Junction of the Peace and Smoky RiversJunction of the Peace and Smoky Rivers
Fifteen days of continuous travel from Vermilliontook us to the junction of Smoky River, the principal tributary of the Peace, flowing towards the south-west not far from some of the head-waters of the Athabasca. This junction is rather an important point, as it is close to the end of the waggon-road to the Lesser Slave Lake, lying seventy-five miles to the south. Here the trading-goods brought overland are loaded on to scows and boats, to be sent down-stream to Vermillion and up-stream to Dunvegan, St. John's, and Hudson's Hope. A little above are Mr. Brick's mission and the farm that I have already spoken of, besides a settlement of half-breeds, more hunters than farmers, well known as the laziest and most worthless gang on the whole length of Peace River. Many efforts have been made to get these people to pay more attention to their potato-patches as the game is getting killed out, but all in vain; sometimes they will fence in a piece of ground and plant seed, but will take no further trouble with the crop, and generally use their fence-rails for firewood during the next winter. Luckily whitefish are very plentiful in the Lesser Slave Lake within two days' journey, or starvation would certainly play havoc at Smoky River.
I enjoyed a long talk with Mr. Brick in his pleasant home in the wilds, where we spent a night; he kindly furnished me with supplies that I was short of, and three days afterwards we arrived at Dunvegan, another celebrated fur-post,situated on the north bank of the river at the foot of a high bluff known as the Cap. Here again was abundant evidence of the fertility of the soil in the crops harvested by the Company and the missionaries. Across the river, twenty miles away, is the Company's cattle-ranche, where the oxen used on the waggon-road are raised and a fair amount of beef is annually killed. Some thoroughbred stock has been imported and should prove successful, but of course there is no paying market for a large amount of cattle, although there are plenty of hungry people who would be glad of a chance to eat beef.
At Dunvegan, besides Mr. Round who was in charge of the fort, I met Mr. Ewen Macdonald, the chief of Peace River District, with headquarters at Lesser Slave Lake. He had just finished his inspection of the upper river-posts, and had left Hudson's Hope, the last establishment east of the mountains, a few days previously; he reported that the snow was already low down on the foot-hills, and advised me strongly to give up my attempt to cross the Rockies so late in the autumn. He told me, however, that a free-trader was expected in from the west side of the mountains, and if I was lucky enough to meet him I should probably be able to secure the service of some of his crew who would be returning to Quesnelle.
Above Dunvegan the valley of the river contracts, the banks rise for several hundred feetin height, and the strength of the current increases. The hundred and twenty miles to St. John's took us seven days and a half to travel, and in many places we had to keep two men on the line to stem the strong water; the tracking too was bad, as the banks had fallen in several spots, and John, who had been up and down the river three times before, proved a very poor pilot. The weather was colder, and a sheet of ice formed over the back waters and close to the bank out of the current.
At St. John's we found Mr. Gunn busy with a band of Indians who were taking their winter supplies, and I had a chance of hearing their accounts of the wilderness to the north in the direction of the Liard River; they described it as a muskeg country abounding in game and fur, but a hard district to reach, as the streams are too rapid for canoes and the swamps too soft for horses to cross. They occasionally fall in with a small band of buffalo, but have never seen them in large numbers. Sometimes by ascending Half-way River, a stream adjoining Peace River twenty-five miles above St. John's, they meet the Indians from Fort Nelson on the south branch of the Liard.
We had now passed out of the Cree-speaking belt and the language became that of the Beaver Indians, a far inferior language to Cree, resembling in sound and in many of the words some of the dialects of the Chipeweyan tongue.Mr. Gunn had learned to speak Beaver fluently, and was now going up to Hudson's Hope to interpret; he was a great help to us both as pilot and on the line, and with two men always tracking we took little notice of the strong stream which we found throughout the fifty miles to the next fort.
Snow was falling heavily when we left St. John's, and it looked as if the winter had set in, but next day the ground was bare again, and a west wind from across the mountains blew warm as a summer's breeze. We camped for a night at the mouth of Half-way River, heading towards the north through a wide open bay which seems to invite exploration. A considerable quantity of gold dust has been taken out of some of the gravel-bars along this part of Peace River, and Half-way River is supposed to be a paradise for the miner and hunter, but I could not hear of any white man having ever penetrated far up this valley. On the afternoon of Sunday, October 26th, on rounding a bend in the river, we caught our first glimpse of the snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains that I had travelled so far to reach; but the sublime is often mixed with the ludicrous, and when John in his admiration of the scenery slipped off a narrow ledge of shale along which he was tracking and fell with an oath into the river, the snowy peaks were forgotten in the joy that always greets other people's misfortunes in this sort of travelling.
A shortdistance below Hudson's Hope we passed a remarkable group of high basaltic islands, differing entirely from anything in the neighbourhood, and affording a strong contrast to the low gravelly islands so numerous in the course of this river. In the afternoon of the 27th we unloaded the skiff and hauled her up on the beach in front of the fort, to lie there till anybody might want to run her down-stream the following spring.
Hudson's Hope is a small unpretentious establishment, standing on the south side of Peace River, a mile below the wild cañon by which this great stream forces its way through the most easterly range of the Rocky Mountains. The Indians were all encamped in their moose-skin lodges on the flat close to the fort waiting for the trade to begin, and I was surprised to hear how few representatives of the once numerous tribe of Beavers are left. It is the same at St. John's and Dunvegan, and the total Indian population of the upper Peace River cannot exceed three hundred, an immense falling off since Sir Alexander Mackenzie first crossed the mountains by this route. The biggest lodge was occupied by Baptiste Testerwich, a half-breed Iroquois, descended from the Iroquois crew left here many years ago by Sir George Simpson, formerly Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company. Baptiste had a house at Moberley's Lake twelve miles to the south, and is well known as the most successfuland most enduring of moose-hunters. A remarkable point about the man is his hardiness and indifference to cold; in the dead of winter he wears no socks in his moccasins, which to any other man would mean a certainty of frozen feet, and the Indians say that his feet are so hot that the snow melts in his tracks in the coldest weather.
