Early on the day of de-
partiire we struck the Beaver or Upper
Churchill River, and followed its winding
course for some forty miles. Tlie shores
were well wooded with white spruce, juni])er,
and birch ; the banks, some ten or twenty
feet above the surface of the ice, sloped easily
back ; while at every ten or fifteen miles
smaller streams sought the main river, and
at each accession the bed of the channel
nearly doubled in width.
Hitlierto I had not spoken of the cold ; the
snow lay deep upon the ground, but so far
the days had been fine, and tlie nights,
though of course cold, were by no means ex-
cessively so. The morning of the 19th of Feb-
ruary found us camped on a pine ridge, be-
tween lakes, about fifteen miles south of Lac
He a la Crosse, by the spot where an ox liad
perished of starvation during the ])revious
autumn, his bones now furnishing a niglit-
long repast for our hungry dogs. The night
had been very cold, and despite of blanket
or buffalo robe it was impossible to remain
long asleep. It may seem strange to those
95
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
who live in warm houses, who sleep in cosy
rooms from which the draught is carefully
excluded, and to whom the notion of seeking
one's rest on the ground, under a jDine tree
in mid-winter, Avould appear eminently sui-
cidal ; it may seem strange, I say, how in a
climate where cold is measured by degrees
as much below the freezing point as the hot-
test shade heat of Carnatic or Scindian sum-
mer is known to be nboce it, that men should
be able at the close of a hard day's march to
lie down to rest under the open heavens.
Yet so it is.
When the light begins to fade over the
frozen solitude, and the first melancholy hoot
of the night owl is heard, the traveller in the
north looks around him for " a good camping-
place." In the forest country he has not
long to seek for it ; a few dead trees for fuel,
a level space for his fire and his blanket,
some green young pines to give him " brush "
for his bed, and all his requirements are su^j-
plied. The camp is soon made, the fire
lighted, the kettle filled with snow and set
to boil, the supper finished, dogs fed, and the
blankets spread out over the pine brush. It
is scarcely necessary to say that there is not
much time lost in the operation of undress-
ing; under the circumstances one is more
likely to reverse the process, and literally
(not figuratively as in the ease of modern so-
96
TITE WILD NORTH LAND.
ciety, preparing for lior l)all) to (/n'ss for tlu-
iiiglit. Then begins the cold ; it has been
bitterly eold all day, v.itli tlarkness; the
wind has lulled, and the frost has eonie out
of the cold, gre}^ sky with still, silent rigour.
If you have a thermometer placed in the
snow at your head the spirit will have
shrunken back into the twenties and thirties
below zero; and just when the dawn is steal-
ing over the eastern pine tops it will not un-
frequently he into the forties. "Well then,
that is cold if you like ! You are tired by a
thirty-mile march on snow-shoes. You have
lain down with stiffened limbs and blistered
feet, and sleep comes to you by the mere
force of your fatigue ; but never goes the con-
sciousness of the cold from your waking
brain ; and as you lie with crossed arms and
up-gathered knees beneath your buffalo robe,
you welcome as a benefactor any short-haired^
shivering dog who may be forced from his
lair in the snow to seek a few hours' sleep
upon the outside of your blankets.
Yet do not imagine, reader, that all this is
next to an impossibility, that men will perish
under many nights of it. Men do not perish
thus easily. Nay even, when before daAvn
the fire has been set alight, and the tea swal-
lowed hot and strong, the whole thing is
nigh forgotten, not unfrequently forgotten in
the anticipations of a cold still more try-
7 97
THE WILD NORTH LAXD.
ing ill tlie day's jouiiicy which is before
you.
Such was the case now. We had slept
coldly, and ere daylight the thermometer
showed 32 degrees below zero. A strong
wind swept through the fir-trees from the
north ; at daylight the wind lulled, but every
one seemed to anticipate a bad day, and
leather coats and capotes were all in use.
We set oif at six o'clock. For a time
calmness reigned, but at sunrise the north
wind sprang up again, and the cold soon be-
came more than one could bear. Before
mid-day we reached the southern end of Lac
He a la Crosse ; before us to the north lay
nearly thirty miles of shelterless lake, and
down this great stretch of ice the wind came
with merciless severity.
We made a fire, drank a great deal of hot
tea, muffled up as best we could and put out
into the lake. All that day I had been ill,
and with no little difficulty had managed to
keep up with the party. I do not think that
I had, in the experience of many bitter days
of travel, ever felt such cold ; but I attrib-
uted this to illness more than to the day's
severity.
We held on ; right in our teeth blew the
bitter blast, the dogs Avith low-bent heads
tugged steadily onward, the half-breeds and
Indians wrapped their blankets round their
98
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
heads, ami l)i'iKliiigl'(jr\v;ir(l as tlicy ran made
their way against the Avind. To run was in-
stantly to freeze one's face; to lie on the sled
was to chill through the body to the very
marrow. It was impossible to face it long,
and again we put in to shore, made a lire,
and boiled some tea.
At mid-day the sun shone, and the ther-
mometer stood at 26° below zero; the sun
was utterly powerless to make itself felt in
the slightest degree ; a drift of dry snow flew
before the bitter Avind. Was this really
great cold? I often asked myself. I had
not long to wait for an answer. My two fel-
low-travellers were perhaps of all men in
those regions best able to settle a question of
cold. One had spent nigh thirty years in
many parts of the Continent ; the other had
dwelt for years within the Arctic Circle, and
had travelled the shores of the Arctic Ocean
at a time when the Esquimaux keep close
within their greasy snow huts. Both were
renowned travellers in a land where bad trav-
ellers were unknown : tlie testimony of such
men was conclusive, and for years they had
not known so cold a day.
" I doubt if I have ever felt greater cold
than this, even on the Anderson or the
Mackenzie," said the man who was so well
acquainted with winter hardship. After that
1 did not care so much ; if they felt it cold, if
99
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
tlieii' cheeks grew white and hard in tlie
bitter blast, surely 1 could afford to freeze
half my face and all my fingers to boot.
Yet at the time it was no laughing matter;
to look forward to an hour seemed an infinity
of pain. One rubbed and rubbed away at
solid nose and white cheek, but that only
added one's fingers to the list of iced things
one had to carry.
At last the sun began to decline to the
west, the wind fell with it, the thick, low-
lying drift disappeared, and it was possible
by running hard to restore the circulation.
With dusk came a magnificent Aurora; the
sheeted light quivered over the frozen lake
like fleecy clouds of many colours blown
across the stars. Night had long closed
when we reached the warm shelter of the
shore, and saw the welcome lights of houses
in the gloom. Dogs barked, bolts rattled,
men and children issued from the snow-cov-
ered huts ; and at the door of his house stood
my kind fellow-traveller, the chief factor of
the district, waiting to welcome me to his
fort of He a la Crosse.
The fort of He a la Crosse is a solitary
spot. Behind it spreads a land of worthless
forest, a region abounding in swamps and
muskegs, in front the long arms of the Cruci-
form Lake. It is not from its shape that the
lake bears its name ; in the centre, where the
100
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
four long arms meet, stands an island, on tlie
open shore of which the Indians in bygone
times Avere wont to play their favourite game
of la Crosse. The game named the island,
and the island in turn gave its name to the
lake. The Beaver River enters the lake at
the south-east, and leaves it again on the
north-west side. The elevation of the lake
above the level of Hudson's Bay cainiot be
less than 1,300 feet, so it is little Avonder if
the wild winds of the north should have full
sweep across its frozen surface. The lake is
well stocked with excellent white fish, and by
the produce of the net the garrison of the
fort is kept wholly in food, about 130 large
fish being daily consumed in it.
At a short distance from the fort stands
the French Mission. One of the earliest
established in the north, it has thrown out
many branches into more remote solitudes.
Four ladies of the order of Grey Nuns have
made their home here, and their school al-
ready contains some thirty cliildren. If one
wants to see what can be made of a very
limited space, one should visit this convent at
He a la Crosse ; the entire building is a small
wooden structure, yet school, dormitory,
oratory, kitchen, and dining-room are all
contained therein.
The sisters seemed happy and contented,
chatted gaily of the outside world, or of tlieir
m
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
far-away liomes iu Lower Canada. Their
present house was only a temporary erection.
In one fell night fire had destroyed a larger
building, and consumed their library, oratory,
everything ; and now its ravages were being
slowly repaired. Of course it was an event
to be long remembered, and the lady who de-
scribed to us the calamity seemed still to
feel the terror of the moment.
My long journey left me no time for de-
lay, and after one day's rest it became neces-
sary to resume the march. The morning of
the 21st February found us again in motion.
We now numbered some five sleds; the
officer in charge of the Athabasca district,
the next to the north, was still to be my
fellow-traveller for nearly 400 miles to his
post of Fort Chipewyan. All dogs save
mine were fresh ones, but Cerf-vola showed
not one sign of fatigue, and Spanker was still
strong and hearty. Pony was, however,
betraying every indication of giving out, and
had long proved himself an arrant scoundrel.
Dogs were scarce in the north this year.
A distemper had swept over all the forts, and
many a trusty hauler had gone to the land
where harness is unknown.
Here, at He a la Crosse, I obtained an
eighth dog. This dog Avas Major; he was
an Esquimau from Deer's Lake, the birth-
place of Cerf-vola, and he bore a very strong
10?
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
resemblance to my leader. It is not unlikely
that they were closely related, perhaps
brothers, who had thus, after many wander-
ings, come together ; but, be that as it may,
Cerf-vola treated his long-lost brother with
evident suspicion, and continued to maintain
towards all outsiders a dogged demeanour.
Major's resemblance to the Untiring led to
a grievous error on the morning of my de-
parture from the fort.
It was two hours before daylight when the
dogs were put into harness ; it was a morning
of bitter cold ; a faint old moon hung in the
east ; over the dim lake, a shadowy Aurora
flickered across the stars ; it was as wild and
cheerless a sight as eye of mortal could look
upon; and the work of getting the poor un-
willing dogs into their harness was done by
the Indians and half-breeds in no amiable
mood.
In the haste and darkness the Untiring
was placed last in the train which he had
so long led, the new-comer, IVIajor, getting
the foremost place. Upon my assuming
charge of the train, an ominous tendency to
growl and fight on the part of my steer-dog
told me something was wrong; it was too
dark to see plainly, but a touch of the Un-
tiring' s nose told me that the right dog was
in the wrong ])lace.
The mistake Avas quickly rectified, but,
103
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
nevertheless, I fear its memory long rankled
in the mind of Cerf-vola, for all that day,
and for some days after, he never missed
an opportunity of counter-marching suddenly
in his harness and prostrating the unoffend-
ing Majorat his post of steer-dog; the attack
was generally made with so much sudden-
ness and vigour that jNIajor instantly capitu-
lated, " turning a turtle" in his traces. This
unlooked-for assault was usually accompanied
by a flank movement on the part of Spanker,
who, whenever there was anything in the
shape of fighting lying around, was sure to
have a tooth in it on his own account, being
never very particular as to whether he at-
tacked the head of the rear dog or the tail of
his friend in front.
All this led at times to fearful confusion in
my train ; they jumped on one another; they
tangled traces, and back-bands, and collar-
straps into sad knots and interlacings, which
baffled my poor frozen fingers to unravel.
Often have I seen them in a huge ball loll-
ing over each other in the snow, while the
rapid api)lication of my whip only appeared
to make matters worse, conveying the idea to
Sjjanker or the Untiring that they were
being ])adly bitten by an unknown belligerent.
Like the lady in Tennyson's "Princess,"
they "mouthed and muml)led" each other in
a very perplexing manner, but, of course,
104
THE WILD XORTir LAND.
from a cause totally at variance from that
which influenced the matron in the poem.
These events only occurred, however, when
a new dog was added to the train ; and, after
a day or so, things got smoothed down, and
all tugged at the moose-skin collars in peace-
ful unanmiity.
But to return. We started from He a la
Crosse, and held our way over a chain of
lakes and rivers. Eiviere Cruise was passed,
Lac Clair lay at sundown far stretching to
our right into the blue cold north, and when
dusk had come, we were halted for the night
in a lonely Indian hut which stood on the
shores of the Detroit, fully forty miles from
our starting-place of the morning.
" A long, hard, cold day ; storm, drift, and
desolation. We are lost upon the lake."
Such is the entry which meets my eye as I
turn to the page of a scanty note-book which
records the 22nd of February; and now
looking back upon this day, it does not seem
to me that the entry exaggerates in its pithy
summing up the misery of the day's travel.
To i-ecount the events of each day's journey,
to give minutely, starting-point, date, dis-
tance, and resting-place, is too frequently an
error into which travellers are wont to fall.
I have read somewhere in a review of a work
on African travel, that no literary skill has
hitherto been able to enliven the description
105
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
of how the traveller left a village o£ dirty
negroes in the morning, and struggled through
swamps all day, and crossed a river swarming
with hippopotami, and approached a Avood
where there were elephants, and finally got
to another village of dirty negroes in the
evening. The reviewer is right; the reiter-
ated recital of Arctic cold and hardship, or
of African heat and misery, must be as
wearisome to the reader as its realization was
painful to the writer; but the traveller has
one advantage over the reader, the reality of
the " storm, drift, and desolation " had the
excitement of the very pain which they pro-
duced. To be lost in a haze of blinding snow,
to have a spur of icy keenness urging one to
fresh exertion, to seek with dazed eyes hour
after hour for a faint print of snow-shoes
or moccasin on the solid surface of a large
lake, to see the night approaching and to
urge the dogs with whip and voice to fresh
exertions, to greater efforts to gain some dis-
tant land-point ere night has wrapped the
dreary scene in darkness ; all this doled out
hour by hour in narrative would be dull
indeed.
To me the chief excitement lay in the
question. Will this trail lead to aught? Will
we save daylight to the shore? But to the
reader tlie fact is already patent that the
trail did lead to something, and that tlie
106
THE WILD XOKTII LAND.
night did not iind the travellers still lost on
the frozen lake.
Neither could the reader enter into the joy
with which, after such a day of toil and hard-
ships, the traveller sees in the gloom the
haven he has sought so long; it may be only
a rude cabin with windows cut from the
snow-drift or the moose-skin, it may be
only a camp-fire in a pine clump, but never-
theless the lost wanderer hails Avith a
feeling of intense joy the gleam which
tells him of a resting place ; and as he
stretches his weary limbs on the hut floor
or the pine-bush, he laughs and jests over
the misfortunes, fatigues, and fears, which
but a short hour before were heartsickening
enough.
It was with feelings such as this that I be-
held the lights of Eiviere la Loche station on
the night of the 22nd of February; for,
through an afternoon of intense cold and
blinding drift, we had struggled in vain to
keep the track across the Buffalo Lake. The
guide had vanished in the drift, and it was
only through the exertions of my companion
after hours of toil that we were able to regain
the track, and reach, late on Saturday even-
ing, the warm shelter of the little post; a
small, clean room, a bright fire, a good sup-
per, an entire twenty-four hours of sleep, and
rest in prospect. Is it any woudei- that with
107
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
such surroundings the hut at Riviere la Loche
seemed a palace?
And now each succeeding day carried us
further into the great wilderness of the north,
over lakes whose dim. shores loomed through
the driving snow, and the ragged pines tossed
wildly in the wind ; through marsh and
muskeg and tangled Avood, and all the'long
monotony of dreary savagery which lies on
that dim ridge, from whose sides waters roll
east to the Bay of Hudson, north to the
Frozen Ocean.
We reached the Methy Portage, and turned
north-west through a long region of worth-
less forest. Now and again a wood Cariboo
crossed the track ; a marten showed upon a
frozen lake ; but no other sign of life Avas
visible. The Avhole earth seemed to sleep
in savage desolation ; the snow lay deep upon
the ground, and slowly we plodded on.
To rise at half-past two o'clock a.m., start
at four, and plod on until sunset, halting
twice for an hour during the day, this was
the history of each day's toil. Yet, Avith
this long day of Avork, Ave could only travel
about tAventy-live miles. In front, along
the track, Avent a young Chipewyan Indian ;
then came a train of dogs floundering deep in
the soft snow ; then the other trains Avound
along upon lirmer footing. Cam})-making in
the evening in this deej) suow Avas tedious
108
THE WILD NOT{TIT LAND.
work. It was hard, too, to hunt up tlu; va-
rious dogs iu the small hours of theuiorniug,
from their lairs in snow-drift or beneath root
of tree ; but some dogs kept uncomfortably
close to camp, and I well remember waking
one night out of a deep sleep, to find two
huge beasts tearing each other to pieces on
the top of the buffalo bag in which I lay.
After three days of wearisome labour on
this summit ridge of the northern continent
we reached the edge of a deep glen, 700 feet
below the plateau. At the bottom of this
valley a small river ran in many curves be-
tween high-wooded shores. The sleds
bounded rapidly down the steep descent,
dogs and loads rolling frequently in a con-
fused heap together. Night had fallen when
we gained the lower valley, and made a camp
in the darkness near the winding river ; the
height of land was passed, and the river
in the glen was the Clearwater of the Atha-
basca.
I have before spoken of the life of hard-
ship to which the wintering agents of the
Hudson's Bay Company are habituated, nor
Avas I without some prat^tical knowledge of
the subject to which I have alluded. I had
now, however, full opportunity of judging
the measure of toil contained in the simi)le
encomium one often litters in the north, " He
is a good traveller. "
109
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
Few men have led, even in the liard regions
of the north, a life of greater toil than Mr.
Roderick Macfarlane. He had left his island
home when almost a boy, and in earliest
manhood had entered the remote Avilds of
the Mackenzie River. For seventeen years
he had remained cut off from the outer world ;
yet his mind had nev^er permitted itself to
sink amidst the oppressive solitudes by which
he was surrounded : it rose rather to the level
of the vastness and grandeur which Nature
wears even in her extreme of desolation.
He entered with vigour into the life of toil
before him. By no means of a strong con-
stitution or frame of body, he nevertheless
fought his way to hardiness ; midst cold and
darkness and scant living, the natural accom-
paniments of remote travel, he traversed the
country between the Peel, Mackenzie, and
Liard rivers, and pushed his explorations to
the hitherto unknown River Anderson.
Here, on the borders of the Barren Ground,
and far within the Arctic Circle, he founded
the most northern and remote of all the trad-
ing stations of the Fur Comijany. In mid-
winter he visited the shores of the Frozen
Ocean, and dwelt with the Esquimaux along
the desolate coasts of that bay which bears
the name of England's most hapless ex-
plorer.
Nor was it all a land of desolation to him.
110
THE WILD NOIJTII LAND.
Directed by a mind as sanguine as liis own,'
he entered warmly into the ])ursuits of nat-
ural history, and classed and catalogued the
numerous birds Avhich seek in summer these
friendless regions, proving in some instances
the range of several of the tiniest of the
feathered wanderers to reach from Texas to
the Arctic shores.
All his travels were performed on snow
shoes, driving his train of dogs, or beating
the track for them in the snow. In a single
winter, as I have before mentioned, he passed
from the Mackenzie River to the Mississippi,
driving the same train of dogs to Fort Garry
fully 2,000 miles from his starting-point;
and it was early in the following summer,
on his return from England after a hasty
visit, the first during twenty years, that I
made his acquaintance in the American State
of Minnesota. He was not only acquainted
with all the vicissitudes of northern travel,
but his mind was well stored with the his-
tory of previous exploration. Chance and
the energy of the old North- West Company
had accumulated a large store of valuable
books in the principal fort on the Mackenzie.
These had been carefully studied during
periods of inaction, and arctic exploration in
'Tlie late Major Kennicot, U. S. A., who, in
charge of tlie United States telegraph exploration,
died at Fort Yukon, Alaska.
Ill
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
reality or in narrative was equally familiar
to liiiu.
'*! would have given my riglit arm to have
been allowed to go on one of these search ex-
peditions," he often said to me; and per-
haps, if those wise and sapient men, who,
acting in a corporate or individual capacity,
have the power of selection for the Avork of
relief or exploration, would only accustom
themselves to make choice of such materials,
the bones that now dot the sands of King
\Yilliam's Land or the estuary of the Great
Fish River, might in the flesh yet move
amongst us.
One night we were camped on a solitary
island in the Swan Lake. The camp had
been made after sunset, and as the morning's
path lay across the lake, over hard snow
where no track was necessarj-, it was our in-
tention to start on our way long before day-
break. In this matter of early starting it is
almost always impossible to rely on the In-
dian or the half-breed i-oydijenr. They will
lie close hid beneath their blankets unless,
indeed, the cold should become so intense
as to force them to arise and light a fire ; but
generally speaking, they will lie huddled so
closely together that they can defy the ele-
ments, and it becomes no easy matter to
arouse them from their pretended slumbers
at two or three o'clock of a dead-cold morn-
112
k
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
ing. My coiupanion, liowever, seemed to be
able to live Avithout sleep. At two o'clock
he would arise from his deer-skm robe and
set the camp astir. I generally got an hour's
law until the lire Avas fairly agoing and the
tea-kettle had been boiled.
No matter Avhat the morning Avas, he never
complained. This morning on Swan Lake
was bitterly cold — 30° below zero at my head.
" Beautiful morning ! " he exclaimed, as I
emerged from my buffalo robe at three
o'clock ; and he really meant it. I Avas not
to be done.
" Oh, delightful ! " I managed to chatter
forth, Avith a tolerable degree of acquiescence
in my voice, a fcAv mental reservations and
many bodily ones all over me.
But 30° beloAv zero, unaccompanied by
wind, is not so bad after all when one is
fairly under Aveigh and has rubbed one's nose
for a time, and struck the huge "mittained "
hands violently together, and run a mile or
so ; but let the faintest possible breath of
wind arise — a " zephyr " the poets Avould call
it, a thing just strong enough to turn smoke
or twist the feather Avhich a Avild duck might
detach from beneath his Aving as he cleft the
air above — then look out, or rather look
down, cast the eye so much askant that it can
catch a glimpse of the top of the nose, and
you Avill see a ghostly sight.
8 113
TFIE WILD NORTH lAND.
"We have all heard of hard hearts, and
stony eyes, and marble foreheads, alabaster
shoulders, snowy nedks, and tirni-set lip, and
all the long array of silicious similitudes used
to express the various qualities of the human
form divine ; but firmer, and colder, and
whiter, and harder than all stands forth
prominently a frozen nose.
A study of frozen noses would be interest-
ing; one could work out from it an essay on
the admirable fitness of things, and even his-
tory read by the light of frozen noses might
teach us new theories. The Iloman nose
could not have stood an arctic winter, hence
the limits of the Eomau empire. The Es-
(juimau nose is admirably fitted for the cli-
mate in which it breathes, hence the limited
nature it assumes.
114
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
CHAPTER XII.
The Clearwater — A Bygone Ocean— A Land of Lakes
— The Athabasca River — Who is He? — Chipe-
wyau Indians — Echo — Major Succumbs at Last
— Mai de Raquette.
The Clearwater, a river small in a land
Avhere rivers are often a mile in width, mean-
ders between its lofty wooded hills ; or rather
one should say, meanders in the deep valley
which it has worn for itself through count-
less ages.
Ever since the beginning of the fur trade
it has been the sole route followed into the
North. More practicable routes undoubtedly
exist, but hitherto the Long Portage (a
ridge dividing the waters of the chain of
lakes and rivers we have lately passed from
those streams which seek the Arctic Ocean)
and the Clearwater River have formed as it
were the gateway of the North.
This Long Portage, under its various
names of La Loche and Methy, is not a bad
position from whence to take a bird's-eye
view of the Great North.
Once upon a time, how long ago one is
afraid to say, a great sea rolled over what is
U5
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
now the central continent. From the Gulf
of jMexico to the Arctic Ocean, from the Gulf
of St. Lawrence to the base of the Rocky
Mountains, this ocean has left its trace. It
had its shores, and to-day these shores still
show the trace of where the restless waves
threw their surge upon the earlier earth. To
the eye of the geologist the sea-shell, high
cast upon some mountain ridge, tells its story
of the sea as plainly as the tropic sea-shell,
held to the dreamer's ear, whispers its low
melody of sounding billow.
To the east of this ocean the old earth
reared its iron head in those grim masses
which we name Laurentian, and which, as
though conscious of their hoary age, seem to
laugh at the labour of the new comer, man.
The waters went down, or the earth went
up, it little matters Avhich ; and the river
systems of the continent worked their ways
into Mother Ocean : the Mississippi south,
the St. Lawrence east, the Mackenzie north.
But the old Laurentian still remained, and
to-day, grim, filled with wild lakes, pine-
clad, rugged, almost impassable it lies,
spread in savage sleep from Labrador to the
Arctic Ocean.
At the Methy Portage we are on the west-
ern boundary of this Laurentian rock ; from
here it runs south-east to Canada, north to
the Frozen Ocean.
116
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
It is of the region lying between this pri-
mary formation and the Rocky Mountains,
the region once an ocean, of which we would
speak.
I have said in an earlier chapter that the
continent of British America, from the United
States' boundary, slopes to the north-east,
the eastern slope terminates at this Portage
la Loche, and henceforth the only slope is
to the north ; from here to the Frozen Sea,
one thousand miles, as wild swan flies, is
one long and gradual descent. Three rivers
carry the waters of this slope into the Arctic
Ocean ; the great Fish River of Sir George
Back, at the estuary of which the last of
Franklin's gallant crew lay down to die; the
Coppermine of Samuel Hearne ; and the Mac-
kenzie which tells its discoverer's name. The
first two flow through the Barren Grounds,
the last drains by numerous tributaries, sev-
enteen hundred miles of the Rocky Moun-
tains upon both sides of that snow-capped
range. All its principal feeders rise beyond
the mountains, cutting through the range at
riglit angles, through tremendous valleys,
the sides of which overhang the gloomy
waters.
The Liard, the Peel, the Peace rivers, all
have their sources to the west of the Rocky
Mountains. Even the parent rill of the Great
Athabasca is on the Pacific side also. Nov
U7
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
is this mountain, thus curiously rent in twain
by large rivers, a mere ridge, or lofty table-
land ; but huge and vast, capped by eternal
snow, it lifts its peaks full fifteen thousand
feet above the sea level.
Many large lakes lie spread over this an-
cient sea bottom ; Lake Athabasca, Great
Slave, and Great Bear Lake continue across
the continent, that great Lacustrine line,
which, with Winnipeg, Superior, Huron, and
Ontario, forms an aggregate of water surface
half as large as Europe.
Of other lakes, the country is simply a
vast network, beyond all attempt at name or
number; of every size, from a hundred
yards to a hundred miles in length, they lie
midst prairie, or midst forest, lonely and
silent, scarce known even to the wild man's
ken.
And now, having thus imperfectly tried to
bring to the reader's mind a vision of this
vast North, let us descend from the height
of land into the deej) valley of the Clear-
water, and like it, hurry onward to the
Athabasca.
Descending the many-curving Clearwater
for one day, we reached, on the last day of
February, its junction with the Athabasca, a
spot known as the Forks of the Athabasca.
The aspect of the country had undergone a
complete change ; the dwarf and ragged foi-
ua
THE WILD NOKTII LAXD.
est had given place to loft}- trees, and the
white spruce froui a trunk of eight feet in
circumference lifted its head fully one hun-
dred and fifty feet above the ground. Nor
was it only the aspect of the trees that might
have induced one to imagine himself in a
land of plenty. In the small fort at the
Forks, luxuries unseen during many a da}-
met the eye ; choice vegetables, the produce
of the garden; moose venison, and better
than all, the tender steak of the wood buffalo,
an animal now growing rare in the North.
There was salmon too, and pears and
peaches; but these latter luxuries I need
hai'dly say were not home ])rodm'e ; they
(ame from the ojiposite extremes of Quebec
and California. Here, then, in the midst of
the wilderness was a veritable Eden. Here
was a })lace to cry Halt, to build a hut, and
jjass the remainder of one's life. Xo more
dog-driving, no more snow-shoes, no smoky
camp, no aching feet, no call in midnight;
nothing but endless wood buffalo steaks, fried
onions, moose moofle, parsnips, fresh buttei-,
rest and sleep : alas ! it might not be ; nine
hundred miles yet lay between me and the
Rocky Mountains; nine hundred miles had
still to be travelled, ere the snow had left
bare the brown banks of the Peace Iliver.
And now our course led straight to the
north, down the broad bed of the Athabasca.
iiy
THE WILD NORTH LAXD.
A. river high shored, and many islanded, with
long reaches, leagues in length, and lower
banks thick Avooded with large forest trees.
From bank to bank fully six hundred yards
of snoAv lay spread over the rough frozen
surface ; and at times, Avhere the prairie
plateau approached the river's edge, black
bitumen oozed out of the clayey bank, and
the scent of tar was strong upon the frosty
air.
On Sunday, the 2nd of March, we remained
for the day in a wood of large pines and pop-
lars. Dogs and men enjoyed that day's rest.
Many were footsore, some were sick, all were
tired.
"The Bheel is a black man, and much
more hairy; he carries archers in his hand,
Avith these he shoots you when he meets you ;
he throws your body into a ditch : by this
3'ou will know the Bheel." Such, word for
Avord, Avas the written reply of a young Hin-
doo at an examuiation of candidates for a
Government Office in Bombay a fcAv years
ago. The examiners had asked for a de-
scription of the hill-tribe known as Bheels,
and this Avas the ansAver. It is not on record
Avhat number of marks the youtlif ul Brahmin
receiA'ed for the information thus lucidly con-
veyed, or Avhetlier the examiners Avere desir-
ous of making further acquaintance Avitli the
Bheel, upon the terms indicated in the cou-
130
THE WILD NOItTII LAND.
eluding sentence; but, for some reason or
other, the first sight of a veritable Chipewyan
Indian brought to my mind the foregoing
outline of the Bheel, and I found myself in-
sensibly repeating, "The Chipewyan is a red
man, and much more hairy." There I
stopped, for he did not carry archers in his
hand, nor proceed in the somewhat abrupt
and discourteous manner which characterized
the conduct of the Bheel. And here, per-
haps, it will be necessary to say a few words
about the wild man who dwells in this North-
ern Land.
A great deal has been said and written
about the wild man of America. The white
man during many years has lectured upon
him, written learned essays upon him, pliien-
ologically i)roved him tliis, chronologically
demonstrated him that, ethnologically as-
serted him to be the tother! I am not sure
that the conchologists even have not thrown
a shell at him, and most clearly shown tliat
he was a conglomerate of this, that, and
tother all combined. They began to dissect
him very early. One Hugh Grotius had
much to say about him a long time ago.
Another Jean de Lent also descanted upon
him, and so far back as the year of grace
1050, one Thorogood (what a glimpse the date
gives of the name and the ih'une of the date I)
composed a godly treatise' entitled " Jewa
121
THE WILD NORTH LAXD.
ill America, or a probability that Americans
are of that race." Perhaps, if good jVIaster
Thorogood was in the flesh to-day he might,
arguing from certain little dealings in bound-
ary cases, consequential claims and so forth,
prove incontestably that modern American
statesmen were of that race too. But to pro-
ceed. This question of the red man's origin
has not yet been solved ; the doctors are still
disputing about him. One professor has
gotten hold of a skull delved from the pre-
sumed site of ancient Atazlan, and by the
most careful measurements of the said skull
has proceeded to show that because one skull
measures in circumference the hundredth and
seventy-seventh decimal of an inch more than
it ought, it must of necessity be of the black-
amoor type of headpiece.
Another equally learned professor, pos-
sessed of another equally curious skull (of
course on shelf not on shoulders), has unfor-
tunately come to conclusions directly oppo-
site, and incontestably proven from careful
occii)ital measurements that the tpye is Mon-
golian.
^Yhile thus the doctors differ as to what he
is, or who he is, or Avhence he came, the
farce of theory changes to the stern tragedy
of fact ; and over the broad prairie, and ui)on
the cloud-capped mountain, and northwards
in t,\\e gloomy pijie-forest, the red man
133
THE "WILD NOirni LAND.
withers and dies out before our gaze ; soon
they will have nothing but the skulls to lec-
ture upon.
From the Long Portage which we have but
lately crossed, to the barren shores where
dwell the Esquimaux of the coasts, a family
of cognate tribes inhabit the continent ; from
east to west the limits of this race are even
more extensive. They are found at Churchill,
on Hudson's Bay, and 9t Fort Simpson, on
the rugged coast of New Caledonia. But
stranger still, far down in Arizona and Mex-
ico, even as far south as Nicaragua, the gut-
tural language of the Chipewyan race is still
heard, and the wild Navajo ami fierce Apache
horseman of the Mexican i)lains are kindred
races with the distant fur-hunters of the
North. Of all the many ramifications of In-
dian race, this is perhaps the most extraordi-
nary. Through what vicissitudes of war and
time, an offshoot from the shores of Atha-
basca wandered down into Mexico, while a
hundred fierce, foreign. Avarlike tribes occu-
pied the immense intervening distance, is
more than human conjecture can determine.
To the east of the Eocky Mountains these
races call themselves **Tinneh," a name
which signifies "People," with that sublim-
ity of ignorance which makes most savage
people imagine themselves the sole proprie-
tors of the earth. Many subdivisions exist
12ii
THE WILD NORTH LAN^D.
among them ; these are the Copper Indians,
and the Dog Eibs of the Barren Grounds;
the Loucheux or Kutchins, a fierce tribe on
the Upper Yukon ; the Yellow Knives,
Hares, Nehanies, Sickanies, and Dahas of
the IMountains and the IMackenzie River ; the
Slaves of the Great Slave Lake ; the Chip-
ewyans of Lake Athabasca and Portage la
Loche, the Beavers of the Peace River.
\yest of the Rocky Mountains, the Car-
riers, still a branch of the Chipewyan stock,
intermingle with the numerous Atnah races
of the coast. On the North Saskatchewan,
a small wild tribe called the Surcees also
springs from this great family, and as we
have already said, nearly three thousand
miles far down in the tropic plains of Old
]\Iexico, the harsh, stuttering " tch " accent
grates upon the ear. Spread over such a vast
extent of country it may be supposed they
vary much in physiognomy. Bravery in men
and l^eauty in women are said to go hand in
hand. Of the courage of the Chi[)ewyan men
I shall say nothhig; of the beauty of the
women I shall say something. To assert that
they are very plain would not be true ; they
are undeniably uglv. Some of the young ones
are very fat ; all of the old ones are very thin.
INIany of the faces are pear-shaped ; narrow
foreheads, wide cheeks, snuill deep-set fat
eyes. Xhe type is said to be Mongolian, and
124
THE AVILF) NORTH LAND.
if so, the Mongolians sliould change tlieir
type as soon as i)ossible.
Several of the men wear sickly-looking
monstaches, and short, pointed chin tufts;
the hair, coarse and matted, is worn long.
The children look like rolls of fat, half melted
on the outside. Their general employment
seems to be eating moose meat, when they
are not engaged in deriving nourishment from
the maternal bosom.
This last occupation is protracted to an ad-
vanced age of childhood, a circumstance
which probably arises from the fact that the
new-born infant receives no nourishment
from its mother for four days after its birth,
in order that it shall in after life be able to
stand the pangs of hunger; but the infant
mind is no doubt conscious itself that it is
being robbed of its just rights, and endeav-
ours to make up for lost time by this post-
ponement of the age of weaning.
This description does not hold good of the
Beaver Indians of Peace River; many of
them, men and women, are good-looking
enough, but of them more anon.
All these tribes are excellent hunters.
The moose in the south and Avooded country,
the reindeer in the barren lands, ducks and
geese in vast numbers during the summer,
and, generally speaking, inexhaustible fish in
the lakes yield them their means of living.
125
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
At times, one prodigious feast; again, a
period of starvation.
For a time living on moose nose, or buffalo
tongue, or daintiest tit-bit of lake and for-
est ; and then glad to get a scrap of dry meat,
or a putrid fish to satisfy the cravings of their
hunger. While the meat lasts, life is a long
dinner. The child just able to crawl is seen
Avith one hand holding the end of a piece of
meat, the other of which is held between the
teeth ; while the right hand Avields a knife a
foot in length, with which it saws steadily,
between lips and fingers, until the mouthful is
detached. How the nose escapes amputation
is a mystery I have never heard explained.
A few tents of Chipewyans were pitched
along the shores of the Athabasca River,
when we descended that stream. They had
long been expecting the return of my com-
panion, to whose arrival they looked as the
means of supplying them with percussion
gun-caps, that article having been almost ex-
hausted among them.
Knowing the hours at which he was wont
to travel they had marked their camping-
places on the wooded shores, by planting a
line of branches in the snow across the river
from one side to the other. Thus even at
night it would have been impossible to pass
their tents Avithout noticing the line of
marks. The tents inside or out always pre-
136
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
sented the same spoetacle. l^atte red-looking
dogs of all ages sunouiided the dwelling-
place. In the trees or on a stage, meat,
snow-shoes, and dog sleds, lay sale from
canine ravage. Inside, some ten or twelve
people congregated around a bright lire burn-
ing in the centre. The lodge was usually
large, requiring a dozen moose skins in its
construction. Quantities of moose or buffalo
meat, cut into slices, hung to dry in the
upper smoke. The inevitable puppy dog
playing with a stick ; the fat, greasy child
pinching the puppy dog, drinking on all
fours out of a tin pan, or sawing away at a
bit of meat; and the women, old or young,
cooking or nursing with a naivete which
Rubens w^ould have delighted in. All these
made up a Chipewyan "Interior," such as it
appeared wherever we halted in our march,
and leaving our dogs upon the river, went up
into the tree-covered shore to where the tents
stood pitched.
