ON THE OLD INDIAN TRAIL
Next morning we scouted ahead and found that the trail led to a small lake some five and a half miles beyond our camp. For a mile or so the brush was pretty thick and the trail was difficult to follow, but beyond that it was comparatively well defined though exceedingly steep, the hill rising to an elevation of one thousand and fifty feet above the Nascaupee River in the first two miles. We had fifteen hundred pounds of outfit to carry upon our backs, and I realized that at first we should have to trail slowly and make several loads of it, for, with the exception of Pete, none of the men was in training. The work was totally different from anything to which they had been accustomed, and as I did not wish to break their spirits or their ardor, I instructed them to carry only such packs as they could walk under with perfect ease until they should become hardened to the work.
The weather had been cool and bracing, but as if to add to our difficulties the sun now boiled down, and the black flies—“the devil’s angels” some one called them, came in thousands to feast upon the newcomers and make life miserable for us all. Duncan was as badly treated by them as any of us, although he belonged to the country, and I overheard him swearing at a lively gait soon after the little beasts began their attacks.
“Why, Duncan,” said I, “I didn’t know you swore.”
“I does, sir, sometimes—when things makes me,” he replied.
“But it doesn’t help matters any to swear, does it?”
“No, sir, but” (swatting his face) “damn the flies—it’s easin’ to the feelin’s to swear sometimes.”
On several occasions after this I heard Duncan “easin’ his feelin’s” in long and astounding bursts of profane eloquence, but he did try to moderate his language when I was within earshot. Once I asked him:
“Where in the world did you learn to swear like that, Duncan?”
“At the lumber camps, sir,” he replied.
In the year I had spent in Labrador I had never before heard a planter or native of Groswater Bay swear. But this explained it. The lumbermen from “civilization” were educating them.
At one o’clock on July first, half our outfit was portaged to the summit of the hill and we ate our dinner there in the broiling sun, for we were above the trees, which ended some distance below us. It was fearfully hot—a dead, suffocating heat—with not a breath of wind to relieve the stifling atmosphere, and some one asked what the temperature was.
“Eighty-seven in the shade, but no shade,” Richards remarked as he threw down his pack and consulted the thermometer where I had placed it under a low bush. “I’ll swear it’s a hundred and fifty in the sun.”
During dinner Pete pointed to the river far below us, saying, “Look! Indian canoe.” I could not make it out without my binoculars, but with their aid discerned a canoe on the river, containing a solitary paddler. None of us, excepting Pete, could see the canoe without the glasses, at which he was very proud and remarked: “No findin’ glass need me. See far, me. See long way off.”
On other occasions, afterward, I had reason to marvel at Pete’s clearness of vision.
It was John Ahsini in the canoe, as we discovered later when he joined us and helped Stanton up the hill with his last pack to our night camp on the summit. I invited John to eat supper with us and he accepted the invitation. He told us he was hunting “moshku” (bear) and was camped at the mouth of the Red River. He assured us that we would find no more hills like this one we were on, and, pointing to the northward, said, “Miam potagan” (good portage) and that we would find plenty “atuk” (caribou), “moshku” and “mashumekush” (trout). After supper I gave John some “stemmo,” and he disappeared down the trail to join his wife in their wigwam below.
We were all of us completely exhausted that night. Stanton was too tired to eat, and lay down upon the bare rocks to sleep. Pete stretched our tent wigwam fashion on some old Indian tepee poles, and, without troubling ourselves to break brush for a bed, we all soon joined Stanton in a dreamless slumber upon his rocky couch.
The night, like the day, was very warm, and when I aroused Pete at sunrise the next morning (July second) to get breakfast the mosquitoes were about our heads in clouds.
A magnificent panorama lay before us. Opposite, across the valley of the Nascaupee, a great hill held its snow-tipped head high in the heavens. Some four miles farther up to the northwest, the river itself, where it was choked with blocks of ice, made its appearance and threaded its way down to the southeast until it was finally lost in the spruce-covered valley. Beyond, bits of Grand Lake, like silver settings in the black surrounding forest, sparkled in the light of the rising sun. Away to the westward could be traced the rushing waters of the Red River making their course down through the sandy ridges that enclose its valley. To the northward lay a great undulating wilderness, the wilderness that we were to traverse. It was Sunday morning, and the holy stillness of the day engulfed our world.
When Pete had the fire going and the kettle singing I roused the boys and told them we would make this, our first Sunday in the bush, an easy one, and simply move our camp forward to a more hospitable and sheltered spot by a little brook a mile up the trail, and then be ready for the “tug of war” on Monday.
In accordance with this plan, after eating our breakfast we each carried a light pack to our new camping ground, and there pitched our tent by a tiny brook that trickled down through the rocks. While Stanton cooked dinner, Pete brought forward a second pack. After we had eaten, Richards suggested to Pete that they take the fish net ahead and set it in the little lake which was still some two and a half miles farther on the trail. They had just returned when a terrific thunderstorm broke upon us, and every moment we expected the tent to be carried away by the gale that accompanied the downpour of rain. It was then that Richards remembered that he had left his blankets to dry upon the tepee poles at the last camp. The rain ceased about five o’clock, and Duncan volunteered to return with Richards and help him recover his blankets, which they found far from dry.