Once again arose the trouble about guides to take us to Macleod's Lake. John had been there before, but I had already seen too much of his piloting to trust myself in his hands, and was quite sure that he would lose his way if there was the least possibility of doing so. The free-trader from across the mountains had not yet arrived, and as it was getting late in the year there was a chance of his being frozen in before he reached Hudson's Hope. Besides the Peace River route there is the Pine River Pass, farther to the southward, heading almost directly to Macleod's Lake. A party of surveyors once came through this pass several years ago, and the Indians use it habitually in the summer; but none of the Beavers would volunteer to guide us through at this time of the year, as a heavy snowfall might be expected immediately.
I decided to wait a few days for the trader, and we had a very festive time at Hudson's Hope; a ball was given every night, and the moose-dance, rabbit-dance, and duck-dance were kept up till the small hours. A ball is not an expensive entertainmentat an out-of-the-way trading-post; no invitations are necessary, but a scrape of the fiddle at the door of the master's house fills the ball-room in a few minutes. If the master is in a liberal state of mind, a cup of tea is provided for his guests, but in any case the river is close, and if anyone is thirsty there is plenty of water. On the third night the ceremonies were interrupted by the sound of a gunshot on the opposite bank, and an Indian came across with the news that the trader had arrived at the west end of the cañon with two small scows, and that some of his crew were going back to Quesnelle.
Baptiste lent me a horse on the following day, and I rode over to interview the new arrivals. A fair trail, twelve miles in length on the north side of the river, leads to the navigable water above the cañon, while the stream runs a circuitous course of probably thirty miles. I could get little information as to the nature of this cañon; even the Indians seem to avoid it, and, though accounts of it have been written, nobody appears to have thoroughly explored this exceptionally rough piece of country. I went down a few miles from the west end, but found the bluffs so steep that I could seldom get a view of the water, and could form no idea of the character of the rapids and waterfalls. There is some quiet place in the middle of the cañon where the Indians cross on the ice, but beyond this they could tell me little about it.
Rightin the centre of the gap by which the trail crosses stands the Bull's Head, a solitary mountain well known to travellers coming from the west, as it can be seen many miles away, and in full view to the south is a huge flat-topped mountain, covered with perpetual snow and fit to rank with any of the giants of the main range. The trail reaches a considerable elevation above the river level, and from the summit the upper waters of the Peace are seen winding away to the west, through a broad valley flanked by hills of ever increasing height, as far as the eye can reach. Close to the river the slopes are open or thinly timbered with pine and poplar, but the big mountains are clothed nearly to their summits with the dense, almost impassable, forest growth which is such a common feature in the scenery as the Pacific Coast is approached.
At the far end of the portage, on the bank of the river, stand a rough shanty and trading-store. Here I made the acquaintance of Twelvefoot Davis, who acquired this name, not from any peculiarity of stature, but from a small though valuable mining claim of which he had been the lucky possessor in the early days of British Columbia. A typical man of his class is Davis, and his story is that of many a man who has spent his life just in advance of civilization. Born in the Eastern States of America, a 'Forty-niner in California, and a pioneer of the Caribou Diggings discovered far up the Fraser River in'Sixty-one, he had eventually taken to fur-trading, which has ever such an attraction for the wandering spirit of the miner. Here among the mountains and rivers where formerly he sought the yellow dust he carries on his roaming life. There is a strong kinship between the two enterprises; the same uncertainty exists, and in each case the mythical stake is always just ahead. No failure ever damps the ardour of miner or fur-trader, or puts a stop to his pleasant dreams of monster nuggets and silver foxes.
Davis was making all possible haste in packing his cargo across the portage with horses; an Indian and a half-breed were going back to Quesnelle, and would gladly enter my service as guides. A small stock of goods was to be left at the west end of the portage, and Thomas Barrow, the only white man who had come down with Davis, was to remain in charge of the trading-post during the winter.
On November 5th I camped at the head of the cañon with my crew, Murdo, John, Charlie, a half-breed from Quesnelle, and Pat, a full-blooded Siccanee from Fraser Lake ready to make a start up-stream the following morning with a long narrow canoe dug out of a cotton-wood log. But in the night the weather changed; snow fell heavily, a severe frost set in, and ice was forming rapidly along the banks. Baptiste, the Iroquois, who had come across the portage to see us off, had brought me a dozen pair of the best moose-skin moccasins from his daughters, who were beyond compare thebellesof Hudson's Hope. Baptiste had spent many years of his life in this part of the country, and I was quite ready to listen to his opinion on the chances of getting through to Macleod's Lake. He would not hear of our starting with a canoe under the changed conditions of weather: it was the winter; the ice would catch us in less than three days, and we should be lucky if we could get back on foot through the deep snow. His advice was to wait a fortnight till the river set fast, and occupy ourselves in making hand-sleighs, while he would make us five pairs of snow-shoes, and then wemight walk the two hundred miles to Macleod's Lake in comfort. Accordingly I gave orders for the lodge, which we still had with us, to be pitched in a clump of poplars a short distance above Barrow's house, and we busied ourselves with cutting birch and bending sleighs in readiness for our trip.
The cold snap continued for several days, but very little ice was running, although the eddies and backwaters were frozen up; then the weather grew milder again, and I could see that we had missed our chance. It was past the middle of November, and the river, by all accounts, is usually frozen solid at this time of year; it seemed too risky to start out so late to try and make a passage with open water. Meantime we were taking things easily when, as it turned out, we should have been travelling; there was not much to shoot beyond wood-grouse and rabbits, but with these we could keep the pot going, and time went pleasantly enough in short expeditions into the surrounding hills.
And now a warm Chinook wind came sweeping across from the Pacific, and licked up the snow from the ground, while the ice broke away from the banks and drifted down in little floes to be ground to pieces in the cañon. I could bear the inactivity no longer, and, with a recklessness that I had plenty of opportunity to repent later on, gave orders on November 25th for the canoe to be got ready on the morrow to start up-streamand take the chances of being caught by the ice in the main range of the Rocky Mountains. I consulted Charlie and Pat about the route, and they both said they could make no mistake in finding the way to the Hudson's Bay Fort on Macleod's Lake, as they had just come down the river, and Charlie had made the journey the year before; if we could succeed in getting to the junction of the Findlay and Parsnip, just beyond the big mountains, before the ice caught us, there could be no difficulty in reaching the fort on foot in about four days' travel.