Anxious to learn the amount of game de-
stroyed by a good hunter in a season, I caused
one of the men to ask Chripo what he had
killed. Chripo counted for a time on his fin-
gers, and then informed us that since the
snow fell he had killed ten Avood buffalo and
twenty-five moose ; in other Avords, about
seventeen thousand pounds of meat, dui-ing
four months. But of this a large quantity
137
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
went to tlie Hudson's Bay Fort, at the Forks
of the Athaljasea.
The night of the 4th of March found us
camped in a higli wood, at a point where a
" cache " of provisions had been made for
ourselves and our dogs. More than a fort-
night earlier these provisions had been sent
from Fort Chipewyan, on Lake Athabasca,
and had been deposited in tlie " cache " to
await my companion's arrival. A bag of fish
for the dogs, a small i^acket of letters, and a
bag of good things for the master swung
from a large tripod close to the shore. Some
of these things were very necessary, all were
welcome, and after a choice supper we turned
in for the night.
At four o'clock next morning we were off.
My friend led the march, and the day Avas
to be a long one. For four hours we held
on, and by an hour after sunrise we had
reached a hut, where dwelt a Chipewyan
named Echo. The house was deserted, and
if anybody had felt inclined to ask. Where
had Echo gone to? Echo was not there to
answer where. Nobody, however, felt dis-
posed to ask the question, but in lieu thereof
dinner Avas being liastily got ready in Echo's
abandoned fireplace. Dinner? Yes, onr first
dinner took place usually between seven and
eight o'clock a.m. Nor were appetites ever
wanting at that hour either.
128
THE WILD NOIJTIT [.AND.
Various iuisl)aiis, of l)vok(Mi sjiow-slioo.s and
broken-down dog, had retarded my i)rogress
on this morning, and l)y the time the leading
train had reached Echo's I was far behind.
One of my dogs had totally given out, not
Cerf-vola, but the He a la Crosse dog " Major."
Poor brute ! he had suddenly lain down, and
refused to move. He was a willing, good
hauler, generally barking vociferously when-
ever any impediment in front detained the
trains. I saw at once it was useless to coerce
him after his first break-down, so there was
nothing for it but to take him from the har-
ness and hurry on with the other three dogs
as best I could. Of the old train which had
shared my fortunes ever since that now dis-
tant day in the storm, on the Red River
steam-boat, two yet remained to me.
Pony had succumbed at the Riviere la
Loche, and had been left behind at that sta-
tion, to revel in an abundance of white fish.
The last sight I got of him was suggestive of
his character. He v/as careering Avildly
across the river with a huge stolen white fish
in his Jiiouth, pursued by two men and half-
a-dozen dogs, vainly attempting to recapture
the purloined property. Another dog, named
" Sans Pareil," had taken his place, and thus
far we had " marched on in the bowels of
the land without impediment."
From the day after my departure from He
9 129
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
a la Crosse I had regularly used snow-shoes,
and now I seldom sought the respite of the
sled, but trudged along behind the dogs.
For I well knew that it was only by sparing
my dogs thus that I could hope to carry
them the immense distance I purposed to
travel; and I was also aware that a time
might come when, in the many vicissitudes
of snow travel, I would be unable to walk,
and have to depend altogether on my train
for means of movement. So, as day by day
the snow-shoe became easier, I had tramped
along, until now, on this 5th of March, I
could look back at night three hundred miles
of steady walking.
Our meal at Echo's over we set out again.
Another four hours passed without a halt,
and another sixteen or seventeen miles lay
behind us. Then came the second dinner —
cakes, tea, and sweet pemmican ; and away
we went once more upon the river. The day
was cold, but line ; the dogs trotted well, and
the pace was faster than before. Two In-
dians had started ahead to hurry on to a
spot, indicated by my companion, where they
Avere to make ready the cam}), and await our
arrival.
Night fell, and found us still upon the river.
A bright moon silvered the snow ; we pushed
along, but the dogs were now tired, all, save
my train, which having only blankets, guns,
1:50
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
and a few articles to carry, went still as
gamely as ever. At sundown our baggage
sleds were far to the rear. My companion
driving a Avell-loaded sled led the way, while
I kept close behind him.
For four hours after dark we held steadily
on; the night was still, but very cold; the
moon showed us the track ; dogs and men
seemed to go forward from the mere impulse
of progression. I had been tired hours be-
fore, and had got over it ; not half-tired, but
regularly weary ; and yet somehow or other
the feeling of weariness had passed away,
and one stepped forward upon the snow-shoe
by a mechanical effort that seemed destitute
of sense or feeling.
At last we left the river, and ascended a
steep bank to the left, passing iiito the shadow
of gigantic pines. Between their giant trunks
the moon-light slanted ; and the snow, piled
liigh on forest wreck, glowed lustrous in the
fretted light. A couple of miles more brought
us suddenly to the welcome glare of firelight,
and at ten o'clock at night we reached the
blazing camp. Eighteen hours earlier Ave
had started for the day's march, and only
during two hours had we halted on the road.
We had, in fact, marched steadily during
sixteen hours, twelve of Avhich had been at
rapid pace. The distance run that day is
unmeasured, and is likely to remain so for
131
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
many a da}' ; but at the most moderate esti-
mate it would not have been less than lifty-
six miles. It was the longest day's march I
ever made, and I had cause long to remember
it, for on arising at daybreak next morning I
was stiff with IVIal de Raquette.
In the North, ]\tal de Eaquette or no Mai
de Raquette, one must march ; sick or sore,
or blistered, the traveller must frequently
still push on. Where all is a wilderness,
progression frequently means preservation ;
and delay is tantamount to death.
In our case, however, no such necessity
existed ; but as we were only some twenty-
five miles distant from the great central dis-
tributing point of the Northern Fur Trade, it
was advisable to reach it without delay.
Once again we set out : debouching from the
forest we entered a large marsh. Soon a
lake, with low-lying shores, spread before us.
Another marsh, another frozen river, and
at last, avast lake opened out upon our gaze.
Islands, rocky, and clothed with pine-trees,
rose from the snowy surface. To the east,
nothing but a vast expanse of ice-covered sea,
with a blue, cold sky-line; to the north, a
shore of rocks and hills, wind-swept, and
part covered with dwarf firs, and on the ris-
ing shore, the clustered buildings of a large
fort, with a red flag flying above them in the
cold n(jrth l^last.
133
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
The "lake " was Athabasca, the " clustered
buildnigs " Fort Chipewyan, and the Flag —
well; we all know it; but it is only when
the wanderer's eye meets it in some lone spot
like this that he turns to it, as the emblem
of a Home Avhich distance has shrined deeper
in his heart.
183
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
CHAPTER XIII.
Lake Athabasca — Northern Lights — Chipewyan —
The Real Workers of the World.
Athabasca, or more correctly "Arabas-
cow," "The Meeting-place of many Waters,"
is a large lake. At this fort of Chipewyan we
stand near its western end. Two hundred
miles away to the east, its lonely waters still
lave against the granite rocks.
Whatever may be the work to which he
turns hand or brain, an Indian seldom errs.
If he names a lake or fashions a piece of
bark to sail its waters, both Avill fit the work
for which they were intended.
" The meeting-place of many waters " tells
the story of Athabasca. In its bosom many
rivers unite their currents; and from its
north-western rim pours the Slave River,
the true Mackenzie. Its first English dis-
coverer called it the " Lake of the Hills ; " a
more appropriate title would have been " The
Lake of the \Vinds, " for fierce and wild the
storms sweep over its waves.
Over the Lake Athabasca the Northern
Lights hold their highest revels. They flash,
and dance, and stream, and intermingle, and
134
THE WILD N()Kt:i land.
wave together their many colours like the
shapes and hues of a kaleidoscope. Some-
times the long columns of light seem to rest
upon the silent, frozen shores, stretching out
their rose-tipped tops to toucli the zenith;
again the lines of liglit traverse the sky from
east to west as a hand might sweep the
chords of some vast harp, and from its touch
would flow liglit instead of music. So
quickly run the colours along these shafts,
that the ear listens instinctively for sound in
the deep stillness of the frozen solitude ; but
sound I have never heard. Many a time I
have listened breathless to catch the faint-
est whisper of these wondrous lightnings ;
they were mute as the waste that lay around
me.
Figures convey but a poor idea of cold,
yet they are the only means we have, and by
a comparison of figures some persons, at
least, will understand the cold of an Atha-
bascan winter. The citadel of Quebec has
the reputation of being a cold winter resi-
dence ; its mean temperature for the month
of January is 11° 7' Fahr. The mean tem-
perature of the month of January, 1844, at
Fort Chipewyan, was 22° 74', or nearly .30°
colder, and during the preceding month of
December the wind blew with a total pressure
of one thousand one hundred and sixty
pounds to the square foot.
135
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
It is perhaps needless to say more about
the rigour of an Athabascan winter.
As it is the "meeting-place of many-
waters " so also is it the meeting-place of
many systems. Silurian and Devonian ap-
proach it from the west. Laurentian still
holds five-sixths of its waters in the same
gras]) as when what is now Athabasca lay a
deep fiord along the ancient ocean shore.
The old rock caught it to his rough heart
then, and when in later ages the fickle waves
which so long had kissed his lijis left him
stern and lonely, he still held the clear, cold
lake to his iron bosom.
Athabasca may be said to mark also the
limits of some great divisions of the animal
kingdom. The reindeer and that most cu-
rious relic of an older time, the musk ox,
come down near its north-eastern shores, for
there that bleak region known as the " Bar-
ren Grounds" is but a few miles distant.
These animals never pass to the southern end
of the lake ; the Cariboo, or reindeer of the
woods, being a distinct species from that
which inhabits the treeless waste. The wood
buffalo and the moose are yet numerous on
the north-west and south-west shores: but
of these we shall have more to say anon.
All through the summer, from early ^Lay
to mid-October, the shores of the lake swarm
with wild geese, and the twilight midsummer
136
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
miduiglit is filled with the harsh sounds of
the cries of the snow goose, or the " wavy "
flying low over their favourite waters.
In early days Chipewyan was an important
centre of the fur trade, and in later times it
has been made the starting-point of many
of the exploratory i)arties to the northern
coast. From Old Fort Chii)ewyan Mackenzie
set forth to explore the great northern river,
and to the same place he returned when first
of all men north of the 40th parallel he had
crossed in the summers of 1792-93 the con-
tinent to the Pacific Ocean.
It was from New Fort Chipewyan that
Simpson set out to trace the coast-line of the
Arctic Ocean ; and earlier than either, it was
from Fond du Lac, at the eastern end of
Fort Athabasca, that Samuel Hearne wan-
dered forth to reach the Arctic Sea.
To-day it is useful to recall these stray
items of adventure from the past in which
they lie buried. It has been said by some
one that a " nation can not be saved by a cal-
culation ; " neither can she be made by one.
If to-day we are what we are, it is because
a thousand men in bygone times did not stop
to count the cost. The decline of a nation
differs from that of an individual in the first
symptoms of its decay. The heart of the
nation goes first, the extremities still remain
vigorous. France, with many a gallant soul
137
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
striking hard for her in the Carnatic or in
Canada, sickens in the pomp and luxury of
Versailles, and as nothing to offer to her
heroes but forgetfulness, debt, or the rack.
Her colonial history was one long tissue of
ingratitude.
]^>iencourt, De Chastes, Varrene de la Yer-
endrie, or Lally might fight and toil and die,
what cared the selfish heart of old France?
The order of St. Louis long denied, and
40,000 livres of debt rewarded the discovery
of the Rocky Mountains. Frenchmen gave
to France a continent. France thought little
of the gift, and fate took it back again.
History sometimes repeats itself. There is
a younger if not a greater Britain waiting
quietly to reap the harvest of her mother's
mistakes.
But to Chipewyan. It is emphatically a
lonely spot; in summer the cry of the wild
bird keeps time to the lajjping of the wave
on the rocky shore, or the pine islands rustle
in the western breeze ; nothing else moves
over these 8,000 square miles of crystal
water. Now and again at long intervals the
beautiful canoe of a Chij^ewyan glides along
the bay-indented shores, or crosses some
traverse in the open lake.
AYhen Samuel Hearne first looked upon the
"Arabascow," buffalo were very numerous
along its southern shore, to-day they are
138
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
scarce; all else rests as then in untamed di'so-
lation. At times this west end of the lake
has been the scene of strange excitements.
Men came from afar and pitched their tents
awhile on these granite shores, ere they struck
deeper into the heart of the great north.
Mackenzie, Franklin, Back, Richardson,
Simpson, Rae, rested here; ere piercing
further into unknown wilds, they flew the
red-cross flag o'er seas and isles upon whose
shores no human foot had pressed a sand-
print.
Eight hundred thousand pounds sunk in
the Arctic Sea! will exclaim my calculating
friend behind the national counter; nearly a
million gone for ever! Ko, head cash-
keeper, you are wrong. That million of
money will bear interest higher than all your
little speculations in times not far remote,
and in times lying deep in the misty future.
In hours when life and honour lie at differ-
ent sides of the "to do " or "'not to do," men
will go back to times when other men bat-
tling Avith nature or with man, cast their
vote on the side of honour, and by the white
light thrown into the future from the great
dead Past, they will read their roads where
many paths commingle.
139
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
CHAPTER XIV.
A Hudson's Baj' Fort — It Comes at Last — News from
the Outside World — Tame and Wild Savages —
Lac Clair — A Treacherous Deed— Harper.
The term " Fort " which so frequently oc-
curs in these pages may perhaps convey an
erroneous impression to the reader's mind.
An imjjosing array of rampart and bastion, a
loop-holed wall or formidable fortalice may
arise before his mind's eye as he reads the
oft-recurring word. Built generally upon
the lower bank of a large river or lake, but
sometimes perched upon the loftier outer
bank, stands the Hudson's Bay Fort. A
square palisade, ten to twenty feet high, sur-
rounds the buildings ; in the prairie region
this defence is stout and lofty, but in the
wooded country it is frequently dispensed
with altogether.
Inside the stockade some half-dozen houses
are grouped together in square or oblong
form. The house of the Bourgeois and
Clerks, the store wherein are kept the blank-
ets, coloured cloths, guns, ammunition, bright
handkerchiefs, ribbons, beads, &c., the sta-
X40
TITE WILD NORTH LAND.
l)le cominoditit's of tlio Indian trade; another
store for furs and peltries, a building from
the beams of wliicli hang mj'riads of skins
worth many a gold piece in the marts of
far-away London city ; — martens and minks,
and dark otters, fishes and black foxes, to
say nothing of bears and beavers, and a host
of less valuable furs. Then came the houses
of the men.
Lounging at the gate, or on the shore in
front, one sees a half-breed in tasselated cap,
or a group of Indians in blanket robes or dirty
white capotes; everybody is smoking; the
pointed poles of a wigwam or two rise on
either side of the outer palisades, and over
all there is the tapering flag-staff. A horse
is in the distant river meadow. Around the
great silent hills stand bare, or fringed with
jagged pine tops, and some few hundred
yards away on either side, a rude cross or
wooden railing blown over by the tempest,
discoloured by rain or snow-drift, marks the
lonely resting-place of the dead.
Wild, desolate and remote are these iso-
lated trading spots, yet it is diflicult to de-
scribe the feelings Avith which one beholds
them across some ice-bound lake, or silent
river as the dog trains wind slowly amidst
the snow. Coming in from the wilderness,
from the wrack of tempest, and the bitter
cold, wearied with long marches, foot-sore or
141
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
frozen^ one looks upon the wooden liou.se as
some palace of rest and contentment.
I doubt if it be possible to know more
acute comfort, for its measure is exactly the
measure of that other extremity of discomfort
which excessive cold and hardship have car-
ried with them. Nor does that feeling of
home and contentment lose aught for want of
a welcome at the threshold of the lonely rest-
ing-place. Nothing is held too good for the
wayfarer ; the best bed and the best supper
are his. He has, perhaps, brought letters or
messages irona long absent friends, or he
comes with news of the outside world; but
be he the bearer of such things, or only the
chance carrier of his own fortunes, he is still
a welcome visitor to the Hudson's Bay Fort.
Three days passed away in rest, peace, and
plenty. It was nearing the time when
another start would be necessary, for after
all, this Athabascan Fort was scarce a half-
way house in my winter journey. The ques-
tion of departure was not of itself of conse-
quence, but the prospect of leaving for a
long sojourn in deep solitudes, without one
word of news from the outside world, with-
out that winter packet to which we had all
looked so long, was something more than a
mere disap])ointment.
All this time we had been travelling in ad-
vance of the winter packet, and as our track
142
THE WILD NOHTII LAND.
left a sinootli road for wliatevcr niiglit suf-
ceed us, wc reckoned U}»oii being overtaken
at some i)oint of the journey by the faster
travelling express. Such had not been the
case, and now three days had passed since
our arrival without a sign of an in-coming
dog-train darkening the expanse of the frozen
lake.
The morning of the 9th of March, however,
brought a change. Far away in the hazy
drift and "poudre " which hung low upon
the surface of the lake, the figures of two
men and one sled of dogs became faintly visi-
ble. "Was it only Antoine Tarungeau, a soli-
tary " Freeman " from the Quatre Fourche,
going like a good Christian to his prayers at
the French Mission? Or was it the much-
wished-for packet?
It soon declared itself; the dogs were steer-
ing for the fort, and not for the mission.
Tarungeau might be an indifferent church
member, Ijut had the whole college of cardi-
nals been lodged at Chipcwyan they must
have rejoiced that it was not Tarungeau
going to mass, and that it was the winter
packet coming to the fort.
What reading we had on that Sunday
afternoon! News from the far-off busy
world ; letters from the far-off quiet home ;
tidings of great men passed away from the
earth ; glad news and sorry news, borne
143
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
through months of toil 1,500 miles over the
winter waste.
And now came a short busy time at the
fort. A redistribution of the packet had to
be made. On to the north went a train of
dogs for the distant Yukon ; on to the west
went a train of dogs for the head of the
Peace River. In three days more I made
ready to resume my journey up the Peace
River. Once more the sleds were packed, once
more the Untiring Cerf-vola took his place in
the leading harness, and the word " march "
was given.
This time I was to be alone. My good
friend, whose unvarying kindness had made
an acquaintanceship of a few weeks ripen
into a friendship destined I trust to endure
for many years, was no longer to be my com-
panion.
He came, in company with another officer,
some miles of the way, to see me off; and
then at the Quatre Fourche we parted, he to
return to his lonely fort, I to follow across
the wide-spreading Lake Mamoway the long
trail to the setting sun.
If the life of the wanderer possesses many
moments of keen enjoyment, so also has it
its times of intense loneliness; times when
no excitement is near to raise tlie spirits, no
toil to render thought impossible ; nothing
but a dreary, hopeless prospect of lal our,
144
THE WILD NOIJTFI LAND.
Avhioh takes day aftor day some little ]iovtioii
f'foiii that realm of space lying l)efoie liiiii,
only to cast it to augment tiiat other dim
laud of separation which lies behind him.
Honest Joe Gargery never with his black-
smith hand nailed a sadder truth upon the
wheel of time, than when he defined life to
be made up of " partings welded together."
But in civilization generally when we part we
either look forward to meeting again at some
not remote period, or we have so many varied
occupations, or so many friends around us,
that if the partings are welded together, so
also are the meetings.
In the lone spaces it is different. The end-
less landscape, the monotony of slow travel,
the dim vision of what lies before, seen only
in the light of that other dim prospect lying
behind ; lakes, rivers, plains, forests, all
hushed in the savage sleep of winter ; — these
things bring to the wanderer's mind a sense
of loneliness almost as vast as the waste
which lies around him.
On the evening of the 12th of March I
camped alone in the wilderness. Far as eye
could reach, on every side, there lay nothing
but hard, drifted snow, and from its surface
a few scant willows raised their dry leafless
saplings. True, three or four men were busy
scraping the deep snow from the lee side of
some low willow buslies, but they were alien
10 145
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
in every thought and feeling; and we were
separated l^y a gulf iinpo.ssil)le to bridge: so
that I was virtually alone. I will not say
on whose side the fault la}-, and possibly the
admission may only prove a congeniality of
feeling between myself and my train ; but,
for all that, I felt a far stronger tie of com-
panionship with the dogs that drew my load,
than for the men with whom I now found
myself in company.
They were by no means wild; far from it,
they Avere eminently tame. One of them
was a scoundrel of a very low type, as some
of his actions will hereafter show. In him
the wild animal had been long since destroyed,
the tame brute had taken its place.
The man who had been my servant from
the Saskatchewan was a French half-breed ;
strong, active, and handsome, he was still a
sulky, good-for-nothhig fellow. One might
as well have tried to make friends Avith a tish
to which one cast a worm, as with this good-
looking, good-for-nothing man. He had
depth sufficient to tell a lie which might
wear the semblance of truth for a day ; and
cunning enough to cheat without being caught
in the actual fact. I think he was the most
impudent liar I have ever met. The motive
Avhich had induced him to accept service in
this long journey was, I believe, a domestic
one. He had run away with a young English
146
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
half-breed girl, and tlien ran away from her.
If she had only known the object of her
affections as well as I did, she wonld have
regarded the last feat of activity as a far less
serious evil than the first.
The third man was a Swampy Indian of
the class one frequently meets in the English-
speaking settlement on Red River. Taken
by himself, he was negatively good; but
placed with others worse than himself, he
was positively bad. He was, however, a
fair traveller, and used his dogs with a degree
of care and attention seldom seen amongst
the half-breeds.
Small wonder, then, that with these three
worthies who, though strangers, now met
upon a base of common rascality, that I
should feel myself more completely alone
than if nothing but tlie waste had spread
around me. Full thirty days of travel must
elapse ere the mountains, that great break
to which I looked so long, should raise their
snowy peaks across my pathway.
The lameness of the last day's travel al-
ready gave ominous symptoms of its presence.
The snow was deeper than I had yet seen it ;
heretofore, at the longest, the forts lay within
five days' journey of each other; now there
was one gap in which, from one post to the
next, must, at the shortest, be a twelve days'
journey.
147
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
At dawn, on the 13th of jNIareh, we quitted
our burrow in the deej) drift of the willow
bushes, and held our Avay across what was
seemingly a shoreless sea.
The last sand ridge or island top of Lake
Athabasca had sunk beneath the horizon, and
as the sun came up, flashing coldly upon the
level desert of snow, there lay around us
nought but the dazzling surface of the frozen
lake.
Lac Clair, the scene of our present day's
journey, is in reality an arm of the Atha-
basca. Nothing but a formation of mud and
drift, submerged at high summer water, sepa-
rated it from the larger lake ; but its shores
vary much from those of its neighbour, being
everywhere low and marshy, lined with scant
willows and destitute of larger timber. Of
its south-western termination but little is
known, but it is said to extend in that direc-
tion from the Athabasca for fully seventy
miles into the Birch Hills. Its breadth from
north to south would be about half that
distance. It is subject to violent winter
storms, accompanied by dense drift; and
from the scarcity of wood along its shores,
and the absence of distinguishing landmarks,
it is much dreaded by the winter voyagnur.
The prevailing north-east wind of the Lake
Athabasca has in fact the full sweep of 250
miles across Lac Clair. To lose one's way
148
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
upon it would appear to be the first rule of
travel amongst the trip-men of Fort Chipe-
wyan. The last adventure of this kind wliich
had taken place on its dim expanse had nearly
a tragic end.
On the southern shore of the lake three
moose had been killed. When the tidings
reached the fort, two men and two sleds of
dogs set off for the " cache ; " it was safely
found, the meat packed upon the sleds, and
all made ready for the return. Then came
the usual storm: dense and dark the line
snow (dry as dust under the biting cold)
swept the surface of the lake. The sun,
which on one of these " poudre " days in the
North seems to exert as much influence upon
the war of cold and storm as some good
bishop in the ^Middle Ages was Avont to exer-
cise over the belligerents at Cressy or Poic-
tiers, when, as it is stated, " He withdrew to
a neighbouring eminence, and there remained
during the combat;" — the sun, I say, for a
time, seemed to protest, by his presence,
against the whole thing, but then finding all
protests ecpially disregarded by the wind and
cold, he muffled himself up in the nearest
cloud and went fast asleep until the fight
was over.
For a time the men held their Avay across
the lake ; then the dogs became bewildered ;
the leading driver turned to his companion.
THE WILD NORTH LAN'D.
and telling him to drive both trains, he
strode on. in front of his dogs to give a
" lead " in the storm.
Driving two trains of loaded dogs is hard
work; the second driver could not keep up,
and the man in front deliberately increasing
his pace walked steadily away, leaving his
comrade to the mercies of cold and drift.
He did this coward act Avith the knowledge
that his com})anion had only three matches in
his possession, he having induced him to
give up the rest to Indians wliom they had
fallen in with.
The man thus abandoned on the dreaded
lake was a young Hudson's Kay clerk, by no
means habituated to the hardships of such a
situation. But it requires little previous ex-
perience to know when one is lost. The
dogs soon began to wander, and finally
headed for where their instinct told them lay
the shore. When they reached the shore
night had fallen, the wind liad gone down,
but still the cold was intense ; it was the
close of January, the coldest time of the
year, when 80'^ of frost is no unusual (jccur-
rence. At such a time it was no easy matter
to light a fire ; the numbed, senseless hands
cannot find strength to strike a match ; and
many a time had I seen a hardy roydyi'iir
fail in his first attempts w\i\\ the driest
wood, and with full daylight to assist him.
loO
THE AVILT) ^'()I^TII LA^^D.
, liut what cluuice liad tlu' iiicxjit'iicMirefl
liaiid, witli scant willow sticks for fuel and
darkness to deceive him? His wood was
])artly green, and one by one his three matches
Hashed, flickered, and died out.
No fire, no food — alone somewliere on Lac
Clair in 40'^ to 50^ below zero ! It was an
ugly prospect. "\Vrap])ing himself in a l)lan-
ket, he got a dog at his feet and lay down.
"With daylight he was np, and putting the
dogs into harness set out; but he knew not
the landmarks, and he steered heedless of
direction. He came at last to a spring of
open water; it was highly charged with sul-
phur, and hence its resistance to the cold f)f
winter. Though it was nauseous to the taste
he drank deeply of it; no other spring of
water existed in all the wide circle of the
lake.
For four days the wretched man remained
at this place ; his sole hope lay in the chance
tliat men would come to look for liim from
the fort, but ere that would come about a
single night might suffice to terminate his
existence.
These bad nights are bad enough when we
have all that food and fuel can do. Men
lose their fingers or their toes sometimes in
the hours of wintry daylight, but here fire
there was none, and food without fire was not
t-o be liad. The meat upon the sled had
151
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
frozen almost as solid as the stoue of a
quarry.
He still hoped for relief, but had he known
of the conduct of the ruffian whose desertion
had thus brought him to his misery his hope
would have been a faint one.
On the day following his desertion, the
deserter appeared at the Quatre Fourche ; he
pretended to be astounded that his comrade
had not turned up. On the same evening he
reached Fort Chipewyau : he told a plausible
story of having left his companion smoking
near a certain spot on the north side of the
lake ; on his return to the spot the sleds were
gone, and. he at once concluded they had
headed for home. Such was his tale<
A search expedition was at once despatched,
but acting under the direction of the scoundrel
Harper no trace of the lost man could be
found.
No wonder! for the scene of his desertion
lay many miles away to the south, but the
villain wished to give time for cold and hun-
ger to do their work ; not for any gratification
of hatred or revenge towards his late com-
rade, but simply because " dead men tell no
tales." Upon the return of this unsuccessful
expedition suspicions were aroused ; the man
was besought to tell the truth, all would be
forgiven him if he now confessed where it
was he had left his companion. lie gtill
15»
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
however asserted that he had left him on the
shore of the lake at a spot marked by a single
willow. Again a search party goes out, but
this time under experienced leadership, and
totally disregarding the story of the deserter.
Far down, near the south shore of the lake,
tlie quick eye of a French half-breed cauglit
tlie faint print of a snow-shoe edge on the
liard drifted surface ; he followed the clue —
another print — and then another; — soon the
shore was reached, and the impress of a hu-
man form found among the willows.
Never doubting for an instant that the
next sight would be the frozen body of the
man they sought for (since the fireless camp-
ing-place showed that he was without tlie
means of making a fire), the searchers went
along. They reached the Sulphur Sj)ring,
and tliere, cold, hungry, but safe, sat the ob-
ject of their search. Five days had passed,
yet he had not frozen !
If I wished to learn more of the deserter
Harper, I had ample opportuntiy of doiug
so. His villainous face formed a prominent
object at my camp fire. He was now tlie
packet bearer to Fort Vermilion on the Peace
River ; he was one of the Avorthies I have al-
ready sjioken of.
We crossed Lac Clair at a rapid pace, and
reached at dusk the nortli-western shore; of
course we had lost ourselves; but tlie evening
153
THE WILD NORTH LAND
was calm and clear, and the error was set
right by a two-hours' additional march.
It was piercingly cold when, some time
after dark, the shore was gained ; but wood
was found by the yellow light of a full moon,
and a good camp made on a swampy island.
From here our path lay through the woods
and ridges nearly due Avest again.
On the fourth day after leaving Fort Chip-
ewyau we gained a sandy ridge covered Avitli
cypress, and saw beneath us a far-stretching
valley ; beyond, in the distance to north and
west, the blue ridges of the Cariboo Moun-
tains closed the prospect. In the valley a
broad river lay in long sweeping curves from
west to east.
We were on the banks of the I'eace Eiver.
154
THE AVILD NORTH LAND.
CHAPTER XV.
The Peace River — Volcanos — M. J(!an Batiste 8t.
Cyr — Half a Ijoaf is Better tiiaii No ]5rea(l —
An Oasis iu the Desert — Tecumseh and Black
Hawk.
It is possible that the majority of my
readers have never heard of the Peace River.
The British empire is a large one, and Brit-
ons can get on very well without knowing
much of any river, excepting perhaps the
Thames, a knowledge of which, until lately,
Londoners easily obtained by the simple pro-
cess of smelling. Britannia it is well known
rules the waves, and it would be ridiculous
to expect rulers to bother themselves much
about the things which they rule. Per-
chance, in a score of years or so, Avhen our
lively cousins bring forth their little Alaska
Boundary question, as they have already
brought forth their Oregon, Maine, and Sau
Juan boundary questions, Ave may jiay the
Emperor of Morocco, or some equally enlight-
ened potentate, the compliment of asking him
to tell us whether the Peace River has always
been a portion of the British em})ire? ov
whether we knew the meaning of our own
language when we framed the treaty of 1825'('
105
THE ^YILD NORTH LAND.
Until then, the Peace River may rest in the
limbo of obscurity; and in any case, no mat-
ter who should claim it, its very name must
indicate that it was never considered worth
fighting about.
Nevertheless the Peace Eiver is a large
stream of water, and some time or other may
be worth fighting for too. Meantime we will
have something to say about it.
Like most of the streams which form the
headwaters of the great Mackenzie Eiver sys-
tem, the Peace River has its sources west of
the Chipewyan or Rocky Mountains. Its
principal branch springs from a wild region
called the Stickeen, an alpine land almost
wholly unknown. There at a presumed ele-
vation of 6,000 feet above the sea level, amidst
a vast variety of mountain peaks, the infant
river issues from a lake to begin its long voy-
age of 2,500 miles to the Arctic Sea.
This region is the birthplace of many
rivers, the Yukon, the Liard, the Peace
River, and countless streams issue from this
impenetrable fastness. Situated close to the
Pacific shore, at their source, these rivers
nevertheless seek far distant oceans. A huge
barrier rises between them and the nearest
coast. The loftiest range of mountains in
North America here finds its culminating
point ; the coast or cascade range shoots up
its volcanic peaks to nigh 18,000 feet above
156
THE WILD NOHTir LAND.
till' lu'ighbouring waves. Mounts Cri-Hon
aiiil St Elias cast their criuison greeting far
over the gloomy sea, and Ilyainnaand Island
Corovin catch up the flames to fling them
further to Kamchatka's flre-boiuid coast.
The Old World and the New clasp hands
of fire across the gloomy Northern Sea; and
amidst ice and flame Asia and America look
upon each other.
Through 300 miles of mountain the Peace
Elver takes its course, countless creeks and
rivers seek its waters; 200 miles from its
source it cleaves the main Rocky Mountain
chain through a chasm whose straight, steep
cliffs frown down on the black water through
0,000 feet of dizzy verge. Then it curves
into the old ocean bed, of which we have
already spoken, and for 500 miles it flows in
a deep, narrow valley, from 700 to 800 feet
beloAv the level of the surrounding plateau.
Then it reaches a lower level, the banks be-
come of moderate elevation, the country is
densely wooded, the large river winds in ser-
pentine bends through an alluvial valley ; the
current once so strong becomes sluggish, until
at last it pours itself through a delta of low-
lying drift into the Slave River, and its long
course of 1,100 miles is ended.
For 900 miles only two interruptions break
the even flow of its waters. A ridge of lime-
stone underlies the whole bed of the river at
157
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
a point some 250 miles from its mouth, caus-
ing a fall of eiglit feet with a short rapid
above it. The other obstacle is the mountain
eaiion on tlie outer and lower range of the
Rocky Mountains, where a portage of twelve
miles is necessary.
In its course through the main chain of the
Rocky INIountains no break occurs, the cur-
rent runs silently under the immense preci-
pice as though it fears to awaken even by a
ripple the sleeping giant at whose feet it
creeps.
Still keeping Avest, we began to ascend the
Peace River; we had struck its banks more
than 100 miles above its delta, by making
this direct line across Lac Clair and the in-
tervening ridges.
Peace River does not debouch into Lake
Athabasca, but as we have said into the Slave
River some twenty miles below the lake ; at
high water, however, it communicates Avith
Athabasca through the canal-like channel of
the Quatre Fourche, and when water is low
in Peace River, Athabasca repays the gift by
sending back through the same channel a
portion of her surplus tide.
Since leaving Lac Clair I had endured no
little misery ; the effects of that long day's
travel from the river Athabasca had from
the outset been apparent, and each da}^ now
further increased them. The muscles of
158
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
ancles and instep liati become painfull}' in-
Haiued, to raise the snow-shoe from the
ground was frequently no easy matter, and at
last every step was taken in pain. I eould
not lie upon my sled because the ground was
rough and broken, and the sled lApset at
every hill side into the soft snow; besides
there was the fact that the hills were short
and stee}), and the dogs could not easily
have dragged me to the summit. There was
nothing for me but to tramp on in spite of
aching ancles.
At the camp I tried my remedies, but all
were useless. From pain-killer, moose fat,
laudanum and porpoise oil I concocted a mix-
ture, which I feel convinced contains a vast
fortune for any enterprising professor in the
next century, and which even in these infant
ages of " puffing " might still be made to real-
ize some few millions of dollars; but never-
theless, my poor puffed foot resisted every
attempt to reduce it to symmetry, or what
was more important, to induce it to resume
work.
That sixteen-liour day had inflamed its
worst passions, and it had struck for an
"eight-hour movement." One can afford to
laugh over it all now, but then it was gloomy
work enough; to make one step off the old
hidden dog-track of the early winter was to
sink instantly into the soft snow to the depth
159
THE WILD ^'()1{TII LAND.
of three or four feet, and Avlien we camped
at night on tlie wooded shore, our blankets
Avere laul in a deep furrow between lofty
snoAv Avails, Avhich it had taken us a full hour
to scoop out. At last, after six days of
Aveary traA-el through ridge and along river
reach, Ave dreAV near a house.
Where tlie little stream called the Red
EiA^er enters from the south the Avide channel
of the Peace River, there stands a small
Hudson's Bay post. Here, on the e\'ening
of the 17th of March, Ave put in for the night.
At this solitary post dAvelt M.Jean Batiste
St. Cyr; an old and faithful follower of the
Hudson's Bay Company. When the power-
ful North-West Fur Company became merged
into the Avealthier but less enterprising cor-
poration of the Hudson's Bay, they left be-
hind them in the North a race of faithful
serAdtors — men draAvn in early life from the
best rural Jtabitans of LoAver Canada — men
worthy of that old France from Avliich they
sprung, a race noAv almost extinct in the
north, as indeed it is almost all the Avorld
over. What Ave call " the spirit of the age "
is against it; faithful service to poAvers of
earth, or even to those of HeaA^en, not
being included in the catalogue of A'irtues
taught in the big school of modern democ-
racy.
From one of this old class of French
160
THE WILD NOKTII LAND.
Canadians, jM. Jean Batiste St. C'yr Avas de-
scended.