Mosquitoes, it seemed to me, were never so numerous or vicious as after this thunderstorm. We had head nets that were a protection from them generally, but when we removed the nets to eat, the attacks of the insects were simply insufferable, so we had our supper in the tent. After our meal was finished and Pete had washed the dishes, I read aloud a chapter from the Bible—a Sunday custom that was maintained throughout the trip—and Stanton sang some hymns. Then we prevailed upon him to entertain us with other songs. He had an excellent tenor voice and a repertoire ranging from “The Holy City” to “My Brother Bob,” and these and some of the old Scotch ballads, which he sang well, were favorites that he was often afterward called upon to render as we gathered around our evening camp fire, smoking our pipes and drinking in the tonic fragrance of the great solemn forest around us after a day of hard portaging. These impromptu concerts, story telling, and reading aloud from two or three “vest pocket” classics that I carried, furnished our entertainment when we were not too tired to be amused.
Camp Was Moved to the First Small Lake
The rain cleared the atmosphere, and Monday was cool and delightful, and, with the exception of two or three showers, a perfect day. Camp was moved and our entire outfit portaged to the first small lake. Our net, which Pete and Richards had set the day before, yielded us nothing, but with my rod I caught enough trout for a sumptuous supper.
The following morning (July fourth) Pete and I, who arose at half-past four, had just finished preparing breakfast of fried pork, flapjacks and coffee, and I had gone to the tent to call the others, when Pete came rushing after me in great excitement, exclaiming, “Caribou! Rifle quick!” He grabbed one of the 44’s and rushed away and soon we heard bang-bang-bang seven times from up the lake shore. It was not long before Pete returned with a very humble bearing and crestfallen countenance, and without a word leaned the rifle against a tree and resumed his culinary operations.
“Well, Pete,” said I, “how many caribou did you kill?”
“No caribou. Miss him,” he replied.
“But I heard seven shots. How did you miss so many times?” I asked.
“Miss him,” answered Pete. “I see caribou over there, close to water, run fast, try get lee side so he don’t smell me. Water in way. Go very careful, make no noise, but he smell me. He hold his head up like this. He sniff, then he start. He go through trees very quick. See him, me, just little when he runs through trees. Shoot seven times. Hit him once, not much. He runs off. No good follow. Not hurt much, maybe goes very far.”
“You had caribou fever, Pete,” suggested Richards.
“Yes,” said Easton, “caribou fever, sure thing.”
“I don’t believe you’d have hit him if he hadn’t winded you,” Stanton remarked. “The trouble with you, Pete, is you can’t shoot.”
“No caribou fever, me,” rejoined Pete, with righteous indignation at such a suggestion. “Kill plenty moose, kill red deer; never have moose fever, never have deer fever.” Then turning to me he asked, “You want caribou, Mr. Wallace?”
“Yes,” I answered, “I wish we could get some fresh meat, but we can wait a few days. We have enough to eat, and I don’t want to take time to hunt now.”
“Plenty signs. I get caribou any day you want him. Tell me when you want him, I kill him,” Pete answered me, ignoring the criticisms of the others as to his marksmanship and hunting prowess. All that day and all the next the men let no opportunity pass to guy Pete about his lost caribou, and on the whole he took the banter very good-naturedly, but once confided to me that “if those boys get up early, maybe they see caribou too and try how much they can do.”
After breakfast Pete and I paddled to the other end of the little lake to pick up the trail while the others broke camp. In a little while he located it, a well-defined path, and we walked across it half a mile to another and considerably larger lake in which was a small, round, moundlike, spruce-covered island so characteristic of the Labrador lakes.
On our way back to the first lake Pete called my attention to a fresh caribou track in the hard earth. It was scarcely distinguishable, and I had to look very closely to make it out. Then he showed me other signs that I could make nothing of at all—a freshly turned pebble or broken twig. These, he said, were fresh deer signs. A caribou had passed toward the larger lake that very morning.
“If you want him, I get him,” said Pete. I could see he felt rather deeply his failure of the morning and that he was anxious to redeem himself. I wanted to give him the opportunity to do so, especially as the young men, unused to deprivations, were beginning to crave fresh meat as a relief from the salt pork. At the same time, however, I felt that the fish we were pretty certain to get from this time on would do very well for the present, and I did not care to take time to hunt until we were a little deeper into the country. Therefore I told him, “No, we will wait a day or two.”