At the risk of being verbose and boring any reader who has struggled thus far through the record of my wanderings in the North, I must now enter somewhat fully into the details of travel, and describe minutely the events that happened during the next month, in order to answer once for all the numerous questions that I have been asked as to what took place on that terrible winter journey in the Rocky Mountains. When I reached civilization again, and found that part of the story had leaked out, I received plenty of gratuitous advice as to what I should have done and where I should have gone, from people who had never themselves been in a like predicament, and had no further knowledge of hardship than perhaps having had to pay a long price for a second-rate dinner. I discovered that the easiest method of satisfying them was to let them tell the tale of my adventures in their ownway, and assent readily to their convincing proofs that if they had been there all would have gone well. I admit freely that it was a stupid act to leave a supply-post so late in the year, unprovided as we were with the necessary outfit for winter travelling; but think I was justified in trusting to the local knowledge of my native guides to bring our party in safety to Macleod's Lake after we were forced to abandon the canoe.
Walter Macdonald, a son of Mr. Ewen Macdonald of Lesser Slave Lake, and Tom Barrow both gave me every assistance in their power to provision my crew for what is usually an eight or nine days' journey. Meat was not to be had, and there was little chance of finding big game along the course of the river, but a hundred pounds of flour, a few pounds of beans and rice, and a small sack of potatoes, besides plenty of tea and tobacco, would surely last us this short journey, and, even if we found it impossible to travel quickly, a few days of short rations could easily be endured.
It was late in the afternoon of Wednesday, November 26th, when I started the canoe off, and the sun was down before I had settled up accounts and said good-bye to the friends whom I did not expect to meet again for many a long day. The moon was full, and I had no difficulty in finding my way six miles through the woods to an old miner's cabin at which we had arranged to camp for the night. At the first streak ofdawn we were off again, travelling our best with two and sometimes three men on the line; the current was strong, but the tracking on the gravel-bars perfect. That night there was a heavy snowstorm, while the ground froze hard and caused many a nasty fall on the slippery stones during the next two days. On Saturday morning cakes of soft ice began to run, but we found that most of them were brought down by a large tributary coming from the north, and above its mouth the river was comparatively clear of ice. The same afternoon we reached the entrance to the main range of mountains, and under the first peak of the chain tracked up a strong rush of water with a heavy sea at its foot, commonly known as the Polpar Rapid, a curious corruption ofla Rapide qui ne parle pas, so named by the oldvoyageursfrom the absence of the roar of waters which usually gives ample warning of the proximity of a rapid. Part of the cargo we portaged to keep it dry, and above the strong water lay a quiet stretch of river, winding away in the gloomy black chasm between the huge mountains, which in many places takes the form of a sheer bluff hanging over the stream.
We camped just above the Polpar, and another night's snow made the tracking worse than ever; often it was necessary to put the line aboard and take to the paddles, to struggle round some steep point upon which a coating of frozen snow made it impossible to stand. Ice was running in largepans and steering was difficult, but we got on fairly well, and were far in the heart of the mountains when we camped on Sunday night under one of the steepest and most forbidding peaks that I ever remember to have seen in any part of the Rockies.
Monday was really cold, and our difficulties increased; the tow-line was sheeted with ice and three times its ordinary weight, while the channel was in many places almost blocked; poles and paddles had to be handled with numbed fingers, and our moccasins from constant wading turned into heavy lumps of ice; but we pushed on, and at nightfall had passed the mountains and emerged into a more inviting country. It was evident, however, that canoe-work was nearly over for the year, but we determined to make one more attempt, as the junction of the Findlay and Parsnip was not far ahead, and there was just a chance that the ice was coming from the Findlay and we might find the Parsnip, up which our course lay, clear enough for navigation. On Tuesday we made the most dangerous day's travel that I ever experienced in a canoe; the river was far too full of ice to handle even a "dug-out" with safety, and we had to make many crossings in the swift current among the running floes. I made it a point that everybody should keep on the same side of the river to assure our all being together in case of accident, and we had several narrow escapes from beingnipped. At dinner-time we came in sight of the broken water of the Findlay Rapid, and found the big eddy on the south side of the river completely blocked with ice. We went through the risky manœuvre of skirting the edge of the eddy with the floes whirling round us in the strong running water, and, finding a solid spot, hauled the canoe over the ice to the shore, making a half-mile portage to the foot of the rapid. A very close shave of capsizing filled the canoe with water; but the second attempt at tracking through the swift current and blocks of ice was more successful, and, as the short day was drawing to its close, we were paddling under a high bluff which prevented our using the tracking-line. Here darkness caught us, and our position was perilous in the extreme; the current was so strong that our best pace was required to stem it at all, and many times we had to drift back to avoid collision with the ice that was grinding past us. A couple of hours' hard work brought us to the first spot at which we could effect a landing, but it was no easy matter to carry the cargo up the frozen bank; we secured the canoe as well as we could, and found ourselves on a small flat covered with willows and abundance of firewood. Towards midnight the grinding of the ice became less noticeable and before daylight ceased entirely; the river above us had set fast and further water-travel was impossible. When morning broke we saw the Findlay branch completelyjambed with ice stretching away to the north-west, and the Parsnip bending sharply to the south presented a similar appearance.
A glance at our position is not out of place, and a good map might have saved us from the serious trouble we afterwards experienced.
Far away in the mountains of British Columbia, in a country little known to the white man and at no great distance from the Pacific Ocean, the Findlay River has its source, while the Parsnip rises close under the Rocky Mountains on their west side, and, skirting the foot-hills, joins the Findlay at the spot where we now encamped. Below the junction the stream, already of considerable size and known as the Peace River, pours through the black rent in the backbone of the North American continent many thousands of feet below the summits of the mountains, and takes its course towards the Arctic Ocean at the mouth of the great Mackenzie. The most extraordinary feature in this reversion of the laws of Nature is the extreme tranquillity of the stream in passing through the main range, for with the exception of the Findlay and Polpar Rapid, one at either end of the pass, there is no difficulty in navigating a canoe. In passing the eastern range above Hudson's Hope the cañon is rough to the last degree, and one would expect to find the same thing among the higher mountains. A third branch, the Omineca, once a celebrated mining-camp, joins the Findlay, but is a much smallerstream. To reach Fort Macleod we had to follow the Parsnip and turn up a tributary branch known as Macleod's River, draining Macleod's Lake into the Parsnip.