Weary limbs and aching ancles pleaded for
delay at this little post, but advancing spring,
and still more the repeated assaults of my
servant and his comrades upon my stock of
luxuries, urged movement as the only means
of saving some little portion of those good
things put away for me by my kind host at
Chipewyan. It seems positively ridiculous
now, how one could regard the possession of
flour and sugar, of sweet cake and sweet
pemmican, as some of the most essential
requisites of life. And yet so it was. With
the grocer in the neighbouring street, and
the baker round the corner, we can afford to
look upon flour and sugar as very common-
place articles indeed ; but if any person wishes
to arrive at a correct notion of their true
value in the philosophy of life let him elimi-
nate them from his daily bill of fare, and re-
strict himself solely to moose meat, grease,
and milkless tea. For a day or two he will
get on well enough, then he will begin to
ponder long upon bread, cakes, and other
kindred subjects ; until day by day he learns
to long for bread, then the Bath buns of his
earlier years will float in enchanting visions
before him; and like Clive at the recollection
of that treasure-chamber in the Moorsheda-
bad Palace, he will marvel at the moderation
11 161
THE WILD XORTH LAND.
which left untouched a single cake upon that
wondrous counter.
It is not difficult to understand the feelings
which influenced a distant northern Mission-
ary, when upon his return to semi-civiliza-
tion, his friends having prepared a feast to
bid him welcome, he asked them to give him
bread and nothing else. He had been with-
out it for years, and his mind had learned to
hunger for it more than the body.
My servitor, not content with living as his
master lived, was helping the other rascals to
the precious fare. English half-breed, French
ditto, and full Christian Swampy had appar-
ently formed an offensive and defensive alli-
ance upon the basis of a common rascality,
Article I. of the treaty having reference to the
furtive partition of my best white sugar,
flour, and Souchong tea; things which, when
they have to be ''portaged" far on men's
shoulders in a savage land, are not usually
deemed fitted for savage stomachs too.
One night's delay, and again we were on
the endless trail ; on along the great silent
river, between the rigid bordering pines,
amidst the diamond-shaped islands where
the snow lay deep and soft in " shnay " and
" batture," on out into the long reaches
where the wild INIarch winds swept the river
bed, and wrapt isle and shore in clouds of
drift.
162
THE WILD NORTH LAXD.
Ou the evening of the 19th of jNIareli our
party drew near a lonely post, which, from
the colour of the waters in the neighouring
stream, bears the name of Fort Vermilion.
The stormy weather had sunk to calm ; the
blue sky lay over mingled forest and prairie;
far off to the north and soutli rose the dark
outlines of the Eeindeer and Buffalo Moun-
tains ; Avhile coming from the sunset and van-
ishing into the east, the great silent river lay
prone amidst the wilderness of snow.
A gladsome sight was the little fort, with
smoke curling from its snow-laden roof, its
cattle standing deep in comfortable straw-
yard, and its master at the open gateway,
waiting to welcome me to his home : pleasant
to any traveller in the wilderness, but doubly
so to me, whose every step was now taken in
the dull toil of unremitting pain.
Physicians have termed that fellow-feeling
which the hand sometimes evinces for the
hand, and the eye for the eye, by the name
of " sympathy." It is unfortunate that these
ebullitions of affection which the dual mem-
bers of our bodies manifest towards each
other, should always result in doubling the
amount of pain and inconvenience suffered by
the remainder of the human frame. For a
day or two past my right foot had shown
symptoms of sharing the sorrows of its fel-
low-labourer ; and however gratifying this
163
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
proof of good feeling sliould liave been, it
Avas nevertheless accompanied by such an in-
crease of torture that one could not help
wishing for more callous conduct in the pres-
ence of Mai de Kaquette.
A day's journey north of the Peace River
at Fort Vermilion, a long line of hills ap-
proaching the altitude of a mountain range
stretches from east to west. At the same
distance south lies another range of similar
elevation. The northern range bears the
name of the Eeindeer; the southern one that
of the Buffalo Mountains. These names
nearly mark the two great divisions of the
animal kingdom of Northern America.
It is singular how closely the habits of
those two widely differing animals, the rein-
deer and the buffalo, approximate to each
other. Each have their treeless prairie, but
seek the woods in winter; each have their
woodland species; each separate when the
time comes to bring forth their young ; each
mass together in their annual migrations.
Upon both the wild man preys in unending
hostility. When the long days of the Arc-
tic summer begin to shine over the wild re-
gion of the Barren Grounds, the reindeer set
forth for the low shores of the Northern
Ocean ; in the lonely wilds whose shores look
out on the Archipelago where once the ships
of England's explorers struggled midst floe
164
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
and pack, and hopeless iceberg, the herds
spend the fleeting summer season, subsisting
on the short grass, which for a few weeks
changes these cold, grey shores to softer
green.
With the approach of autumn the bands
turn south again, and uniting upon the bor-
ders of the barren grounds, spend the winter
in the forests which fringe the shores of the
Bear, Great Slave, and Athabascan Lakes.
Thousands are killed by the Indians on this
homeward journey; waylaid in the passes
which they usually follow, they fall easy
prey to Dog-rib and Yellow-knife and Chi-
pewyan hunter ; and in years of plenty the
forts of the extreme north count by thou-
sands the fat sides of Cariboo, piled high in
their provision stores.
But although the hills to the north and
south of Vermilion bore the names of Rein-
deer and Buffalo, upon neither of these ani-
mals did the fort depend for its subsistence.
The Peace River is the land of the moose ;
here this ungainly and most wary animal has
made his home, and winter and summer,
hunter and trader, along the Avhole length of
900 miles, between the Peace and Athabasca,
live upon his delicious venison.
Two days passed away at Fort Vermilion;
outside the March wind blew in bitter storm,
and drift piled high around wall and pali-
165
THE "WILD NORTH LAND.
sade. But within there was rest and quiet,
and many an anecdote of time long passed in
the Wild North Land.
Here, at this post of Vermilion, an old vet-
eran spent the winter of his life ; and from
his memory the scenes of earlier days came
forth to interest the chance wanderer, Avhose
footsteps had led him to this lonely post.
Few could tell the story of these solitudes
better than this veteran pensioner. He had
come to these wilds while the century was
yet in its teens. He had seen Tecumseh iu
his glory, and Black Hawk marshal his Sauk
warriors, Avliere now the river shores of Illi-
nois wave in long lines of yellow corn. He
had spoken with men who had seen the gal-
lant La Perouse in Hudson's Bay, when, for
the last time in History, France flew the
fleur-de-lis above the ramparts of an English
fort in this northern land.
The veteran explorers of the Great North
had been familiar to his earlier days, and he
could speak of Mackenzie and Frazer and
Thompson, Harmon and Henry, as men whom
he had looked on in his boyhood.
For me these glimpses of the bygone time
had a strange charm . This mighty solitude,
whose vastness had worn its way into my
mind ; these leagues and leagues of straight,
tall pines, whose gloomy moan seemed the
voice of oOO miles of wilderness ; these rivers
166
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
so hushed and silent, save when tlie night
owl hooted through the twilight; all this
sense of immensity was so impressed on the
imagination by recent travel, that it height-
ened the rough colouring of the tale which
linked this sliadowy land of the present with
the still more shadowy region of the past.
Perhaps at another time, when I too shall
rest from travel, it Avill be my task to tell
the story of these dauntless men ; but noAV,
when many a weary mile lies before me, it is
time to hold westward still along the great
XJnchagah.
The untiring train was once again put into
the moose-skin liarness, after another night
of wild storm and blinding drift; and with
crack of whip and call to dog, Vermilion
soon lay in the waste behind me.
167
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
CHAPTER XVI.
The Buffalo Hills— A Fatal Quarrel— The Exiled
Beavers — "At-tal-loo" Deplores his Wives — A
Cree Interior — An Attractive Camp — I Camp
Alone — Cerf-vola without a Supper — The Rec-
reants Return — Duuvegan — A Wolf-hunt.
A LONG distance, destitute of fort or post,
had now to be passed. For fully 300 miles
above Vermilion, no sign of life but the wild
man and his prey (the former scant enough)
are to be found along the shores of the Peace
Eiver.
The old fort known as Dunvegan lies
twelve long Avinter days' travel to the south-
west, and to reach it even in that time
requires sustained and arduous exertion.
For 200 miles above Vermilion the course
of the Peace River is north-west; it winds in
long, serpentine curves between banks which
gradually become more lofty as the traveller
ascends the stream. To cut the long curve
to the south by an overland portage now
became our work ; and for three days we fol-
lowed a trail through mingled prairie and
forest-land, all lying deep in snow. Four
trains of dogs now formed our line. An Ojib-
beway, named " AVhite l>ear," led the ad-
108
THE AVILD NORTH LAND.
vance, and the trains took in turn tlie work
of breaking the road after him.
^lal de Ra(iuette had at last proved more
than a match for me, and Avalking had be-
come impossible ; but the trains returning to
Dunvegan were lightly loaded, and as the
officer at Vermilion had arranged that the
various dogs should take their turn in haul-
ing my cariole, I had a fresh train each day,
and thus Cerf-vola and his company obtained
a two days' respite from their toil.
The old dog was as game as when I had
first started, but the temporary change of
masters necessitated by our new arrangements
seemed to puzzle him not a little ; and many
a time his head would turn round to steal a
furtive look at the new driver, who, "filled
with strange oaths," now ran behind his
cariole. Our trail led towards the foot of
the Buffalo Hills. I was now in the country
of the Beaver Indians, a branch of the great
Chi])ewyan race, a tribe once numerous on
the river which bears its present name of
Peace from the stubborn resistance offered by
them to the all-conquering Crees — a resist-
ance which induced that Avarlike tribe to
make peace on tlie banks of the river, and to
leave at rest the beaver-hunters of the
Unchagah.
Since that time, though far removed from
the white settler, lying remote from the
169
THE AVILD NORTH LAND.
faintest echo of civilization, this tribe of
Beaver Indians has steadily decreased; and
to-day, in the whole length of 900 miles from
beyond the mountains to the Lake Athabasca,
scarce 200 families lie scattered over the high
prairies and undulating forest belts of the
Peace Eiver. Now they live in peace with
all men, but once it was a different matter ;
the Cree were not their only enemies, their
Chipewyau cousins warred upon them ; and
once upon a time a fierce commotion raged
amongst their own tribe.
One day a young chief shot his arrow
through a dog belonging to another brave.
The brave revenged the death of his dog, and
instantly a hundred bows were drawn. Ere
night had fallen some eighty Avarriors lay
dead around the camp, tlie pine woods rang
with the lamentations of the women, the
tribe had lost its bravest men. There was a
temporary truce — the friends of the chief
whose arrow had killed the dog yet numbered
some sixty people — it was agreed that they
should separate from the tribe and seek their
fortune in the vast wilderness lying to the
south.
In the night they commenced their march ;
sullenly their brethren saw them depart
never to return. They Avent their way by
the shores of the Lesser Slave Lake, towards
^he great plains wliich were said to lie far
170
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
southward by the banks of the swift-rolling
Saskatchewan.
The tribe of Beavers never saw again this
exiled band, but a hundred years later a
Beaver Indian, who followed the fortunes of
a white fur-hunter, found himself in one of
the forts of the Saskatchewan. Strange In-
dians were canij)ed around the palisades,
they were portions of the great Black-feet
tribe whose hunting-grounds lay south of the
Saskatchewan ; among them were a few braves
who, when they conversed together, spoke a
language different from the other Blackfeet;
in this language the Beaver Indian recognized
his own tongue.
The fortunes of the exiled branch were
then traced, they had reached the great
plains, the Blackfeet had protected them, and
they had joined the tribe as allies in war
against Crees or Assineboines. To-day the
Surcees still speak the guttural language of
the Chipewyan. Notorious among the wild
horse-raiders of the prairies, they outdo even
the Blackfeet in audacious plundering; and
although the parent stock on the Peace River
are quiet and harmless, the offshoot race
has long been a terror over the prairies of the
south. No men in this land of hunters hunt
better than the Beavers, It is not uncom-
mon for a single Indian to render from his
winter trapping 200 marten skins, and not
ITJ
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
less than 20,000 beavers are annually killed
by the tribe on the waters of the Peace River.
On the morning of the third day after leav-
ing Vermilion we fell in with a band of Bea-
vers. Five wigwams stood pitched upon a
pretty rising knoll, backed by pine woods,
which skirted the banks of the stream, upon
the channel of Avhich the lodges of the ani-
mal beaver rose cone-like above the snow.
When Ave reached the camp, " At-tal-loo, "
the chief, came forth. A stranger was a
rare sight ; and " At-tal-loo " was bound to
make a speech; three of his warriors, half a
dozen children, and a few women filled up
the background. Leaning iij^on a long sin-
gle-barrelled gun " At-tal-loo " began.
The mayor and corporation of that thriving
borough of Porkingham could not have been
more solicitous to interrupt a royal progress
to the north, than was this Beaver Indian
anxious to address the traveller; but there
was this difference between them, whereas
Mayor Tomkins had chiefly in view the ex-
cellent o^Dportunity of hearing his own voice,
utterly unmindful of what a horrid bore he
was making himself to his sovereign, "At-
tal-loo " had in view more practical results :
his frequent iteration of the word "tea," in
his guttural harangue, told at once the story
of his wants : — ■
" This winter had been a severe one ; death
173
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
had struck lieavily into tlietril)e; in these
three wigwams six women had died. It was
true each biave still had three or four wives
left, but moose were plenty, and a man with
six helpmates could he rich in dry meat and
moose leather. Tea was the pressing want.
Without tea the meat of the moose was in-
sipid; without tea and tobacco the loss of
even the fifth or sixth rib became a serious
affair."
I endeavoured to find out the cause of this
mortality among the poor hunters, and it was
not far to seek. Constitutions enfeebled by
close intermarriage, and by the hardships at-
tending upon wild life in these northern
regions, were fast wearing out. At the pres-
ent rate of mortality the tribe of the Beavers
will soon be extinct, and with them will have
disappeared the best and the simplest of the
nomad tribes of the north.
" At-tal-loo " was made happy with tea and
tobacco, and we went our way. Another
doughty chief, named " Twa-i)00s, " probably
also regarded tea as the elixir of life, and the
true source of happiness ; but as my servitor
still continued to regard my stock of the
luxury as a very excellent medium for the
accumulation of stray marten skins for his
own benefit, it was perhaps as well that I
should only know " Twa-poos " through the
channel of hearsay.
173
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
On the morning of tlie 25th of j\Iarch we
emerged from the tortuous little I^utt'alo River
upon the majestic channel of the Peace. Its
banks Avere now deeply farrowed beneath the
prairie level, its broad surface rolled away to
the south-west, 500 yards from shore to
shore. The afternoon came forth bright and
warm ; from a high ridge on the left shore a
far-stretching view lay rolled before us — the
Eagle Hills, the glistening river, the wide
expanse of dark forest and white prairie ; and
above, a sky which had caught the hue and
touch of spring, while winter still stood in-
trenched on plain and river.
Late that evening we reached the hut of
a Cree Indian. A snow-storm closed the
twilight, and all sought shelter in the house :
it was eight feet by twelve, in superficial size,
yet nineteen persons lay down to rest in it,
a Cree and his wife, an Assineboine and his
wife, eight or ten children, and any number
of Swampy, Ojibbeway, and half-breeds.
Whenever the creaky door opened, a dozen
dogs found ingress, and dodgeci under and
over the men, women, and children in hope-
less confusion.
The Assineboine squaw seemed to devote
all her energies to the expulsion of the in-
truders; the infants rolled over the puppy
dogs, the puppy dogs scrambled over the in-
fants, and outside in the snow and on the
174
THE WILD NORTH LAXD.
low root' CeiT-vulii ;ui(l liis fiieiuls did Ijatilc
with a liost of Iiuliau dogs. 80 the night
passed away. Next moniing there was no
track. We waded deep in the snow, and
made but slow progress. Things had reached
a climax with my crew ; they had apparently
made up their minds to make a long, slow
journey. They wanted to camp at any In-
dian lodge they saw, to start late and to
camp early, to eat, smoke, and talk, to do
everything in fact but travel.
I was still nearly 150 miles from Dunve-
gan, and as much more from tliat mountain
range whose defiles I hoped to reach ere the
ice road on which I travelled had turned to
a rushing stream. Already the sun shone
strong in the early afternoon, and the surface
snow grew moist under liis warm rays, and
here were my men ready to seek any excuse
for loitering on the way.
About noon one day we reached a camp of
Crees on the south shore of the river.
Moose-meat was getting scarce, so I asked my
yellow rascal to procure some tit-bits from
the camp in exchange for tea. The whole
party at once vanished into the tents, while
I remained with the dogs upon the river.
Presently my friend reappeared ; he " could
only get a rib-piece or a tough leg. " " Then
don't take them," I said. I saw the rascal
was at his old work, so taking some tea and
175
THE WILD NOT^TII LAXD.
tobacco, I went up myself to tlie tents;
lueantiuie the men, women, and children had
all come out to the shore. I held u}) the tea
and pointed to the moose-meat; in an instant
the scene changed — briskets, tongues, and
moose-noses were brought out, and I could
have loaded my dogs with tit-bits had I
wished ; still I pretended to find another mo-
tive for my henchman's conduct. "See," I
said to him, " I make a better trader with
Indians than you do. They would only give
you the tough bits ; I can get noses enough to
load my dogs Avith."
But the camp possessed an attraction still
more enticing ; early that morning I had ob-
served the Indians and half-breeds arraying
themselves in their gayest trappings. The
half-breed usually in dressing himself devotes
the largest share of attention to the decora-
tion of his legs ; beads, buckles, and embroid-
ered ribbons flutter from his leggings, and his
garters are resplendent with coloured worsted
or porcupine-quill work.
These items of finery had all been donned
this morning in camp, the long hair had been
carefully smeared with bear's fat, and then
I had not long to wait for an explanation of
all this adornment. In one of the three Cree
tents there dwelt two good-looking squaws ;
we entered this tent, the mats were unrolled,
the fire replenished, and the squaws set to
176
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
work to cook a moose nose and tongue for
nvy dinner. Dinner over, the difficulty be-
gan ; the quarters were exceHent in the esti-
mation of my men. It Avould be the wildest
insanity to think of quitting such a paradise
of love and food under at least a twenty-four
hours' delay.
So they suddenly announced their inten-
tion of " bideing a wee. " I endeavoured to ex-
postulate, I spoke of the lateness of the
season, the distance I had yet to travel, the
necessity of bringing to Dunvegan the train
of dogs destined for that post at the earliest
period; all was of no avail. Their snow-
shoes were broken and they must wait. Very
good ; put my four dogs into harness, and I
will go on alone. ' So the dogs were put in
harness, and taking with me my most loota-
ble effects, I set out alone into the wilderness.
It still wanted some four hours of sunset
when I left the Indian lodges on the south
shore, and held my way along the far-reach-
ing river.
My poor old dog, after a few glances back
to see why he should be alone, settled him-
self to work, and despite a lameness, the
result of long travel, he led the advance so
gamely that when night fell some dozen
miles lay between us and the Cree lodges.
At the foot of a high ridge whose summit
still caught the glow from the low-set sun,
12 177
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
while the river valley grew dark in the twi-
light, I turned the dogs towards the south
shore, and looked about for a camping-place.
The lower bank sloped doAvn to the ice
abruptly, but dogs going to camp will drag a
load up, over, or through anything, and the
prospect of rest above is even a greater in-
centive to exertion than the fluent impreca-
tions of the half-breed below. So by dint of
hauling we reached the top, and then I made
my camp in a pine-clump on the brink.
When the dogs had been unharnessed, and
the snow dug away, tlie pine brush laid upon
the ground, and the wood cut, when the Are
was made, the kettle filled with snow and
boiled, the dogs fed with a good hearty meal
of dry moose meat, and my own hunger sat-
isfied ; then it was time to think, while the
fire lit up the pine stems, and the last glint
of daylight gleamed in the western sky, A
jagged pine-top laid its black cone against
what had been the sunset. An owl from the
opposite shore sounded at intervals his lonely
call; now and again a passing breeze bent
the fir-trees until they whispered forth that
mournful song which seems to echo from the
abyss of the past.
The fir-tree is the oldest of the trees of the
earth, and its look and its voice tell the
story of its age. If it were possible to have
left my worthless half-breeds altogether and
178
THE WILD NOllTII LAND.
to traverse the solitudes alone, how gladly
would I have done so !
I felt at last at home. The i;-rfat silent
river, the lofty ridge darkening against the
twilight, yon star burning like a beaeon above
the precipice — all these Avere friends, and
midst them one could rest in peace.
And now, as I run back in thought along
that winter journey, and see again the many
camp-fires glimmering through the waste of
wilderness there comes not to my memory a
calmer scene than that which closed around
my lonely fire by the distant Unchagah. I
was there almost in the centre of the vast
wilderness of North America, around,
stretched in silence, that mystery we term
Nature, that thing which we see in pictures,
in landscapes, in memory; which W'e hear in
the voice of wind-swept forests and the long
sob of seas against ocean rocks. This
mother, ever present, ever mysterious, some-
times terrible, often tender — always beautiful
— stood there with nought to come between us
save loneliness and twilight. I awoke with
the dawn. Soft snow was falling on river
and ridge, and the opposite shore lay hid in
mist and gloom. A breakfast, which con-
sists of pemmican, tea, and biscuit, takes but
a short time to prepare or to discuss, and by
sunrise I was on the river.
Until mid-day I held on, but before that
179
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
time tlie sun glowed l^rightly on the dazzling
surface of the snow ; and the dogs panted as
they liauled their loads, biting frequent
mouthfuls of the soft snow through which
they toiled.
About noon I camped on the south shore.
I had still two meals for myself, but none
remained for the dogs; the men had, how-
ever, assured me that they would not fail to
make an early start, and I determined to
await their coming in this camp. The day
passed and night closed again, but no figure
darkened the long stretch of river, and my
poor dogs went supperless to sleep. Cerf-
vola, it is true, had some scraps of sweet
pemmican, but they were mere drops in the
ocean of his appetite. The hauling-dog of
the North is a queer animal about food;
when it is there he likes to have it, but when
it isn't there, like his Indian master, he can
do without it.
About supper-hour he looks wistfully at
his master, and seeing no sign of pemmican-
chopping or dry meat-slicing, he rolls himself
up into a ball and goes quietly to sleep in his
snow bed.
Again the night came softly down, the
grey owl hooted his lonely cry, the breeze
stirred the forest tops, and the pine-tree mur-
mured softly and low, singing its song of the
past to the melody of its myriad years. At
180
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
such times the mmcl of the wanderer sings
its own song too. It is the song of home ;
and as memory rings the cadence, time and
distance disappear, and the okl land brightens
forth amidst the embers of the forest-fire.
These islands which we call "home "are
far away; afar off we idealize them, in the
forest depths we dream bright visions of their
firesides of welcome; in the snow-sheeted
lake, and the icy stretch of river, and the
motionless muskeg, how sweetly sound the
notes of brook and bird ; how brightly rise
the glimpses of summer eves when the white
mists float over the scented meadows, and
the corn-craik sounds from his lair in the
meadow-sweet !
It is there, away in the east, far off, where
the moon is rising above the forked pines, or
the up-coming stars edge the ice piles on the
dim eastern shores of yon sheeted lake. Far
away, a speck amidst the waves of distance,
bright, happy, and peaceful; holding out its
Avelcome, and following with its anxious
thoughts the Avanderer who sails away over
the ocean, and roams the expanses of the
earth.
Well, some fine day we come back again ;
the great steam-ship touches the long ideal-
ized shore. Gods, how the scene clianges!
We feel bursting with joy to see it all again,
to say, " Oh ! how glad I am to see you all ! "
m
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
We say it with our eyes to the young lady
behind the refreshment buffet at the railroad
station. Alas! she mistakes our exuber-
ance for impertinence, and endeavours to an-
nihilate us with a glance, enough to freeze
even her high-spirited sherry. We pass the
bobby on his beat with a smile of recognition,
but that ferocious functionary, not a whit
softened, regards us as a " party " likely to
afford him transient employment in the mat-
ter of "running in." The railway porter
alone seems to enter into our feelings of joy,
but alas ! it is only with a view to that dona-
tion with which we are sure to present him.
We have enlisted his sympathies as her Maj-
esty enlists her recruits, by the aid of a shil-
ling. Ere an hour has passed, the vision seen
so frequently through the mist of weary
miles has vanished, and we have taken our
place in the vast humming crowd of Eng-
land's hive, to wish ourselves back into the
dreamy solitudes again.
I had been asleep some hours, and mid-
night had come, when the sound of voices
roused me, and my recreant band ai)proached
the dying camp-lire. They had at length
torn themselves away from the abode of bliss
and moose meat, but either the memory of
its vanished pleasures, or a stray feeling of
shame, ke]jt them still sullen and morose.
They, however, announced theiv readiness to'
183
THE WILD NORTJJ LAND.
go on at once as the crust upon tlic snow was
now hard. I rose from my robe, gave the
dogs a late supper, and once more we set out.
Daylight found us still upon the track;
the men seemed disposed to make amends for
former dilatoriness, the ice-crust was hard,
and the dogs went well. When the sun had
become warm enough to soften the surface we
camped, had supper, and lay down to sleep
for the day.
With sunset came the hour of starting, and
thus turning night into day, breakfasting at
sunset, dining at midnight, supping at sunrise,
travelling all night, and slee^iing all day, we
held our way up the Unchagah. Three
nights of travel passed, and the morning of
the 1st of April broke upon the silent river.
AVe had travelled well ; full one hundred miles
of these lonely, lofty shores had vanished be-
hind us in the grey dusky light of twilight,
night, and early morning.
As the dawn broke in the east, and gradu-
ally grew into a broader band of light, the
huge ramparts of the lofty shores wore
strange, unearthly aspects. Six hundred feet
above the ice, wind and sun had already
swept the snow, and the bare hill-tops rose
■to view, free, at last, from winter's covering.
Lower down full many a rugged ridge,
and steej), scarped precipice, held its clinging
growth of pine and poi)lar, or showed gigan-
183
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
tic slides, upon whose gravelly surface the
loosened stones rolled with sullen echo, into
the river chasm beneath. Between these
huge walls lay the river, broadly curving
from the west, motionless and soundless, as
we swept with rapid stride over its sleeping
waters.
Sometimes in the early morning, upon
these steep ridges, the moose would emerge
from his covert, and look down on the pass-
ing dog trains, his huge, ungainly head out-
stretched to
"Sniff the tainted gale,"
his great ears lying forward to catch the
faint jingle of our dog-bells. Nearly all else
seemed to sleep in endless slumber, for,
alone of summer denizens, the owl, the
moose, the wolf, and the raven keep winter
watch over the wilderness of the Peace
River.
At daybreak, on the 1st of April, we were
at the mouth of the Smoking River. This
stream enters the Peace River from the south-
west. It has its source but a couple of days'
journey north of the Athabasca River, at the
spot Avherethat river emerges from the Rocky
Mountains, And it drains the beautiful re-
gion of varied prairie and forest-l^nd, which
lies at the base of the mountains bet^y^en the
J*eace and Athabasca rivers,
184
THE AVILD NORTH LAND.
The men made a long march this day.
Inspired by the offer of a gratuity, if they
could make the fort by night-time, and
anxious, perhaps, to atone for past shortcom-
ings, they made up a train of five strong
dogs.
Setting out with this train at eight o'clock
in the morning, three of them held the pace
so gamely that when evening closed we
were in sight of the lofty ridge which over-
hangs at the north shore, the fort of Dun-
vegan.
As the twilight closed over the broad river
we were steering between two huge walls of
sandstone rock, which towered up 700 feet
above the shore.
The yellow light of the sunset still glowed
in the west, lighting up the broad chasm
through which the river flowed, and throwing
many a weird shadow along the basaltic
precipice. Right in our onward track stood
a large dusky wolf. He watched us until we
approached within 200 yards of him, then
turning he held his course up the centre of
the river. My five dogs caught sight of
him, and in an instant they gave chase.
The surface of the snow was now hard frozen,
and urged by the strength of so many dogs
the cariole flew along over the slippery sur-
face.
The driver was soon far behind. The
180
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
wolf kept the centre of the river, and the
cariole bounded from snow pack to snow
pack, or shot along the level ice ; while the
dusky twilight filled the deep chasm with its
spectral light. But this wild chase was not
long to last. The wolf sought refuge amidst
the rocky shore, and the dogs turned along
the trail again.
Two hours later a few lights glimmered
through the darkness, beneath the black shad-
ow of an immense hill. The unusual sound
of rushing water broke strangely on the ear
after such a lapse of silence. But the hill
streams had already broken their icy barriers,
and their waters were even now hastening to
the great river (still chained with the gyves
of winter), to aid its hidden current in the
work of deliverance.
Here and there deep pools of water lay on
the surface of the ice, through which the
dogs waded, breast deep, and the cariole
floated like a boat. Thus, alternately Avad-
ing and sliding, we drew near the glimmering
lights.
We had reached Dun vegan ! If the men
and dogs slept well that night it was little
wonder. With the intermission only neces-
sary for food, Ave had travelled incessantly
during four-and-twenty hours. Yet was it
the same that night at Dunvegan as it had
been elsewhere at various times. Outside
18G
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
the dogs might rest as they ])lease(l, but
Avithin, in the huts, Swampy and Half-breed
and Ojibbeway danced and fiddled, laughed
and capered until the small hours of the
morning.
1«7
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
CHAPTER XVII.
Alexander IMjickeiizie — The First Sign of Spring —
Spanker the Suspicious — Cerf -vola Contemplates
Cutlets — An Indian Hunter — "Encumbrances"
—Furs and Finery— A " Dead Fall "—The Fur
Trade at Botli Ends— An Old Fort— A Night
Attack — Wife-lifting — Cerf-vola in Difficulties
and Boots — The Rocky Mountains at Last.
About eighty years ago a solitary canoe
floated on the waters of the Peace River.
Eight sturdy Iroquois or Canadians moved it
with dexterous paddle ; in the centre sat the
figure of a European, busy with field-book
and compass.
He was a daring Scotchman from the isles,
by name Alexander JNIackenzie. He was
pushing his Avay slowly to the West; before
him all was vague conjecture. There was a
mighty range of mountains the Indians said
— a range through which the river flowed in
a profound chasm — beyond that all was mys-
tery ; but other wild men, who dwelt west-
Avard of the chasm, in. a land of mountains,
had told them tales of another big river flow-
ing toward the mid-day sun into the lake
that had no shore.
This dariug explorer built himself a house
188
THE WILD NORTH I.AXD.
not far below tlie spot where my recreant
crew had found a i)aradi,se in tlu! wilderness;
here he passed the winter. Early in the J'ol-
lowing spring he continued his ascent ot the
river. He was the first r]nglishnian that
ever passed the Rocky Mountains. He was
the first man who crossed the Northern Con-
tinent.
His footsteps were quickly followed by
men almost as resolute. Findlay, Frazer,
and Thompson soon carried tlie fortunes of
the North- West Company through the defiles
of the Peace River ; and long before Jacob
Astor had dreamt his dream of Columbian
fur trade, these men had planted on the wild
shores of New Caledonia and Oregon the first
germs of English domination ; little dream-
ing, doubtless, as they did so, that in after-
time, between dulness upon one side and du-
plicity on the other, the fruits of their labour
and their sufferings would pass to hostile
hands.
From its earliest days, the fur trade of the
North had been carried on from bases which
moved north with the tide of exploration.
The first French adventurers had made Ta-
dousac, at the mouth of the rock-shadowed
Saguenay, the base of their operations ; later
on, Montreal had been their point of distribu-
tion ; then Mackenaw, between Lakes Michi-
gan and Huron. With the fall of French
189
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
dominion in 17(>2 the trade passed to English
hands, and Fort William on Lake Superior,
and Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca, be-
came in time centres of fur trade.
It was from the latter place that Macken-
zie and his successors pushed their explora-
tions to the distant shores of Arctic and
Pacilic Oceans, Among the earlier posts
which these men established in the Great
Wilderness was this fort, called Dunvegan,
on the Peace River. A McLeod, of Skye,
founded the post, and named it after the
wild, storm-swept fortalice which the chief
of his race in bygone times had reared upon
the Atlantic verge. As Dunvegan was then,
so it is to-day ; half a dozen little houses
roofed with pine-bark; in front, the broad
river in its deep-cut gorge ; behind, an
abrupt ridge 700 feet in height, at the top of
which a rolling table-land spreads out into
endless distance.
Unlike the prairies of the Saskatchewan,
this plateau is thickly interspersed with
woods and thickets of pine and poplar. Its
many lakes are free from alkali, and the
varied growth of willows which they sustain,
yield ample sustenance to the herds of moose
which still roam the land. The deep trough
through which the river flows increases with
singular regularity as the traveller ascends
the stream. Thus at Vermilion the banks
190
i
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
ave seareely tliirty feet above low-watev level ;
L'OO miles higlier up they rise to oHO feet;
at Diiuvegaii tliey are 720; and H)0 miles
still further west they attain an elevation of
900 and 1,000 feet. Onee upon tlie summit,
however, no indication of ruggedness meets
the eye. The country spreads into a succes-
sion of prairies, lakes, and copses, through
which the traveller can ride with ease, safe
from the badger-holes which form such an
objectionable feature in more southern
prairies. At times the river-bed fills up the
entire bottom of the deep valley through
which it runs ; but more frequently a wooded
terrace lies between the foot of the ridge and
the brink of the water, or the land rises to
the upper level in a series of rounded and
less abrupt ascents. The soil is a dark sandy
loam, the rocks are chiefly lime and sand-
stone, and the numerous slides and huge
landslips along the lofty shores, render visible
strata upon strata of many-coloured earths
and layers of rock and shingle, lignite and
banded clays in rich succession. A black,
bituminous earth in many places forces its
way through rock or shingle, and runs in long,
dark streaks down the steep descent. Such
is the present aspect of the Peace River, as
lonely and silent it holds its long course, deep
furrowed below the unmeasured wilderness.
April had come; already the sun shone
191
THE AVILD XORTII LAND.
warmly in the midday hoars; already the
.streams were beginning to fnrrow the grey
overhanging hills, from whose sonthern sides
the snow had vanished, save where in ravine
or hollow it lay deep, drifted by the Avinter
winds ; but the river was not to be thus easily
ronsed from the sleep into which the Arctic
cold had cast it. Solid under its Aveight of
ice, four feet in thickness, it would yet lie
for days in motionless torpor. Snow might
fly from sky and hill-top, prairie and forest
might yield to the soft coming spring; but
like a skilful general grim winter only drew
off his forces from outlying points to make
his last stand in the intrenchments of the
frozen river.
From the summit of the steep hill, whose
scarped front looks down upon the little huts
of Dunvegan, the eye travels over many a
mile of wilderness, but no hill top darkens
the far horizon ; and the traveller, whose
steps for months have followed the western
sun, feels half inclined to doubt the reality
of the mountain barrier he has so long looked
in vain for. So it seemed to me, as I
scanned one evening the long line of the
western sky from this lofty ridge.
Nineteen hundred miles behind me lay that
]\Iusk Rat Creek, by whose banks on that now
distant day in October, I had bidden civiliza-
tion a long good-bye.
193
THE WILD NOKTII LAND.
Pniirie and lakelet, broad river, vast for-
est, dim spreading lake, silent ridge and
waste of wilderness — all lay deep sunken
again in that slumber from which my lonely
passage had for a moment roused them.
Different faces had at times accompanied
me ; various dogs had toiled and tugged at
the oaken sled, or lain at niglit around the
wintry camp-fires ; and yet, still remote lay
that giant range, for whose defiles my steps
had so long been bound. But amid all
changes of time and place and persons, two
companions still remained with me. Cerf-
vola the Untiring, Spanker the Suspicious,
still trotted as briskly as when they had
quitted their Dakotan home. If I should
feel inclined to doubt their strength and
vigour, I had only to look down the hill- side
to read a reassurance — a couple of hundred
feet beneath where I stood. There Spanker
the suspicious might have been observed in
company with two other savages, doing his
utmost to terminate the career of a yearling
calf, which early spring had tempted to the
hill-top. It was consolatory to notice that
Cerf-vola the untiring took no part in this
nefarious transaction. He stood apart, watch-
ing it with a countenance expressive of emo-
tions which might be read, either in the light
of condemnation of cruelty, or commendation
of coming veal cutlets.
13 193
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
About midiiiglit on the 3r(I of April I
quitted Duuvegan, and turned oiice more
along tlie frozen river. The moon, verging
to its first quarter, shone above the southern
shore, lighting half the river, while the re-
mainder lay wrapped in darkness.
A half-breed named Kalder accompanied
me — my former servitor having elected to
remain at Dun vegan. He had probably heard
strange stories of life beyond the mountains.
" Miners were fond of shooting ; to keep their
hand and eye in practice they would shoot
him as soon as they caught sight of him,"
so it would perhaps be wiser to stay on the
eastern slope. He remained behind, and
William Kalder, a Scotch half-breed, who
spoke French in addition to his Indian
tongue, reigned in his stead.