Pete, as I soon discovered, had an insatiable passion for hunting, and could never let anything in the way of game pass him without qualms of regret. Sometimes, where a caribou trail ran off plain and clear in the moss, it was hard to keep from running after it. Nothing ever escaped his ear or eye. He had the trained senses and instincts of the Indian hunter. When I first saw him in New York he looked so youthful and evidently had so little confidence in himself, answering my question as to whether he could do this or that with an aggravating “I don’t know,” that I felt a keen sense of disappointment in him. But with every stage of our journey he had developed, and now was in his element. He was quite a different individual from the green Indian youth whom I had first seen walking timidly beside the railway conductor at the Grand Central Station in New York.
The portage between the lakes was an easy one and, as I have said, well defined, and we reached the farther shore of the second lake early in the afternoon. Here we found an old Indian camping ground covering several acres. It had evidently been at one time a general rendezvous of the Indians hunting in this section, as was indicated by the large number of wigwams that had been pitched here. That was a long while ago, however, for the old poles were so decayed that they fell into pieces when we attempted to pick them up.
There was no sign of a trail leading from the old camp ground, and I sent Pete and Richards to circle the bush and endeavor to locate one that I knew was somewhere about, while I fished and Stanton and Duncan prepared an early supper. A little later the two men returned, unsuccessful in their quest. They had seen two or three trails, any of which might be our trail. Of course but one of themcouldbe the right one.
This report was both perplexing and annoying, for I did not wish to follow for several days a wrong route and then discover the error when much valuable time had been lost.
I therefore decided that we must be sure of our position before proceeding, and early the following morning dispatched Richards and Pete on a scouting expedition to a high hill some distance to the northeast that they might, from that view-point, note the general contour of the land and the location of any visible chain of lakes leading to the northwest through which the Indian trail might pass, and then endeavor to pick up the trail from one of these lakes, noting old camping grounds and other signs. As a precaution, in case they were detained over night each carried some tea and some erbswurst, a rifle, a cup at his belt and a compass. When Pete took the rifle he held it up meaningly and said, “Fresh meat to-night. Caribou,” and I could see that he was planning to make a hunt of it.
When they were gone, I took Easton with me and climbed another hill nearer camp, that I might get a panoramic view of the valley in which we were camped. From this vantage ground I could see, stretching off to the northward, a chain of three or four small lakes which, I concluded, though there was other water visible, undoubtedly marked our course. Far to the northwest was a group of rugged, barren, snow-capped mountains which were, perhaps, the “white hills,” behind which the Indians had told us lay Seal Lake. At our feet, sparkling in the sunlight, spread the lake upon whose shores our tent, a little white dot amongst the green trees, was pitched. A bit of smoke curled up from our camp fire, where I knew Stanton and Duncan were baking “squaw bread.”
We returned to camp to await the arrival and report of Richards and Pete, and occupied the afternoon in catching trout which, though more plentiful than in the first lake, were very small.
Toward evening, when a stiff breeze blew in from the lake and cleared the black flies and mosquitoes away. Easton took a canoe out, stripped, and sprang into the water, while I undressed on shore and was in the midst of a most refreshing bath when, suddenly, the wind died away and our tormentors came upon us in clouds. It was a scramble to get into our clothes again, but before I succeeded in hiding my nakedness from them, I was pretty severely wounded.
It was scarcely six o’clock when Richards and Pete walked into camp and proudly threw down some venison. Pete had kept his promise. On the lookout at every step for game, he had espied an old stag, and, together, he and Richards had stalked it, and it had received bullets from both their rifles. I shall not say to which hunter belonged the honor of killing the game. They were both very proud of it.
But best of all, they had found, to a certainty, the trail leading to one of the chain of little lakes which Easton and I had seen, and these lakes, they reported, took a course directly toward a larger lake, which they had glimpsed. I decided that this must be the lake of which the Indians at Northwest River had told us—Lake Nipishish (Little Water). This was very gratifying intelligence, as Nipishish was said to be nearly half way to Seal Lake, from where we had begun our portage on the Nascaupee.
What a supper we had that night of fresh venison, and new “squaw bread,” hot from the pan!
In the morning we portaged our outfit two miles, and removed our camp to the second one of the series of lakes which Easton and I had seen from the hill, and the fourth lake after leaving the Nascaupee River. The morning was fearfully hot, and we floundered through marshes with heavy packs, bathed in perspiration, and fairly breathing flies and mosquitoes. Not a breath of air stirred, and the humidity and heat were awful. Stanton and Duncan remained to pitch the tent and bring up some of our stuff that had been left at the second lake, while Richards, Easton, Pete and I trudged three miles over the hills for the caribou meat which had been cached at the place where the animal was killed, Richards and Pete having brought with them only enough for two or three meals.
The country here was rough and broken, with many great bowlders scattered over the hilltops. When we reached the cache we were ravenously hungry, and built a fire and had a very satisfying luncheon of broiled venison steak and tea. We bad barely finished our meal when heavy black clouds overcast the sky, and the wind and rain broke upon us in the fury of a hurricane. With the coming of the storm the temperature dropped fully forty degrees in half as many minutes, and in our dripping wet garments we were soon chilled and miserable. We hastened to cut the venison up and put it into packs, and with each a load of it, started homeward. On the way I stopped with Pete to climb a peak that I might have a view of the surrounding country and see the large lake to the northward which he and Richards had reported the evening before. The atmosphere was sufficiently clear by this time for me to see it, and I was satisfied that it was undoubtedly Lake Nipishish, as no other large lake had been mentioned by the Indians.