I had another long conversation with Charlie and Pat as to the best plan of action, and pointed out to them that if there was the least doubt about finding the lake we might still get back to Hudson's Hope, as by the aid of a few portages over ice-jambs one can travel down-stream in company with the floes long after it has become impossible to force a passage against them, and when we reached the east end of the pass it would be easy to walk through the level country. But both the guides laughed at the idea of their getting lost, and again reminded me of the fact that only a few weeks before they had come from Macleod. If we could cross the Parsnip, they said, we had only to follow the west bank till we came to the Little River, and then half a day would take us to the fort; in four days from now, or five at the latest, we should reach the end of our journey. The morning of December 4th was spent in making a scaffold on which to store my rather bulky cargo, which of course had to be left with the intention of returning from Fort Macleod with a dog-sleigh. After dinner we started on foot, every man carrying his blanket and a small load of provisions, kettles, and necessaries of various kinds. I decided to take no gun, as I only had a dozen shot-cartridges left,and a gun is always an impediment in walking through the woods, although there is a good old saying in the North that men should not part with their guns till the women throw away their babies.
One thing that I thought might cause some trouble was the fact of our having no snow-shoes, and the snow would soon be deep enough to require them. We took all our beans and rice, but left about thirty pounds of flour in a sack on the scaffold, thinking it needlessly heavy to carry, and that it was better to run short for a day or two than overload ourselves and prevent rapid travelling.
The ice was piled up high on the banks, and we began badly by climbing over a steep hill covered with such heavy timber that the pace was slow, and it was night when we came out on the bank of the Parsnip not more than four miles from our last camp. The next day we did rather better, but, getting among burnt timber and deep snow, had many heavy falls. In the evening we found a jamb in the river, and, making rather a risky crossing with the chance of our ice-bridge breaking up at any moment, camped on the Macleod side, thinking that we were now surely safe enough, and the worst thing that could happen might be a little starvation before we reached the fort. Then came two days of fair travelling, sometimes on the ice and sometimes in the woods, but the latterwere so thick that it was hard to get through them at all.
I have never seen a river freeze in the remarkable manner that the Parsnip set fast this summer. The first jamb had probably taken place at the junction of the Findlay; the water had backed up till it stood at a higher level than the summer floods, and the gravel beach was deeply submerged. There was no appearance of shore-ice, as the constant rise and fall in the water prevented a gradual freezing; jambs would form and break up again, and huge blocks of ice were forced on each other in every conceivable position. Often too the ice was flooded, and it was already cold enough to freeze wet feet; the backwaters were full, and the ice on them usually under water or hanging from the banks without support; the shores were fringed with a tangled mass of willows, heavily laden with snow and their roots often standing in water, while behind, rising to the summit of rough broken hills, was the dense pine-growth of the great sub-Arctic forest.
John caused a good deal of delay by not keeping up, and I did not like to leave him far behind, as he was clumsy on the ice, and there were many treacherous spots where black running water showed in strong contrast to the snow, and the gurgle of a swift current suggested an unpleasant ending to the unlucky man who should break through. Everybody carried an axe or astick to sound the ice, and, excepting near the banks where the water had fallen away from the ice, there were no mishaps. Further delay was caused by our frequently having to light a fire to dry moccasins and keep our feet from freezing.
On the fourth night after abandoning the canoe we camped close to a coffin hung between two trees, as is the fashion of the Siccanees in dealing with their dead; the guide recognised this coffin, and told me we should certainly be at the fort in two days. Beans and rice were finished, but we had flour enough left for another day, and this we baked into bread to save trouble in cooking later on, and on the following day made a fair journey considering the bad state of the ice.
The next morning, after eating our last bite of bread, we were going to try for the fort, and to lighten our load left behind the kettles, for which we had no more use, while some of us were rash enough to leave our blankets; we expected to be back with the dog-sleigh in a few days, and could then pick up everything.
The water had risen again in the night and the ice was useless for travelling on, so on the guide's advice we left the river on the west bank, and climbing the rough hills walked along the ridge in a south-westerly direction, expecting every hour to fall upon the little river running out of Macleod's Lake. When night caught uswe were still in the woods, and, although there was no supper and snow was falling softly, a bright fire and the prospect of reaching the fort in the morning kept us in good spirits enough. I was one of the unfortunates without a blanket, and was glad to see daylight come again and with it a cessation of the snowstorm. During the last few days rabbit-tracks had been frequently seen in the snow and grouse were plentiful, but we had no means of securing game of any kind.
To make as sure as possible of getting food the next day, I sent Murdo and Charlie ahead without loads to make the best of their way to the fort, while Pat and myself would stay by John, who was already in difficulties, and carry the packs.
Starting without breakfast is the worst part of these starving times. The walking for the first two hours was very hard, through a thick growth of young pines rising among the blackened stumps and fallen logs of a burnt forest, up and down steep gullies, with the snow from the branches pouring down our necks, and our loads often bringing us up with a sudden jerk as they stuck between two little trees. John soon gave up his pack, and left it hanging on a bough, where it remains probably till the present day. About mid-day we came to the end of the ridge and looked up the wide valley of the Parsnip. Far below us we could trace its windings, and branching away to the mountains in the westwas a stream that Pat instantly declared to be Macleod's River. Towards sundown we lit a fire on a high bank above the stream, and John in a fatuous manner remarked that he recognised the place where he had camped with a boat's crew some years before. We followed the fresh tracks of our advanced party, and turning our backs on the Parsnip walked on good shore-ice till darkness compelled us to camp. I was rather surprised to find that the river was not frozen up and had much more current than I had expected, but, as both John and Pat were quite certain that all was right, I had not the least doubt that we had at last reached Macleod's River and should arrive at the fort in good time the next day.