Above Dunvegan, the Peace is a rapid
river. We decided to travel by moonlight
only, and in the morning, as many places
had already become unsound ; a great quan-
tity of water lay on the surface of the ice,
and wet moccasins and heavy snow-shoes be-
came our constant companions. By daybreak,
however, all water would be frozen solid, and
except for the effect of the sharp ice on the
dogs' feet, the travelling was excellent at
that hour.
At daybreak on the fourth we heard ahead
a noise of barking, and presently from the
194
THE WILD NOlITir LAND.
wooded slicre a moose broke forth upon the
river. The crusted snow broke beneath his
weight, and lie turned at bay near the south-
ern shore. We were yet a long way off, and
we hurried on as fast as dogs could run.
"When we had reached within a couple of
hundred yards of where he stood butting the
dogs, a shot rang sharply from the woods;
the unshapely animal still kept his head
lowered to his enemies, but the shot had
struck, for as we came panting up, he rolled
heavily amidst his baying enemies, who
closed around him while the blood bubbled
fast over the pure frosted snow. Above, on
the wooded banks, under a giant pine, sat a
young Indian quietly regarding his quarry.
Not a move of limb or countenance betokened
excitement ; his face was flushed by a long
quick chase down the rugged hill-side ; but
now, though his game lay stretched beneath
him, he made no outward sign of satisfac-
tion. He sat unmoved on the rock above,
his long gun balanced above his knee — the
fitting background to a picture of wild sport
in the wilderness. It was now the time
when the Indians leave their winter hunting-
grounds and make a journej-to the forts with
the produce of their season's toil. They
come, a motley throng; men, women and
children ; dogs, sleds and hand-toboggans,
bearing the precious freight of fur to the trad-
193
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
ing-post, bringing in tbe harvest of marten-
skins from the vast field of the desert wilds.
O'l this morning, ere we reached our camj:)-
ing place, a long cavalcade passed us. A
couple of braves in front, too proud and lazy
to carry anything but their guns ; then old
women and young ones, bending under their
loads, or driving dogs, or hauling hand-
sleds laden with meat, furs, moose-skins, and
infants. The puj^py-dog and the infant
never fail in cabin or cortefje. Sometimes one
may see the two packed together on the back
of a woman, who carries besides a load of
meat or skins. I believe the term " encum-
brance" has sometimes been applied to the
human j)ortion of such a load, in circles so
elevated that even the humanity of mater-
nity would appear to have been successfully
eliminated by civilization. If ever the term
carried truth with it, it is here in this wild
northern land, where yon Avretched woman
bears man's burthen of toil as well as her
own. Here the child is veritably an encum-
brance; yet in some instincts the savage
mother might teach her civilized sister a
lesson of womanity. Perhaps here, while
this motley cavalcade passes along, we may
step aside a moment from the track, and tell
the story of a marten.
A couple of cotton kerchiefs, which my
lady's-maid would disdain to be the owner
196
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
of, and a couple of ten-pound bank-notes
from my lady's purse, mark the two extremes
between which lies the history of a marten.
We will endeavour to bring together these
widely-severed ends.
When the winter is at its coldest, but when
the days are beginning to lengtlien out a lit-
tle over the dim pine-woods of the North
the Indian builds a small circular fence of
wood, some fourteen inches high. Upon
one side this circle is left open, b\it across
the aperture a thick limb or thin trunk of
tree is laid with one end resting on the
ground. Inside the circle a forked stick
holds a small bit of fish or meat as a bait.
This forked stick is set so as to support
another small piece of wood, upon which in
turn rests the half-uplifted log. Pull the
baited stick, and you let slip the small sup-
porting one, which in turn lets fall the large
horizontal log. Thus runs the sequence. It
is a guillotine, with a tree instead of a sharp
knife; it is called a " dead fall." Numbers
of them are erected in the woods, where
martens' tracks are plentiful in the snow.
Well, then, the line of " dead falls " being
made and set, the Indian departs, and silence
reigns in the forest. But once a week he
starts forth to visit this line of " dead falls,"
which may be ten or fifteen miles in length.
Every now and again he finds one of his
197
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
guillotines down, and underneath it lies a
small, thick-furred animal, in size something
larger than a ferret, something smaller than
a cat. It is needless to describe the colour of
the animal; from childhood upwards it is
familiar to us. Most persons can recall the
figure of maiden aunt or stately visitor,
muffed, cuffed, boa'd and pelissed, in all the
splendour of her sables. Our little friend
under the dead fall is none other than the
sable — the marten of North America, the
sable of Siberia.
A hundred miles away from the nearest
fort this marten has been captured. When
the snow and ice begin to show symptoms of
softening, the Indian packs his furs together,
and sets out, as we have seen, for the fort.
There are, perhaps, five or six families to-
gether ; the squaws and dogs are heavy laden,
and the march is slow and toilsome. All
the household gods have to be carried along.
The leather tent, the battered copper kettle,
the axe, the papoose strapped in the moss
bag, the two puppy-dogs, yet unable to shift
for themselves, the snoAv-shoes for hunting,
the tattered blanket, the dry meat ; it makes
a big load, all told; and squaw and dog toil
along with dilficulty under it. The brave of
course goes before, deigning only to carry his
gun, and not always doing even that; the
wife is but as a dog to him.
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
Well, day by day the party moves along till
the fort is reached. Then comes the trade.
The fifty or a hundred marten-skins are
lianded over: the debt of the past year is
cancelled, partly or wliolly; and advances
are taken for the coming season.
The wild man's first thought is for the lit-
tle one, — the child's white capote, strouds or
blanketing for tiny backs, a gaudy handker-
chief for some toddling papoose. After that
the shot and powder, the flints and ball for
his own use ; and lastly, the poor wife gets
something for her share. She has managed
to keej) a couple of deer-skins for her own
perquisite, and with these she derives a little
pin-money.
It would be too long to follow the marten
skin through its many vicissitudes — how it
changes from hand to hand, each time more
than doubling its price, until at length some
stately dowager spends more guineas upon it
than its original captor realized pence for it.
Many a time have I met these long pro-
cessions, sometimes when I have been alone
on the march, and at others when my fol-
lowers were around me ; each time there was
the inevitable hand-shaking, the good-hu-
moured laughing, the magic word " the ; " a
few matches, and a plug or two of tobacco
given, and we separated. How easily they
were made happy! And now and again
199
THE WILD XORTII LAND.
among them would be seen a poor crippled
Indian, maimed by fall from horse or shot
from, gun, hobbling along with the women in
the rear of the straggling cortege, looking for
all the world like a wild bird with a broken
wing.
The spring was now rapidly approaching,
and each day made some change in the state
of the ice. The northern bank was quite
clear of snow ; the Avater on the river grew
daily deeper, and at night the ice cracked
and groaned as we walked upon it, as though
the sleeping giant had begun to stir and
stretch himself previous to his final waking.
On the morning of the 7th of April we
passed the site of an old fort on the northern
shore. I turned aside to examine it. Rank
weeds and grass covered a few mounds, and
faint traces of a fireplace could be still dis-
cerned. Moose-tracks were numerous around.
Just fifty years earlier, this old spot had
been the scene of a murderous attack.
In the grey of the morning, a small band
of Beaver Indians approached the fort, and
shot its master and four men ; a few others
escaped in a canoe, leaving Fort St. John's
to its fate. It was immediately burned down,
and the forest has long since claimed it as
its own. In the phraseology of the period,
this attack was said to have been made by
the Indians in revenge for a series of " wife-
200
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
lifting " which had been carried on against
them by the denizens of the fort. History
saith no more, but it is more than ])rol)able
that this dangerous method of levying " black
female " was thereafter discontinued by the
Highland fur-traders.
We camped not far from the ruined fort,
and next night drew near our destination. It
was full time. The ice was rapidly going,
and already in places dark, treacherous holes
showed grimly through to the rushing water
beneath.
The dogs were all lame, and Cerf-vola had
to be regularly put in boots previous to start-
ing. Still, lame or sound, he always trav-
elled just the same. When his feet were
very sore, he would look around now and
again for assistance ; but if none was forth-
coming he bent himself resolutely to the task,
and with down-bent head toiled at his collar.
Others might tire, others might give out, but
he might truly say, — -
" Dogs may come, aud dogs may go,
But I go on for ever.
Ever, ever, I go on for ever."
Before daybreak on the 8th we stopped for
the usual cup of tea and bite of pemmican.
The night was dark and overcast, l^eside
us a huge pile of driftwood lay heaped above
the ice. We fired it in many places before
starting, and then set out for our last dog-
201
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
march. The flames rose high through the
dry timber, and a long line of light glowed
and quivered upon the ice. We were soon
far away from it. Day broke ; a thick rain
began to fall ; dogs and men sunk deep in the
slushy snow. "Go on, good old Cerf-vola!
A little more, and your weary journey will
be over; a little more, and the last mile of
this 1,400 will have been run ; a little more,
and the collar will be taken from your worn
shoulders for the last long time I "
At the bend of the Peace River, where a
lofty ridge runs out from the southern side,
and the hills along the northern shore rise to
nearly 1,000 feet above the water, stands the
little fort of St. John. It is a remote spot,
in a land which is itself remote. From out
the plain to the west, forty or fifty miles
away, great snowy peaks rise up against the
sky. To the north and south and east all is
endless Avilderness — wilderness of pine and
prairie, of lake and stream — of all the vast
inanity of that moaning waste Avhich sleeps
betweeen the Bay of Hudson and the Rocky
Mountains.
So far have we journeyed through that
land; here we shall rest awhile. The time
of winter travel has drawn to its close ; the
ice-road has done its work ; the dogs may lie
down and rest; for those great snowy peaks
are the Rocky Mountains.
803
CHAPTER XVIII.
TlieWild Animals of the Peace River — Indian Meth-
od of Hunting the Moose — Twa-poos — The Bea-
ver— Tlie Bear — Bear's Butter — A Bear's Hug
and How it Ended— Fort St. John — The River
Awakes — A Rose without a Tliorn — Nigger Dan
— A Tlireatening Letter — I Issue a Judicial
Memorandum — Its Effect is All that could be
Desired — Working up the Peace River.
Three animals have made their homes on
the shores of the Peace River and its tribu-
taries. They are the bear, the moose, and
the beaver. All are valuable to the Indian
for their flesh, fur, or skin ; all come to as
great perfection here as in any part of the
American continent.
The first and last named go to sleep in the
long winter months, but the moose still
roams the woods and willow baanks, feeding
with his flesh the forts and the Indians
along the entire river. About 100 full-
grown moose had been consumed during the
winter months at the four posts we have
lately passed, in fresh meat alone. He is a
huge animal; his carcase will weigh from.
303
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
three to six hundred pounds ; yet an ordinary
half-bi'eed will devour him in little more than
a month.
Between four and five hundred moose are
annually eaten at the forts of the Peace
E.iver ; four times that number are consumed
by the Indians, but the range of the animal
is vast, the hunters are comparatively few,
and to-day there are probably as many moose
in Peace Piver as there Avere fifty years
ago.
Athabasca trades to-day the skins of
nearly 2,000 moose in a single year. Few ani-
mals are more unshapely than this giant deer.
His neck slojies down from the shoulder,
ending in a head as large as a horse — a head
which ends in a nose curled like a camel's — -
a nose delicious to the taste, but hideous to
the eye. The ears are of enormous length.
Yet, ugly as are the nose and ears of the
moose, they are his chief means of protection
against his eneiiiy, and in that great ungainly
head there lurks a brain of marvellous cun-
ning. It is tlirough nose and ears that this
cunning brain is duly prompted to escape
danger.
No man save f/ie Indian, or the half-In-
dian, can hunt the moose with chance of suc-
cess.
I am aware that a host of Englishmen and
Canadians will exclaim against this, but
304
THE WILD NOT^TII LAND.
nevertheless it is perfectly true. Hunting
the luoose in summer and winter is one thing
— killing him in a snow-yard, or running him
down in deep snow is another. The two
methods are as widely different as killing a
salmon which another man has hooked for
you is different from rising, hooking, play-
ing, and gaffing one j^ourself.
To hunt the moose requires years of study.
Here is the little game which his instinct
teaches him. When the early morning has
come, he begins to think of lying down for
the day. He has been feeding on the grey
and golden willow-tops as he walked lei-
surely along. His track is marked in the
snow or soft clay ; he carefully retraces his
footsteps, and, breaking off suddenly to the
leeward side, lies down a gunshot from his
feeding-track. He knows he must get the
wind of any one following his trail.
In the morning "Twa-poos," or the Three
Thumbs, sets forth to look for a moose ; he
hits the trail and follows it; every now and
again he examines the broken willow-tops or
the hoof-marks, when experience tells him
that the moose has been feeding here during
the early night. Twa-poos quits the trail,
bending in a deep circle to leeward; stealth-
ily he returns to the trail, and as stealthily
bends away again from it. He makes as it
were the semicircles of the letter B, suppos-
205
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
ing the perpendicular line to indicate the
trail of the moose ; at each return to it he
examines attentively the Avillows, and judges
his proximity to the game.
At last he is so near that he knows for an
absolute certainty that the moose is lying in
a thicket a little distance ahead. Now comes
the moment of caution. He divests himself
of every article of clothing which might
cause the slightest noise in the forest ; even
his moccasins are laid aside ; and then, on a
pointed toe which a ballet-girl might envy,
he goes forward for the last stalk. Every
bush is now scrutinized, every thicket exam-
ined. See ! he stops all at once ! You who
follow him look, and look in vain ; you can
see nothing. He laughs to himself, and
points to yon willow covert. No, there is
nothing there. He noiselessly cocks his
gun. You look again and again, but can see
nothing; then Twa-poos suddenly stretches
out his hand and breaks a little dry twig
from an overhanging branch. In an instant,
right in front, thirty or forty yards away,
an immense dark-haired animal rises up from
the willows. He gives one look in your
direction, and that look is his last. Twa-
poos has fired, and the moose is either dead
in his thicket or within a few hundred yards
of it.
One Avord now abovit this sense of hearing
206
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
possessed by tlie inoose. The most favoura-
ble day for hunting is in wild windy weather,
when the dry branches of the forest crack in
the gale. Nevertheless, Indians have as-
sured me that, on such days, when they have
sighted a moose, thej^ have broken a dry
stick; and although many branches were
waving and cracking in the woods, the ani-
mal started at the sound — distinguishing it
from the natural noises of the forest.
But although the moose are still as numer-
ous on Peace River as they were in days far
removed from the present, there is another
animal which has almost wholly disappeared.
The giant form of the wood-buffalo no
longer darkens the steep lofty shores. When
first Mackenzie beheld the long reaches of
the river, the " gentle laAvns " which alter-
nated with " abrupt precipices " were " en-
livened" by vast herds of buffaloes. This
was in 1793. Thirty-three years later, Sir
George Simpson also ascended the river with
his matchless Iroquois crew. Yet no buffalo
darkened the lofty shores.
What destroyed them in that short in-
terval? The answer is not difficult to seek
— deep snow. The buffalo grazes on the
grass, the moose browses on the tall willows.
During one winter of exceptionally deep
snow, eighty buffaloes were killed in a single
day in the vicinity of Dun vegan. The In-
207
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
dians ran them into the snowdrifts, and then
despatched them with knives.
It is still a matter of dispute whether the
wood-bulfalo is the same species as his
namesake of the southern plains ; but it is
generally believed by the Indians that he is
of a kindred race. He is nevertheless larger,
darker, and wilder ; and although the north-
ern land, in which he is still found, abounds
in open prairies and small plains, he never-
theless seeks in preference the thickest woods.
Whether he be of the plain race or not, one
thing is certain — his habits vary much from
his southern cousin. The range of the wood-
buffalo is much farther north than is gener-
ally believed. There are scattered herds
even now on the banks of the Liard River as
far as sixty-one degrees of north latitude.
The earth had never elsewhere such an ac-
cumulation of animal life as this northern
continent must have exhibited some live or
six centuries ago, when, from the Great Slave
Lake to the Gulf of Florida, millions upon
millions of bisons roamed the wilderness.
Have we said enough of animals, or can we
spare a few words to the bears and the bea-
vers? Of all the animals which the New
World gave to man the beaver was the most
extraordinary. His cunning surpassed that
of the fox ; his skill was greater than that of
the honey-bee; his patience was more en-
208
THE WJLI) NOHTIl J.ANl).
(luring than the spidev's; liis labour could
turn the waters of a mighty river and change
the face of an entire country, lie couhl cut
down forests, and build bridges; lie dwelt in
a house with rooms, a common hall and a
neat doorway in it. He could fell a forest
tree in any direction he pleased, or carry it
on his back when his sharp teeth had lopped
its branches. He worked in companies, with
a master beaver at the head of each — com-
panies from whose ranks an itlle or a lazy
beaver was ignominiously expelled. He
dwelt along the shores of quiet lakes, or by
the margins of rushing streams, and silent
majestic rivers, far in the heart of the soli-
tude.
But there came a time when men deemed
his soft, dark skin a fitting covering for their
heads; and Avild men hunted him out in liis
lonely home. They traj^ped him from Texas
to the Great Bear Lake; they hunted him in
the wildest recesses of the Rocky Mountains;
rival companies went in pursuit of him. In
endeavouring to cover the heads of others,
hundreds of trappers lost their own head-
covering ; the beaver brought many a white
man's scalp to the red man's lodge-pole;
and many a red man's life went out with the
beaver's. In the West he became well-nigh
extinct, in the nearer North he became
scarce; yet here in Peace River he held his
1-1 209
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
own against all comers. Nigh 30,000 l)ea-
vers die annually along its shores, and when
spring opens its waters the night is ever
broken l)y the dull plunge of countless
beavers in the pools and eddies of the great
river.
Along the lofty shores of the Peace Eiver
the Saskootum berry grows in vast quanti-
ties. In August its fruit is ripe, and the
bears come forth to enjoy it; black, brown,
and grizzly, stalk along the shores and hill-
sides browsing on this luscious berry. On
such food Bruin grows fat and unwieldy;
he becomes " sleek-headed " and " sleeps of
nights," thus falling an easy prey to his
hunter.
While he was alive he loved the " poire "
berries, and now when he is dead the red
man continues the connexion, and his dain-
tiest morsel is the bear's fat and Saskootum
berries mixed with powdered moose-meat.
It is the dessert of a Peace River feast ; the
fat, white as cream, is eaten in large quan-
tities, and although at first a little of it
suffices, yet after a while one learns to like
it, and the dried Saskootum and "bear's
butter " becomes a luxury.
But fat or lean, the grizzly bear is a for-
midable antagonist. Few Indians will fol-
low him alone to his lair; his strength is
enormous, he can kill and carry a buffalo-
210
THE AVILI) NOUTII LAM).
bull ; were he as active as lie is strong it is
probable that he would stand as the most
dangerous animal on the earth. lint his
movements are comparatively slow, and his
huge form is upraised upon its hind legs be-
fore he grapples his adversary. Woe to that
adversary should those great fore-paws ever
encircle him. Once only have I known a
man live to tell the tale of that embrace : his
story was a queer one. He had been at-
tacked from behind, he had only time to tire
his gun into the bear's chest when the mon-
ster grasped him. The Indian never lost his
power of tliought ; he plunged his left arm
into the brute's throat, and caught firm hold
on the tongue ; with his right hand he drove
his hunting-knife into ribs and side ; his arm
and hand were mangled, his sides were
gashed and torn, but the grizzly lay dead be-
fore him.
The fort of St. John, on the Upper Peace
River, is a very tumble-down old place; it
stands on the south shore of the river, some
thirty feet above high-water level; close be-
hind its ruined buildings the ridges rise 1,000
feet, steep and pine-clad; on the opposite
shore bare grassy hills lift their thicket-
fringed faces nearly to the same elevation ;
the river, in fact, runs at the bottom of a
very large V-shaped trough 900 feet below
the prairie-plateau. Between the base of the
211
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
hill and the bank of the river lies a tract of
wooded and sheltered land, from whose
groves of birch, poplar, and i)ines the loud
" drumming " of innumerable }tartiidges now
gave token of the coming spring. Yes, we
had travelled into the spring — our steps and
these never-tiring dogs had carried us farther
and quicker than time. It was only the sec-
ond week in April, and already the earth
began to soften; the forest smelt of last
year's leaves and of this year's buds; the
rills spoke, and the wild duck winged along
the river channels. During the whole of
the second week of April the days were soft
and Avarm ; rain fell in occasional showers;
at daybreak my thermometer showed only 3°
or 4° of frost, and in the afternoon stood at
50° to 60° in the shade. From the 15th to
the 20th the river, which had hitherto held
aloof from all advances of the spring, began
to show many symptoms of yielding to her
soft entreaties. Big tears rose at times upon
his iron face and flowed down his frosted
cheeks; his great heart seemed to swell within
him, and ominous groans broke from his
long-silent bosom. At night he recovered
himself a little, and looked grim and rigid in
the early morning; but, at last, spring, and
shower, and sun, and stream were too much
for him — all his children were already awake,
and prattling, and purling, and pulling at
213
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
him, and shaking him to open his long-ch)Sf>(l
eyelids, to look once more at the bhie and
golden summer. It was the 20th of April.
]^ut the rose of spring had its thorn too
(what rose has not?), and with bud, and sun,
and shower came the first mosquito on this
same 20th of April. He was a feeble insect,
and hummed around in a mournful sort of
manner, not at all in keeping with the glow-
ing prospect before him. He had a wliole
long summer of stinging in prospective;
" the winter of his discontent " was over, and
yet there was nothing hilarious in his hum.
1 have made a slight error in rei)eating the
old saying, that "'no rose is without its
thorn," for there is just one — it is the prim-
rose. Bui; there were other thorns than mos-
quitoes in store for the denizens of this
isolated spot, called St. John's, in the wilder-
ness.
On the north shore of the river, directly
facing the tumble-down fort, a new log-
house was in course of erection by the Hud-
son's Bay Company. Work moves slowly in
the North, and his log-house lay long unlin-
ished. One fine day a canoe came floating
down the lonely river; it held a solitary
negro — pioneer, cook, trapper, vagrant, idler,
or squatter, as chance suited him. Tliis
time the black paddler determined to squat
by the half -finished log-house of the Com-
ply
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
pany. Four yeais eariiev lie had dwelt for a
season on this same spot. There were dark
rumours afloat about him ; he had killed his
man it Avas averred; nay, he had repeated
the pastime, and killed two men. He had
robbed several mining shanties, and had to
shift his residence more than once beyond
the mountains on account of his mode of life.
Altogether Nigger Dan, as he was called,
bore an indifferent reputation among the soli-
tary white man and his half-breed helpers at
the post of St. John's. By the Indians he
was regarded as something between a beaver
and an American bear, and, had his head
been tradeable as a matter of fur, I believe
they would have trapped him to a certainty.
But despite the hostile feelings of the entire
community, Nigger Dan held stout possession
of his shanty, and claimed, in addition to
his hut, all the land adjoining it, as well as
the Hudson's Bay Fort in course of erection.
From his lair he issued manifestoes of a very
violent nature. He planted stakes in the
ground along the river-bank, upon which he
painted in red ochre hieroglyphics of a men-
acing character. At night he could be
heard across the silent river indulging in loud
and uncalled-for curses, and at times he
varied this employment by reciting ])ortions
of the Bible in a pitch of voice and accent
peculiar to gentlemen of colour. On the
814
THE WILD ^OKTII LAND.
12tli of Ajiiil, four days after my arrival at
St. John's, my young host was the recipient
(jf the following ultimatum, I copy it verba-
tim : —
April 12.
Kenedy I licar by
VVorne you that Com and Gett your
persuol property if eny you
have Got of my prmeeis In 24 hours And then keep
a\vay from me because I slial Not betrubbld Nor
trod on
only by her most Noble
Majesty
Government
(Sgd) I). T. Williams.
On the back appeared, —
I have wated longe A-day for an ancer from that
Notis you toer Down and now It is my turn to tore
down
Although the spirit of loyalty which
breathed througli the latter portion of this
do(!ument was n o-;t admirable, it is neverthe-
less matter for regret that Dan's views of the
subject of " persnol property " were not those
of a law-abiding citizen ; unfortunately for
me, both the Hudson's Bay claimant and the
pegro occupant appealed to me in support of
^heir rival rights. What was to be done?
It is true that by virtue of a commission con-
ferred upon me some years earlier I had been
plevated to the lofty title of justice of the peace
for Kupert's Laud and the North- West Te;-
815
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
ritories, my brother justices consisting, I be-
lieve, of two Hudson Bay officials and three
half-breed buffalo runners, whose collective
wisdom was deemed am])ly sufficient to dis-
pense justice over something like two million
sqiiare miles. !N"evertlieles.s, it occurred to
me that this matter of disputed ownership
was one outside even the wide limits of my
jurisdiction. To admit such want of juris-
diction would never have answered. " Ru-
pert's Land and the North-West" carried
with tliem a sense of vast indehnite power,
that if it were once shaken by an admission
of non-competency, two million square miles,
containing a })opulation of one twenty-fourth
of a wild man to each square mile, might
have instantly become a prey to chaotic prime.
Feeling the inutility of my lofty office to
deal with the matters in question, I decided
upon adopting a middle course, one which I
have every reason to believe upheld the full
majesty of the law in the eyes of the eight
representatives of the Canadian, African, and
American races of man, now assembled
around me. I therefore issued a document
which ran thus : —
Judicial ISIemorandum.
Various circumstances having occurred in tlie
neighbourhood of the Hudson's Bay Fort, known as
St. John's, on t}\e Peace River, of a nature to lead
to the assumptipn that », breach of the pea<?e is liable
^16
THE ^yUA') NOHTII I, AND.
to arise out of tlie question of (li.s])ute(l ownership,
iu ii plot of land on the north shore of the river, on
which the Hudson's Bay Company iiave elected
buildings to serve as their future place of business,
and on which it is asserted one Daniel Williams, a
person of colour, formerly lived, this is to notify all
persons concerned in this question, that no belief of
ownership, no former or present possession, will be
held in any way to excuse or palliate the slightest
infringement of the law, or to sanction any act of
violence being conuiiitted, yr to occasion any threats
being made use of by any of the said parties which
might lead to a 1)reach of the peace.
Executed by me, as Justice of the Peace for Ku-
pert's Land and the North-West, this 22nd day of
April, 1873.
Signed, etc., etc.
I claim for this memorandum or manifesto
some slight degree of praise. It hears, I
think, a striking analogy to diplomatic docu-
ments, for which of late years the British
Government has been conspicuons in times of
grave foreign complications; but in one im-
portant respect my judicial memorandum was
very much more successful than any of the
political papers upon which it was framed ;
for whereas they had been received by the
respective belligerents to wlioni they had
been addressed in a manner not at all flatter-
ing to our national dignity, my very lucid
statement that, diplomatically sjjeaking, two
and two made four, had a marked impression
on the iiiinds of my audience,
317
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
On the one hand, I clearly pointed out
that murder, arson, and robbery were not
singly or collectively in unison with the true
interpretation of British law; and on the
other, I carefully abstained from giving any
indication of what would result from the in-
fringement of that law in the persons of any
of the belligerents.
I have reason to believe that the negro
Bismarck Avas deeply impressed by the gen-
eral tenour of the document; and that a
lengthened perusal of the word "executed,"
in the last sentence, carried with it a sense
of profound strangulation under which he
long laboured.
And now it was time to think of moving
again towards the setting sun.
]\Iany months of travel had carried me
across the great plateau of the North to this
spot, where from tlie pine-clad i)lain arose
the white ridges of the Rocky Mountains.
Before me lay a land of alps, a realm of
mountaia peaks and gloomy canons, where in
countless valleys, unseen by the eye of man,
this great Peace River had its distant
source. In snow that lasts the live-long
year these mountain summits rest ; but their
sides early feel tlie influence of the summer
sun, and from the thousand valleys crystal
streams rush forth to swell the majestic
current of the great river, and to send it
2m
THE WILD NOllTir LAND.
foaming in miglity volume to the distant
Athabasca.
At such a time it is glorious work for the
voi/aijeiit' to launch liis cotton-wood canoe on
the rushing water and glance down the broad
bosom of the river. His paddle lies idle in
the water, or is used only to steer the swift-
flying craft; and when evening darkens over
the lofty shores, he lights his cami)-fire full
half a hundred miles from his starting-point
of the morning.
But if it be idle, easy work to run down
the river at its summer level, what arduous
toil it is to ascend it during the same season!
Bit by bit, little by little, the upward way
must be won ; with paddle, with pole, with
line dragged along shore and pulled round
tree-stump or projecting boulder; until even-
ing finds the toiler often not three rivei'
reaches from his starting-point.
When the river finally breaks up, and the
ice has all passed away, there is a short
period when the waters stand at a low level ;
the sun is not yet strong enougli to melt the
snow quickly, and the frosts at night are still
sharp in the mountain valleys. The river
then stands ten feet below its level of mid-
June; this period is a short one, and not an
hour must be lost by the rojinfji'iir wlio would
gain the benefit ot the low water in the
eaiiier days of May.
219
THE AVILl) NORTH LAND.
Seventy miles higher up the Peace River
stands a solitary house called Hudson's Hope.
It marks the spot where the river first
emerges form the caiion of the Rocky Moun-
tains, and enters the plain country. A trail,
jjassable for horses, leads along the north
shore of the river to this last trading-post of
the Hudson's Bay Company on the verge of
the mountains. Along this trail I now
determined to continue my journey, so as to
gain the west side of the Great Canon before
the ice had left the river, and thus reap the
advantage of the low water in ascending still
farther into the mountains.
It is no easy matter to place an exact pic-
ture of the topography of a country before a
reader: we must, however, endeavour to
do so.
Some fifty miles west of St. John, the
Peace River issues from the canon through
which it passes the outer range of the Rocky
Mountains. Ko boat, canoe, or craft of any
kind has ever run the gauntlet of this huge
chasm ; for five-and-thirty miles it lies deep
sunken through the mountains; while from
its depths there ever rises the hoarse roar of
the angry waters as they dash furiously
against their rocky prison. A trail of ten
miles leads across this portage, and at the
western end of this trail the river is reached
close to where it makes its first plunge into
230
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
the rock-hewn chasm. At thi« point tlio
traveller stands witliin the outer ran<,n' of
the mountains, and he has before liim a broad
river, stretching far into a region of lofty
peaks, a liver with strong but even current,
flowing between banks 200 to 300 yards
apart. Around great mountains lift up their
heads dazzling with the glare of snow, 10,000
feet above the water which carries his frail
canoe.
It was through this that I now proposed
to journey westward towards the country
which lies between the Pacific Ocean, Alaska,
and the multitudinous mountains of Central
British Columbia, a land but little known ; a
vast alpine region, where, amidst lakes and
mountains nature reigns in loneliness and
cloud.
221
CHAPTER XIX.
Start from St. John's — Crossing the Ice — Batiste le
Fleur — Chimeroo — The Last Wood-buffalo — A
Dangerous Weapon — Our Raft Collapses—
Across the Half-way River.
The 22iid of April had come. For some
days we were engaged at St. John's in pre-
paring supplies for the ascent of the river,
and in catching and bringing in from the
prairie the horses which were to carry me to
the point of embarcation at the west end of
the canon ; the snow had nearly all disap-
peared from the level prairie. Tlie river
opposite the fort was partly open, but some
distance below a bridge of ice yet remained,
and on the 20th we moved our horses across
this connecting link to the north shore. The
night of the 20th made a serious change in
the river, and when the 22nd came, it was
doubtful whether we should be able to cross
without mishap.
From the fort of St. John's to the gold
mines on the Ominica River was some twenty
or thirty days' travel, and as no supplies
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
were obtainable en route, save sucli as my giin
iniglit afford, it became necessary to carry a
considerable quantity of moose pemmican
and dry meat, the sole luxuries which St.
John's could boast of.
By the 22nd all preparations were declared
complete, and we began to cross the river
over the doubtful ice-bridge. First v\^ent two
men dragging a dog-sled, on which was piled
the stores and provisions for the journey;
next came old Batiste La Fleur, who was to
accompany me as far as the Half-way River,
a torrent which we would have to raft across
on the second day of our journey.
Batiste carried a long pole, with which he
sounded the ice previous to stepping upon it.
I brought up the rear, also carrying a pole,
and leading by a long line the faithful Cerf-
vola. Spanker and his six comi^anions here
passed from my hands, and remained at St.
John's to idle through the approaching sum-
mer, and then to take their places as Hudson
Bay hauling-dogs ; but for Cerf-vola there
was to be no more hauling, his long and
faithful service had at length met its reward,
and the untiring Esquimau was henceforth
to lounge through life collarless and com-
fortable.
Coasting down along the shore-ice we
reached the crossing-point, and put out into
the mid-river; once on the dangerous part,
233
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
there was no time to think whether it was
safe or not. A Salteaux Indian, draggiiif;
the sled, went in, but light and quick as
thought he dragged himself from the ice and
sped along its yielding surface. Below rnm-
bled the river, and in the open places its dark
waters gurgled up and over the crumbling
ice. Only a narrow tongue of ice spanned
the central current ; we crossed it with noth-
ing worse than wet feet and legs, and to me
a dislocated thumb, and then we breathed
freer on the farther side.
Loading the horses with luggage and pro-
visions, I bade good-bye to my host, and
we turned our faces towards the steep north
shore. The day was gloriously bright. The
hill up which the horses scrambled for a
thousand feet was blue with wild anemones ;
spring was in the earth and in the air. Cerf-
vola raced in front, with tail so twisted over
his back that it threatened to dislocate his
spine in a frantic attempt to get in front of
his nose. The earth, bare of snow, gave
forth a delicious fragrance, which one drank
with inhnite delight after the long, long
scentless v/inter; and over the white river
below, and the pine forest beyond, summer,
dressed in blue sky and golden sunbeam,
came moving gently up on the wing of the
soft south wind.
We reached the summit. Below lay a long
224
THE WILD NOHTII LAND.
line of frosted river; tlie little fort, dwarfed
by distance, the opposing I'idges, the vast
solitude, and beyond all, snow-white against
the western sky, the peaks and pinnacles of
nameless mountains. Through varied prairie
and wooded country, and across many a rush-
ing brook, deep hidden in tangled brake and
thicket, we held our way on that bright
spring afternoon ; and evening found us on a
bare and lofty ridge, overlooking the valley
of the Peace Kiver. Batiste had lived his
life in these solitudes, and knew the name of
creek and prairie, and the history (for even
the wilderness has a history) of each hill or
widespread meadow.
The beautiful prairie which lay beneath
our camping-place was Chimeroo's prairie,
and the great ridge of rock which frowned
above it was also Chimeroo's; and away
there where the cleft appeared in the hills to
the north, that was where Chimeroo's river
came out to join the Peace. In fact, Chi-
meroo played such a conspicuous part in the
scenery that one naturally asked. Who was
Chimeroo?
"Chimeroo! Oh, he is a Beaver Indian;
he lived here for a long time, and he killed
the last wood-buffalo in yonder valley, just
three years ago."
The last of his race had wandered down
from the banks of the Laird, and Chimeroo
1.-) 225
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
had struck his trail, and followed him to the
death.
AVhen twilight fell, that peculiar orange
light of the American wilderness lay long in
the west. Against this vivid colour Chime-
roo's hill stood out in inky profile the perfect
image of a colossal face. Forehead, no.se,
lips, and chin seemed cut in the huge rock,
and, like a monstrous sphinx, looked blankly
over the solitude.
" It is the head of Chimeroo," I said to
Batiste; "see, he looks over his dominions."
We were perched upon a bare hill-top, many
hundred feet above the river. The face rose
between us and the west, some three miles
distant; the head, thrown slightly back,
seemed to look vacantly out on the waste of
night and wilderness, while a long beard (the
lower part of the ridge) descended into the
darkness. Graduall}' day drew off his orange
curtain from the horizon, and ere the dark-
ness had blotted out the huge features of Chi-
meroo, we slept upon our lonely hill-top.
Pursuing our journey on the morrow, w^e
descended to the river, and held our way
over Chimeroo' s prairie, passing beneath the
lofty ridge, whose outline had assumed the
image of a human face.
About mid-day w^e reached the banks of
Chimeroo's river, which, being flooded, w^e
forded, and, climbing its steep north shore,
226
TUK Wir.D X()I{TH r.AND.
lialted for dinner. It would not be easy to
exaggerate tlie Ixnuity of tlie country tlirougli
which the trail liad carried us, or the sensa-
tion of rest Avhich came to one as, looking
out over the landscape, the fair spring scene
stole insensibly on the mind. Everywhere
the blue anemone, like a huge primrose,
looked up to the bluer sky ; butterflies flut-
tered in the clear, pure air; partridges
drummed in the budding thickets. The birch
trees and willows were putting forth their
flowers, precursors of the leaves so soon to
follow. The long-hushed rippling of the
streams fell on the ear like music heard after
lapse of time ; and from the blue depths of
sky at times fell the cry of the wild goose,
as Avith scarce-moving wing he held his way
in long waving ?(^'s to his summer home.
Chimeroo's prairie was golden with the long
grass of the old year. Chimeroo's hill glis-
tened in the bright sun of the new spring ;
and winter, driven from the lower earth, had
taken refuge in the mountains, where his
snow-white flag of surrender floated out from
crag and cliff, high above the realm of pines.