We hastened down the mountain and made our way through rain-soaked bushes and trees that showered us with their load of water at every step, and when at last we reached camp and I threw down my pack, I was too weary to change my wet garments for dry ones, and was glad to lie down, drenched as I was, to sleep until supper was ready.
None of our venison must be wasted. All that we could not use within the next day or two must be “jerked,” that is, dried, to keep it from spoiling. To accomplish this we erected poles, like the poles of a wigwam, and suspended the meat from them, cut in thin strips, and in the center, between the poles, made a small, smoky fire to keep the greenbottle flies away, that they might not “blow” the venison, as well as to aid nature in the drying process.
All day on July seventh the rain poured down, a cold, northwest wind blew, and no progress was made in drying our meat. There was nothing to do but wait in the tent for the storm to clear.
When Pete went out to cook dinner I told him to make a little corn meal porridge and let it go at that, but what a surprise he had for us when, a little later, dripping wet and hands full of kettles, he pushed his way into the tent! A steaming venison potpie, broiled venison steaks, hot fried bread dough, stewed prunes for dessert and a kettle of hot tea! All experienced campers in the north woods are familiar with the fried bread dough. It is dough mixed as you would mix it for squaw bread, but not quite so stiff, pulled out to the size of your frying pan, very thin, and fried in swimming pork grease. In taste it resembles doughnuts. Hubbard used to call it “French toast.” Our young men had never eaten it before, and Richards, taking one of the cakes, asked Pete:
“What do you call this?”
“I don’t know,” answered Pete.
“Well,” said Richards, with a mouthful of it, “I call it darn good.”
“That’s what we call him then,” retorted Pete, “darn good.”
And so the cakes were christened “darn goods,” and always afterward we referred to them by that name.
The forest fire which I have mentioned as having swept this country to the shores of Grand Lake some thirty-odd years ago, had been particularly destructive in this portion of the valley where we were now encamped. The stark dead spruce trees, naked skeletons of the old forest, stood all about, and that evening, when I stepped outside for a look at the sky and weather, I was impressed with the dreariness of the scene. The wind blew in gusts, driving the rain in sheets over the face of the hills and through the spectral trees, finally dashing it in bucketfuls against our tent.
The next forenoon, however, the sky cleared, and in the afternoon Richards and I went ahead in one of the canoes to hunt the trail. We followed the north shore of the lake to its end, then portaged twenty yards across a narrow neck into another lake, and keeping near the north shore of this lake also, continued until we came upon a creek of considerable size running out of it and taking a southeasterly course. Where the creek left the lake there was an old Indian fishing camp. It was out of the question that our trail should follow the valley of this creek, for it led directly away from our goal. We, therefore, returned and explored a portion of the north shore of the lake, which was very bare, bowlder strewn, and devoid of vegetation for the most part—even moss.
Once we came upon a snow bank in a hollow, and cooled ourselves by eating some of the snow. Our observations made it quite certain that the trail left the northern side of the second lake through a bowlder-strewn pass over the hills, though there were no visible signs of it, and we climbed one of the hills in the hope of seeing lakes beyond. There were none in sight. It was too late to continue our search that day and we reluctantly returned to camp. Our failure was rather discouraging because it meant a further loss of time, and I had hoped that our route, until we reached Nipishish at least, would lie straight and well defined before us.
Sunday was comfortably cool, with a good stiff breeze to drive away the flies. I dispatched Richards, with Pete and Easton to accompany him, to follow up our work of the evening before, and look into the pass through the hills, while I remained behind with Stanton and Duncan and kept the fire going under our venison.
I Had expected that Duncan, with his lifelong experience as a native trapper and hunter in the Labrador interior, would be of great assistance to us in locating the trail; but to my disappointment I discovered soon after our start that he was far from good even in following a trail when it was found, though he never got lost and could always find his way back, in a straight line, to any given point.
The boys returned toward evening and reported that beyond the hills, through the pass, lay a good-sized lake, and that some signs of a trail were found leading to it. This was what I had hoped for.
Our meat was now sufficiently dried to pack, and, anxious to be on the move again, I directed that on the morrow we should break camp and cross the hills to the lakes beyond.
WE GO ASTRAY
At half-past four on Monday morning I called the men, and while Pete was preparing breakfast the rest of us broke camp and made ready for a prompt start. All were anxious to see behind the range of bowlder-covered hills and to reach Lake Nipishish, which we felt could not now be far away. As soon as our meal was finished the larger canoe was loaded and started on ahead, while Richards, Duncan and I remained behind to load and follow in the other.