Another sleepless night gave me plenty of time for reflection while John was comfortably rolled up in a blanket that I had been carrying all day. Four months had passed, and many a hundred miles of lake and river travelled, since David had seen the first star on that summer's night far away in the Barren Ground; now I thought my journey was nearly over, for two hundred miles on snow-shoes from Fort Macleod to Quesnelle, and three hundred miles of waggon-road from Quesnelle to the Canadian Pacific Railway, counted as nothing. It was true that we had not tasted food for two days, and rations had been short for some time past; but it was by no means my first experience of starvation, andto-morrow evening at the latest we should be in the midst of luxury once more. It was satisfactory to think that we had succeeded in forcing our way through the Rocky Mountains in the face of the winter, and were every day approaching a country made temperate by the breezes of the Pacific; already the cedars, to be found only on the west side of the main range, were showing among the pines.
With the first grey light in the east I roused my companions, and we started on shore-ice at a good pace with the prospect of breakfast ahead. Pat broke through shortly after leaving camp, and, as he was afraid of freezing his feet, we lit a fire to dry his moccasins, and the sun was up when we set out again. A couple of hours later we saw a thin blue column of smoke rising straight up into the sky, and a nearer approach showed that it came from the chimney of a cabin hidden in the woods; a cheering sight at first, but directly we reached the trail leading up from the river I knew that something was wrong, and something wrong at such a time meant something very wrong indeed.
I had spent too much of my life among the woods and mountains to be unable to read the easy writing in the snow; two tracks leading up the river late overnight, and the same two tracks quite fresh coming down-stream and turning up the trail. Murdo and Charlie must be in the cabin, and could not have reached the fort; ifthey had been coming back with supplies they would never have put ashore with starving men so close up. Pushing open the rough door we found them sitting one on each side of a small fire of cedar-chips that were just crackling into a blaze. "Have you been to the fort, Murdo?" I asked, needlessly enough. "No." "Why not? What is the matter?" "Charlie says it is the wrong river; we are lost, like d——d fools."
Murdo had described the situation concisely enough, and I fully realised the awful position we were in; lost and starving in the mountains with no guns to procure food, no snow-shoes with which to travel over the increasing depth of snow, and no clothes to withstand the cold of mid-winter which was already upon us.
There was still a hope, for Charlie was not quite ready to admit that he was mistaken. Our advance party had turned back on seeing a rapid, and even now could not give me any accurate description of this obstacle to navigation; if it was so bad that a scow could not run down, it was obvious that this could not be Macleod's River, for I knew that no portage was necessary to reach the lake. Pat was still sure that he had recognised many places this morning, but could not say anything about the log-cabin; it stood back from the river, and there was a chance that people, passing quickly down-stream, might have missed seeing it when the foliage was thick on the willows. The best plan seemed to first makesure about the rapid, so we started up-stream to inspect it. I was very doubtful of any good result coming from this move, when I saw that the strength of the current increased, and the mountains on each side of the stream grew higher and steeper. Soon we passed a newly-built beaver-house, which certainly was a strange object on the side of a travelled river, and in a couple of hours reached the rapid. Surely this was enough to make anyone turn back; a heavy shute of broken water down which no scow could ever run without being smashed to pieces; even Pat now acknowledged that he was hopelessly lost. A valuable day had been wasted, and the sun was down before we came again to the cabin, where we decided on spending the night. Three days we had been starving, and it was fully time to take the first steps by which men in our desperate position seek to maintain life as long as possible. A thorough search in the shanty produced nothing of value but an old lard-tin which would serve as a kettle; there were many empty boxes, labelled with enticing names and pictures of canned fruit and of fat cattle that had been converted into "Armour's Preserved Beef" at Kansas City, Missouri; a large number of rotten sacks, marked "Oregon Flour Patent Roller Process," showed that someone had spent a winter here, and an iron bottle containing a little quicksilver proved that he had been a miner by occupation. A board, with a notice in pencil thattwo men, whose names I forget, had arrived here from Sandy Bar in a day and a half, conveyed no meaning to us.
Among the necessary articles that we had been carrying was a large piece of dressed moose-skin for mending moccasins, and this seemed the most edible thing we could find; five small strips, three inches in length and an inch broad, were cut off and put into the lard-tin to boil for supper. We discovered Labrador tea growing in the woods, and made a brew with the leaves as soon as we thought the moose-skin was soft enough to eat. Rabbit-snares were made by unravelling a piece of string and set in the runs, but after trying this plan on several nights not a rabbit was caught, though we sometimes had the mortification of finding a broken snare. After supper of moose-skin and Labrador tea we felt in better spirits, and with a good fire and a pipe of tobacco discussed our position seriously enough.
Euclid, when he found himself incapable of proving that any particular angle or line was the exact size that he desired, had a habit of supposing it to be of some other magnitude, and by enlarging upon the absurdity of this supposition so completely puzzled the aspiring student that he was glad to admit any statement that the inventor of the proposition suggested. This does well enough on paper, but starving men have no time to put this plan to the test of practice, and when they find that a river is not the one theysupposed it to be are at a loss to tell what stream it really is.
Charlie, Pat, and John, who had all been to Macleod's Lake before, told me frequently that they had never heard of any river coming into the Parsnip on the west side between the Findlay and Macleod's River. Now, in a boating journey the talk is always of points and rivers, and the mouth of any tributary is always commented upon, so it seemed unlikely that they should have passed by this large stream without noticing it; nor had they heard of any miner's cabin, which must certainly have been spoken of in a country where houses are scarce. There was a possibility that we had come too far and missed the mouth of Macleod's River, for we had sometimes travelled on the east side of the Parsnip to take advantage of better ice or a thinner growth of timber, and I had heard David say that the Little River was not easy for a stranger to find. In any case it was better to retrace our steps to the mouth of the stream that we had been following, to see if our guides could recognise any landmark, for the hills were conspicuous and sometimes of remarkable shape.
At daylight on December 10th we left the cabin and made tracks down-stream, taking with us the lard-tin in which we had boiled more moose-skin for breakfast. So far we had lost no strength and, with the exception of John, who was always behind, were going strong and well.It was late in the afternoon when we reached the river and once again stood on the bank of the Parsnip. Across on the east side rose a high-cut bank of yellow clay, a mark that any one should recognise who had ever seen it before; but Charlie and Pat both put on a hopeless blank expression when I asked them if they knew the place. No, they said, they had never seen it before in their lives. Six weeks before they had passed right under that cut bank in a scow, and less than forty miles up-stream would have taken us to the fort if we had only known it. These men were a half-breed and an Indian, supposed to be gifted with that extraordinary instinct of finding their way in all circumstances which is denied to the white man. John was just as much to blame, although it was some years ago that he travelled down the Parsnip; long afterwards, when all the trouble was over, he confided to me, as an excuse for his ignorance, that he had been very drunk when he left Macleod and was unable to make any accurate observations as to courses and distances.