Such a scene as this, might the first man
have beheld when he looked over the virgin
earth. It was far too fine a day to work:
we would rest. Batiste La Fleur knew of a
lake not far off, and we would go to it and
spend the evening in liunting beaver and wild
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
(lucks ; so we put the saddles on and jour-
neyed slowly to Batiste's paradise.
Through many a devious path and tortuous
way did Batiste guide us, until his hunting-
ground Avas gained. On a knoll Ave made
our camp; and while Kalder remained to
look after it, Batiste and I sallied forth to
hunt.
Batiste's gun Avas an excellent weapon,
were it not for a tendency to burst about the
left barrel. This Avas made observable by
tAvo or more ominous bulges towards the cen-
tre of the piece ; but Batiste appeared to haA^e
unlimited confidence in the integrity of his
weapon, and explained that these blemishes
were only the result of his having on tAvo or
three occasions placed a bullet over a charge
of shot, and then directed the united volley
against the person of a beaver. When load-
ing this gun Batiste had a risky method of
leaning it against his chest Avhile draAving a
charge of shot from his shot-bag. I pointed
out to him that this Avas not a safe method of
loading, as it Avas quite possible the other
barrel might explode Avhile the gun thus
rested against his side. It was true, he said,
for only last year the gun under similar
treatment had exploded, carrying aAvay the
brim of his hat, and causing no slight alarm
to the rest of his person.
Our success that afternoon Avas not great;
228
THE WILD NORTH T.AM).
ducks and geese but lately arrived from the
peo})led south were yet wild and wary, and
had not learned to look on man in any light
save that of an enemy ; and altogether Ba-
tiste's hunter's paradise did not justify his
glowing accounts of it. To do him justice,
however, it must be stated that the wet
ground was literally ploughed up with moose-
tracks; and the golden willows lay broken
down and bruised by the many aninuds which
had browsed upon them during the winter.
It was mid-day on the 24th of A})ril Avhen
we reached the banks of the Half-way Eiver,
whose current, swollen by the melting snow,
rolled swiftly from the north, between banks
piled high with ice-floe. This was the first
serious obstacle to the journey, and as soon
as dinner was over we set to work to over-
come it. From a neighbouring grove of pines
Kalder and Batiste got dry trees; half a
dozen of these lashed together formed the
groundwork of a raft. Three other pine-trees
tied on top completed the craft, and with a
long pole and a rough paddle, all fashioned by
the axe, the preparations were declared
finished. This craft was put together in a
sheltered part of the river ; and when all was
completed, the goods and chattels were placed
upon it. But one more piece of work re-
mained to be accomplished ere we set sail
upon our raft — the horses had to be crossed.
239
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
By dint of driving and shouting we forced
them across the boulders of ice into the water.
It was cold as ice, and they stood knee-deej^,
afraid to venture farther. But Kalder was
a very demon when work had to be done.
In an instant he Avas across the ice-floe, and
upon the back of one of the horses ; then
with knees and hands and voice and heels he
urged the brute into the flood. The horse
reared and snorted and plunged, but Kalder
sat him like the half-breed that he was, and
in another second, horse and rider plunged
wildly into the torrent. Down they Avent
out of sight, and when they reaj^peared the
horse was striking out for the far shore, and
Kalder was grappling with the ])rojecting ice.
The other horses soon followed their leader,
and all four went swimming down the cur-
rent. Gradually the back eddy near the
farther shore caught them, and, touching
ground, they disappeared in the forest. Now
came our turn to cross. We towed the crazy
raft up the bordering ice, and, mooring her
for a moment in an eddy, took our places on
the upper logs. Scarcely had we put out
from the shore than the fastening gave way,
and the whole fabric threatened instant col-
lapse. We got her back to the eddy, re-
paired the damage, and once more put out.
Our weight and baggage sunk us down, so
that the body of the raft was quite sub-
230
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
merged, and only the three trees on top
showed above the water; npon these we
crouched. Old Batiste waved a good-bye.
Kalder was at the bow with a pole. I
worked a j^addle on the stern. Once out of
the sheltering eddy, tlie current smote our
unwieldy platform, and away we went.
Another instant and the pole failed to reach
the bottom. With might and main I worked
the paddle; down we shot, and across; but
ten yards down to every one across. Would
we save the eddy? that was the question;
for if we missed it, there was nought to stay
our wild career. Far as eye could reach, the
current ran wild and red. For an anxious
minute we rushed down the stream, and then
the eddy caught us, and we spun round like
a teetotum. "The other side! " roared Kal-
der ; and to the other side went the paddle
to keep us in the eddy. Then we headed for
the shore; and, ere the current could catch
us again, Kalder was breast-deep in tlie
water, holding on with might and main to the
raft.
We were across the Half-way River. To
unload the raft, build a lire, to dry our wet
garments, and shout good-bye to old Batiste,
who stood on an ice boulder, anxiously watch-
ing our fortunes from the shore we had
quitted, took us but a short time.
The horses were captured and saddled,
^31
THE WILD XORTI! LAND.
and, ascending through tangled forest into a
terraced land of rich-rolling prairies, we
pushed on briskly towards the west.
Thus, trotting through a park-like land of
wood and glade and meadow, where the
jumping deer glanced through the dry grass
and trees, we gradually drew near the Rocky
Mountains. At times the trail led up the
steep face of the outer hill to the plateau
above, and then a rich view would lie be-
neath — a view so vast with the glories of the
snowy range, and so filled with nearer river
and diamond-shaped island, that many a time
I drew rein upon some lofty standpoint to
look, as one looks upon things Avhich we
would fain carry away into the memory of
an aftertime.
About the middle of the afternoon of the
2oth of Aj^ril we emerged from a Avood of
cypress upon an open space, beneath which
ran the Peace River. At the opposite side
a solitary wooden house gave token of life in
the wilderness. The greater part of the
river was still fast frozen, but along the
nearer shore ran a current of open water.
The solitary house was the Hope of Hudson !
CHAPTER XX.
Hudson's Hope — A Lover of Literature — Crossing
tlie Peace — An Unskilful Pilot — We are Upset —
Our Rescue — A Strange Variety of Arms — The
Buffalo's Head — A Glorious View.
Dismounting from our tired horses, we
loosened saddles and bridles, hobbled the
two fore-legs together, and turned them adrift
in the forest. Then we caclwd onr baggage
in the trees, for wolves were plentiful around,
and a grey wolf has about as extensive a bill
of fare in the matter of man's clothing and
appointments as any animal in creation, ex-
cept perhaps a monkey.
In my early days in Burmah and India, I
once possessed a rare specimen of the last-
named genus, who, when he found the oppor-
tunity, beautifully illustrated his descent
from the lower orders of man by devouring
a three-volume novel in less time than any
young lady of the period could possibly ac-
complish it. He never knew a moment's
starvation as long as he had a photograph
album to appease his insatiable love of litera-
ture. But to proceed : —
By the time we had cached our baggage,
two men had come forth from the house on
233
THE AVILD NORTH LAND.
the other side of the river, and started out
upon the ice, dragging a very small canoe ;
when they reached the open water at our
side, they launched their craft and paddled
across to the shore ; then, ascending the hill,
they joined us at the cache.
Their news was soon told ; the river was
open at the west end of the portage (ten
miles away). Jaques Pardonet, a French
miner, who had been trapping during the
winter, was about to start for the mines on
the Ominica River; he was now patching up
an old canoe which he had found stranded
on the shore, and when it was ready he would
be oif : for the rest, no Indians had come in
for a very long time, and moose meat was at
a very low ebb in Hudson's Hope.
We descended to the river, and Kalder
and Charette (a half-breed in charge of the
fort) crossed first in the beaver canoe ; it was
much too small to carry us all. When they
had disembarked safely on the ice, they
fastened a long line to the bow of the canoe
and sh-oved her off to our side ; as she neared
our shore she was caught by an English miner
who had been living with Charette for some
days, and whom I had engaged to accompany
me to the mines. He had declared himself
a proficient in the art of canoeing, and I was
now about to experience my fi.rst example of
his prowess.
334
THE ^\UA) KOKTil LAND.
We took our places and slioved from the
shore. I lay low in the canoe, with legs
stretched under the narrow thwarts to steady
her as much as possible. I took in no bag-
gage but placed gun and revolver in the bot-
tom alongside of me. Cerf-vola was to swim
for himself.
A , the miner, took a paddle at the
stern. We had scarcely left the shore when
the canoe lurched quickly to one side, ship-
l)ing water as she did so. Then came another
lurch on the other side, and I knew all was
over. I heard the men on shore shouting to
the miner to sit low — to keep down in the
canoe— but all was too late. There came
another lurch, a surge of water, and we were
over into the icy quick-nmning river. I
could not free myself from the thwarts which
held me like a vice ; the water gurgled and
rushed around, about, and above me ; and
the horrid sensation of powerlessness, which
the sleeper often experiences in a nightmare,
came full upon my waking senses.
Of struggling I have but a faint recollec-
tion ; at such times one struggles with a wild
instinct that knows no rule or thought ; but
I vividly recollect the prevalent idea of being
held head downwards in the icy current, in a
grasp which seemed as strong as that of
death.
I remembered, too, without trouble, all the
235
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
surroundings of tlie scene ; the bordering ice
which was close below us — for the channel of
water took a central course a little bit lower
down the river, and the ice lay on both sides
of it — Avhile the current ran underneath as
water can only run when four feet of solid
ice is pressing upon it. Once under that ice
and all Avas over with us. How it came
about I cannot tell, but all at once I found
myself free ; I suppose one struggle some-
thing wilder than the rest had set me free,
for long afterwards one of my legs bore to-
kens of the fight. In another second I was
on the surface. I grasped the canoe, but it
was round as a log, and turned like a wheel
in the water, rolling me down each time,
half -drowned as I already was.
My companion, the miner, had gone at
once clear of the canoe, and, catching her by
the stern, had held himself well above the
water. One look at Kalder and Chare tte on
the ice told me they were both utterly de-
moralized : Kalder had got behind Charette,
while the latter held the line without well
knowing what to do with it. Perhaps it was
better that he did so, as the line was a misera-
bly frail one, little better than a piece of
twine, and the weight upon it now in this
strong current was very great. Very slowly
Charette hauled in the line that held us to
Mother Earth ; then Kalder recovered his
236
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
presence of miiul, and flung a leatliei line
across the upturned canoe. I grasped it, and
in another instant the bark grated against the
edge of the ice. Numbed and frozen I drew
myself on to the canoe, then on to the crum-
bling ice along the edge, and finally to the
solid pack itself. Wet, water-logged, numbed,
and frozen, Ave made our way across the ice
to the shore. My gun and revolver had van-
ished; they lay somewhere under twenty
feet of water.
Thus, without arms, with watch feebly
ticking — as though endeavouring to paddle
itself with its hands through billows of water,
with Aneroid so elevated, I presume, at its
escape from beneath the water, that in a sud-
den revulsion of feeling it indicated an
amount of elevation above the sea level to-
tally inconsistent with anything short of a
Himalayan altitude, at which excited state it
continued to exist during the remainder of
my wandering — we reached the Hope of
Hudson. There never was truer saying than
that when things go to the worst they mend.
When I had changed my dripping clothes for
a suit of Charette's Sunday finery, when Mrs.
Charette had got ready a cup of tea and a bit
of moose steak, and when the note-book,
letters, and likenesses, which one carries
as relics of civilization into the realms of
savagery, had all been duly dried and reno-
237
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
vated, matters Ijegaii to look a good deal
better.
Early on the followiiig morning Charette
and Kalder moored a couple of canoes in the
open water, and began to drag for the gun
with a fishhook fastened to the end of a long
pole ; the gun was in a leathern case, and an
hour's work resulted in its recovery, none the
worse for its submersion. My ammunition
was still safe, but as the supply of it availa-
ble for a breech-loader was limited, we were
on the whole badly off for arms. I armed
Kalder with a flint trading-gun — a weapon
which, when he had tried it at a mark, and
then hammered the barrel, first on one side
then on the other, he declared to be a good
"beaver gun." The miner also i)0ssessed a
gun, but as the hammer of one barrel hung
dangling gracefully down the side, and as he
possessed no percussion-caps for the other
barrel (a want he supplied by an ingenious
use of wax vestas), the striking of his match
conveyed a similar idea to the mind of any
bird or beast at whose person he presented
the muzzle ; and while the gun was thinking
about going off, the bird or beast had already
made up its mind to take a similar course.
Now this matter of weapons was a serious
item in our affairs, for numerous are the de-
lays and mishaps of an up-river journey in
the wild land we were about to penetrate.
238
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
Dowri stream ull is v/ell; a raft can always
be made that will run from four to six miles
an hour; but the best craft that man can
build will not go a mile an hour up-stream on
many parts of these rivers, and of this up-
river we had some 200 miles before us.
On the 27th of April I set out from Hud-
son's Hope to cross the portage of ten miles,
which avoids the Great Caiion, at the farther
end of which the Peace Eiver becomes navi-
gable for a canoe.
We crossed the river once more at the
scene of our accident two days previously ;
but this time, warned by experience, a large
canoe was taken, and we passed safely over
to the north shore. It took some time to
hunt up the horses, and mid-day had come
before we finally got clear of the Hope of
Hudson .
The portage trail curved up a steep hill of
800 or 900 feet ; then on through sandy flats
and by small swamps, until, at some eight or
nine miles from the Hope of Hudson, the
outer spurs of the mountains begin to flank
us on either side. To the north a conspicu-
ous ridge, called the l^uffalo's Head, rises
abruptly from the plain, some 3,000 feet
above the pass ; its rock summit promised a
wide view of mountain ranges on one side,
and of the great valley of the Peace River on
the other. It stood alone, the easternmost
239
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
of all the ranges, and the Caiion of the Peace
Kivei- flowed round it upon two sides, south
and west.
INIonths before, at the forks of the Atha-
basca River, a man who had once wandered
into these wilds told me, in reply to a ques-
tion of mine, that there was one spot near
the mouth of the Peace River pass which
commanded a wide range of mountain and
prairie. It was the Buffalo's Head.
Nine hundred miles had carried me now to
that spot. The afternoon was clear and line ;
the great range had not a cloud to darken
the glare of the sun upon its sheen of snow ;
and the pure cool air came over the forest
trees fresh from the thousand billows of this
sea of mountains. The two men went on to
the portage end ; I gave them my horse, and,
turning at right angles into a wood, made
my way towards the foot of the Buffalo's
Head.
Thick with brule and tangled forest lay
the base of the mountain ; but this once
passed, the steep sides became clear of forest,
and there rose abruptly before me a mass of
yellow grass and soft-blue anemones. Less
than an hour's hard climbing brought me to
the summit, and I w^as a thousand times re-
paid for the labour of the ascent.
I stood on the bare rocks which formed the
frontlet of the Buffalo's Head. Below, the
340
THE WILD NOPvTII LAND.
pines of a vast forest looked like the toy-
trees wich children set np when Noah is put
forth to watch the animals emerging from
his ark, and where everything is in perfect
order, save and except that perverse pig, who
will insist on lying upon his side in conse-
quence of a fractured leg; and who must
either be eliminated from the procession alto-
gether, or put in such close contact to Mrs.
Noah, for the sake of her support, as to de-
tract very much from the solemnity of the
whole procession.
Alas, how futile is it to endeavour to de-
scribe such a view ! Not more wooden are
the ark animals of our childhood, than the
words in which man would clothe the images
of that higher nature which the Almighty
has graven into the shapes of lonely moun-
tains ! Put down your wooden woods bit by
bit; throw in colour here, a little shade
there, touch it up with sky and cloud, cast
about it that perfume of blossom or breeze,
and in Heaven's name what does it come to
after all? Can the eye wander away, away,
away until it is lost in blue distance as a lark
is lost in blue heaven, but the sight still
drinks the beauty of the landscape, though
the source of the beauty be unseen, as the
source of the music which falls from the
azure depths of sky.
That river coming out broad and glittering
16 241
THE WILD NORTH LAND
from the dark mountains, and vanishing into
yon profound cliasm with a roar which reaches
up even here — billowy seas of peaks and
mountains beyond number away there to
south and west — that huge half dome which
lifts itself above all others sharp and clear
cut against the older dome of heaven ! Turn
east, look out into that plain — that endless
plain where the pine-trees are dwarfed to
speargrass and the prairie to a meadow-patch
— what do you see? Nothing, poor blind
reader, nothing, for the blind is leading the
blind; and all this boundless range of river
and plain, ridge and prairie, rocky precipice
and snow-capped sierra, is as much above my
poor power of words, as He who built this
mighty nature is higher still than all.
Ah, my friend, my reader! Let us come
down from this mountain-top to ovir own
small level again. We will upset you in an
ice-rapid; Kalder will fire at you; we will
be wrecked ; Ave Avill have no food ; Ave Avill
hunt the moose, and do anything and every-
thing you like, — but we cannot put in words
the things that we see from these lonely
mountain-tops Avhen Ave climb them in the
sheen of evening. When you go into your
church, and the organ rolls and the solemn
chant floats through the lofty aisles, you do
not ask your neighbour to talk to you and
tell you what it is like. If he should do
243
THE WILD NOKTII LAND.
anything of the kind, the beadle takes him
and puts him out of doors, and then the
policeman takes him and puts him indoors,
and he is punished for his atrocious conduct;
and yet you expect me to tell you about this
church, whose pillars are the mountains,
whose roof is the heaven itself, whose music
comes from the harp-strings which the earth
has laid over her bosom, which we call pine-
trees ; and from which the hand of the Un-
seen draws forth a ceaseless symphony roll-
ing ever around the world.
343
CHAPTER XXI.
Jacques, the French Miner — A Fearful Abyss — The
Great Canon of tlie Peace River — We are Off on
our Western Way — Unfortunate Indians — A
Burnt Baby— "The Moose that Walks."
It was dusk when I reached the ruined
hvtt which stood at the western end of the
portage. My men had long preceded me,
and Kakler had supper ready before the great
fireplace. The fire shed its light upon a fourth
figure; it was that of Jacques, the French
miner, five feet two inches in height ; miner,
trapper, trader, and wanderer since he left
his home in Lorraine, near the war-famous
citadel of Belfort,'Some twenty years ago.
I brought one piece of news to the hut : it
was that although the river was free from
ice opposite our resting-place, and to the end
of the reach in view, yet it was fast closed in
for the twenty or thirty miles which my
mountain climb had enabled me to scan. So
here in the midst of the mountains we await-
ed the disruption of the ice and the opening
of our watery way.
The delay thus occasioned was unexpected,
and fell heavily on my sujjply of food ; but
244
THE "WILD NORTH LAND.
rabbits and partridges were numerous, and
Kalder's gun proved itself to be a worthy
weapon at these denizens of tlie forest, as
well as at the beaver. On the evening of
my arrival at the hut I had seen two moose
drinking on a sand-bar roar the nioutli of the
Caiion, but the river lay between me and
them, and we could find no further trace of
them on the following day.
In one respect the delay was not irksome
to me ; it gave me an opportunity of exploring
a portion of the Great Canon, and forming
some idea of the nature of the difficulties and
dangers which made it an impassable chasm
for the hardiest ro>/fif/riirs.
On the 29th of April the ice in the upper
part of the river broke up, and came pouring
down with great violence for some hours;
blocks of ice many feet in thickness, and
weighing several tons, came down the broad
river, crushing against each other, and lining
the shore with huge crystal masses.
The river rose rapidly, and long after dark
the grating of the ice-blocks in the broad
channel below told us that the break-up must
be a general one ; the current before our hut
was running six miles an hour, and the ice
had begun to run early in the afternoon.
All next day the ice continued to run at
intervals, but towards evening it grew less,
and at nightfall it had nearly ceased.
245
THE WILD XORTII LAND.
During the day I set out to explore the
Canon. Making my way along the edge of
what was, in ages past, the shore of a vast
lake, I gained the summit of a ridge which
hung directly over the Canon. Through a
mass of wrack and tangled forest I held on,
guided by the dull roar of waters until I
reached an open space, where a ledge of rock
dipped suddenly into the abyss : on the outer
edge of this rock a few spruce-trees sprung
from cleft and fissure, and from beneath,
deep down in the dark chasm, a roar of water
floated up into the day above. Advancing
cautiously to the smooth edge of the chasm,
I took hold of a spruce-tree and looked over.
Below lay one of those grim glimpses which
the earth holds hidden, save from the eagle
and the mid-day sun. Caught in a dark
prison of stupendous cliffs (cliffs which hol-
lowed out beneath, so that the topmost ledge
literally hung over the boiling abyss of
waters), the river foamed and lashed against
rock and precipice, nine hundred feet below
me. Like some caged beast that finds escape
impossible on one side, it flew as madly and
as vainly against the other; and then fell
back in foam and roar and raging whirlpool.
The rocks at the base held the record of its
wrath in great trunks of trees, and blocks of
ice lying piled and smashed in shapeless ruin.
Looking clown the Canon towards the
246
THE AVILD NORTH LAND.
soutli, a great gleu opeurd from tlie west;
and the sun, now getting low in the heavens,
jjoured through this valley a flood of light on
red and grey walls of rugged rock; while
half the pine-clad hills lay dark in shade,
and half glowed golden hi this level light;
and far away, beyond the shadowy chasm
and the sun-lit glen, one great mountain-peak
lifted his dazzling crest of snow high into the
blue air of the evening.
There are many indications above the
mouth of the Caiion, that the valley in which
our hut stood was once a large lake. The
beaches and terrace levels are distinctly
marked, but the barrier fall was worn down
into a rapid, and the Cailoji became a slant
of water for some thirty miles. At the en-
trance the rock is worn smooth and flat in
many places, and huge cisterns have been
hollowed in its surface — "kettles," as the
voyageAiv calls them — perfectly round, and
holding still the granite boulder which had
chiselled them, worn to the size and round-
ness of a cannon-ball from ages of revolution.
Some of these kettles are tiny as a tea-cup ;
pthers are huge as the tun of Heidelberg,
When I got back to the hut, night had
fallen. At the end of the long river-reach
a new moon hung in the orange-tinted west;
the river was almost clear of ice, and it was
i-esolved to start on the morrow.
247
THE WILD NORTH I, AND.
There was a certaiu amount of vagueness
in the programme before me. For seventy
miles the course was perfectly clear — there
was, in fact, only one road to follow — but at
the end of that distance two paths lay open,
and circumstances could only determine the
future route at that point.
If the reader will imagine an immense let-
ter Y laid longitudinally from west to east,
he will have a fair idea of the Peace lliver
above the Cafion. The tail of the Y will be
the seventy miles of river running directly
through the main range of the Rocky Moun-
tains; the right arm will be the Findlay,
having its source 300 miles higher up in that
wilderness of mountains known as the Stic-
keen ; the left arm will be the Parsnip River,
sometimes called by mistake the Peace River,
having its source 260 miles to the south near
the waters of the upper Frazer. Countless
lesser streams (some of them, nevertheless,
having their 200 miles of life) roll down into
these main systems; and it would seem as
though the main cliannel had, like a skilful
general, luiited all its widely-scattered forces
at the forks, seventy miles above us, before
entering on the gigantic task of piercing the
vast barrier of the central montains.
Standing on the high ground at the back
of the hut in which we awaited the opening
of the great river, and looking westward at
THE WILD NOUTfl LAND.
the mountains piled together in endless
masses, it was difficult to imagine bj- Avhat
process a mighty river had cloven asunder
this wilderness of rock, — giving us the singu-
lar spectacle of a wide, deep, tranquil stream
flowing through the principal mountain range
of the American continent.
May-day broke in soft showers of rain ; the
mountains were shrouded in mist; the breeze
was not strong enough to lift the gauze-like
vapour from the tree-tops on the south shore.
By nine o'clock the mists began to drift
along the hillsides; stray peaks came forth
through rifts, then shvit themselves up again ;
until finally the sun drew off the vapours,
and clad mountain and valley in blue ami
gold.
We loaded the canoe, closed the door of
the old shanty, and shoved off upon our
western way. There were four of us and one
dog — two miners, my half-breed Kalder, my-
self, and Cerf-vola. I had arranged with
Jacques to travel together, and I made him
captain of the boat. None knew better the
secrets of the Upper Peace Kiver; for ten
years he had delved its waters with his pad-
dle, and its sand-bars with his miner's shovel.
Little Jacques — he was a curious specimen
of humanity, and well worth some study too.
I have already said that he was small, but
that does not convey any idea of his real size.
2i\i
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
I think he was the smallest man I ever saw
— of course I mean a man, and not a dwarf;
Jacques had nothing of the dwarf about him
— nay, he was a very giant in skill and craft
of paddle, and pluck and daring. He had
lived long u^jon his own resources, and had
found them equal to most emergencies.
He could set his sails to every shift of for-
tune, and make some headway in every wind.
In summer he hunted gold; in winter he
hunted furs. He had the largest head of
thick bushy hair I ever saw. He had drawn
3,000 dollars' worth of pure gold out of a
sand-pit on the Ominica Eiver during the pre-
ceding summer ; he had now a hundred fine
marten-skins, the jiroduce of his winter's
trapping. Jacques was rich, but all the
same, Jacques must work. As I have said,
Jacques was a native of Belfort. Belfort
had proved a tough nut for Kaiser William's
legions ; and many a time as I watched this
little giant in times of peril, I thought that
with 200,000 little Jacqueses one could fight
big Bismarck's beery battalions as often as
they pleased. Of course Jacques had a pair
of miner's boots. A miner without a pair of
miner's boots would be like Hamlet with
Hamlet left out. When Jacques donned
these boots, and swung himself out on a huge
forest trunk prostrate in a rapid, and hewed
away at the giant to give our cauoe a pas-
2oQ
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
sage, lie looked for all the world like his
prototype the giant-killer, and the boots be-
came the seven-leagued friends of our early
days.
How the big axe flew about his little head,
until crash went the monster, and Jacques
sprang back to rock or boat as lively as a
squirrel.
He had many queer stories of early days,
and could recount with pride the history of
the stirring times he had seen. What miner's
heart does not soften at the recollection, in
these degenerate days, of how the Vigilants
hanged six roughs one morning in the market-
place of Frisco, just two-and-twenty years
ago?
We poled and paddled along the shore of
the river ; now on one side, now on the other,
dodging the heavy floes of ice Avhich still
came at intervals along the current.
In the evening we had gained a spot some
twelve miles from the hut, and we made our
camp on a wooded flat set in a wide amphi-
theatre of hills. The next morning broke
wet and stormy, and we lay in camp during
the early part of the day. Towards mid-day
the silence was broken by the discharge of a
gun at the opposite side of the river. We at
once answered it, and soon another report
replied to ours. There were Indians in the
vicinity, so we iiiight expect a visit. About
THE WILD NORTH LAXD.
an hour later a most wretched group appeared
at our cainp. It consisted of two lialf-clad
women, one of whom carried a baby on her
back; a wikl-looking boy, apparently about
twelve or fourteen years of age, led the way,
carrying an old gun ; two dogs brought up
the rear. A glance at the dogs showed that
food, at least, was plentiful in the Indian
camp — they were fat and sleek. If an In-
dian has a fat dog, 3'ou may know that game
is abundant ; if the dog is thin, food is scarce ;
if there be no dog at all, the Indian is starv-
ing, and the dog has been killed and eaten
by his master. But to proceed : —
In a network of tattered blankets and drij)-
ping rags, these three wretched creatures
stalked into our camp; they were as wet as
if they had come underneath the river in-
stead of across it; but that seemed to give
them little thought. Jacques undei'stood a
few words of what they said, and the rest
was made out by signs; — all the men were
sick, and had been sick for months. This
boy and another were alone able to hunt;
but moose were plenty, and starvation liad
not come to supplement sickness ; the women
were "packing" the men.
Reader, what do you imagine that means?
I will soon tell you. It means that when
the camp moves — whicli it does every few
days, as the game gets hunted away fioni
252
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
one locality — the women carried the men on
their backs in addition to tlu' houseludd
gods. Literally these poor womni carried
oJi their bent backs the house, the clothes,
the food, the baby, and the baby's father.
What was the disease? They could not
tell.
My slender stock of drugs Avas long since
exhausted; I had nothing left but the pain-
killer. I gave them half of my last bottle,
and had it been the golden wealth of the
sand-bars of this Peace Kiver itself, it could
not have been more thought of. To add to
their misfortunes, the baby had come to grief
about a week previously— it had tumbled
head foremost into the fire. It was now un-
slung from its mother's back for my inspec-
tion. Poor little Beaver! its face and head
had got a dreadful burning; but, thanks to
mountain air and Indian hardiness, it was
getting all right.
Had I anything to rub on it? A little of
the Mai de Raquette i)orpoise-oil and pain-
killer yet remained, and with such an anti-
dote the youthful Beaver might henceforth
live in the camp-fire.
I know some excellent Christians at home
who occasionally bestow a shilling or a half-
crown upon a poor man at a church-door or a
street-crossing, not for the humanity of the
act, but just to purchase that amount of
253
THE WILD NORTH LAXD.
heaven iu the next world. I believe they
could tell you to a farthing liow much of
Paradise they had purchased last week or the
week before. I am not sure that they are
quite clear as to whether the quantity of
heaven thus purchased, is regulated by the
value set on the gift by the beggar or by the
rich man ; but if it be by the value placed on
it by him who gets it, think, my Christian
friends, think what a field for investment
does not this wilderness present to you.
Your shilling spent here amongst these In-
dians will be rated by them at more than its
weight in gold ; and a pennyworth of pain-
killer might purchase you a perpetuity of
Paradise.
Jacques, an adept in Indian trade, got a
large measure of dried moose meat in ex-
change for a few plugs of tobacco; and the
Indians went away wet, but happy.
One word more about Indians — and I mean
to make it a long word and a strong word,
and perhaps my reader will add, a wrong
word ; but never mind, it is meant the other
way.
This portion of the Beaver tribe trade to
Hudson's Hope, the fort we have but lately
quitted.
Here is the story of a trade made last sum-
mer by " the moose that walks. "
" The moose that walks " arrived at Hud-
2rA
TTTE WILD NOKTII LAND.
son's Hoi)e early in the s[)iiiig. Tie was
sorely in want of gunpowder and shot, i'or
it was the season when the beaver Icaxe their
winter houses, and when it is easy to shoot
them. So he earried his thirty niartenskins
to the fort, to barter them for shot, powdei-,
and tobacco.
There was no person at the Hope. The
dwelling-house was closed, the store shut up,
the man in charge had not yet come up from
St. John's; now what was to be done? In-
side that wooden house lay piles and piles of
all that the walking moose most needed;
there was a whole keg of powder ; there were
bags of shot and tobacco — there was as much
as the moose could smoke in his whole life.
Through a rent in the parchment window
the moose looked at all these wonderful
things, and at the red flannel shirts, and at
the four flint guns, and the spotted cotton
handkerchiefs, each worth a sable skin at one
end of the fur trade, half a sixjience at the
other. There was tea, too — tea, that magic
medicine before which life's cares vanished
like snow in spring sunshine.
The moose sat down to think about all
these things, but thinking only made matters
worse. He was short of ammunition, there-
fore he had no food, and to think of food
when one is very hungry is an unsatisfactoiy
business. It is true that "the moose that
255
THE WILD NOIJTIT LAND.
■walks " had only to walk in through that
pavc'hmeiit window, and help himself till he
was tired. But no, that would not do.
"Ah!" my Christian friend will exclaim,
"Ah! yes, the poor Indian had known the
good missionary, and had learnt the lesson
of honesty and respect for liis neighbour's
property."
Yes ; he had learnt the lesson of honesty,
but his teacher, my friend, had been other
than human. The good missionary had never
reached the Hope of Hudson, nor improved
the morals of " the moose that walks."
But let us go on.
After waiting two days he determined to
set off for St. John, two full days' travel.
He set out, but his heart failed him, and he
turned back again.
At last, on the fourth day he entered the
parchment window, leaving outside his com-
rade, to whom he jealously denied admit-
tance. Then he took from the cask of pow-
der three skins' worth, from the tobacco four
skins' worth, from the shot the same; and
sticking the requisite number of martens in
the powder-barrel and the shot-bag and the
tobacco-case, he hung up his remaining skins
on a nail to the credit of his account, and de-
parted from this El Dorado, this Bank of
England of the Red man in the wilderness,
this Hunt and Roskell of Peace River.
256
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
And when it was all over he went his wa}',
thinking he had done a very reprehensible
act, and one by no means to l)e jiroiid of.
Poor " moose that walks ! " in this trade for
skins 3'ou are but a small item !
Society muffles itself in your toil- won sables
in distant cities, while you starve and die
out in the wilderness.
The credit of your twenty skins, hung to
i^he rafter of Hudson's Hope, is not a large
one ; but surely there is a Hope somewhere
else, where your account is kept in golden
letters, even though nothing but the clouds
had baptized you, no missionary had cast
water on your head, and God only knows
who taught you to be honest.
Let me not be misunderstood in this mat-
ter. I believe, gentlemen missionaries, you
mean well by this Indian. I will go further;
you form, I think, almost the only class who
would deal fairly by him, but you go to work
in a wrong direction ; your mode of proceed-
ing is a mistake. If you would only be a
little more human, and a little less divine —
if you would study the necessities of the sav-
age races amidst whom you have cast your
lot — what good might ye not effect?
This Cree, this Blackfoot, this Chipewyan,
this Beaver — -what odds is it, in the name of
all goodness, whether he fully understands
the numbered or unnumbered things you tell
17 257
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
hiiii. Teach him the simple creed whicli you
woukl teach a cliikl. He is starving, and
the feast you give him is of delicate and
subtle food, long since compounded from the
brain of schoolman and classicist. He is
naked, and you would clothe him in mysteri-
ous raiment and fine tissue, which time has
woven out of the webs of doubt and inquiry.
All this will not warm him from the terrible
blast of winter, or shelter him from the
drenching rains of early siimmer. He has
many faults, some virtues, innumerable
wants. Begin with these. Preach against
the first ; cultivate the second ; relieve as
much as possible the third. Make him a
good man before you attempt to make him an
indifferent Christian. In a word, do more
for his body ; and after a bit, when you have
taught him to help his wife in toil and trou-
ble — to build a house and to live in it — to
plant a few potatoes when the ground thaws,
and to hoe them out ere it hardens again —
when you have loosed the bands of starva-
tion, nakedness, and hardship from the grasp
in which they now hold him, then will come
the moment for your books and your higher
teaching. And in his hut, with a well-filled
stomach, he will have time to sift truth from
falsehood, amidst all the isms and arians
under the guise of which you come to teach
him. But just now he is only a proletarian
258
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
and an open-arian, and not mncli cvcmi of
these. Meantime I know tliat yon wish well
by him. You are ready to teach him — to
tell him about a host of good, and some very
indifferent, persons; but lo! in the middle of
your homilies he falls asleep, and his sleep
is the sleep of death. He starves and dies
out before you. Of course I know the old
old answer : " He is hopeless ; we have tried
everything ; we can do nothing." How often
have I not been told, " He is hopeless ; we
can do nothing for this Red nian ! " But will
any person dare to say that men such as this
Indian at Hudson's Hope are beyond the cure
of man? If they be, then your creed must
be a poor weak thing.
259
CHAPTER XXII.
Still "Westward — The Dangers of the Ice — We Enter
the Main Range — In the Mountains — A Grizzly
— The Death of the Moose — Peace River Pass —
Pete Toy— The Ominica—" Travellers " at
Home.
We held our way up the river, fighting
many a battle with the current. Round the
points the stream ran strong, and our canoe
was a big, lumbering affair, hollowed out of
a single cotton-wood tree by Jacques, years
before on the Fraser River, and ill-adapted
to the ice, which was our most dangerous
enemy. Many a near shave we had of being
crushed under its heavy floes as we coasted
along beneath their imj^ending masses.
When the river breaks up, portions of it
stronger than the rest remain still frozen.
At the back of these the floating ice jams,
and the river rises rapidly behind the barrier
thus flung across it. Then the pack gives
way, and the pent-up waters rapidly lower.
But along the shore, on either side, the huge
blocks of ice lie stranded, heaped one upon
another, and the water, still falling, brushes
off from beneath the projecting pieces, leav-
260
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
ing a steep wall of ice, sometimes twenty and
thirty feet, brightly rising above the water.
Along these impending masses we had to
steer our canoe, and hazardous vv'ork it was,
for every now and again some huge fragment,
many tons in weight, Avould slide from its
high resting-place, and crash into the river
with a roar of thunder, drivirg tlie billows
before it half-way across the wide river, and
making our hearts jump half as much again.
At one point where the river ran with un-
usual velocity we battled long beneath a very
high ice-wall. Once or twice the current
carried us against its sides. We dared not
touch it with our poles, for it hung by a
thread, so far did its summit project over our
heads.
Gently we stole our way up from beneath
it, and were still within thirty yards of it
when the great boulder, looming high, crashed
into the river.
On the fourth day we got clear of this
shore ice, and drew near the main range of
the mountains. But there was one impor-
tant question which experience soon told me
there was no cause for anxiety about — it was
the question of food.