With the rising sun the day had become excessively warm, and there was not a breath of wind to cool the stifling atmosphere. The trail was ill-defined and rough, winding through bare glacial bowlders that were thick-strewn on the ridges; and the difficulty of following it, together with the heat, made the work seem doubly hard, as we trudged with heavy packs to the shores of a little lake which nestled in a notch between the bills a mile and a half away. Once a fox ran before us and took refuge in its den under a large rock, but save the always present cloud of black flies, no other sign of life was visible on the treeless hills. Finally at midday, after three wearisome journeys back and forth, bathed in perspiration and dripping fly dope and pork grease, which we had rubbed on our faces pretty freely as a protection from the winged pests, we deposited our last load upon the shores of the lake, and thankfully stopped to rest and cook our dinner.
We were still eating when we heard the first rumblings of distant thunder and felt the first breath of wind from a bank of black clouds in the western sky, and had scarcely started forward again when the heavens opened upon us with a deluge.
The brunt of the storm soon passed, but a steady rain continued as we paddled through the lake and portaged across a short neck of land into a larger lake, down which we paddled to a small round island near its lower end. Here, drenched to the bone and thoroughly tired, we made camp, and in the shelter of the tent ate a savory stew composed of duck, grouse, venison and fat pork that Pete served in the most appetizing camp style.
I was astounded by the amount of squaw bread and “darn goods” that the young men of my party made away with, and began to fear not only for the flour supply, but also for the health of the men. One day when I saw one of my party eat three thick loaves of squaw bread in addition to a fair quantity of meat, I felt that it was time to limit the flour part of the ration. I expressed my fears to Pete, and advised that he bake less bread, and make the men eat more of the other food.
“Bread very good for Indian. Not good when white an eat so much. Good way fix him. Use not so much baking powder, me. Make him heavy,” suggested Pete.
“No, Pete, use enough baking powder to make the bread good, and I’ll speak to the men. Then if they don’t eat less bread of their own accord, we’ll have to limit them to a ration.”
I decided to try this plan, and that evening in our camp on the island I told them that a ration of bread would soon have to be resorted to. They looked very solemn about it, for the bare possibility of a limited ration, something that they had never had to submit to, appeared like a hardship to them.
On Tuesday morning when we awoke the rain was still falling steadily. During the forenoon the storm abated somewhat and we broke camp and transferred our goods to the mainland, where the trail left the lake near a good-sized brook. Our portage led us over small bills and through marshes a mile and a half to another lake. While Pete remained at our new camp to prepare supper and Easton stayed with him, the rest of us brought forward the last load. Richards and I with a canoe and packs attempted to run down the brook, which emptied into the lake near our camp; but we soon found the stream too rocky, and were forced to cut our way through a dense growth of willows and carry the canoe and packs to camp on our backs.
The rain had ceased early in the afternoon, and the evening was delightfully cool, so that the warmth of a big camp fire was most grateful and comforting. Our day’s march had carried us into a well-wooded country, and the spectral dry sticks of the old burnt forest were behind us. The clouds hung low and threatening, and in the twilight beyond the glow of our leaping fire made the still waters of the lake, with its encircling wilderness of fir trees, seem very dark and somber. The genial warmth of the fire was so in contrast to the chilly darkness of the tent that we sat long around it and talked of our travels and prospects and the lake and the wilderness before us that no white man had ever before seen, while the brook near by tumbling over its rocky bed roared a constant complaint at our intrusion into this land of solitude.
The following morning was cool and fine, but showers developed during the day. Our venison, improderly dried, was molding, and much of it we found, upon unpacking, to be maggoty. After breakfast I instructed the others to cut out the wormy parts as far as possible and hang the good meat over the fire for further drying, while with Easton I explored a portion of the lake shore in search of the trail leading out. We returned for a late dinner, and then while Easton, Richards and I caught trout, I dispatched Pete and Stanton to continue the search beyond the point where Easton and I had left off. It was near evening when they came back with the information that they had found the trail, very difficult to follow, leading to a river, some two miles and a half beyond our camp. This was undoubtedly the Crooked River, which empties into Grand Lake close to the Nascaupee, and which the Indians had told us had its rise in Lake Nipishish.
The evening was very warm, and mosquitoes were so thick in the tent that we almost breathed them. Stanton, after much turning and fidgeting, finally took his blanket out of doors, where he said it was cooler and he could sleep with his head covered to protect him; but in an hour he was back, and with his blanket wet with dew took his usual place beside me.
Below the point where the trail enters the Crooked River it is said by the Indians to be exceedingly rough and entirely impassable. We portaged into it the next morning, paddled a short distance up the stream, which is here some two hundred yards in width and rather shallow, then poled through a short rapid and tracked through two others, wading almost to our waists in some places. We now came to a widening of the river where it spread out into a small lake. Near the upper end of this expansion was an island upon which we found a long-disused log cache of the Indians. A little distance above the island what appeared to be two rivers flowed into the expansion. Richards, Duncan and I explored up the right-hand branch until we struck a rapid. Upon our return to the point where the two streams came together we found that the other canoe, against my positive instructions not to proceed at uncertain points until I had decided upon the proper route to take, had gone up the branch on the left, tracked through a rapid and disappeared.