There was nothing to be done but turn down the Parsnip again and keep a bright look-out for the mouth of the little river, in case we had passed it. The ice was too much flooded to walk on, and we camped high up on the mountain-side in heavy falling snow. Another misfortune befell us here; the bottom of the lard-tin was burnt out during the process of melting snow,and we had to give up the small comfort of moose-skin and wild tea. Murdo and myself spent a wretched night cowering over the fire with the snow falling down our backs, for we were still without blankets; daylight saw us struggling through the thick growth of young pines and an increased depth of snow, till at noon, when everybody was thoroughly exhausted and John had nearly given up all hope, we found ourselves stopped on the side-hill by a series of bluffs which no one felt equal to scaling. Fifteen hundred feet below us lay the river, and as a desperate alternative we descended the mountain, with many bruises from stumbling over logs hidden by the snow, to find that the water had fallen in the night, and the ice, though rough in the extreme, was dry enough to travel on. After the night had closed down over the forest we reached the place where the kettles and blankets had been left, and things looked a little brighter with the prospect of tea and a night's sleep; but we knew now that Fort Macleod must lie behind us, although there was little inducement to make another attempt to reach it with such untrustworthy guides. Our only chance of life was to reach the entrance of the Peace River Pass, where thirty pounds of flour lay on a rough scaffold exposed to the mercy of the wolverines!
Snow fell again in the night and increased our difficulties. For a day and a half we forced our way, sometimes on rough ice and sometimes through the thick willow bushes, with frequent rests as exhaustion overtook us, till we again saw the Siccanee coffin hung in the trees. Here we found the flour-sack that had been thrown away on our up-stream journey, and scraped off perhaps half a pound of flour which had stuck to the sack when wet. At the same time a mouse was caught in the snow, and, with no further preparation than singeing off the hair, was cut into strips and boiled with the flour into a thin soup. Every man carried a tin cup in his belt, so a careful distribution of the precious soup was made, and the last pipe of tobacco smoked; we certainly derived a little strength from this unexpected supply, and our spirits improved greatly for a short time.
The weather now turned colder and its increased severity told on us heavily, for our clothes were torn to rags by pushing through the woods, and a starving man through loss of flesh always feels the cold more severely than a man in good condition. We often had to lighta fire to prevent our feet from freezing when wet from walking on flooded ice or breaking through near the shore. The river was still open in places and continually altering its level. John was always far behind, and I expected to see him drop at any time; but he had the advantage of starting fatter than the rest of us, and took good care of himself, always hanging in the rear and coming into camp when the labour of throwing out the snow and getting wood was accomplished. Never once during the whole of this march did he go ahead to break a trail through the snow, which is of course the most fatiguing work of all.
A little before sundown on December 17th, the tenth day without eating anything but small scraps of moose-skin and the soup at the coffin-camp, we staggered among huge blocks of ice, passed the junction of the Findlay, and soon afterwards arrived at thecache. It was an anxious moment as I crawled up the frozen bank and waded through the snow to the scaffold; no wolverine tracks were to be seen, and the flour was lying untouched. Camp was made, a kettle of thick paste boiled, and a cupful eaten every half-hour to prevent any ill effects from straining the weakened organs of the digestion.
But we were by no means out of our difficulties yet. Thirty pounds of flour, without meat, is the ordinary amount that would be given to five men for two days, without taking into accountthe fact that we had been starving for a long time and were now reduced to skeletons. Before us was the main range of the Rocky Mountains; the snow would be drifted deep in the narrow pass, and travel would be slow, if indeed we got through at all. Another serious trouble was the state of our moccasins; as they wore out we had eaten them, and were now wearing rough apologies for shoes which we had made out of the moose-skin that was quickly getting very small under the constant demands made upon it for various purposes.
In the morning I measured the flour very carefully with a cup into different loads, so that I might be able to keep account of the quantity that was used, and, taking a gun and what few cartridges were left, we started for Tom Barrow's cabin, which we hoped to be able to reach in three or four days if the ice should prove good. In this we were terribly disappointed, for at the end of the second day, after wading through deep snow, and frequently putting ashore to light a fire on account of the intense cold, we camped but a short distance below the Findlay Rapid. John's feet were frozen already, and all of us were touched in the face; there was always great difficulty in lighting a match with numbed fingers, but birch-bark was plentiful, and being readily inflammable was nearly sure to blaze up at once. Our only remaining axe was almost useless from having been carelessly left for a night in thefire. Much of the snow had drifted off the ice and was lying three and four feet deep on the banks, increasing the labour of making camp and picking up firewood, for we were too weak to do any effectual chopping even if our axe had been in good condition. Without snow-shoes it was impossible to walk through the forest in the hope of finding grouse; and, after one or two efforts, the exertion of wading waist-deep through snow that reached to the belt was found too great, and the attempt was abandoned.
On the third day a blizzard swept through the pass, completely obscuring the opposite bank of the river, which was here quite narrow. We attempted to travel against it, but found our faces were frozen before going a quarter of a mile. Murdo and myself had always to light the matches, as the other men suffered more from the cold than we did; I knew that my hands were already useless, and that if we continued to force our way against the storm there would be little chance of starting a fire further on. I gave orders to turn back for the camp, and we spent the short day in keeping up the fire that was still burning. Besides the drift, a gust of wind would often send down the masses of snow that had gathered on the branches, putting out our little blaze and filling up the hole that we had dug in the snow, while the boughs themselves often fell dangerously close to the camp. The allowance of flour was cut down to two cupfuls among fivemen, and this was eaten in the form of paste, which we found more satisfying than bread. The Labrador tea was buried deep under the snow, and from this time no more was obtained.