Game was abundant; the lower hills were
thickly stocked with blue grouse — a noble
bird, weighing between thi-ee and four
pounds.
361
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
The bays of the river held beaver, swim-
ming through the driftwood, and ere we had
reached the mountain gate a moose had fallen
to my trusty smooth-bore, in one of the
grassy glens between the river and the snowy
range. It was literally a hunter's paradise.
This was the worst time of the year, except
for beaver, but necessity knows no game law,
and the wilderness at all times must feed its
wanderers.
We usually camped a couple of hours be-
fore sundown, for in this northern land the
daylight was more than long enough to stiffen
our shoulders, and make our arms ache from
pole or paddle. Then came the time to
stretch one's legs over these great grassy up-
lands, so steep, yet so free of rock ; so full
of projecting point and lofty proinontory, be-
neath which the river lay in long silvery
reaches, while around on every side the moun-
tains in masses of rock and snoAv, lay like
giant sentinels, guarding the great road which
Nature had hewn through their midst.
At the entrance to the main range, the val-
ley of the river is about two miles wide. The
river itself preserves its general width of 250
to 300 yards with singular uniformity. The
reaches are from one to three miles in length,
the banks are dry, the lower beaches are
level and well wooded, and the current be-
comes deeper and less rapid.
263
THE "WILD NORTH LAND.
On the 8th of May we readied, early in
the morning, the entrance to the main range.
A short rapid marks it, a rapid easy to run
at all stages of water, and up which we towed
our canoe, carrying the more perishable arti-
cles to save them from the spray — a precau-
tion Avhich was, however, not necessary, as
no water was shij^ped.
We Avere now in the mountains. From
the low terrace along the shore they rose in
stupendous masses ; their lower ridges clothed
in forests of huge spruce, poplar, and birch ;
their middle heights covered in dense thickets
of spruce alone; their summits cut into a
thousand varied peaks, bare of all vegetation,
but bearing aloft into the sunshine 8,000 feet
above us the glittering crowns of snow which,
when evening stilled the breezes, shone re-
flected in the quiet waters, vast and motion-
less.
Wonderful things to look at are these
white peaks, perched up so high above our
world. They belong to us, yet they are not
of us. The eagle links them to the earth;
the cloud carries to them the message of the
sky; the ocean sends them her tempest; the
air rolls her thunders beneath their brows,
and launches her lightnings from their sides ;
the sun sends them his first greeting, and
leaves them his latest kiss. Yet motionless
they keep their crowns of snow, their glacier
263
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
crests of jewels, and dwell among tlie stars
heedless of time or tempest.
For two days we journeyed through this
vast valley, along a wide, beautiful river,
tranquil as a lake, and bearing on its bosom,
at intervals, small isles of green forest. Kow
and again a beaver rippled the placid surface,
or a bear appeared upon a rocky point for a
moment, looked at the strange lonely craft,
stretched out his long snout to sniff the gale,
and then vanished in the forest shore. For
the rest all was stillness; forest, isle, river
and mountain — all seemed to sleep in unend-
ing loneliness ; and our poles grating against
the rocky shore, or a shot at some quick-div-
ing beaver, alone broke the silence; while
the echo, dying away in the vast mountain
canons, made the relapsing silence seem more
intense.
Thus we journeyed on. On the evening of
the 8th of May we emerged from the pass,
and saw beyond the extremity of a long reach
of river a mountain range running north and
south, distant about thirty miles from us.
To the right and left the Rocky Mountains
opened out, leaving the river to follow its
course through a long forest valley of con-
siderable width.
We had passed the Eocky Mountains, and
the range before us was the central mountain
system of North British Columbia.
264
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
It was a very beautiful evening ; the tops
of the birch-trees were already showing their
light green leaves amidst the dark foliage of
the spruce and firs.
Along the shore, where we landed, the
tracks of a very large grizzly bear were im-
printed freshly in the sand. I put a couple
of bullets into my gun and started up the
river, with Cerf-vola for a companion. I had
got about a mile from the camp when, a few
hundred yards ahead, a large dark animal
emerged from the forest, and made his way
through some lower brushwood towards the
river. Could it be the grizzly? I lay down
on the sand-bank, and pulled the dog down
beside me. The large black animal walked
out upon the sand-bar two or three hundred
yards above me. He proved to be a moose
on his way to swim the river to the south
shore. I lay still until he had got so far on
his way that return to the forest would have
been impracticable ; then I sprang to my feet
and ran towards him. What a spring he
gave across the sand and down into the water !
Making an allowance for the force of the cur-
rent, I ran towards the shore. It was a
couple of hundred yards from me, and when
I gained it the moose was already three-parts
across the river, almost abreast where I
stood, swimming for his very life, with his
huge unshapen head thrust out along the sur-
365
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
face, the ears thrown forward, while the
large ripples rolled from before his chest as
he clove his way through the water.
It was a long shot for a rifle, doubly so for
a smooth-bore ; but old experience in many
lands, where the smooth-bore liolds its own
despite all other weapons, had told me that
when you do get a gun to throw a bullet well,
you may rely upon it for distances supposed
to be far beyond the possibilities of such a
weapon; so, in a tenth of the time it has
taken me to say all this, I gave the moose
the right barrel, aiming just about his long
ears. There was a single plunge in the
water; the giant head went down, and all
was quiet. And now to secure the quarry.
Away down stream he floated, showing only
one small black speck above the surface; he
was near the far side, too. Running down
shore I came within calling-distance of the
camp, from which the smoke of Kalder's lire
was already curling above the tree-tops.
Out came Kalder, Jacques, and A . Of
course it was a grizzly, and all tlie broken
flint-guns of the party were suddenly called
into requisition. If it had been a grizzly,
and that I had been retiring before him in
skirmishing order, gods! what a support I
was falling back upon! A 's gun is
already familiar to the reader; Kalder's
beaver-gun went off about one shot in three;
366
THE WILD NUKTII LAND.
and Jacques possessed a weapon (it had
been discarded by aa Indian, and Jacques
had resuscitated it out of the store of all
trades which he possessed an inkling of) the
most extraordinary I had ever seen. Jacques
always spoke of it in the feminine gender.
" She was a good gun, except that a trifle too
much of the powder came out the wrong way.
He would back her to shoot 'plum' if she
would only go off after a reasonable lapse of
time, but it was tiring to him to keep her to
the shoulder for a couple of minutes after he
had pulled her trigger, and then to have her
go off when he was thinking of pulling the
gun-coat over her again." When she was
put away in the canoe, it was always a mat-
ter of some moment to place her so that in
the event of any sudden explosion of her
pent-up wrath, she might discharge herself
harmlessly along the river, and on this ac-
count she generally lay like a stern-chaser
projecting from behind Jacques, and endan-
gering only his paddle.
All these maimed and mutilated weapons
were now brought forth, and such a loading
and priming and hammering began, that, had
it really been a grizzly, he must have been
utterly scared out of all semblance of attack.
Kalder now mastered the position of affairs,
and like an arrow he and Jacques were into
the canoe, and out after the dead moose.
867
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
They soon overhauled him, and, slipping a
line over the young antlers, towed him to the
shore. AVe were unable to lift him altogether
out of the water, so we cut him wp as he lay,
stranded like a whale.
Directly opposite a huge cone mountain
rose up some eight or nine thousand feet
above us, and just ere evening fell over the
scene, his topmost peak, glowing white in
the sunlight, became mirror'd in most faith-
ful semblance in the clear quiet river, while
the life-stream of tlie moose flowed out over
the tranquil surface, dyeing the nearer waters
into brilliant crimson.
If some painter in the exuberance of his
genius had put upon canvas such a strange
contrast of colours, j^eople would have said
it is not true to nature ; but nature has many
truths, and it takes many a long day, and not
a few years' toil, to catch a tenth of them.
And, my dear friend with the eye-glass — you
who know all about nature in a gallery and
Avith a catalogue — you may take my word
for it.
And now, ere quitting, probably for ever,
this grand Peace River Pass — this immense
valley which receives in its bosom so many
other valleys, into whose depths I only caught
a moment's glimpse as we floated by their
outlets — let me say one other word about it.
Since I left the Wild North Land, it has
368
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
been my lot to visit the chief points of inter-
est ill Oregon, California, the Vale of Shasta,
and the Yoseuiite. Shasta is a loftier moun-
tain than any that fcown above the Peace
River Pass, Yosemite can boast its half-
dozen waterfalls, trickling down their thou-
sand feet of rock ; but for wild beauty, for
the singular spectacle of a great river flowing
tranquilly through a stupendous mountain
range, — these mountains presenting at every
reach a hundred varied aspects, — not the
dizzy glory of Shasta nor the rampart preci-
pices of Yosemite can vie with that lonely
gorge far away on the great Unchagah.
On the 9th of May we reached the Forks
of the river, where the two main streams of
the Parsnip and the Findlay came together.
A couple of miles from their junction a sec-
ond small rapid occurs; but, like the first
one, it can be run without difficulty.
Around the point of junction the country
is low and marshy, and when we turned into
the Findlay, it was easy to perceive from the
colour of the water that the river was rising
rapidly.
Some miles above the Forks there is a soli-
tary hut on the south bank of the river. In
this hut dwelt Pete Toy, a miner of vast re-
pute in the northern mining country.
Some ten years ago Pete had paddled his
canoe into these lonely waters. As he went,
209
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
he i)i'Ospected the various Lars Su(hleiily
he struck one of surpassing richness. It
yielded one dollar to the bucket, or one hun-
dred dollars a day to a man's work. Pete
was astonished; he laid up his canoe, built
this hut, and claimed the bar as his property.
For a long time it j'ielded a steady return ;
but even gold has a limit — the bar became
exhausted. Where had all his gold come
from?
Ah, that is the question! Even to-day,
though the bank has been washed year after
year, " it is still rich in colour ; " but the
" pay-dirt " lies too far from the water's edge,
hence the labour is too great.
Well, Pete, the Cornish miner, built his
hut and took out his gold; but th^^t did not
satisfy him. What miner ever yet was satis-
fied? Pete went in for fifty things; he traded
with the Indians, he trapped, he took an In-
dian wife; yet, through all, he maintained a
character for being as honest and as straight-
forward a miner as ever found " a colour "
from Mexico to Cariboo.
My little friend Jacques expected to meet
his old brother miner Pete at his hut, but, as
we came within five miles of it, a beaver
swam across the river. We all fired at him,
and when the smoke had vanished, I heard
Jacques mutter, "Pete's not hereabouts, or
that fellow wouldn't be there." He was
370
THE WILD NOKTII LAND.
right, for, when we readied the Imt an hour
later, we found a notice on the door, saying
that Pete and two friends had departed for
the Ominica just six days earlier, being to-
tally out of all food, and having only their
guns to rely upon. Now this fact of Pete's
absence rendered necessary new arrange-
ments, for here the two courses I have already
allud d to lay open — either to turn south,
along tlie Parsnip; or north and west, along
the Findlay and Ominica.
The current of the Parsnip is regular ; that
of the Ominica is wild and rapid. But the
Parsnip was already rising, and at its spring
level it is almost an impossibility ^o ascend
it, owing to its great depth ; while the Omi-
nica, th( ugh difficult and dangerous in its
canons, is nevertheless possible of ascent,
even in its worst stage of water.
I talked the matter over with Jacques, as
we sat camped on the gold-bar opposite Pete
Toy's house. Fortunately we had ample
supplies of meat ; but some luxuries, such as
tea and sugar, were getting dangerously low,
and flour was almost exhausted. I decided
upon trying the Ominica.
About noon, on the 10th of May, we set
out for the Ominica, with high hopes of find-
ing the ri"er still low enough to allow us to
ascend it.
Ten miles above Toy's hut the Ominica
271
THE WILD NORTfl LAND.
enters the Peace River from the south-westr.
We reached its mouth on the morning of tlie
11th, and found it liigli and rai)id. There
was hard work in store for us, and the diffi-
culties of passing the Great Caiion loomed
ominously big. We pushed on, however,
and that night reached a spot where the river
issued from a large gap in a liigh wall ,f
dark rock. Above, on the summit of this
rock, pine-trees projected over the river.
We were at the door of the Ominica caiion.
The warm weather of last week had done its
Avork, and the Avater rushed from the gate of
the canon in a wild and impetuous torrent.
We looked a moment at the grim gate which
we had to storm on the morrow, and then
puc in to the north shore, where, under broad
and lofty pines, we made our beds for the
night.
The Findlay River, as it is called, after
the fur-trader, Avho first ascended it, has
many large tributaries. It is something like
a huge right hand spread out over the coun-
try, of which the middle finger would be the
main river, and the thumb the Ominica.
There is the North Fork, which closely hugs
the main Rocky Mountain range. There is
the Findlay itself, a magnificent river, flow-
ing from a vast labyrinth of mountains, and
being unchanged in size or apparent volume,
120 miles above the Forks we had lately left.
273
THE WILD NOKTII LAND.
At tliat distance it issnes from a cafion simi-
lar to that at whose mouth we are now
cam[)e(l; and there is the second So-utli Fork,
a river something smaller than tlie Ominica,
from whose mouth it is distant about a hun-
dred miles.
Of these rivers nothing is known. These
few items are the result of chance informa-
tion i^icked up from the solitary miner who
penetrated to this canou's month, and from
the reports which a wandering band of Sicka-
nies give of the vast unknown interior of the
region of the Stickeen. And yet it is all
British territory. It abounds with game ; its
scenery is as wild as mountain peak and
gloomy cafion can make it; it is free from
fever or malaria. In it Nature has locked
lip some of her richest treasures— treasures
which are open to any strong, stout heart
who will venture to grasp them.
I know not how it is, but sometimes it
seems to me that this England of ours is liv-
ing on a bygone reputation ; the sinew is
there without the soul !
It is so easy to be a traveller in an easy-
chair — to lay out a map and run one's finger
over it and say, "This river is the true source
of the Hunkydorum, and that lake finds its
outlet in the Rumtif oozle ; " and it is equally
easy, particularly after our comfortable din-
ner at the club, to stroll over to the meeting
18 273
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
of the Society for the Preservation of Stic-
klebacks in Tahitian Seas, and to prove to
the fashionable audience there assembled,
that a stickleback was the original progenitor
of the human race.
Our modern Briton can be a traveller with-
out any trouble. He is a member of "the
Club," and on the strength of his member-
ship he can criticize " that fellow Burton," or
" that queer fish Palgrave," and prove to you
how, if that " poor devil " Hay ward had tried
the Chittral Pass instead of the Palmirsteppe,
"he would never have come to grief, you
know."
I know one or tv/o excellent idiots, who
fancy they are wits because they belong to
the Garrick. It is quite as easy to be a trav-
eller by simply belonging to a Travellers'
Club.
Now all this would be a very harmless
pastime, if something more serious did not lie
behind it; just as the mania to dress our-
selves in uniform and carry a rifle through
the streets, would also be a very harmless,
if a very useless, pastime, if a graver ques-
tion did not again lie hidden beneath " our
noble Volunteers ; " but the club traveller
and the club soldier are not content Avith the
role of lounging mediocrity for which nature
destined them. They must needs stand be-
tween the spirit of England's better genius,
274
THE WILT) NORTH LAND.
and England's real toilers of the wilds.
They must supervise and criticize and cate-
chize, and generally play the part of Fuzbuz
to the detriment of everything whicli re-
dounds to the true spirit of England's honour
in the fair field of travel and discovery.
Let there be no mistake in this matter.
To those veterans who still stand above the
waves of time, living monuments of Eng-
land's heroism, in Arctic ice or Africa's sun,
we owe all honour and love and veneration.
They are the old soldiers of an army passed
from the world, and when Time sums up the
record of their service here below, it will be
but to hand up the roll to the Tribunal of
the Future.
But it is of the younger race of whom we
would speak — that race who buy with gold
the right to determine what England shall
do, and shall not do, in the wide field of
geographical research; who are responsible
for the wretched exploratory failures of the
past few years; who have allowed the palm
of discovery and enterprise to pass away to
other nations, or to alien sons. But if we
were to say all we think about this matter,
we might only tire the reader, and stop until
doomsday at the mouth of this Black Canon
of the Ominica.
375
CHAPTER XXIII.
The Black Canon — An Ugly Prospect — The Vanished
Boat — We Struggle on — A Forlorn Hope — We
Fail Again — An Unhoped-for Meeting and a
Feast of Joy — The Black Cafion Conquered.
Casting off from camp, on the morning of
the 12th, we pushed right into the mouth of
the canon. At once our troubles began.
The steep walls of smooth rock rose directly
out of the water — sometimes washed by a
torrent, at others beaten by a baekwhirl and
foaming eddy. In the centre ran a rush of
water that nothing could stem. Poling, pad-
dling, clinging with hands and nails to the
rock; often beaten back and always edging
up again, we crept slowly along under the
overhanging cliff, which leaned out two hun-
dred feet above us to hold nj^on its dizzy
verge some clinging pine-tree. In the centre
of the chasm, about half a mile from its
mouth, a wild cataract of foam forbade our
passage ; but after a Avhole morning's labour
we succeeded in bringing the canoe safely to
the foot of this rapid, and moored her in a
quiet eddy behind a sheltering rock. Here
we unloaded, and, clambering up a cleft in
276
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
the canon wall two hundred feet above us,
passed along the top of the cliff, and bore
our loads to the upper or western end of the
canon, fully a mile from the boat. The day
was hot and sweltering, and it was hard
work.
In one of these many migrations between
camp and canoe, it chanced one evening that,
missing the trail, my footsteps led me to the
base of a small knoll, the sides and summit
of which were destitute of trees. Climbing
to the top of this hill I beheld a view of ex-
traordinary beauty. Over the sea of forest,
from the dark green and light green ocean of
tree-tops, the solid mountain mass lay piled
against the east. Below my stand-point the
lirst long reach of the canon opened out ; a
grim fissure in the forest, in the depths of
which the waters caught the reflection of the
sun-lit skies above, glowing brightly between
the walls of gloomy rock deep hidden be-
neath the level rays of the setting sun. I
stood high above the canon, high above the
vast forest which stretched between me and
the mountains ; and the eye, as it wandered
over the tranquil ocean upon whose waves
the isles of light green shade lay gold-crested
in the sunset, seemed to rest upon fresh in-
tervals of beauty, until the solid ramparts
rent and pinnacled, silent and impassive,
caught and rivetted its glance ; as their snow-
877
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
white, iiiutionless liugevs, carved in charac-
ters tliat ever last, the story of earth's loveli-
ness upon the great blue dome of heaven.
We pushed througli the dense underwood,
loaded doAvn with all the paraphernalia of
our travel, and even Cerf-vola carried his
load of boots and moose-meat. Wlien we
had finished carrying our loads, it was time
for dinner; and that over, we set to work at
once for the stiffer labour of hauling the
canoe up the rajtid of the cailon ; for, remem-
berj there was no hope of lifting her, for she
was too heavy, and tlie rocky walls were far
too steep to allow of it. Up along shore,
through rapid and eddy we dragged our craft,
for here the north side had along its l)ase
ledges of rock and bits of shore, and taking
advantage of these, sometimes in the canoe
and sometimes out of it in the water, we
reached at length the last edge or cliff round
which it was possible to proceed at the north
shore.
For a long time we examined the spot, and
the surrounding canon. Jacques and I
climbed up to the top above, and then down
on hands and knees to a ledge from whicli we
could look over into the chasm, and scan its
ugly features, I)eyond a doubt it was ugly
— the rock on which we lay hollowed down
beneath us until it roofed the shore of the
canon with a half cavern, against which a
278
THE WILD NOKTH LAND.
wild wliii'lpool boiled up now and Jigaiii,
sinking suddenly into stillness. Even if we
c.uuld stretch a ling from above the rock to
where our canoe lay below it, she must have
been knocked to atoms in the whirlpool in
her passage beneath the cavern ; l)ut the dis-
tance was too great to stretch a line across.
The next and only course was to make a l)old
crossing from below the rock, and gain the
other shore, up which it was possible to drag
our canoe. Once over, the thing would be
easy enough for at least a couple of hundred
yards more.
AVe climbed back to the canoe and im-
parted the result of our investigation to the
other two men. From the level of the l)oat
the proposed crossing looked very nasty. It
was across a wild rush of water, in the centre
of the caiion, and if we failed to make a
small eddy at the farther shore we must drive
full upon the precipice of rock where, below
us, boiled and seethed the worst rapid in the
canon — a mass of wave, and foam, and mad-
dened surge. Once out of the sheltering
eddy in which we lay watching this Avild
6cene, we would be in the midst of the rush
plose above the rapid. There was no time
to get headway on the canoe. It would
phoot from shelter into furious curi'ent,
and then, if it missed yon little eddy, look
(^)Ut; and if you have any good angels away
27y
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
at home, pray that they uiay be praying for
you — for down that white fall of water you
must go broadside or stern on.
The more we looked at it, the less we liked
it; but it Avas the sole means of passing the
caiion, and retreat came not yet into our
heads. We took our places — Kalder at the
bow, Jacques at the stern, A and I in
the middle ; then Ave hugged the rock for the
last time, and shoved out into the swirl of
Avaters. There Avas no time to think ; Ave
rose and fell ; Ave dipped our paddles in the
rushing waA-es Avith those Avild quick strokes
Avhich men use Avhen life is in the blow; and
then the canon SAViing and rocked for a sec-
ond, and with a Avild yell of Indian Avar-
Avhoop from Kalder, Avhich rose above the
rush of the Avater, Ave Avere in the eddy at
the farther shore.
It Avas Avell done. On again up the canon
Avith line from rock to rock, bit by bit, until,
as the sun began to slope Ioav upon the forest,
we reached the foot of the last fall — the
stiffest Ave had yet breasted. AboA^e it lies
our cami> upon the north shore ; aboA^e it Avill
be easy Avork — Ave Avill have passed the worst
of the Ominica River.
Made bold by former victory Ave passed
our line round the rock, and bent our shoul-
ders to haul the canoe up the slant of Avater.
Kalder with a long pole held the frail craft
380
THE WILD XOKTII LAND.
out from the rock. A and I were on
the line, and Jacques was running up to
assist us, when suddenly there came upon the
rope a fierce strain ; all at once the canoe
seemed to have the strength of half a dozen
runaway horses. It spun us round, we threw
all our strength against it, and snap Avent the
rope midway over the water; the boat liad
suddenly sheered, and all was over. We
had a second line fastened to the bow ; this
line was held by Kalder at the moment of
the accident, but it was in loose coils about
him, and of no service to stay the downward
rush. Worse than all, the canoe, now going
like an arrow down the rapid, tightened the
tangled coils around Kalder' s legs, and I saw
Avith horror that he ran every chance of being
dragged feet foremost from the smooth rock
on which he stood, into the boiling torrent
beneath.
Quicker than thought he realized his peril ;
he sprang from the treacherous folds, and
dragged with all his strength the quick-run-
ning rope clear of his body; and tlien, like
the Indian he was, threw all his weight to
stay the canoe.
It was useless ; his line snapped like ours
had done, and away went the canoe down
the surge of water — down the lip of the fall
— away, away — bearing with her our sole
means of travel through the trackless wilder-
iibl
THE WILD NORTit LAND.
iiess! We ci'ouched together on the high
rock, which commanded, a long view down
the Black Canon, and gazed wistfully after
our vanishing boat.
In one instant we were reduced to a most
wretched state. Our canoe was gone; but
that was not half our loss— our meat and tent
had also gone with her ; and we were left on
the south shore of the river, while a deep,
wide and rapid stream rolled between us and
our cam}), and we had no axe wherewith to
cut trees for a raft — no line to lash them to-
gether. Night was coming on ; we were
without food, shipwrecked in the wilderness.
AVhen the canoe had vanished, we took
stock of all these things, and then deter-
mined on a course. It was to go back along
the upper edge of the canon to the entrance
opposite our camping-place of the last night,
there to make a raft from some logs which
had been collected for a cache in the previous
yeai', then to put together whatever line or
piece of string we possessed, and, making a
raft, endeavour to cross to the north shore,
and thus gain our camp above the caiion.
It was a long piece of Avork, and we were
already tired with the day's toil, but it was
the sole means by which we could ho[)e to
get back to our camp and to food again.
After that we would deliberate upon further
movements.
2ya
THE WII>1) ^'OKTM LAN[).
When men come heavily to grief in any
enterprise, the full gravity of the disaster
does not break all at once upon their minds ;
nay, I have generally found that the first
view of the situation is the ludicrous one.
One is often inclined to laugh over some
plight, which means anything but a laughing
matter in reality.
AVe made our way to the mouth of the
cailon, and again held a council. Jacques
did not like the idea of the raft; he would
go down through the Beaver swamps along
the south shore and, it might be, find the
canoe stranded on some beach lower down.
Anyhow he would search, and next morning
he would come up again along the river and
hail us across the water in our camp with
tidings of his success : so we parted.
We at once set to woik to make our raft.
We upset the logs of the old cache, floated
them in the water, and lashed them together
as best we could, with all the bits of line we
could fasten together; then we got three
rough poles, took our places on the rickety
raft, and put out into the turbid river. Our
raft sank deep into the water; down, down
we went; no bottom for the poles, which
we used as paddles in the current At last
we reached the shore of a large island, and
our raft was thrown violently amidst a pile
of (U'iftwood We scrambled ou shore, broke
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
our way through drift and thicket to the
upper end of the island, and found a wide
channel of water separating us still from the
north shore. Wading up to our middles
across a shallow part of this channel, we
finally reached the north shore and our camp
of the previous night ; from thence we worked
through the forest, and just at dusk we struck
our camp of the morning. Thus, after many
vicissitudes and much toil, we had got safely
back to our camp; and though the outlook
was dreary enough — for three large rivers
and seventy miles of trackless forest lay be-
tween us and the mining camp to which we
were tending, while all hope of assistance
seemed cut off from us — still, after a hearty
supper, we lay down to sleep, ready to meet
on the morrow whatever it might bring
forth.
Early next morning the voice of little
Jacques sounded from the other side. He
had had a rough time of it; he had gone
through slough and swamp and thicket, and
finally he had found the canoe stranded on
an island four miles below the caiion, half
full of water, but otherwise not much the
worse for her trip. " Let us make a raft and
go down, and we would all pull her u]3 again,
and everything would yet be right." So,
taking axes and line with us, we set off once
more for the mouth of the canon, and built a
2^
THE WILD NOHTFI LAND.
])ig raft of dry logs, and puslied it out into
the current.
Jacques was on the opposite shore, so we
took hiui on our raft, and away we went
down current at the rate of seven miles an
hour. We reached the island where our cast-
away canoe lay, and once more found our-
selves the owners of a boat. Then Ave poled
up to the caiion again, and, Avorking hard,
succeeded in landing the canoe safely behind
the rock from Avhich we had made our cele-
brated crossing on the previous day. The
day was hot and fine, the leaves of the cotton-
Avood Avere green, the straAv berries Avere in
blossom, and in the morning a humming-bird
had fluttered into the camp, carrying the
glittering colours which he had gathered in
the tropics. But these proofs of summer
boded ill for us, for all around the glittering
hills Avere sending down their foaming tor-
rents to flood the Ominica.
On the niglit of the 13th the river, already
high, rose nearly tAvo feet. The morning of
the 14th came, and, as soon as breakfast Avas
over, we set out to make a last attempt to
force the caiion. The programme Avas to be
the same as that of tAvo days ago ; to cross
above the rapid, and then Avith double-tAvisted
line to drag the canoe up the fatal fall ! We
reached the canoe and took our places the
same as before. This time, however, there
285
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
was a vague feeling of uneasiness in every
one's mind; it may have been because we
went at the work coldly, unwarmed by i)ie-
vious exercise; but despite the former suc-
cessful attempt, we felt the presage of dis-
aster ere we left the sheltering rock. Once
more the word was given, and we shot into
the boiluig flood. There was a moment's
wild struggle, during which we worked with
all the strength of despair. A second of
suspense, and then we are borne backwards
— slowly, faster, yet faster — until with a
rush as of wings, and amid a roar of mad-
dened water, we go downwards towards the
cailon's wall.
" The rock ! the rock ! — keep her from the
rock!" roared Jacques. We might as well
have tried' to stop an express train. We
struck, but it was the high bow, and the blow
split us to the centre; another foot and we
must have been shivered to atoms. And
now, ere there was time for thought, we were
rushing, stern foremost, to the edge of the
great rapid. There was no escaj^e ; we were
as helpless as if we had been chained in that
black canon. "Put steerway on her!"
shouted Jacques, and his paddle dipped a
moment in the surge and spray. Another
instant and we were in it; there was a plunge
— a dash of water on every side of us ; the
waves hissed around and above us, seeming
286
THE WILT) NORTH LAND.
to say, " Now we liave got you ; for two
(lays you have been edging along us, flank-
Nig us, and tooling us; but now it is (mr
turn ! "
The shock with Avhich we struck into the
mass of breakers seemed but the prelude to
total wreck, and the first sensation 1 experi-
enced was one of surprise that the canoe was
still under us. But after the first plunge
she rose well, and amidst the surge and spray
we could see the black walls of the canon fiit-.
ting by us as we glanced through the boiling
flood. All this was but the work of a mo-
ment, and lo ! breathless and dripping, with
canoe half filled, we lay safe in quiet eddies
where, below the fall, the water rested after
its strife.
Behind the rock we lay for a few minutes
silent, while the flooded canoe rose and fell
upon the swell of the eddy.
If, after this escape, we felt loth to try the
old road again, to venture a third time upon
that crossing above the rapid, let no man
hold our courage light.
We deliberated long upon what was best
to be done. Retreat seemed inevitable ; Kal-
der was strongly opposed to another attempt;
the canoe was already broken, and with
another such blow she must go to pieces.
At last, and reluctantly, we determined to
carry all our baggage back from the camp, to
287
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
load up the boat, and, ahandoning the Black
Canon and the Oniinica altogether, seek
through the Tarsnip River an outlet towards
the South. It was our only resource, and it
Avas a poor one. ^^'earily we dragged our
baggage back to the canoe, and loaded her
again. Then, casting out into the current,
we ran swiftly doAvn the remainder of the
caiion, and shot from beneath the shadows
of its sombre walls. As we emerged from
the mouth into the broader river, the sheen
of coloured blankets struck our sight on the
south shore.
In the solitudes of the North one is sur-
prised at the rapidity with which the eye per-
ceives the first indication of human or animal
existence, but the general absence of life in
tlie wilderness makes its chance presence
easily detected.
We put to shore. There was a camp close
to the spot where we had built our first raft
on tlie night of the disaster; blankets, three
fresh beavers, a bundle of tra]>s, a bag of
flour, and a pair of miner's boots. The last
item engaged Jacques's attention. He looked
at the soles, and at once declared them to be-
long to no less an individual than Pete Toy,
the Cornish miner; but where, meantime,
was Pete? A further inspection solved that
question too. Pete was " portaging " his
load from the upper to the lower end of the
288
THE WILD NORTH [.AND.
caiion — lie evidently dreaded tlie (looded
chasm too luucli to attem])t its descent with
a loaded canoe. In a little wliile ap[)eared
the missing Pete, carrying on his back a huge
load. It was as we had anticipated — his
canoe lay above the rapids, ours was here
below. Happy coincidence ! We would ex-
change crafts ; Pete would load his goods in
our boat, Ave would once again carry our bag-
gage to the upper end of the caiion, and there,
taking his canoe, pursue our western way.
It was indeed a most remarkable meeting to
us. Here were we, after long days of use-
less struggle, after many dangers and hair-
breadth escapes amid the whirlpools and
rapids of the Black Chasm, about to abandon
the Ominica River altogether, and to seek by
another route, well known to be almost im-
passable at high water, a last chance of
escape from the difficulties that beset us;
and now, as moody and discouraged, we
turned our faces to begin the hopeless task,
our first glance was greeted, on eanerging
from the dismal prison, by a most unlooked-
for means of solving all our difficulties. Lit-
tle wonder if we were in high spirits, and if
Pete, the Cornish miner, seemed a friend in
need.
But before anything could be done to carry
into effect this new arrangement, Pete insisted
upon our having a royal feast. He had
19 289
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
brought Avitli liiiu fiom tlie iniiiiiig oanip
many luxuries; he had bacon, and beans,
and dried ajjples, and sugar, and flour, and
we poor toilers had only moose meat and
frozen potatoes and sugarless tea in our les-
sening larders. So Pete set vigorously to
work ; he baked and fried, and cut and sliced,
and talked all the time, and in less than half
an hour laid out his feast upon the ground.
I have often meditated over that repast in
after-time, and wondered if Pete really pos-
sessed the magic power of transmuting the
baser victuals known to us as pork, beans,
and molasses into golden comestibles, or had
scarcity and the wilderness anything to say
to it? It was getting late when we broke up
from the feast of Toy, and, loading once
more all our movables upon our backs, set
out to stagger for the last time to the west
end of the portage. There the canoe of the
Cornish miner stood ready for our service;
but the sun was by this time below the ridges
of the Ominica Mountains, and we pitched
our camp for the night beneath the spruce-
trees of the southern shore.
At break of day next morning we held our
way to the west. It was a fresh, fair dawn,
soft with the odours of earth and air; be-
hind us lay the l^lack Cafion, conquered at
last; and as its sullen roar died away in dis-
tance, and before our canoe rose the snow-
290
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
covered peaks of the Central Coluiuhiaii
range, now looming but a few miles distant,
I drew a deep breath of satisfaction — the
revulsion of long, anxious hours.
291
CHAPTER XXIV.
The Untiring Over-estimates his Powers — He is not
Particular as to the Nature of liis Dinner — Toil
and Temper — Farewell to the Ominica — Ger-
mansen — The Mining Camp — Celebrities.
In the struggle which it was our daily
work to wage with Nature, whose dead
weight seemed to be bent on holding us back,
the Avear and tear of the things of life had
been considerable. Clothes we will say noth-
ing of — it is their function to go — but our
rough life had told heavily against less per-
ishable articles. My aneroid was useless;
my watch and revolvers slept somewhere be-
neath the Peace River ; ammunition was re-
duced to a few rounds, to be used only upon
state occasions ; but to make up for every loss,
and to counterbalance each misfortune, Cerf-
vola had passed in safety through rapid,
wreck, and canon. On several occasions he
had had narrow escapes. A fixed idea per-
vaded his mind that he was a good hunting-
dog ; it was an utterly erroneous impression
upon his part, but he still clung to it with
the tenacity I have not unfrequently seen
evinced by certain sporting individuals who
292
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
fancy themselves sportsmen ; and as tlie im-
pression sometimes leads its human holders
into strange situations, so also was Cerf-vola
beti-ayed into dangers by this unfortunate be-
lief in his sporting propensities. A very
keen sense of smell enabled him to detect the
l^resence of bird ol" beast on shore or forest,
but absence from the canoe usually obliged
him to swim the swollen river — a feat which
resulted in his being carried down sometimes
out of sight on the impetuous torrent. He
swam slowly, but strongly, and his bushy
tail seemed incapable of submersion, remain-
ing always upon the surface of the water.
But about this time an event occurred which
by every rule of science sliould have proved
fatal to him.
One evening, it was the 16th of May, our
larder being low, we camped early at the
mouth of a river called the Ozalinca. Beaver
were plentiful, fish were numerous; and
while I went in quest of the former with my
gun, Jacques got ready a few large cod-hooks,
with bait and line. I pushed my way up the
Ozalinca, and soon reached a beaver-dam.
Stealing cautiously to the edge, I saw one old
veteran busily engaged in the performance of
his evening swim ; every now and again he
disappeared beneath the crystal water, rising
again to the surface to look around him with
evident satisfaction; presently a younger
?93
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
beaver appeared, and began to nibble some
green willows beneatb the water. They were
a little too far to afford a certain shot, so I
waited, watching the antics of this strangest
denizen of American rivers. All at once the
old veteran caught sight of me ; his tail
flogged loudly on the water, and down he
went out of sight. I waited a long time, but
he never reappeared, and I Avas obliged to
content myself with a couple of ducks ere
night closed over the pond.
When I reached the camp on the Ominica
River my three companions wore long faces :
the cause Avas soon told. Jacques had baited
his hooks with moose-meat; in an evil mo-
ment he had laid one of these upon the shore
ere casting it into the water; Cerf-vola had
swallowed bait, hook, and line in a single
mouthful; the hook was no mere salmon
hook, but one fully two inches in length, and
of proportionate thickness — a full-sized cod-
hook. I turned to the dog ; he lay close to
my outspread buffalo robe, Avatching the
preparation of su^jper ; he looked as unmoved
as though he had recently swallowed a bit of
pemmican. One niight have fancied from
his self-satisfied appearance that large fish-
hooks had ever formed a favourite article of
food with him. I gave him the greater por-
tion of my supper, and he went to sleep as
usual at my head. I have merely to add
394
TlIK WILD NOKTII LAND.
tliat from tliat day to tliis he lias bern in
most excellent health. I can only attiibnte
this fact to the quantity of fish he had con-
sumed in his career; a moderate computation
would allow him many thousand white fish
and pike in the course of his life and as he
only made one mouthful of a large white
iish, the addition of a fish-hook in the matter
was of no consequence.