We Found a Long-disused Log Cache of the Indians
There were no signs of Indians on either of these branches so far as we could discover, and I was well satisfied that somewhere on the north bank of the expansion, probably not far from the island and old cache which we had passed, was the trail. But evening was coming on and rain was threatening, so there was nothing to do but follow the other canoe, which had gone blindly ahead, until we should overtake it, as it contained all the cooking utensils and our tent. This fail-ure of the men to obey instructions took us a considerable distance out of our way and cost us several days’ time, as we discovered later.
We tracked through some rapids and finally overhauled the others at a place where the river branched again. It was after seven o’clock, a drizzling rain was falling, and here we pitched camp on the east side of the river just opposite the junction of the two branches.
On the west fork and directly across from our camp was a rough rapid, and while supper was cooking I paddled over with Richards to try for fish. We made our casts, and I quickly landed a twenty-inch ouananiche and Richards hooked a big trout that, after much play, was brought ashore. It measured twenty-two and a half inches from tip to tip and eleven and a half inches around the shoulders. I had landed a couple more large trout, when Richards enthusiastically announced that he had a big fellow hooked. He played the fish for half an hour before he brought it to the edge of the rock, so completely exhausted that it could scarcely move a fin. We had no landing net and he attempted to lift it out by the line, when snap went the hook and the fish was free! I made a dash, caught it in my hands and triumphantly brought it ashore. It proved to be an ouananiche that measured twenty-seven and one-half inches in length by eleven and one-quarter inches in girth.
In our excitement we had forgotten all about supper and did not even know that it was raining; but we now saw Pete on the further shore gesticulating wildly and pointing at his open mouth, in pantomime suggestion that the meal was waiting.
“Well, thatisfishing!” remarked Richards. “I never landed a fish as big as that before.”
“Yes,” I answered; “we’re getting near the headwaters of the river now, where the big fish are always found.”
“I never expected any such sport as that. It’s worth the hard work just for this hour’s fishing.”
“You’ll get plenty more of it before we’re through the country. There are some big fellows under that rapid. The Indians told us we should find salmon in this section too, but we’re ahead of the salmon, I think. They’re hardly due for a month yet.”
“Let’s show the fellows the trout, first. They’re big enough to make ’em open their eyes. Then we’ll spring the ouananiche on ’cm and they’ll faint. It’ll, be enough to make Easton want to come and try a cast too.”
So when we pushed through the dripping bushes to the tent we presented only the few big trout, which did indeed create a sensation. Then Richards brought forward his ouananiche, and it produced the desired effect. After supper Pete and Easton must try their hand at the fish, and they succeeded in catching five trout averaging, we estimated, from two to three pounds each. Richards, however, still held the record as to big fish, both trout and ouananiche, and the others vowed they would take it from him if they had to fish nights to do it.
En routeup the river, in the afternoon, Pete had shot a muskrat, and I asked him that night what he was going to do with it.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “Muskrat no good now.”
“Well, never kill any animal while you are with me that you cannot use, except beasts of prey.”
This was one of the rules that I had laid down at the beginning: that no member of the party should kill for the sake of killing any living thing. I could not be angry with Pete, however, for he was always so goodnatured. No matter how sharply I might reprove him, in five minutes he would be doing something for my comfort, or singing some Indian song as he went lightheartedly about his work. I understood how hard it was for him to down the Indian instinct to kill, and that the muskrat bad been shot thoughtlessly without considering for a moment whether it were needed or not. The flesh of the muskrat at this season of the year is very strong in flavor and unpalatable, and besides, with the grouse that were occasionally killed, the fish that we were catching, and the dried venison still on hand, we could not well use it. No fur is, of course, in season at this time of year, and so there was no excuse for killing muskrats for the pelts.
In the vicinity of this camp we saw some of the largest spruce timber that we came upon in the whole journey across Labrador. Some of these trees were fully twenty-two inches in diameter at the butt and perhaps fifty to sixty feet in height. These large trees were very scattered, however, and too few to be of commercial value. For the most part the trees that we met with were six to eight, and, occasionally, ten inches through, scrubby and knotted. In Labrador trees worth the cutting are always located near streams in sheltered valleys.
That evening before we retired the drizzle turned to a downpour, and we were glad to leave our unprotected camp fire for the unwarmed shelter of our tent. While I lay within and listened to the storm, I wrote in my diary: “As I lie here, the rain pours upon the tent over my head and drips—drips—drips through small holes in the silk; the wind sweeps through the spruce trees outside and a breath of the fragrance of the great damp forest comes to me. I hear the roar of the rapid across the river as the waters pour down over the rocks in their course to the sea. I wonder if some of those very waters do not wash the shores of New York. How far away the city seems, and how glad I shall be to return home when my work here is finished!
“This is a feeling that comes to one often in the wilderness. Perhaps it is a touch of homesickness—a hunger for the sympathy and companionship of our friends.”