The shortening of rations produced grumbling in the camp, especially from John, who declared that it was better to eat well while the little flour lasted, to gain strength to take us to the trading-post. Murdo was more sensible in this respect, but was beginning to lose the full use of his head, and, besides the strong aversion he had always shown to John, now developed a passionate hatred to Charlie and Pat, whom rightly enough he held responsible for our position. This ill-feeling among the various members of our party was increased tenfold by an episode which took place on the following day. The morning was very cold but with less wind, and, although our faces froze again, we pushed on for an hour or two and then made a fire on the bank. Here we left the Indian and half-breed drying their moccasins, and continued travelling down stream to make a camp for the mid-day halt, knowing that the others could catch us up easily with the advantage of our road through the snow; this they did just as our fire was blazing up. I asked Charlie for his flour, as so far we had not used any from his load, but when he produced it there was not more than a cupful left in the bag. I had given him five pounds of flour to carry, and at once knew that our guides, who had caused allthe trouble, had now been guilty of stealing food, when our lives depended on the scanty store that we had picked up at thecache. For this offence, at such a time, there is but one punishment: a man on the point of starving to death cares little whether you cut off the dollar a day that he is earning or not; a blow struck would have fired the train of discontent that was ready to explode;—the only course open to me, if the offenders were to be punished at all, was to put an end to them both with the shot-gun that I carried. For a long time I debated this question while a few spoonfuls of flour were boiled for dinner, and finally decided to let matters take their course; there were still seven or eight pounds of flour left, and by further reduction of rations we might keep ourselves alive for a few more days; the weather might be warmer, the ice less rough, and the snowfall lighter if we could reach the far end of the pass, but at present things looked very black indeed. Flesh and strength were failing rapidly; this loss of provisions would tell heavily, and travelling through the gloomy pass under the high mountains was more laborious than words can describe. It was no good refusing to give the thieves their share of rations, as this might induce them to strike a blow in the night, and deal us the death that they themselves deserved; but the question might still have to be decided, in case of a man dropping, whether his life should be sacrificed and the offenders allowedto go free. If affairs came to the point which everything seemed to indicate, there could now be no fair drawing of lots to see who should die that the survivors might support themselves by the last resource of all.
The weather continued cold, and frozen feet caused many delays; there was no chance here to treat a frost-bite by the tender methods of thawing with snow and rubbing with oil that are practised in civilization, but feet were thrust into a blazing fire and allowed to blister as they would. John and Charlie suffered greatly from this cause, and their pain in walking was much increased. These delays were serious, for although the Peace River Pass lies as far to the south as the 56th parallel of latitude the days were at their shortest.
For three more days we continued wading through the snowdrifts, and crawling over rough ice, continually changing our leader, till on December 24th we were stopped by another blizzard, and forced to lie in camp all day. Rations were by this time cut down to a spoonful of flour in the morning and a strip of moose-skin at night for each man. Not more than a pound of flour was left, and the storm, far too fierce for such wretched skeletons to face, might continue for several days. Our situation seemed utterly hopeless as we crouched over the fire that was with difficulty maintained, and apparently the end had come. There was none of the kindlysympathy for companions in misfortune which men who share a common danger should have: a mutual distrust was prevalent; hatred and the wolfish madness of hunger ruled the camp; and to this day I cannot understand how it was that the fatal spark was never struck, and no tragedy of murder and cannibalism enacted on the banks of that ice-bound river without witnesses save the great silent mountains and the God who made them.
Christmas Day brought rather better weather, although snow was still falling quietly, and, finding open water in the river with shore-ice on which the snow was not so deep as usual, there was a great improvement in our case. An accident, however, occurred which nearly put an end to two of the party. Charlie and Pat, who were leading at the time, ventured too near the edge of the open water and broke through, not only to the knees or waist, as had so often happened, but over their heads in deep water with a strong current, and we had some trouble in pulling them out. It was very important that we should make a fire at once, as the temperature was many degrees below zero, and the men drenched to the skin began to freeze directly. The accident had taken place under a long steep bluff, and from where we stood no firewood was to be seen on our side of the river within a couple of miles. By the greatest good fortune, on turning a point we found a huge tree that had fallen over thecliff and lay on the beach smashed up into firewood, as if it had been prepared specially for our use. A blaze was soon started, and the two half-drowned men left to dry themselves. The most unfortunate part of the affair was the wetting of the matches which they carried. I had divided these precious articles among the men in case of accidents of this kind, for without fire we should have had no chance of saving our lives; as it turned out we never ran short of matches and never once missed making fire, although there was often trouble in procuring wood; we were far too weak to handle a big log, but usually found a dead cotton-wood tree, from which the bark is easily pulled and makes the best of fires.
In the afternoon we passed the Polpar Rapid, which was completely frozen up, and emerging from the pass caught the first sight of the sun, that had been hidden from us for many days by the high mountains. The ice below the rapid continued fairly good till nightfall, when we were forced to camp, although the moon was full and we tried to travel by her light. But although it was easy enough to see close ahead, it was impossible to pick out the line of the best ice, and the labour of travelling was increased by having to force our way through drifts and piled-up ice that we might have avoided in daylight.
Soon after leaving camp on the following morning a grouse was killed, and I think eventhis little nourishment helped us a great deal to accomplish our task of reaching the trading-post; this was the only grouse we had seen since we left thecache, although on the up-stream journey birds had been plentiful enough. The ice was still rough at times, but in some places the river was open and good shore-ice made the walking easy; the weather was much warmer, with bright sunshine, and there was no danger of freezing our feet. At dark camp was made within a day's travel of Barrow's house, if only we had strength enough to reach it.