Passing the mouths of the ]\Iesalinca and
the Ozalinca — two Avild, swollen torrents
flowing through a labyrinth of mountain
peaks from the north-west — we entered, on
the third day after leavhig tlie canon, the
great central snowy range of Xorth-British
Columbia. The Ominica was here only a
slant of Avater, 100 yards in breadth ; it
poured down a raging flood with a velcjcity
difficult to picture.
We worked slowly on, now holding by the
bushes that hung out from the fprest shore,
now passing ropes round rocks and tree-
stumps, and dragging, poling, pushing, as
best we could. The unusual toil brought out
the worst characteristics of my crew. Kalder
worked like a horse with a savage temjjcr,
and was in a chronic state of laying violent
hands upon the English miner, who, i)oor
fellow, worked his best, but failed to satisfj'^
the expectations of the more athletic Indian.
It was no easy matter to keep the peace be-
395
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
tween them, and once, midway in a rapid,
my Indian leaped past me in the canoe,
seized the unoffending miner, and hurled him
to the bottom of the boat. This was too
much. I caught hold of a paddle and quickly
informed my red servitor that if he did not
instantly loosen his hold, my paddle would
descend upon his ]iot-tempered head; he
cooled a little, and we resumed our upward
way.
]^>ut for all this Kalder was a splendid fel-
low. In toil, in difficulty, in danger, alone
he was worth two ordinary men ; and in
camp no better wild man lived to cut, to
carry, or to cook ; to pitch a tent, or portage
a load — no, not from Yukon to wild Hud-
son's Bay.
On the night of the 19th of May we reached
the mouth of the Wolverine Creek, and
camped at last by quiet water. We were
worn and tired from continuous toil. The
ice-cold water in which we so frequently
waded, and which made the pole-handles
like lumps of ice to the touch, had begun to
tell on hands and joints. Nevertheless,
when at night the fire dried our dripping
clothes and warmed us again, the plate of
pemmican and cup of tea were relished, and
we slept that sleep which is only known when
the pine-trees rock the tired wanderer into
forgetfulness.
396
THE AVILI) NORTH LAND.
The last rapid was passed, and now before
us lay a broad and gentle current, lying in
long serpentine bends amid lofty mountains.
So, on the morning of the 20th, we paddled
up towards the mining camp with easy
strokes. Around us lay misty mountains,
showing coldly through cloud-rift and billowy
vapour. The Jiigh altitude, to which by such
incessant labour we had worked our way, was
plainly visible in the backward vegetation.
We were nearing the snow-line once more,
but still the sheltered valleys were bursting
forth into green, and spring was piercing the
inmost fastness of these far-north hills.
And now I parted with the Ominica. It
lay before us, far stretching to the westward,
amid cloud-capped cliffs and snowy peaks:
known to the gold-seeker for seventy miles
yet higher and deeper into the land of moun-
tains, and found there to be still a large,
strong river, flowing from an unknown west.
And yet it is but one of that score of rivers
which, 2,o00 miles from these mountains,
seek the Arctic Sea, through the mighty gate-
way of the Mackenzie.
Late on the evening of the 20th of May I
reached the mining camp of Germansen, three
miles south of the Ominica Eiver. A queer
place was this mining camp of Germansen,
the most northern and remote of all the
mines on the American continent,
397
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
Deep in the bottom of a valley, from whose
steep sides the forest had been cleared or
burned off, stood some dozen or twenty well-
built wooden houses ; a few figures moved in
the dreary valley, ditches and drains ran
along the hillsides, and liere and there men
were at work with pick and shovel in the va-
ried toil of gold-mining.
The history of Germansen Creek had been
the history of a thousand other creeks on the
Avesteru continent. A roving miner had
struck the glittering pebbles ; the news had
spread. From Montana, from Idaho, from
California, Oregon, and Cariboo, men had
flocked to this new find in the far north. In
1871, 1,200 miners had forced their way
through almost incredible hardships to the
new field; provisions reached a fabulous
price ; flour and pork sold at six and seven
shillings a pound ! The innumerable sharks
that prey upon the miner flocked in to reap
the harvest; some struck the golden dust,
but the majority lost everything, and for
about the twentieth time in their lives became
" dead broke ; " little was known of the se-
verity of the season, and many protracted the
time of their departure for more southern
winter quarters. Suddenly, on their return
march, the winter broke; horses and mules
perished miserably along the forest trail. At
length the Frazer Kiver was reached, a few
298
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
canoes Avere obtained, but the ice was fast
filling in the river. The men crowded into
the canoes till they were filled to the edge ;
three wretched miners could find no room;
they were left on the shore to their fate ; their
comrades pushed away. Two or three days
later the three castaways were found frozen
stiff on the inhospitable shore.
The next summer saw fewer miners at the
Camp, and this summer saw fewer still ; but
if to-morrow another strike were t© be made
500 miles to the north of this remote Camp,
hundreds would rush to it, caring little
whether their bones were left to mark the
long forest trail. The miner has ever got his
dream of an El Dorado fresh and sanguine.
No disaster, no repeated failure will discour-
age him. His golden paradise is always
" away up " in some half-inaccessible spot in
a wilderness of mountains. Nothing daunts
him in this wild search of his. Mountains,
rivers, cafions are the enemies he is constantly
wrestling with Nature has locked her treas-
ures of gold and silver in deep mountain
caverns, as though she would keep them from
the daring men who strive to rob her. But
she cannot save them. When one sees this
wonderful labour, this delving into the bowels
of rock and shingle, this turning and twist-
ing of river channel, and sluicing and dredg-
ing and blasting, going on in these strange
299
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
out-of-the-way places, the thought occurs, if
but the tenth part of this toil were expended
by these men in the ordinary avocations of
life, they would all be rich or comfortable.
The miner cannot settle down — at least for a
long time — the life has a strange fascination
for him ; he Avill tell you that for one haul he
has drawn twenty blanks; he Avill tell you
that he has lost more money in one night at
"faro," or "poker," than would suffice to
have kept him decently for five years; he
will tell you that he has frequently to put
two dollars into the ground in order to dig
one dollar out of it, and yet he cannot give
up the wild, free life. He is emphatically a
queer genius ; and no matter what his coun-
try, his characteristics are the same. It
would be impossible to discipline him, yet I
think that, Avere he amenable to even a sem-
blance of restraint and command, 40,000
miners might conquer a continent.
His knowledge of words is peculiar; he has
a thousand phrases of his own which it would
be needless to follow him into. "Don't pre-
varicate, sir ! " thundered a British Colum-
bian judge to a witness from the mines,
"don't prevaricate, sir!" "Can't help it,
judge," answered the miner. "Ever since I
got a kick in the mouth from a mule that
knocked my teeth out, I prevaricate a good
deal."
300
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
In the bottom of the valley, between the
wooden houses and the rushing creek of Ger-
mansen, I pitched my tent for a short time,
and in the course of a few days had the hon-
our of becoming acquainted, either personally
or by reputation, with Doe English, Dancing
Bill, Black Jack, Dirty-faced Pete, 'Ned
Walsh, Rufus Sylvester, and several others
among the leading "boys" of the northern
mining country. I found them men who
under the rough garb of mountain miners had
a large and varied experience in wild life and
adventure — generous, free-hearted fellows
too, who in the race for gold had not thrown
off as dead weight, half as much of human
kindness as many of their brothers, who, on
a more civilized course, start for the same race
too.
801
CHAPTER XXY.
Mr. Eufus Sylvester — The Uutiiing Developes a
New Sphere of Usefulness — jMauseu — A Last
Landmark.
Ox the evening of my arrival at Germansen
Mr. Rufus Sylvester appeared from the south,
carrying the mail for the camp. Eleven days
earlier he had started from Quesnelle on the
Erazer River; the trail was, he said, in a
very bad state ; snow yet lay five feet deep
on the Bald, and Nation River Mountains;
the rivers and streams were running bank-
high ; he had swum his horses eleven times,
and finally left them on the south side of the
Bald Mountains, coming on on foot to his
destination. The distance to Quesnelle was
about 330 miles. Such was a summary of
his report.
The prospect was not encouraging; but
where movement is desired, if people wait
until prospects become encouraging, they will
be likely to rest stationary a long time. My
plan of movement to the south was this : I
would dispense with everything save those
articles absolutely necessary to travel ; food
and clotliing would be brought to the lowest
302
THE WILD NOHTir T.AXD.
limits, and then, witli our t^oods on our shoul-
ders, and with Cerf-vola carrying on his hack
a load of diy moat sutfit-ieut to till his stomach
during ten days, we would set out on foot to
cross the Bald Mountains. Thirty miles
from the mining Camp, at the south side o.f
the mountain range, Rufus Sylvester had left
a horse and a mule ; we would recover them
again, and, packing our goods upon them,
make our way to Fort St. James on the wild
shores of Stuart's Lake — midway on our
journey to where, on the bend of the Frazer
River, the first vestige of civilization woiM
greet us at the city called Quesnelle.
It was the 25th of May when, having
loaded my goods upon the back of a Hydah
Indian from the coast, and giving Kalder a
lighter load to carry, I set off with Cerf-vola
for the south. Idleness during the past
three weeks had produced a considerable
change in the person of the Untiring. He
had grown fat and round, and it was no easy
matter to strap his bag of dry meat upon his
back so as to prevent it performing the feat
known, in the case of a saddle on a horse's
back, by the term "turning." It appeared
to be a matter of perfect indifference to the
Untiring whether the meat destined for his
stomach was carried beneath that portion of
his body or above his back; he pursued the
even tenour of his way in either case, but a
808
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
disposition on liis part to " squat " in every
pool of water or patch of mud along the trail,
perfectly regardless of the position of his ten
days' rations, had the effect of quickly
changing its nature, when it was underneath
liim, from dry meat to very wet meat, and
making the bag which held it a kind of water-
cart for the drier portions of the trail.
Twelve miles from Germansen Creek stood
the other mining camp of Hansen. More
ditches, more drains, more miners, more
drinking; two or three larger saloons; more
sixes and sevens of diamonds and debilitated
looking kings and queens of spades littering
the dusty street ; the wrecks of " faro " and
" poker " and " seven up " and " three-card
monte ; " more Chinamen and Hydah squaws
than Germansen could boast of; and Hansen
lay the same miserable-looking place that its
older rival had already appeared to me.
Yet every person was kind and obliging.
Hr. Grahame, postmaster, dealer in gold-
dust, and general merchant, cooked with his
own hands a most excellent repast, the dis-
cussion of which was followed by further in-
troductions to mining celebrities. Prominent
among many Joes and Davises and Petes and
Bills, I recollect one well-known name ; it
Avas the name of Smith. We have all known,
I presume, some person of that name. We
liave also known innumerable prefixes to it,
304
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
such as Sydney, Washington, Ihickingham,
&('., Sic, but liere at jMansen dwelt a com-
pletely new Sniitli. No hero of ancient or
modern times had been called on to supply a
prefix or a second name, but in the person of
Mr. Peace Kiver Smith I recognized a new
title for the old and familiar family.
Mr. Stirling's saloon at Mansen was a very
fair representation of what, in this country,
we would call a "public house," but in some
respects the saloon and the public differ
widely. The American saloon is eminently
patriotic. Western America, and indeed
America generally, takes its " cocktails " in
the presence of soul-stirring mementoes;
from above the lemons, the coloured wine-
glass, the bunch of mint, and the many alco-
holic mixtures which stand behind the bar —
General Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and
President Grant look placidly n-pon the tip-
pling miner ; but though Mr. Stirling's saloon
could boast its card-tables, its patriotic pic-
tures, and its many " sHngs " and "juleps," in
one important respect it fell far short of the
ideal mining paradise. It was not a hnrdy-
house ; music and dancing were both wanting.
It Avas a serious drawback, but it was ex-
plained to me that Mansen had become too
much " ])layed out " to afford to pay the piper,
and hurdies had never penetrated to the fast-
nesses of the Peace River mines.
20 305
THE WILD XORTII LAND.
AVhen the last mining hero had departed,
I lay down in Mr. Grahame's sanctum, to
snatch a few hours' sleep ere the first dawn
would call us to the march. I lay on the
postmaster's bed while that functionary got
together his little bags of gold-dust, his few
letters and mail matters for my companion,
Rufus Sylvester the express man. Tliiswork
occupied him until shortly before dawn, when
he abandoned it to again resume the duties
of cook in preparing my breakfast. Day was
just breaking over the pine-clad hills as we
bade adieu to this kind host, and with rapid
strides set out through the sleeping camp.
Kalder, theHydah Indian, and the Untiring,
had preceded us on the previous evening, and
I was alone with the express man, Mv. Rufus
Sylvester. He carried on his back a small,
compact, but heavy load, some GOO ounces of
gold-dust being the weightiest item ; but,
nevertheless, he crossed with vapid steps over
the frozen ground. We carried in our hands
snow-shoes for the mountain range still lying
some eight miles away. The trail led o'er
hill and through valley, gradually ascending
for the first six miles, until through breaks
in the pines I could discern the snowy
ridges towards which we Avere tending. Soon
the white patches lay around us in the for-
est, but the frost was severe, and the surface
was hard under our moccasins. Finding the
306
THE WILD NOHTII LAND.
snow-cnist was sufficient to bear our weiglit,
we niched the snow-shoes and held our course
up the mountain. Deeper grew tliesnow;
thinner and smaller became the ])ines —
dwarf things that hung Avisps of blue-grey
moss from their shrunken limbs. At last
they ceased to be around us, and the summit-
ridges of the Bald IMountain spread out
under the low-hung clouds. The big white
ptarmigan bleated like sheep in the thin
frosty air. We crossed the topmost ridge,
where snow ever dwells, and saw beneath a
far-stretching valley. I turned to take a
last look to the north ; the clouds had lifted,
the sun had risen some time ; away over an
ocean of peaks lay the lofty ridge 1 had
named Galty More a fortnight earlier, Avhen
emerging from the Black Canon. He rose
above us then the monarch of the range ;
now he lay far behind, one of the last land-
marks of the Wild North Land.
We began to descend; again the sparse
trees were around us; the snow gradually
lessened ; and after five hours of incessant
and rapid walking we reached a patch of
dry grass, where Kalder, the English miner,
and the Indians with the horses were await-
ing us.
307
CHAPTER XXVI.
Britisli Columbia— Boundaries Again— Juan de Fu^a
— Carver — The Shining Mountains — Jacob As-
tor — The Monarch of Sahnon — Oregon — "Rid-
ing and Tying " — Nation Lake — The Pacific.
We have been a long time now in that
portion of the American continent which is
known as British Columbia, and yet we have
said but little of its early life, or how it
came into the limits of a defined colony.
Sometime about that evening when we
lay camped (noAV a long way back) upon the
hill where the grim face of Chimeroo looked
blankly out upon the darkening wilderness,
we entered for the first time the territory
which bears the name of British Columbia.
Nature, who, whether she forms a flower
or a nation, never makes a mistake, had
drawn on the northern continent of America
her own boundaries. She had put the Rocky
Mountains to mark the two great divisions of
East and West America, But the theory of
natural boundaries appears never to have
elicited from us much support, and in the
instance now under consideration we seem to
308
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
have gone not a little out of our way to evince
our disai^probation of Nature's doings.
It was the business of the Imperial Gov-
ernment a few years ago to define the bound-
aries of the new province to which they were
giving a Constitution.
The old North-West Fur Company had
rested satisfied with the Rocky Mountain
frontier, but in the new document the East-
ern line was defined as follows: "And to
the east, from the boundary of the United
States northwards to the Rocky Mountains,
and the one hundred and twentieth meridian
of West Lonrjitu.de.'" Unfortunately, although
the one hundred and twentieth meridian is
situated for a portion of its course in the
main range of the mountains, it does not lie
altogether Avithin them.
The Rocky Mountains do not run north
and south, but trend considerably to the
west; and the 120th meridian passes out into
the prairie country of the Peace River. In
looking at this strangely unmeaning frontier,
where nature had already given such an ex-
cellent " divide,''' and one which had always
been adopted by the early geographer, it
seems only rational to suppose that the
framers of the new line lay under the impres-
sion that mountain and meridian were in one
and the same line. Nor supposing such to
be the case, would it be, by any means, the
309
tup: wild north land.
first time tliat such an error had been made
by tliose whose work it was to frame our
Colonial destiny.
Well, let us disregard this rectification of
boundary, and look at British Columbia as
Nature had made it.
When, some seventy years ago, the Fur
Company determined to push their trade into
the most remote recesses of the unknown
territory lying before them, a few advent-
urers following this same course which I
have lately taken, found themselves sud-
denly in a labyrintli of mountain. These
men named the mountain land "New Cale-
donia," for they had been nurtured in far
Highland homes, and the grim pine-clad
steeps of this wild region, and the blue lakes
lying lapped amid the mountains, recalled
the Lochs and Bens of boyhood's hours.
'Twas long before they could make much of
this new dominion. Mountains rose on every
side ; white giants bald with age, wrapt in
cloud, and cloaked with pines. Cragged and
scarped, and towering above valleys filled
with boulders, as though in bygone ages,
when the old peaks had been youngsters
they had ])elted each other with Titanic
stones; wliich, falling short, had filled the
deep ravines that lay between them.
])ut if the mountains in thei]- vast irregu-
larity (lefiecl the early explorers, the rivers
5510
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
were even still more perplexing. Moun-
tains have a right to behave in an irregular
kind of way, but rivers are usually sup-
posed to conduct themselves on more peace-
ful principles. In New Caledonia they had
apparently forgotten this rule; they played
all manner of tricks. They turned and twisted
behind the backs of hills, and came out just
the very way they shouldn't have come out.
They rose often close to tlie sea, and then
ran directly away from it. They pierced
through mountain I'anges in caiions and
chasms ; and the mountains threw down
stones at them, but that only made them
laugh all the louder, as they raced away from
canon to caiion. Sometimes they grew
wicked, and, turned viciously and bit, and
worried the bases of the hills, and ate trees
and rocks and landslips; and then, over all
their feuds and bickerings, came Time at
last, as he always does, and threw a veil
over the conflict ; a veil of pine-trees.
But in one respect both mountain and river
seemed in perfect accord; they would keep
the land to themselves and their child, the
wild Indian; but the white man, the child of
civilization, must be kept out. Nevertheless
the white man came in, and he named the
rivers after his own names, tliough they
still laughed him to scorn, and were useless
to his commerce. Gradually this white fur-
yil
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
huntt'i' s[)re;ul himself thvougli the land ; lie
passed the Frazer, reached the Columbia, and
gained its mouth; and here a strange rival
presented himself. "We must go back a little.
Once upon a time a Greek sailor was cast
away on the shore, where the north-most
Mexican coast merged into unknown lands.
He remained for years a wanderer; but
when finally fate threw him again upon
Adriatic coasts, he was the narrator of strange
stories, and the projector of far distant en-
terprises.
North of California's shore, there was, he
said, a large island. Between this island
and the mainland lay a gulf which led to
those other gulfs, which, on the Atlantic
verge, Cartier and Hudson had made known
to Europe.
In these days kings and viceroys gladly
listened to a wanderer's story. The Greek
was sent back to the coasts he had discov-
ered, commissioned to fortify the Straits he
called Annian, against English ships seeking
through this outlet the northern passage to
Cathay.
Over the rest time has drawn a cloud. It
is said that the Greek sailor failed and died.
His story became matter of doubt. More
than oOO years passed away ; Cook sought
in vain for the strait, and the gulf beyond it.
. Auotlier English sailor Avas more fortuu-
55 13
THE WILD XOKTII LAND.
ate ; and iu 1756 a lonely ship })as.se(l be-
tween the island and the mainland, and the
long, doubtful channel was named "Juan
de Fuqa," after the nickname of the forgot-
ten Greek.
To fortify the Straits of Annian was deemed
the dream of an enthusiast ; yet by a strange
coincidence, we see to-day its realization,
and the Island of San Juan, our latest loss,
has now upon its shores a hostile garrison,
bent upon closing the Straits of Fuca against
the ships of England.
North of California, and south of British
Columbia, there lies a vast region. Rich in
forest, prairie, snow-clad peak, alluvial mead-
ow, hill pasture, and rolling table-land. It
has all that nature can give a nation ; its cli-
mate is that of England; its peaks are as
lofty as Mont Blanc; its meadows as rich as
the vales of Somerset.
The Spaniard knew it by repute, and
named it Oregon, after the river which we
call the Columbia. Oregon was at that time
the entire west of the Rocky JNIountains, to
the north of California. Oregon had long
been a mystic land, a realm of fable. Carver
the indefatigable, had striven to reach the
great river of the west, whose source lay near
that of the Mississippi. The Indians had
told him that where the IMississippi had its
birth in the shining mountains, another vast
•dVi
THE AVI LI) NORTH LAN'D.
river also rose, and flowed v/est into the
shoreless sea. Carver failed to reach the
shining nionntains ; his dream remained to
him. "Probably," he writes, "in future
ages they (the mountains) may be found to
contain more rielies in their bowels than
those of Indostan or Malabar, or that are
produced on the golden Gulf of Guinea, nor
will I except even the Peruvian mines." To-
day that dream comes true, and from the
caverns of the shining mountains men draw
forth more gold and silver than all these
golden realms enumerated by the baffled
Carver ever produced. But the road which
Carver had pointed out was soon to be fol-
lowed.
In the first years of the new century men
penetrated the gorges of the shining moun-
tain, and reached the great river of the west;
but they hunted for furs, and not for gold ;
and fur-hunters keep to themselves the knowl-
edge of their discoveries. Before long the
great Republic born upon the Atlantic shores
began to stretch its infant arms towaids the
dim Pacific.
In 1782, a Boston ship entered the mouth
of the Oregon liver.
The charts carried by the vessel sliowed
no river upon the coast-line, and the captain
named tlie breaker-tossed estuary after his
ship "the Columbia" He thought he had
THE WILD NOHTH LAND.
discovered a new river; in reality, he had
but found again the ohier known Oregon. It
is more than probable that this new named
river would again have found its ancient des-
ignation, had not an enterprising German now
appeared upon the scene. One Jacob Astor,
a vendor of small furs and hats, in New
York, turned his eyes to the west.
He wished to plant upon the Pacific the
germs of American fur trade. The story of
liis enterprise has been sketched by a cunning
hand ; but under the brilliant colouring which
a great artist has thrown around his tale of
Astoria, the strong bias of the partisan is
too plainly apparent. Yet it is easy to de-
tect the imperfect argument by which Wash-
ington Irving endeavours to prove the right
of the United States to the disputed territory
of Oregon. The question is one of "Who
was first upon the ground? "
Irving claims, that Astor, in 1810, was
the first trader who erected a station on the
banks of the Columbia.
But in order to form his fort, Astor had to
induce several of the emploi/efs of the North-
West Fur Company to desert their service.
And Irving innocently tells us, that when
the overland expedition under Hunt reached
the Columbia, they found the Indians well
supplied with European articles, which they
had obtaii^ed from white traders already
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
domiciled west of the Rocky Mountains. He
records the fact while he misses its meaning.
British fur traders had reached Oregon long
before Jacob Astor had planted his people
on the estuary of the Columbia. Astor' s
factory had but a short life. The war of
1813 broke out. A British ship appeared off
the bar of the Columbia River, and the
North- West Company moving down the river
became the owners of Astoria. But with
their usual astuteness the Government of the
United States claimed, at the conclusion of
the war, the possession of Oregon, on the
ground that it had been theirs prior to the
struggle. That it had not been so, is evident
to any person who will carefully inquire into
the history of the discovery of the North-
West Coast, and the regions lying west of
the mountains. But no one cares to ask
about such things, and no one cared to do so,
even when the question was one of greater
moment than it is at present. So, with the
usual supineness which has let drift from us
so many fair realms won by the toil and dar-
ing of forgotten sons, we parted at last with
this magnificent region of Oregon, and signed
it over to our voracious cousins.
It was the old story so frequently repeated.
The coiintry was useless ; a pine-forest, a
wilderness, a hopeless blank upou the face of
nature.
316
I
THE WILD NOKTII LAND.
To-day, Oregon is to my mind tJic fniirsf
State in the Aiiierican Union.
There is a story widely told tlirougliout
British Columbia, whicli ajitly illustrates the
past policy of Great Britain, in relation to
her vast Wild Lands.
Stories widely told are not necessarily true
ones ; but this story has about it the ring of
probability.
It is said that once upon a time a certain
British nobleman anchored his ship-of-war in
the deep waters of Puget Sound. It was at
a time when discussion was ripe upon the
question of disputed ownership in Oregon,
and this ship was sent out for the protection
of British interests on the shores of the
North Pacific. She bore an ill-fated name
for British diplomacy. She was called the
" America. "
The commander of the "America" was
fond of salmon fishing; the waters of the
Oregon were said to be stocked with salmon :
the fishing would be excellent. The mighty
"Ekewan," monarch of salmon, would fall a
victim to flies, long famous on waters of
Tweed or Tay. Alas! for the perverseness
of Pacific salmon. No cunningly twisted
hackle, no deftly turned wing of mallard,
summer duck, or jungle cock, would tempt
the blue and silver monsters of the Columbia
or the Cowlitz Rivers. In despair, his lord-
317
THE WILD XOKTII LAND.
ship reeled up liis line, took to pieces his
rod, and wrote in disgust to his l)rother (a
prominent statesman of the day) that the
whole country was a huge mistake ; that
even the salmon in its waters was a fish of no
principle, refusing to bite, to nibble, or to
rise. In line, that the territory of Oregon,
was not Avorthy of a second thought. So the
story runs. If it be not true, it has its birth
in that too true insularity which would be
sublime, if it did not cost us something like
a kingdom every decade of years.
Such has been the past of Oregon. It still
retains a few associations of its former own-
ers. From its mass of forest, from its long-
reaching rivers, and above its ever green
prairies, immense spire-shaped single peaks
rise up 14,000 feet above the Pacific level.
Far over the blue waters they greet the
sailor's eye, while yet the lower shore lies
deep sunken beneath the ocean sky-line.
They are literally the " shining mountains "
of Carver, and seamen say that at night, far
out at sea, the Pacific waves glow brightly
'neath the reflected lustre of their eternal
snows.
These solitary peaks bear English titles,
and early fur-hunter, or sailor-discoverer,
have written their now forgotten names in
snow-white letters upon the blue skies of
Oregon.
318
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
But perhaps one of these days our cousins
will change all that.
JVIeantime, 1 have wandered far south I idiii
my lofty standpoint on the snowy ridges of
the Bald mountains in Northern New Cale-
donia.
Descending with rapid strides the moun-
tain trail, we heard a faint signal-call from
the valley before us. It Avas from the party
sent on the previous evening, to await our
arrival at the spot where Rufus had left his
worn-out horses a week before. A few miles
more brought us within sight of the blue
smoke which promised breakfast — a welcome
prospect after six hours forced marching
over the steep ridges of the Bald Mountains.
Two Indians, two miners, two thin horses,
and one fat dog now formed the cam}) before
the fire, at which we rested with feelings of
keen delight. Tom, the "carrier" Indian,
and Kalder, my trusty henchman, had break-
fast veady; and beans and bacon, to say
nothing of jam and white bread, were still
sufficient novelties to a winter traveller, long
nourished upon the sole luxury of moose pem-
mican, to make eighteen miles of mountain
exercise a needless prelude to a hearty break-
fast. The meal over we made preparations
for our march to the south. In round num-
bers I was 300 miles from Quesnelle. Moun-
tain, forest, swamp, river, and lake, lay be-
319
THE WILT) NORTH LAND.
tween me and that valley where the first
vestige of civilized travel would greet me on
the rapid waters of the Frazer Kiver.
Through all tliis land of wilderness a nar-
row trail held its way ; now, luider the shad-
ow of lofty pine forest; now, skirting the
shores of lonely lakes; now, climbing the
mountain ranges of the Nation River, where
yet the snow lay deep amid those valleys
whose waters seek upon one side the Pacific,
upon the other the Arctic Ocean. Between
me and the frontier " city " of Quesnelle lay
the Hudson's Bay Fort of St. James, on the
south-east shore of the lake called Stuart's.
Here my companion Rufus counted upon
obtaining fresh horses ; but until Ave could
reach this half-way house, our own good legs
must carry us, for the steeds now gathered
into the camp Avere as poor and weak as the
fast travel and long fasting of the previous
journey could make them. They were liter-
ally but skin and bone, and it was still a
matter of doubt whether they would be able
to carry our small stock of food and blank-
ets, in addition to their own bodies, over the
long trail before us.
Packing our goods upon the backs of the
skeleton steeds, we set out for the south.
Before proceeding far a third horse was cap-
tured. He proved to be in better condition
than his comrades. A saddle was therefore
320
THE WILT) Noirrir f^and.
I)la{'e(l on liis buck, and lie was liandcd (i\x'r
to me liy Rufus in onk-r that we sliould
" ride and tie " during tlie remainder of tlie
day. In tlieory this arrangement was admir-
able ; in practice it was painfully defective.
The horse seemed to enter fully into the
"tying" part of it, but the "riding" was al-
together another matter. I think nothing
but the direst starvation would have indticed
that " cayoose " to deviate in any way from
his part of the tying. No amount of stick
or whip or spur would make him a party to
the riding. At last he rolled heavily against
a prostrate tree, bruising me not a little by
the performance. He appeared to have se-
rious ideas of fancying himself " tied " when
in this reclining position, and it was no easy
matter to disentangle oneself from his ruins.
After this I dissolved partnership with Ru-
fus, and found that walking was a much less
fatiguing, and less hazardous performance,
if a little less exciting.
We held our way through a wild land of
hill and vale and swamp for some fifteen or
sixteen miles, and camped on the edge of a
little meadow, where the old grass of the
previous year promised the tired horses a
scanty meal. It was but a poor pasturage,
and next morning one horse proved so weak
that we left him to his fate, and held on with
two horses towards the Nation River. Be-
21 .321
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
tween us aud this Nation River lay a steen
inountain, still deep in snow. We began
its ascent while the morning was yet
young.
Since daylight it had snowed incessantly;
and in a dense driving snow-storm we made
the passage of the mountain.
The winter's snow lay four feet deep
upon the trail, and our horses sunk to their
girths at every step. Slowly we plodded on,
each horse stepping in the old footprints of
the last journey, and pausing often to take
breath in the toilsome ascent. At length the
summit was reached ; but a thick cloud hung
over peak and vallej'. Then the trail wound
slowly downwards, and by noon we reached
the shore of a dim lake, across whose bosom
the snow-storm swept as though the time
had been mid-November instead of the end of
May.
We passed the outlet of the Nation Lake
(a sheet of water some thirty-five miles in
length, lying nearly east and west), and held
our way for some miles along its southern
shore. In the evening we had reached a
green meadow, on the banks of a swollen
stream .
While Rufus and I were taking the packs
off the tired horses, preparatory to making
them swim the stream ; a huge grizzly bear
came out upon the opposite bank and looked
QOO
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
at us for a iiioiuent. Tlie Iiidiaiis wlio were
behind saw him approach us, but tliey were
too far from us to make their voices audible,
A. tree crossed the stream, and the opposite
bank rose steeply from t1 ' water to the level
meadow above. Bruin Avas not twenty paces
from us, but the bank hid him from our
view ; and when I became aware of his prox-
imity he had already made up his mind to
retire. Grizzlies are seldom met under such
favourable circumstances. A high bank in
front, a level meadow beyond, I long re-
gretted the chance, lost so unwittingly, and
our cheerless bivouac that night in the driv-
ing sleet would have been but little heeded,
had my now rusty double-barrel spoken its
mind to our shaggy visitor. But one cannot
always be in luck.
All night long it rained and sleeted and
snowed, and daylight broke upon a white
landscape. We got away from camp at four
o'clock, and held on with rapid pace until
ten. By this hour we had reached the
summit of the table-land " divide " between
the Arctic and Pacific Oceans. It is almost
imperceptible, its only indication being the
flow of water south, instead of north-east.
The day had cleared, but a violent storm
swept the forest, crashing many a tall tree
prostrate to the earth ; and when we camped
for dinner, it was no easy matter to select a
323
THE MaLD NOKTir LAND.
spot safe from the dangers of falling jtine-
trees.
As I quitted this Arctic watershed, and
stood on the height of land between the two
oceans, memory could not help running back,
over the many scenes which had i)assed, since
on that evening after leaving the Long Port-
age, I had first entered the river systems of
the North.
Full 1300 miles away lay the camping-
place of that evening; and as the many long
hours of varied travel rose up again before
me, snow-swept, toil-laden, full at times of
wreck and peril and disaster; it was not
without reason that, turning away from the
cold northern landscape, I saluted with joy
the blue pine-tops, through which rolled the
broad rivers of the Pacific,
324
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
CHAPTER XXVII.
The Look-out Mountain— A Gigantic Tree — Tlie Un
tiring Retires Before Superior Numbers— Fort
St. James — A Strange Sight in the Forest— Lake
Noola — Quesneiie — Cerf-vola in Civilized Life —
Old Dog, Good-bye!
We inarched that day over thirty miles,
and halted in a valley of cotton-wood trees,
amid green leaves again. "We were yet
distant about forty-five miles from the Fort
St. James, but my friend Rufus declared
that a rapid march on the morrow would
take us to the half-way house by sun-down.
Rapid marches had long since become famil-
iar, and one more or less did not matter much.
Daybreak found us in motion; it Avas a
fast walk, it was a faster walk, it was a run,
and ere the mid-day sun hung over the rich
undulating forest-land, we were thirty miles
from our camp in the cotton-wood. Before
noon, a lofty ridge rose before us; the trail
wound up its long ascent. Rufus called it
"the Look-out Mountain." The top was
bare of forest, the day was bright witli sun-
shine ; not a cloud lay over the vast plateau
of Middle New Caledonia.
325
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
Five hundred snowy peaks rose up along
the horizon : the Nation Lake Mountains, the
further ranges of the Ominica, the ridges
which lie between the many tributaries of the
Peace and the countless lakes of the North
Frazer. Babine, Tatla, Pinkley, Stuart's,
and far off to the Avest the old monarchs of
the Rocky Mountians rose up to look a last
farewell to the Avanderer, Avho noAV carried
away to distant lands a hundred memories
of their lonely beauty. On the south slope
of the Look-out Mountain, a gigantic pine-
tree first attracts the traveller's eye; its
seamed trunk is dusky red, its dark and som-
bre head is lifted high above all other trees,
and the music which the winds make through
its branches seems to come from a great dis-
tance. It is the Douglas Pine of the Pacific
coast, the monarch of Columbian forests, a
tree which Turner must have seen in his
dreams.
A few miles south of the mountain, the
country opened out into pleasant prairies
fringed with groves of cotton-wood; the
grass was growing thick and green, the mead-
ows were bright with flowers. Three fat
horses were feeding upon one of these mead-
ows; they were the property of Rufus. We
caught them with some little difficulty, and
turned our two poor thin animals adrift in
peace and plenty ; then mounting the fresh
32G
THE WILD NOirni LAND.
steeds, Rufus and I hurried on to Fort 8t.
James.
The saddle was a pleasant change after
the hard marching of the last few days.
Mud and dust and stones, alternating with
the snow of the mountains, had told heavily
against our moccasined feet; but tlie worst
was noAV over, and henceforth we would liave
horses to Quesnelle.
It was yet some time before sun-down
when we cantered down the sloping trail
which leads to the Fort St. James. Of
course the Untiring was at his usual post —
well to the front. Be it dog-train, or march
on foot, or march with horses, the Untiring
led the van, his tail like the plume of Henry
of Navarre at Ivry, ever waving his followers
to renewed exertions. It would be no easy
matter for me to enumerate all the Hudson's
Bay forts which the Untiring had entered at
the head of his train. Long and varied ex-
perience had made him familiar with every
description of post, from the imposing array
of wooden buildings which marked the resi-
dence of a chief factor, down to the little
isolated hut wherein some half-breed servant
carries on his winter traffic on the shore of
a nameless lake.
Cerf-vola knew them all. Freed from his
harness in the square of a fort — an event
which he usually accelerated by dragging his
337
THE WILD XORTH LAND.
sled and three other dogs to the doorway of
the principal house — he at once made him-
self master of the situation, paying particu-
lar attention to two objective points. First,
the intimidation of resident dogs ; second,
the topography of the provision store. Ten
minutes after liis entry into a previously un-
explored fort, he knew to a nicety where the
white fish were kept, and where the dry
meat and pemmican lay. But on this occa-
sion at Fort St. James a woful disaster
awaited him.
With the memory of many triumphal en-
tries full upon him, he now led the way into
the square of the fort, totally forgetting that
he was no longer a hauling-dog, but a free
lance or a rover on his own account. In an
instant four huge haulers espied him, and,
charging from every side ere I could force in
upon the conflict to balance sides a little,
they completely prostrated the hitherto in-
vincible Esquimau, and at his last Hudson
Bay post, near the close of his 2500 mile
march, he experienced his first defeat. We
rescued him from his enemies before he
had suffered much bodily hurt, but he looked
considerably tail-fallen at this unlooked-fcr
reception, and passed the remainder of the
day in strict seclusion underneath my bed.
