FORTY-TWO YEARSAMONGST THEINDIANS AND ESKIMOCHAPTER ITHE VOYAGE OUT
In the year 1670, a few English gentlemen, ‘the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading to Hudson’s Bay,’ obtained a charter from King Charles II. The company consisted of but nine or ten merchants. They made large profits by bartering English goods with the Indians of those wild, and almost unknown, regions for furs of the fox, otter, beaver, bear, lynx, musk, minx, and ermine.
The company established forts, and garrisoned them with Highlanders and Norwegians. The climate was too cold and the food too coarse to attract Englishmen to the service. The forts, or posts, were about a hundred and fifty or two hundredmiles apart, and to them the Indians resorted in the spring of the year with the furs obtained by hunting, snaring, and other modes of capture. In return for these they obtained guns, powder and shot, traps, kettles, axes, cloth, and blankets. The standard of value for everything was a beaver skin. Two white foxes were worth one beaver skin, two silver foxes were worth eight beaver skins, one pocket-handkerchief was worth one beaver skin, one yard of blue cloth was worth one-and-a-half beaver skins, a frying-pan was worth two beaver skins. As time went on, and the value of furs in the market rose or fell, the prices of certain things altered. But this is a sample of what they were when the hero of our tale first went out to Hudson’s Bay in 1851.
Let us accompany the young missionary on his voyage to Moose Fort, the chief of the company’s trading posts. ‘We, that is, my dear wife and myself,’ he writes, ‘went on board ship at Gravesend on June 6, 1851. Our ship was strongly built, double throughout; it was armed with thick blocks of timber, called ice chocks, at the bows, to enable it to do battle with the ice it would have to encounter. At Stromness we remained a fortnight, taking in a portion of our cargo and a number of men who were going to Hudson’s Bay in the service of the company. It was a solitary voyage. All the way we saw but one vessel. On a Saturday afternoon we entered the Straits.
‘The weather had been very foggy; but the fog rose, the sun shone out, and a most beautiful spectaclepresented itself. The water was as smooth as a fish-pond, and in it were lying blocks of ice of all sizes and shapes, some of them resembling churches, others castles, and others hulls of ships, while at a considerable distance, on either side, rose the wild and dreary land—a land of desolation and death, without a tree or a blade of grass, but high and mountainous, with masses of snow lying in all the hollows. The captain and mates became very anxious. The dangers of the voyage had commenced. An ice-stage, raised eight or nine feet above the deck, was erected, and on this continually walked up and down one or two of the ship’s officers. A man, too, was constantly at the bow on the look out, and yet the blows we received were very heavy, setting the bells a-ringing, and causing a sensation of fear.
‘When we had got about half-way through the Straits, we saw some of the inhabitants of this dreary land. “The Eskimo are coming,” said a sailor.
‘By-and-by, I heard the wordChimofrequently repeated, which means “Welcome,” and presently we saw a number of beautiful little canoes coming towards us, each containing a man. These were soon followed by a large boat containing several women and children. They all came alongside, bringing with them seal-skins, blubber, fox-skins, whalebone, and ivory. These they freely parted with in exchange for pieces of iron, needles, nails, saws, &c., they setting a very great value on anything made of iron. Now these people, who were very, very dirty, were not dressed like English people, but both men and women wore coatsmade of seal-skins, breeches of dog-skins, and boots of well-dressed seal-skins, the only difference between a man’s and a woman’s dress being that the woman had a long tail to her coat, reaching almost to the ground, and an immense hood, in which she carried her little naked baby, which was perched on her shoulders.
‘Again hoisting our sails, in two or three days we cleared the Straits and entered Hudson’s Bay. Danger was not over. Our difficulties had scarcely commenced. Ahead, stretching as far as the eye could reach, is ice—ice; now we are in it. More and more difficult becomes the navigation. We are at a standstill. We go to the mast-head—ice! rugged ice in every direction! One day passes by—two, three, four. The cold is intense. Our hopes sink lower and lower; a week passes. The sailors are allowed to get out and have a game at football; the days pass on; for nearly three weeks we are imprisoned. Then there is a movement in the ice. It is opening. The ship is clear! Every man is on deck. Up with the sails in all speed! Crack, crack, go the blows from the ice through which we are passing; but we shall now soon be free, and in the open sea. Ah! no prisoner ever left his prison with greater joy than we left ours.
‘A few days afterwards, as evening was closing in, there was a great commotion on board: heavy chains were got on deck; we were nearing the place of our destination; in the midnight darkness the roar of our guns announced the joyful intelligence that wewere anchored at the Second Buoy, only twenty-five miles from Moose Fort.’
Looking at the map of North America, a little inland from the coast of Labrador, you will find Hudson’s Bay, and in the south-west corner, at the mouth of the Moose River, Moose Fort. Here is the residence of the deputy governor and his subordinate officers; a number of people are anxiously looking out; they are expecting the one ship that comes to them in the course of the year. A small vessel lying a little way out to sea has raised the long-looked-for signal, and rejoicing is the order of the day.