The days that followed were days of weary waiting and inactivity. A cold northeast storm was blowing and the rain fell heavily and incessantly day and night. Trail hunting was impracticable while the storm lasted, but the halt offered an opportunity that was taken advantage of to repair our outfit; also there was much needed mending to be done, as some of our clothing was badly torn.
Everything we had in the way of wearing apparel was wet, and we set up our tent stove for the first time, that we might dry our things under cover. This stove proved a great comfort to us, and all agreed that it was an inspiration that led me to bring it. It was not an inspiration, however, but my experience on the trip with Hubbard that taught the necessity of a stove for just such occasions as this, and for the colder weather later.
Some of us went to the rapid to fish, but it was too cold for either fly or bait, and we soon gave it up. I slipped off a rock in the lower swirl of the rapid, and went into the river over head and ears. Pete, who was with me, gave audible expression to his amusement at my discomfiture as I crawled out of the water like a half drowned rat; but I could see no occasion for his hilarity and I told him so.
This experience dampened my enthusiasm as a fisherman for that day. The net was set, however, which later yielded us some trout. A fish planked on a dry spruce log hewn flat on one side, made a delicious dinner, and a savory kettle of fish chowder made of trout and dried onions gave us an equally good supper.
On July fifteenth sleet was mingled with the rain in the early morning, and it was so cold that Duncan used his mittens when doing outdoor work. Easton was not feeling well, and I looked upon our delay as not altogether lost time, as it gave him an opportunity to get into shape again.
A pocket copy of “Hiawatha,” from which Stanton read aloud, furnished us with entertainment. Pete was very much interested in the reading, and I found he was quite familiar with the legends of his Indian hero, and he told us some stories of Hiawatha that I had never heard. “Hiawatha,” said Pete, “he the same as Christ. He do anything he want to.” Pete produced his harmonica and proved himself a very good performer.
July sixteenth was Sunday, and I decided that rain or shine we must break camp on Monday and move forwards for the inactivity was becoming unendurable.
A little fishing was done, and Pete landed a twenty-two and three-quarter inch trout, thus wresting the big-trout record from Richards. Pete was proud and boasted a great deal of this feat, which he claimed proved his greater skill as a fisherman, but which the others attributed to luck.
We were enabled to do some scouting in the afternoon, which resulted in the discovery that our camp was on an island. Nowhere could we find any Indian signs, and we were therefore quite evidently off the trail.
LAKE NIPISHISH IS REACHED
As already stated, the Indians at Northwest River Post had informed us that the Crooked River had its rise in Lake Nipishish, and I therefore decided to follow the stream from the point where we were now encamped to the lake, or until we should come upon the trail again, as I felt sure we should do farther up, rather than retrace our steps to the abandoned cache on the island in the expansion below, and probably consume considerable time in locating the old portage route from that point.
Accordingly, on Monday morning we began our work against the almost continuous rapids, which we discovered as we proceeded were characteristic of the river. A heavy growth of willows lined the banks, forcing us into the icy water, where the swift current made it very difficult to keep our footing upon the slippery bowlders of the river bed. Tracking lines were attached to the bows of the canoes and we floundered forward.
The morning was cloudy and cool and resembled a day in late October, but before noon the sun graciously made his appearance and gave us new spirit for our work. When we stopped for dinner I sent Pete and Easton to look ahead, and Pete brought back the intelligence that a half-mile portage would cut off a considerable bend in the river and take us into still water. It was necessary to clear a portion of the way with the ax. This done, the portage was made, and then we found to our disappointment that the still water was less than a quarter mile in length, when rapids occurred again.
As I deemed it wise to get an idea of the lay of the land before proceeding farther, I took Pete with me and went ahead to scout the route. Less than a mile away we found two small lakes, and climbing a ridge two miles farther on, we had a view of the river, which, so far as we could see, continued to be very rough, taking a turn to the westward above where our canoes were stationed, and then swinging again to the northeast in the direction of Nipishish, which was plainly visible. The Indians, instead of taking the longer route that we were following, undoubtedly crossed from the old cache to a point in the river some distance above where it took its westward swing, and thus, in one comparatively easy portage, saved themselves several miles of rough traveling. It was too late for us now, however, to take advantage of this.
Pete and I hurried back to the others. The afternoon was well advanced, but sufficient daylight remained to permit us to proceed a little way up the river, and portage to the shores of one of the lakes, where camp was made just at dusk.
Field mice in this section were exceedingly troublesome. They would run over us at night, sample our food, and gnawed a hole as large as a man’s hand in the side of the tent. Porcupines, too, were something of a nuisance. One night one of them ate a piece out of my tumpline, which was partially under my head, while I slept.
The next morning we passed through the lakes to the river above, and for three days, in spite of an almost continuous rain and wind storm, worked our way up stream, “tracking” the canoes through a succession of rapids or portaging around them, with scarcely any opportunity to paddle.
On the afternoon of the third day, with the wind dashing the rain in sheets into our faces, we halted on a rough piece of ground just above the river bank and pitched our tent.