Stuart's Lake is a very beautiful sheet of
water. Tall mountains rise along its Avestern
338
THE WILD NOTH LAND.
and northern shores, and forest promontories
stretch far into its deep bhie watei'S. It is
the favourite home of the salmon, when late
in summer he has worked his long, toilsome
way up the innumerable rapids of the Frazer,
500 miles from the Pacific.
Colossal sturgeon are also found in its
waters, sometimes weighing as much as 800
pounds. AVith the exception of rabbits,
game is scarce along the shores, but at cer-
tain times rabbits are found in incredible
numbers ; the Indian women snare them by
sacksful, and every one lives on rabbit, for
when rabbits are numerous, salmon are
scarce.
The daily rations of a man in the wide
domain of the Ihidson's Bay Company are
singularly varied.
On the south shores of Hudson's Bay a
voijiujeur receives every day one wild goose ;
in the Sasaktchewan he gets ten pounds of
buffalo-meat; in Athabasca eight pounds of
moose-meat; in English River three large
white fish ; hi the North, half fish and rein-
deer; and here in New Caledonia he receives
for his day's food eight rabbits or one sal-
mon. Start not, reader, at the last item!
The salmon is a dried one, and does not
weigh more than a pound and a half in its
reduced form.
After a day's delay at Fort St. James, we
<J39
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
started again on our southern road. A canoe
carried us to a point some five and twenty
miles lower down the Stuart's River — a rapid
stream of considerable size, which bears the
out-flow of the lake and of the long line of
lakes lying north of Stuart's, into the main
Frazer River.
I here said good-bye to K alder, who was
to return to Peace River on the following
day. A whisky saloon in the neighbourhood
of the fort had proved too much for this hot-
tempered half-breed, and he was in a state of
hilarious grief when we parted. " He liad
been very hasty," he said, "would lex-
squeeze him, as he was sorry ; he would al-
Avays go with this master again if he ever
came back to Peace River ; " and then the
dog caught his eye, and overpowered by his
feelings he vanished into the saloon.
Guided by an old carrier Indian chief, the
canoe swept out of the beautiful lake and ran
swiftly down the Stuart's River. By sun-
down we had reached the spot where the trail
crosses the stream, and here we camped for
the night ; our horses had arrived before us
under convoy of Tom the Indian.
On the following morning, the 31st of
May, we le ached the banks of the Nacharcole
River, a large stream flowing from the Avest;
open prairies of rich land fringed the banks
of this river, and far as the eye could reach
330
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
to the west no mountain ridge barred the
way to tlie Western Ocean.
This river has its source within twenty
miles of the Pacific, and is without doubt the
true line to the sea for a northern railroad,
whenever Canada shall earnestly take in hand
the work of riveting together the now Avidely
severed jjortions of her vast dominion ; but to
this subject I hope to have time to devote a
special chapter in the Appendix to this book,
now my long journey is drawing to a close,
and these latter pages of its story are written
amid stormy waves, where a southward-steer-
ing ship reels on beneath the shadow of
Maderia's mountains.
Crossing the wide Nacharcole River, and
continuing south for a few miles, we reached
a broadly cut trail which bore curious traces
of past civilization. Old telegraph poles
stood at intervals along the forest-cleared
opening, and rusted wire hung in loose fes-
toons down from their tops, or lay tangled
amid the growing brushwood of the cleared
space. A telegraph in the wilderness ! What
did it mean?
When civilization once grasps the wild,
lone spaces of the earth it seldom releases its
hold ; yet here civilization had once advanced
her footsteps, and apparently shrunk back
again frightened at her boldness. It was
even so ; this trail, with its ruined wire, told
331
THE WILD XORTH LAND.
of the wreck of a great enterprise. While
yet the Atlantic cable Avas an nnsettled ques-
tion, a bold idea sprung to life in the brain
of an American. It was to connect the Old
World and the New, by a wire stretched
through the vast forests of British Columbia
and Alaska, to the Straits of Behring;
thence across the Tundras of Kamtschatka,
and around the shores of Okhotsk the wires
would run to the Amoor River, to meet a
line which the Russian Government would
lay from Moscow to the Pacific.
It was a grand scheme, but it lacked the
elements of success, because of ill-judged
route and faulty execution. The great Tele-
graph Company of the United States entered
warmly into the plan. Exploring parties
were sent out ; one pierced these silent for-
ests; another surveyed the long line of the
Yukon ; another followed the wintry shores
of the Sea of Okhotsk, and passed the Tun-
dras of the black Gulf of Anadir.
Four millions of dollars were spent in these
expeditions. Suddenly news came that the
Atlantic cable was an accomplished fact.
Brunei had died of a broken heart ; but the
New World and the Old had welded their
thoughts together, with the same blow that
broke his heart.
Europe spoke to America beneath the
ocean, and the voice which men had sought
333
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
to waft through the vast forests of the Wild
North Laiul, and over tlie Tundras of Siberia,
died away in utter desolation.
So the great enterprise was abandoned, and
to-day from the lonely shores of Lake Babine
to the bend of the Frazer at Quesnelle, the
ruined wire hangs loosel}^ through the forest.
During the first two days of June we jour-
neyed through a wild, undulating country,
filled with lakes and rolling hills; grassy
openings were numerous, and many small
streams stocked with fish intersected the land.
The lakes of this northern plateau are
singularly beautiful. Many isles lie upon
their surface ; from tiny promontories the
huge Douglas pine lifts his motionless head.
The great northern diver, the loon, dips his
white breast in the blue wavelets, and sounds
his melancholy cry through the solitude. I
do not think that I have ever listened to a
sound which conveys a sense of indescribable
loneliness so completely as this wail, which
the loon sends at night over the forest shores.
The man who wrote
" And on the mere the wailing died away"
must have heard it in his dreams.
We passed the noisy Indian village of Lake
Noola and the silent Indian graves on the
grassy shore of Lake Noolkai, and the even-
ing of the 2nd of June found us camped in
333
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
the green meadows of the West Eoad River,
up which a white man hrst penetrated to the
Pacific Ocean just eighty years ago.
A stray Indian came along with news of
disaster. A canoe had upset near the cotton-
wood canon of the Frazer, and the Hudson's
Bay officer at Fort George had gone down be-
neath a pile of drift-wood, in the whirlpools
of the treacherous river. The Indian had
been with him, but he had reached the shore
with difficulty, and was now making his way
to Fort St. James, carrying news of the
catastrophe.
Forty more miles brought us to the summit
of a ridge, from which a large river was seen
flowing in the centre of a deep valley far into
the south. Beyond, on the further shore,
a few scattered wooden houses stood grouped
upon a level bank ; the wild rose-trees were
in blossom; it was summer in the forest,
and the evening air was fragrant with the
scent of flowers.
I drew rein a moment on the ridge, and
looked wistfully back along the forest trail.
Before me spread civilization and the waters
of the Pacific ; behind me, vague and vast, lay
a hundred memories of the Wild North Land.
For many reasons it is fitting to end this
story here. Between the ridge on the west
shore of the Frazer and those scattered
334
TlfE "WILD NOKTII LAXT>.
wooden liouses on the east, lies a gulf wider
than a score of valleys. On one side man —
on the other the wilderness ; on one side noise
of steam and hammer — on the other voice of
wild things and the silence of the solitude.
It is still many hundred miles ere I can
hope to reach anything save a border civiliza-
tion. The road which runs from Quesnelle
to Victoria is 400 miles in length. Washing-
ton territory, Oregon, and California have
yet to be traversed ere, 1500 miles from
here, the golden gate of San Francisco opens
on the sunset of the Pacific Ocean.
Many scenes of beauty lie in that long
track hidden in the bosom of the Sierras.
The Cascades Eanier, Hood, and Shasta will
throw their shadows across my path as the
Untiring dog and his now tired master, wan-
der south towards the grim Yosemite; but to
link these things into the story of a winter
journey across the yet untamed wilds of the
Great North would be an impossible task.
One evening I stood in a muddy street of
New York. A crowd had gathered before
the door of one of those immense buildings
which our cousins rear along their city thor-
oughfares and call hotels. The door opened
and half a dozen dusky men came forth.
" Who are they? " I asked.
"They are the Sioux chiefs from the Yel-
low^stone," answered a bystander; "they're a
335
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
taking them to the tlie-a-ter, to see Lester
Walliek."
Out on tlie Great Prairie I liad often seen
the red man in his boundless home ; savage
if you will, but still a power in the land, and
fitting in every way the wilds in which he
dwells. The names of Eed Cloud and his
brother chiefs from the Yellowstone were
household words to me. It was this same
Red Cloud who led liis 500 whooping war-
riors on Fetterman's troops, when not one
soldier escaped to tell the story of the fight
in the foot-hills of the Wyoming Mountains;
and here was Red Cloud now in semi-civil-
ized dress, but still a giant 'midst the puny
rabble that thronged to see him come forth ;
with the gaslight falling on his dusky feat-
ures and his eyes staring in beAvildered va-
cancy at the crowd around him. Captain
Jack was right : better, poor hunted savage,
thy grave in the lava-beds, than this bur-
lesque union of street and wilderness! But
there was one denizen of the wilds who fol-
lowed my footsteps into southern lands, and
of him the reader might ask, " What more? "
Well, the Untiring took readily to civiliza-
tion ; he looked at Shasta, he sailed on the
Columbia River, he climbed the dizzy ledges
of the Yosemite, he gazed at the Golden
Gate, and saw the sun sink beyond the blue
waves of the great Salt Lake, but none of
336
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
these scenes seemed to affect liiin in the
slightest degree.
He journeyed in the boot or on the roof of
a stage-coach for more than 800 miles ; he
was weighed once as extra baggage, and
classified and charged as such; he conducted
himself with all possible decorum in the rooms
and corridors of the grand hotel at San Fran-
cisco ; he crossed the continent in a railway-
carriage to Montreal and Boston, as though
he had been a first-class passenger since child-
hood; he thought no more of the reception-
room of Brigliam Young in Utah, than had
he been standing on a snow-drift in Athabasca
Lake ; he was duly photographed and petted
and pampered, but he took it all as a matter
of course.
There were, however, two facts in civiliza-
tion which caused him unutterable astonish-
ment — a brass band, and a butcher's stall.
He fled from the one ; he howled with delight
before the other.
I frequently endeavoured to find out the
cause of his aversion to music. Although he
was popularly supposed to belong to the
species of savage beast, music had anything
but a soothing effect upon him. Whenever
he heard a band, he fled to my hotel ; and
once, when they were burying a renowned
general of volunteers in San Francisco with
full military honours, he caused no small
23 337
THE "WILD XORTIT LAXD.
confusion amidst tlie mournful cortege by
charging full tilt through the entire crowd.
But the l)utclier's stall was something to
be long remend)ered. Six or eight sheep,
and half as many fat oxen hung up by the
heels, apparently all for his benefit, was
something that no dog could understand.
Planting himself full before it, he howled
hilariously for some moments, and when with
difficulty I succeeded in conducting him to
the seclusion of my room, he took advantage
of my absence to remove with the aid of his
teeth the obnoxious door-panel which inter-
vened between him and this paradise of mut-
ton.
On the Atlantic shore I bid my old friend
a long good-b3'e. It was night; and as the
ship sailed away from the land, and I found
myself separated for the first time during so
many long months from the friend and ser-
vant and partner who
Thro' every swift vicissitude
Of changeful time, unchanged had stood,
I strung together these few rhymes, which
were not the less true because they were
only
MORE DOGGEREL.
Old dog, good-bye, the parting time has come,
Here on the verge of wiUl Atlantic foam;
He who would follow, when fast beats the drum.
Must have no place of rest, no dog, no home.
338
THE WILD NOl^.TTT LAND.
And yot I raniiot loave tlice even lioro,
Where toil inul eold in peace and rest sliall end,
Poor iait.liful partner of a wild career,
Through icy leagues my sole unceasing friend,
Without one word to mark our long good-bj'c,
Without a line to jiaint that wintry dream.
When day by day, old Husky, thou, and I,
Toiletl o'er the great Unchagah's frozen stream.
For now, wlien it is time to go, strange sights
Rise from the ocean of the vanish 'd year,
And wail of pines, and sheen of northern lights,
Flash o'er the sight and float on mem'rj''s ear.
We cross again the lone, dim shrouded lake.
Where stunted cedars bend before the blast;
Again the camp is made amidst the brake.
The pine-log's light upon thy face is cast.
We talk together, yes — we often spent
An hour in converse, while my bit thou shared.
One eye, a friendly one, on me was bent ;
The other, on some comrade fiercely glared.
Deep slept the night, the owl had ceased his cry,
Unbroken stillness o'er the earth was shed;
And crouch 'd beside me thou wert sure to lie,
Thy rest a watching, snow thy only bed.
The miles went on, the tens 'neath twenties lay ;
The scores to hundreds slowly, slowly, roll'd;
And ere the winter wore itself away,
The hundreds turn'd to thousands doubly told.
But still thou wert the leader of the band.
And still thy step went on thro' toil and pain;
Until like giants in the Wild North Land,
A thousand glittering peaks frown'd o'er the plain.
339
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
And yet we did not part; beside me still
AVas seen thy bushy tail, thy well-known face ;
Through caSon dark, and by the snow-clad hill,
Thou kept unchanged thy old familiar pace.
Why tell it all? through fifty scenes we went,
Where Shasta's peak its lonely shadows ca.st;
Till now for Afric's shore my steps arc bent,
And thou and I, old friend, must part at last.
Thou wilt not miss me, home and care aie thine.
And peace and rest will lull thee to the end ;
But still, perchance with low and wistful whine,
Thou'lt sometimes scan the landscape for thy
friend.
Or when the drowsy summer noon is nigh.
Or wintry moon upon the white snow shines,
From dreamy sleep will rise a muffled cry.
For him who led thee through the land of pines.
340
APPENDIX.
Nearly twenty years ago we began to talk
of building a railroad across the continent of
North America to lie wholly within British
territory, and we are still talking about it.
Meantime our cousins have built their in-
ter-oceanic road, and have opened it and
run apon it for six years : they are also talk-
ing much about their work. But of such
things it is, perhaps, better to speak after the
work has been accomplished than before it has
been begun.
The line which thus connects "the Pacific
and Atlantic Oceans bears the name of the
Union Pacific Railroad. It crosses the con-
tinent nearly through the centre of the United
States, following, witli slight deviation, the
42nd parallel of latitude. Two other lines
have been projected south and one north of
this Union Pacific road, all lying within the
United States; but all have come to untimely
ends, stopping midway in their careers across
the sandy plains of the "West.
Tliere was the Southern Pacific Railroad to
follow the 30th parallel ; there was tlie Kau-
m
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
sas Pacitic line following the Ilepubliean val-
ley, and stopping short at the city of Denver
in Colorado ; and there was the Northern
Pacific Pailroad, the most ambitious of all the
later lines, which, starting from the city of
Duluth on the western extremity of Lake
Superior, traversed the northern half of the
State of Minnesota, crossed the sandy wastes
of Dakota, and has just now come heavily to
grief at the Big Bend of the Missouri River,
on the borders of the "Bad Lauds" of the
Yellowstone.
In an early chapter of this book it has
been remarked that the continent of North
America, east of the Rocky Mountains,
sloped from south to north. This slope,
which is observable from Mexico to the Arc-
tic Ocean, has an important bearing on the
practical working of railroad lines across the
continent. The Union Pacific road, taken in
connection with the Central Pacific, attains
at its maximum elevation an altitude of over
8,000 feet above the sea-level, and runs for
over 900 miles at an average height of about
4,500 feet; the Northern Pacific reaches ovc^r
6,000 feet; and fully half its projected course
lies through a country- 3,000 to 4,000 feet
above ocean-level ; the line of the Kansas Pa-
cific is still more elevated, and the great pla-
teau of the Colorado River is more than
7,000 feet above the sea. Continuing north-
U2
APPENDIX.
ward, into Biitisli territory, tlio next pro-
jected line is that of the Canadian Tacific
Railway, and it is with this road that our
business chiefly lies in these few pages of
Appendix.
The depression, or slope, of the prairie
level toward the north continues, with
marked regularity, throughout the whole of
British America; thus at the 49th parallel
(the boundary-line between Canada and the
United States), the mean elevation of the
plains is about 4,000 feet. Two hundred and
fifty miles north, or in the 53rd parallel, it is
about 3,000 feet; and 300 miles still farther
north, or about the entrance to the Peace
Kiver Pass, it has fallen to something like
1,700 feet above the sea-level.
But these elevations have reference only
to the prairies at the eastern base of the
Rocky Mountains. We must now glance at
the mountains themselves, which form the
real obstacle to interoceanic lines of railroad.
It might be inferred from this gradual
slope of the plains northward, that the
mountain ranges followed the same law, and
decreased in a corresponding degree after they
passed the 49th parallel, but such is not the
case ; so far from it, they only attain their
maximum elevation in 52° North latitude,
where, from an altitude of 1G,000 feet, the
gummits of Mounts Brown and Hooker look
y43
'I'lii'; WILD Noirrii i,ani).
down (HI lliii CcrlHi' |il;iiiis ;il, ilic. sdiirrcH of
tli(! .S;iskai(ilu!\viiii River.
As iniiy 1x1 supposed, il, is only liere 1,li;d.
t,lie lC()cl<y l\loiinl,;iiiis picsriil, Mieiiisidvcs in
ilicif ,l,'l•,■llld(^sl, I'onii. Ivisiiig IVom a l)iis(! only
."),()()() I'eel, above i]\('. ocean, ilieir I'ldl llia|,Mii-
l.ilde sirikes at. once npo" t. lie eye of tlni l)c-
iioldci-; wliereas, when looked at. in tlie
Anieiican SI. at.es Croiii a sl.aiidpoint. already
(devatcd (;,(»(»() or 7,()()() Iccl, above l.lie sea,
ami lisin^ ""'y '•> i'" ult.il.nde of 10, 000 or
lL',000 feet., Miey appear iiisijj;nillc.aid., and
l.lie tra\(dler experiences a sense! of disap-
poiidnienl, as lie looks at; Ilieir peaks thus
sli^iilly (devated above l.lie ])lain. Miit
IIioni;li the suniiiiits of the raiii,^' increase in
hei;.;ht as we. go nort.li, the levels of Iho val-
leys or )>asses de(;rease in a, niosl, nunarkabh^
deL;'ree.
Let, us look i'or a inoment, al. these! gaps
which Ts'aiiire has foi'iiied through t.liis iiiight.y
barrier, 'i'wenty miles north of the boumhiry
line the Kootanic Pass traverses the Kocky
Mountains.
'I'lie waters of the I'xdly iJi ver upon t.lie east,
and those' of t.h(! NVigwani Kiver on t.he west,
ha\(' their sources in this valh^y, the liiglu'st
point, of wliitdi is more tliaii 0,()(K) feet above
sea-levtd.
I'^ifty miles north of tiie Kootanic, tlu'
Kanauuskiss Fass cuts llie tluve parallel
344
AITKNIUX.
r.'ingcH wlii(!li ln-it! form ilic Ror-.ky Moiin-
laiiis; tlic li<!i}^lit of. lainl is licrc, r>,700 f(;<'l..
'riiiit.y miles more to tlie iiorili tlir; Vermilion
I'.iHH finds its liigliost level at A,'M)'A; tvvftnty
niilcts again to tlie north, tlu; Kicking HorK(;
Tass icaelies ^,210 feet; then C(jin(i8 the
House Pass, 4,500 feet; and, lastly, the piXHH
variously known by the names of Jaspei-'s
IToiise, Tnt<? .Teiine,, and Lftathei' Pass, the
highest |)olnt of vvliiiOi is .'J, 100 feet.
{"'rom the JI(Mis(} I 'ass to the; 'ITitci Jenne is
a litthi moie than sixty miles, and it is a sin-
j^Mihir fa,e,t tlia.t tlieso two lowest passes in the
lange have lying betw(;en tliem the loftiest
SMmmitsof the Jioeky Mountains from Mexicio
to tlie Arctic Ocean.
'I'lie outflow from all th(!se jjasses, with the
exc(!i)tion of the one; last nanurd, hca-Mh on the
east the river Hystems of th(! Saskatchewan,
and on the west tlu; C'olundiia and its trihii-
tarie.s. 'I"h(! Tete tjeiinc, on the other iiand,
slnfds its dividing waters into tiio Athahas(;a
River on the east, and into the Frazei' Piv<;r
on the west.
So far we have followed the monntains to
/).T of North latitude;, and hert; we must
pause a moment to glancj; hack at the long-
projected line of tlm Canadian I'acific Kail-
road. As we have, already stated, it is now
nc^arly twenty years sinf^e tlu; idea of a rail-
road through British America was first enter-
THE WILD KORTII LAND.
tained. A few years later a well-equipped
expedition was sent out by the British Gov-
ernment for the pur^jose of thoroughly ex-
ploring the prairie region lying between Ked
Eiver and the Eocky Mountains, and also
reporting upon the nature of the passes trav-
ersing the range, with a view to the practica-
bility of running a railroad across the conti-
nent. Of this expedition it will be sufficient
to observe that, while the details of survey
were carried out with minute attention and
much labour, the graver question, whether it
was possible to carry a railroad through Brit-
ish territory to the Pacific, appears to have
been imperfectly examined, and, after a sur-
vey extending as far north as the Jasper's
House Pass, but not including that remarka-
ble valley, the project was unfavorably
reported upon by the leader of the ex-
pedition.
The reasons adduced in support of this
view were strong ones. Not only had the
unfortunate selection of an astronomical boun-
dary-line (the 49th parallel) shut us out from
the western extreme of Lake Superior, and
left us the Laurentian wilderness lying north
of that lake, as a threshold to the fertile
lands of the Saskatchewan and the Red Riv-
er; but far away to the west of the Rocky
Mountains, and extending to the very shores
of tiie Pacific, there lay a land of rugged
APPENDIX.
mountains almost insurmountable to railroad
enterprise.
Such was the substance of the report of the
expedition. It would be a long, long story
now to enter into the details involved in this
question; but one fact connected with "this
unfortunate selection of an astronomical line "
may here be pertinently alluded to, as evinc-
ing the spirit of candour, and the tendency to
sharp practice which the Great Republic early
developed in its dealings with its discarded
mother. By the treaty of 1783, the northern
limit of the United States was defined as
running from the northwest angle of the Lake
of the Woods to the River Mississippi along
the 49tli parallel; but, as Ave have before
stated, the 49th parallel did not touch the
northwest angle of the Lake of the Woods or
the River Mississippi ; the former lay north
of it, the latter south. Here was clearly a
case for a new arrangement. As matters
stood we had unquestionably the best of the
mistake ; for, whereas the angle of the Lake
of the Woods lay only a few miles north of
the parallel, the extreme source of the Missis-
sippi lay a long, long way south of it; so
that if we lost ten miles at the beginning of
the line, we would gain 100 or more at the
end of it.
All this did not escape the eyes of the fur-
hunteis in the early days of the century.
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
Mackenzie and Thompson both noticed it and
both concluded that the objective point being
the River Mississippi, the line would eventu-
ally be run with a view to its terminal defini-
tions, the Lake of the Woods and the Missis-
sippi. In 1806, the United States Govern-
ment sent out two exploring expeditions into
its newly acquired territory of Louisiana ; one
of them, in charge of a Mr. Zebulon Pike of
the American army, ascended the Mississippi,
and crossed from thence to Lake kSuperior.
Here are his remarks upon the boundary line :
"The admission of this pretension" (the ter-
minal point at the River Mississippi) '' will
throw out of our territory the upper portion
of Red River, and nearly two-fifths of the
territory of Louisiana; whereas if the line is
run due west from the head of the Lake of
the Woods, it will cross Red River nearly at
the centre, and strike the Western Ocean at
Queen Charlotte's Sound. This difference of
opinion, it is presumed, might be easily ad-
justed between the two Governinents at the
present day; but delay, by unfolding tlie true
value of the countnj, may produce difficulties
which do not now exist."
The italics are mine.
Zebulon Pike lias long passed to his Puri-
tan fathers. Twelve years after he had vis-
ited the shores of Lake Superior, and long
before our Government knew "the value of
3-i«
APPENDIX.
the country" of which it was discoursing, the
matter was arranged to the entire satisfaction
of Pike and his countrymen. They hehl te-
naciously to their end, the Lake, of tlie
Woods; we hastened to abandon ours, the
Mississippi River. All this is past and gone ;
but if to-day we write Fish, or Sumner, or
any other of the many names which figure
in boundary commissions or consequential
claims, instead of that of Zebulon Pike, the
change of signature will but slightly affect the
character of the document.
But we must return to the Rocky Moun-
tains. It has ever been the habit of explorers
in the northwest of America to imagine that
beyond the farthest extreme to which they
penetrate there lay a region of utter worth-
lessness. One hundred years ago, Niagara
lay on the confines of the habitable earth ;
fifty years ago a man travelling in what are
now the States of Wisconsin and Minnesota
would have been far beyond the faintest echo
of civilization. So each one thought, as in
after-time fresh regions were brought within
the limits of the settler. The Government
Exploring Expedition of sixteen years since
deemed that it had exhausted the regions fit
for settlement when it reached the northern
boundary of the Saskatchewan valley. The
project of a railroad through Britisli territory
was judged upon the merits of the mountains
849
THE WILD XOPvTTT LAND.
lying west of tlie sources of the Saskatche-
wan, and the hihyrinth of rock and i)eak
stretching ])et\\een the Kocky Mountains and
the Pacific Even to-day, witli the knowl-
edge of further exploration in its possessions,
the Government of the Dominion of Canada
seems bent upon making a similar error. A
line has been projected across the continent,
which, if followed, must entail ruin upon the
persons who would attempt to settle along it
upon the bleak treeless prairies east of the
mountains, and lead to an expenditure west
of the range, in crossing the multitudinous
ranges of Middle and Southern British Co-
lumbia, which must ever prevent its being a
remunerative enterprise.
The Tete Jeune Pass is at present the one
selected for the passage of the Rocky Moun-
tains. This pass has many things to recom-
mend it, so far as it is immediately connected
with the range which it traverses ; but unfor-
tunately the real obstacles become only ap-
parent when its western extremity is reached,
and the impassable " divide " between the
Frazer, the Columbia, and the Thompson
Rivers looms up before the traveller. It is
true that the canon valley of the North
Thompson lies open, but to follow this outlet
is to face still more imposing obstacles where
the Thompson River unites with the Frazer
at Lytton, some 250 miles nearer to the
APPENDIX,
south-west; here, along tlio Frazov, tlic Cas-
cade Mountaius lift their nigged licuds, and
tlie river for full sixty miles flows at llic bot-
tom of a vast tangle cut by nature through
the heart of the mountains, whose stee}) sides
rise abruptly from the water's edge : in many
places a wall of rock.
In fact, it is useless to disguise that the
Frazer River affords the sole outlet from that
portion of the Rocky ]\Iountains lying between
the boundary line, the 53rd parallel of lati-
tude, and the Pacific Ocean ; and that the
Frazer River valley is one so singularly
formed that it would seem as though some
superhuman sword had at a single stroke cut
through a labyrinth of mountains for 300
miles, down deep into the bowels of the land.
Let us suppose that the mass of mountains
lying west of the Tete Jeune has been found
practicable for a line, and that the Frazer
River has been finally reached on any part of
its course between Quesnelle and the Cascade
range at Lytton.
What then would be the result?
Simply this : to turn south along the valley
of the river would be to face the canons of
the Cascades, oetween Lytton and Yale. To
hold west would be to cross the Frazer River
itself, and by following the Chilcotin River,
reach the Pacific Ocean at a point above 200
miles north of the estuary of the Frazer.
851
THE AVI LI) NORTH LAND.
But to cross this Frazer River would be a
work of eiionuoiis uiagnitude — a work
greater, 1 believe, than any at present exist-
ing on the earth : for at no point of its course
from Quesnelle to Lytton is the Frazer River
less than 1,200 feet below the level of the
land lying at either side of it, and from one
steep scarped bank to the other is a distance
of a mile, or more than a mile
How, I ask, is this mighty fissure, extend-
ing right down the country from north to
south, to be crossed, and a passage gained to
the Pacific? I answer that the trxie passage to
the Pacific lies far north of the Frazer River,
and that the true passage of the Rochij Moun-
tains lies far north of the Tete Jeune Pass.
And now it will be necessary to travel
north from this Tete Jeune Pass, along the
range of the Rocky Mountains.
One hundred miles north of the Tete Jeune,
on the east or Saskatchewan side of the
Rocky Mountains, there lies a beautiful land.
It is some of the richest prairie land in the
entire range of the Northwest. It has wood
and water in abundance. On its western side
the mountains rise with an ascent so gradual
that horses can be ridden to the summits of
the outer range, and into the valley lying be-
tween that range and the Central Mountain.
To the north of this prairie country lies the
Peace River; south, the Lesser Slave Lake;
3.53
APPEXDTX.
east, a land of tlie wood and mnsky and track-
less forest. The Smoking Tliver Hows almost
through its centre, rising near Jasper's House,
and flowing nortli and east until it passes into
the Peace River, fifty miles below Dunvegan.
From, the most northerly point of the fertile
land of the Saskatchewan, to the most soiith-
erly point of this Smoking River country, is
about 100 or 120 miles. The intervening
land is forest or musky, and partly open.
The average elevation of this prairie above
sea-level Avould be under 2,000 feet. In the
mountains lying west and northwest there are
two passes; one is the Peace River, with
which we are already acquainted ; the other
is a pass lying some thirty or forty miles
south of the Peace River, known at present
only to the Indians, but well worth the trou-
ble and expense of a thorough exploration,
ere Canada hastily decides upon the best route
across its wide Dominion.
And here I may allude to the exploratory
surveys which the Canadian Government has
already inaugurated. A great amount of work
has without doubt been accomplished, by the
several parties sent out over the long line
from Ottawa to New Westminster; but tlie
result, have not been, so far, equal to the ex-
pendit'ue of the surveys, or to the means
*laced at the disposal of the various i)arties.
In all these matters, tlie strength of an Exec-
353
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
iitive Government resting for a term of years
independent of political parties, as in the case
of the United States, becomes vividly appar-
ent; and it is not necessary for ns in England
to seek in Canada for an exemplilication of
the evils which militate against a great na-
tional undertaking, where an Executive has
to frame a budget, or produce a report, to suit
the delicate digestions of evenly balanced par-
ties.
It would be invidious to particularize indi-
viduals, where many men have worked well
and earnestly ; but I cannot refrain from pay-
ing a passing tribute to the energy and ear-
nestness displayed by the gentlemen who,
during the close of the summer of 1872,
crossed the mountains by the Peace Eiver
Pass, and reached the coast at Fort Simpson,
near the mouth of the Skeena River.
But to return to the Indian pass, lying
west of the Smoking River prairies. As I
have already stated, this pass is known only
to the Indians ; yet their report of it is one of
great moment. They say (and Avho has found
an Indian wrong in matters of practical engi-
neering?) that they can go in three or four
days' journey from the Hope of Hudson to
the fort on Lake Macleod, across the Rocky
Mountains; they further assert that they can
in summer take horses to the central range,
and that they could take them all the way
3r)4
APPENDIX,
across to the west side, but for the fallen
timber which encumbers the Avestern slope.
Now when it is borne in mind that this
Lake Macleod is situated near the height of
land between the Arctic and Pacific Oceans ;
that it stands at the head of the Parsnip River
(the south branch of the Peace); and that,
further, a level or rolling plateau extends
from the fort to the coast range of moun-
tains at Dean's Inlet, or the Bentinck arm on
the coast of British Columbia, nearly oppo-
site the northern extreme of Vancouver's
Island, the full importance of this Indian
pass, as a highway to the Pacific through the
Kocky Mountains, will be easily understood.
But should this Indian pass at the head of
the Pine River prove to be, on examination,
unfit to carry a railroad across, I am still of
opinion that in that case the Peace River
affords a passage to the "Western Ocean vastly
superior to any of the known passes lying
south of it. What are the advantages which
I claim for it? They can be briefly stated.
It is level throughout its entire course ; it
has a wide, deep, and navigable river flowing
through it ; its highest elevation in the main
range of the Rocky Mountains is about 1,800
feet ; the average depth of its winter fall of
snow is abovit three feet ; by the first week of
May this year the snow (unusually deep dur-
ing the winter) had entirely disappeared
355
THE WILD NOPTH LAND.
from the north shore of the river, and vege-
tation Avas already forward in the woods
along the mountain base.
But though these are important advantages
for this mountain ])ass, the most important of
all remains to be stated. From the western
end of the pass to the coast range of moun-
tains, a distance of 300 miles across British
Columbia, there does not exist one single for-
midable impediment to a railroad. By follow-
ing the valley of the Parsnip River from " the
Forks " to Lake Macleod, the Ominica range
is left on the north, and the rolling plateau
land of Stuart's Lake is reached Avithout a
single mountain intervening; from thence the
valley of the Nacharcole can be attained, as
we have seen in my story, without the slight-
est difficulty, and a line of country followed
to within twenty miles of the ocean, at the
head of Dean's Inlet.
I claim, moreover, for this route, that it is
shorter than any projected line at present un-
der consideration ; that it would develop a
land as rich, if not richer, than any portion
of the Saskatchewan territory; that it alto-
gether avoids the tremendous mountain ranges
of Southern British Columbia, and the great
gorge of the Frazer River; and, finally, that
along the Nacharcole River there will be
found a country admirably suited to settle-
ment, and possessing prairie land of a kind
356
APPENDIX.
nowhere else to be found in British Cokim-
bia.
With regard to the climate of the country
lying east of the mountains, those who have
followed me through my journey will remem-
ber the state in which I found the prairies of
Chimeroo on the 22nd and 23rd of April, snow
all gone and mosquitoes already at work.
Canadians will understand these items. I
have looked from the ramparts of Quebec on
the second last day of April, and seen the
wide landscape still white with the winter's
snow.
In the foregoing sentences I have briefly
pointed out the advantages of the Peace Kiver
Pass, the absence of mountain ranges in the
valleys of the Parsnip and Nacharcole Rivers,
and the fertile nature of the country between
the Lesser Slave Lake and the eastern base of
the Rocky Mountains. It only remains to
speak of the connecting line between the
Saskatchewan territory and the Smoking
River prairies.
The present projected line througli tlie
Saskatchewan is eminently unsuited to the
settlement; it crosses the bleak, poor prairies
of the Eagle Hills, the country where, as de-
scribed in an earlier chapter, we hunted the
buffalo during the month of November in the
preceding year. For all purposes of settle-
ment it may be said to lie fully eighty miles
357
THE WILD NORTH LAND.
too far south during a course of some 300 or
400 miles.
The experience of those most intimately
acquainted with the territory points to a line
north of the North Saskatchewan as one
best calculated to reach the country really
fitted for ijiimediate settlement; a country
where rich soil, good water, and abundant
Avood for fuel and building can be easily ob-
tained. All of these essentials are almost
wholly wanting along the present projected
route throughout some 350 miles of its
course.
Now if we take a line from the neighbour-
hood of the Mission of Prince Albert, and
continue it through the very rich and fertile
country lying twenty or thirty miles to the
north of Carlton, and follow it still further
to a point fifteen or twenty miles north of
Fort Pitt, we will be about the centre of the
true Fertile Belt of this portion of the conti-
nent. Continuing northwest for another sixty
miles, we would reach the neighbourhood of
the Lac la Biche (a French mission, Avhere all
crops have been most successfully cultivated
for many years), and be on the watershed of
the Northern Ocean.
Crossing the Athabasca, near the point
Avhere it receives the Riviere la Biche, a re-
gion ot presiiincd musky or swamp would be
encountered, but one neither so extensive nor
358
APPE^'niX.
of as serious a character as that whicli occurs
on the line at present projected between the
Saskatchewan and Jas])er's House.
The opinions thus briefly stated regarding
the best route for a C'anadian-Pacitic llailroad
across the continent result from no inconsider-
able experience in the Kortliwest Territory,
nor are they held solely by myself. I could
quote, if necessary, very much evidence in
support of them from the testimony of those
who have seen portions of the route in-
dicated.
In the deed of surrender, by which the
Hudson's Bay Company transferred to the
Government of Canada the Territory of the
Northwest, the Fertile Belt was defined as
being bounded on the north by the North
Saskatchewan River. It will yet be found
that there are ten acres of fertile land lying
north of the North Saskatchewan for every
one acre lying south of it.
These few pages of Apj^endix must here
end. There yet remain many subjects con-
nected with the settlement of Indian tribes
of the West and their protection against the
inevitable injustice of the incoming settler,
and to these I would like to call attc-.ition,
but there is not time to do so.
Already the low surf-beat shores of West
Africa have been visible for days, and 'midst
359
THE AVILD NORTH LAND.
the sultry atmosphere of the Tropics it has
become no easy task to fling back one's
thoughts into the cold solitudes of the north-
ern wilds.
Sierra Leone, October 15, 1873.
8o.{
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