The long night passed away, and just before daylight we were staggering among the blocks of ice in a scattered line. There was always difficulty in starting from the camp, for there was a certain amount of comfort in lying in our blankets, and nobody was anxious to try whether he could still stand upright or not. Our inclination during the worst time was to lie down and make no further effort, but after walking half an hour we usually found ourselves in better spirits. Soon after coming out on the ice, I looked back to see how John was travelling, and noticed that he was down. Charlie, who had been behind with him, came up and said that John could travel no longer and intended to stay where he was. I stopped all the men, but Charlie tried to push by me and said that he would not wait for anyone. For the first time I had to use threats to ensure my orders being carriedout, and taking the gun from my shoulder let Charlie plainly see that I meant to shoot him if he did not obey. This quickly brought him to his senses, and John came up very slowly. He wanted someone to stay with him and trust to the others sending back provisions, but I would not listen to this proposal. I told him that it was only want of courage that prevented him making any further effort; he was as strong as the rest of us, and, if he would try, could keep up quite easily; if he would come on till we reached the place where we had had dinner on the second day out with the canoe, we would make him a camp and leave all our blankets, so that he might have a chance of keeping himself alive till relief came. On rounding a point we saw open water ahead, and John, although far behind, went far better on the smooth ice, and eventually came in not more than an hour after us. At noon the Bull's Head was in sight, and we could see the line of hills at the foot of which Barrow's house lay. The pace was fast for men in our condition, but we kept up a steady walk, leaving our blankets when there seemed a certainty of reaching the house that night. The sun was down when we passed the old shanty in which we had camped for a night on the way up, and by moonlight we travelled on, following close to the edge of the open water and taking little precaution to test the strength of the ice. Soon the roar of the cañon was heard, and atseven o'clock we crawled up the steep bank and stood in front of the cabin. I pushed open the door, and shall never forget the expression of horror that came over the faces of the occupants when they recognised us. We had become used to the hungry eyes and wasted forms, as our misery had come on us gradually, but to a man who had seen us starting out thirty-two days before in full health the change in our appearance must have been terrible. There was no doubt that we were very near the point of death. For my own part I felt a dull aching in the left side of my head; I was blind in the left eye and deaf in the left ear; there was a sharp pain on each side just below the ribs; but my legs, though not well under control, were still strong. We had all completely lost the use of our voices, and suffered greatly from the cracking of the skin on hands and feet, which always results from starving in cold weather; to say that we were thin conveys no idea of our miserable condition. It is needless to go into the details of our recovery; but under Barrow's careful nursing, and restrictions as to the quantity of food allowed, we all came back to health, although for some days our lives were hanging in the balance.
I can never sufficiently thank Tom Barrow for his kind behaviour on this occasion. Of course, everybody is sorry for starving people; but it is rather a strain on this sympathy tohave to look after five men so near to death in a small cabin among the Rocky Mountains, with such slender supplies as had been left for a winter's rations for two people. Without a murmur he shared his blankets and his provisions, although he knew that there was a good chance of starving himself in the spring.
Barrow told us directly where we had made our mistake. The river we had turned up was Nation River, and the log-cabin had been occupied some years before by a party of miners, but very little gold had been taken out. Some distance up Nation River was the old trail to the Omineca mining-camp; but of course we should not have known what trail it was if we had found it. The mouth of the Nation River and the yellow cut bank Barrow remembered perfectly, and said there had been much talk about these landmarks on the way down; it seems inexplicable that three men, who had been over the route before, should have made the mistake that so nearly cost us our lives. If we had followed up the Parsnip beyond the mouth of Nation River we should have reached Macleod's Lake on December 12th at latest with only a few days' starvation, and avoided all the misery that continued till the 27th of that month.
In a week communication was opened with Hudson's Hope, and Walter Macdonald did everything he could to help us; but the same thing had happened to him. A band of BeaverIndians had been caught by starvation at the mouth of the Pine River Pass, and had suffered the same experiences as ourselves. Many had been left by the way, but I think there were no deaths, as provisions were sent out so soon as the news reached Baptiste at Moberley's Lake.
At the end of a fortnight everybody was well enough to travel; and to ease the strain on provisions I sent Murdo, John, and Charlie to Lesser Slave Lake, where they could get fish to support them, and spare the resources of the upper river posts. But even now these men could not travel together, although they had full rations and nothing to quarrel about. Murdo reached the Lesser Slave Lake alone, John arriving several days later, and I found Charlie at Dunvegan, where he had already distinguished himself by robbing from the priest's trading-store. A thorough blackguard was Charlie, and it would have been little loss to the world in general if he had left his bones under the snow in the Peace River Pass; he had begun his voyage badly by stealing fifty dollars from his mother at Quesnelle, and there were several other offences for which the police had hunted him away from the borders of civilization. Pat was to stay for the winter with Barrow, and as soon as Baptiste had made us snow-shoes we pottered about in the woods together, hunting grouse and rabbits, and had soon entirely recovered our strength.
I havenever heard any satisfactory explanation of the gradual increase and sudden dying out of the rabbits and lynx, which takes place every seven years throughout the North. Starting from the few survivors of the last epidemic, the numbers increase slowly every season, till in the sixth year the whole country is so over-run with them that a man can travel anywhere with no further provision than shot-gun and snares. Then the disease breaks out, dead bodies are found all through the woods, and scarcely a living rabbit or lynx is to be seen. The autumn of 1885 I spent on the head-waters of the Athabasca, at the east end of the Tête Jaune Pass; the rabbits were then at their height and as plentiful as I ever saw them in England. 1892 will be the next big rabbit-year; but after that famine is sure to be rife on Peace River, as it is harder every year to kill moose, and for the last two or three years the rabbit-snares have kept many an Indian from starvation. This rabbit-question is an important one to consider before starting on an exploration trip in the Peace River country, as in the good seasons there is no danger of running short of provisions.
One day, as we were setting snares together, Pat told me the story of the stolen flour. They had stayed behind to dry their moccasins, and Charlie had explained to Pat that I was keeping the flour for the use of the white men, and that their only chance of getting any was to helpthemselves; Pat had objected at first, but afterwards gave way when he saw Charlie cooking the flour, and they had eaten about four pounds between them. Judging from Charlie's character I am inclined to believe the story, as Pat in all other respects had behaved well under the pressure of hardship, and had always done more than his share of work in making camp and breaking the trail.
While staying at Hudson's Hope, Macdonald and I walked over to Moberley's Lake, twelve miles to the south, to pay old Baptiste a visit. The house stands within view of the big peaks of the Rockies close to the edge of the lake, but the appearance of the country is rather spoilt by the abundant traces of forest fires that have taken place of late years. The lake is a beautiful sheet of water, ten miles in length, drained by the Pine River, which falls into the Peace a short distance above Fort St. John. Baptiste has a fruitful potato-patch, and his women were catching plenty of rabbits; there was moose-pemmican, too, and dried meat, for the Fall hunt had been successful. The Iroquois gave me a pair of snow-shoes ornamented with tassels of coloured wool, as well as a pair of beaded moccasins which he made me promise not to eat, and came with us to the fort to see us off.