When camp was made Pete took me to a rise of ground a little distance away, and pointing to the northward exclaimed: “Look, Lake Nipishish! I know we reach him to-day.”
And sure enough, there lay Lake Nipishish close at hand! I was more thankful than I can say to see the water stretching far away to the northward, for I felt that now the hardest and roughest part of our journey to the height of land was completed.
“That’s great, Pete,” said I. “We’ll have more water after this and fewer and easier portages, and we can travel faster.”
“Maybe better, I don’t know,” remarked Pete, rather skeptically. “Always hard find trail out big lakes. May leave plenty places. Take more time hunt trail maybe now. Indian maps no good. Maybe easier when we find him.”
Pete was right, and I did not know the difficulties still to be met with before we should reach Michikamau.
Duncan was of comparatively little help to us now, and as I knew that he was more than anxious to return to Groswater Bay, I decided to dispense with his further services and send him back with letters to be mailed home. When I returned to the tent I said to him:
“Duncan, I suppose you would like to go home now, and I will let you turn back from here and take some letters out. Does that suit you?”
“Yes, sir, that suits me fine,” replied be promptly, and in a tone that left no doubt of the fact that he was glad to go.
“Well, this is Thursday. I’ll write my letters tomorrow, and you may go on Saturday.”
“All right, sir.”
The letters were all written and ready for Duncan on Friday night, and he packed sufficient provisions into a waterproof bag I gave him to carry him out, and prepared for an early start in the morning. But the rain that had been falling for several days still poured down on Saturday, and he decided to postpone his departure another day in the hope of better weather on Sunday. He needed the time anyway to mend his sealskin boots before starting back, for he had pretty nearly worn them out on the sharp rocks on the portages. The rest of us were well provided with oil-tanned moccasins (sometimes called larigans or shoe-packs), which I have found are the best footwear for a journey like ours. Pete’s khaki trousers were badly torn; and Richards and Easton, who wore Mackinaw trousers, were in rags. This cloth had not withstood the hard usage of Labrador travel a week, and both men, when they bad a spare hour, occupied it in sewing on canvas patches, until now there was almost as much canvas patch as Mackinaw cloth in these garments. Richards, however, carried an extra pair of moleskin trousers, and I wore moleskin. This latter material is the best obtainable, so far as my experience goes, for rough traveling in the bush, and my trousers stood the trip with but one small patch until winter came.
Sunday morning was still stormy, but before noon the rain ceased, and Duncan announced his intention of starting homeward at once. We raised our flags and exchanged our farewells and Godspeeds with him. Then he left us, and as he disappeared down the trail a strange sense of loneliness came upon us, for it seemed to us that his going broke the last link that connected us with the outside world. Duncan was always so cheerful, with his quaint humor, and so ready to do his work to the very best of his ability, that we missed him very much, and often spoke of him in the days that followed.
We had made the best of our enforced idleness in this camp to repack and condense and dry our outfit as much as possible. The venison, at the first imperfectly cured, had been so continuously soaked that the most of what remained of it was badly spoiled and we could not use it, and with regret we threw it away. The erbswurst was also damp, and this we put into small canvas bags, which were then placed near the stove to dry.
A rising barometer augured good weather for Monday morning. A light wind scattered the clouds that had for so many days entombed the world in storm and gloom, and the sun broke out gloriously, setting the moisture-laden trees aglinting as though hung with a million pearls and warming the damp fir trees until the air was laden with the forest perfume. It was as though a pall had been lifted from the world. How our hearts swelled with the new enthusiasm of the returned sunshine! It was always so. It seemed as if the long-continued storms bound up our hearts and crushed the buoyancy from them; but the returning sunshine melted the bonds at once and gave us new ambition. A robin sang gayly from a near-by tree—a messenger from the kindlier Southland come to cheer us—and the “whisky jacks,” who had not shown themselves for several days, appeared again with their shrill cries, venturing impudently into the very door of our tent to claim scraps of refuse.
I was for moving forward that very afternoon, but some of our things were still wet, and I deemed it better judgment to let them have the day in which to dry and to delay our start until Monday morning.
After supper, in accordance with the Sunday custom established by Hubbard when I was with him, I read aloud a selection from the Testament—the last chapter of Revelation—and then went out of the tent to take the usual nine o’clock weather observation. Between the horizon and a fringe of black clouds that hung low in the north the reflected sun set the heavens afire, and through the dark fir trees the lake stretched red as a lake of blood. I called the others to see it and Easton joined me. We climbed a low hill close at hand to view the scene, and while we looked the red faded into orange, and the lake was transformed into a mirror, which reflected the surrounding trees like an inverted forest. In the direction from which we had come we could see the high blue hills beyond the Nascaupee, very dim in the far distance. Below us the Crooked River lost itself as it wound its tortuous way through the wooded valley that we had traversed. Somewhere down there Duncan was bivouacked, and we wondered if his fire was burning at one of our old camping places.