Below Lake Nipishish
Darkness soon came and we returned to the tent to find the others rolled in their blankets, and we joined them at once that we might have a good night’s rest preparatory to an early morning advance.
Before seven o’clock on Monday morning (July twenty-fourth) we had made our portage to the water that we had supposed to be an arm of Lake Nipishish, but which proved instead to be an expansion of the river into which the lake poured its waters through a short rapid. This rapid necessitated another short portage before we were actually afloat upon the bosom of Nipishish itself. There was not a cloud to mar the azure of the sky, hardly a breath of wind to make a ripple on the surface of the lake, and the morning was just cool enough to be delightful.
It was the kind of day and kind of wilderness that makes one want to go on and on. I felt again the thrill in my blood of that magic something that had held possession of Hubbard and me and lured us into the heart of this unknown land two years before, and as I looked hungrily away toward the hills to the northward, I found myself repeating again one of those selections from Kipling that I had learned from him:
“Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind theRanges—Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you.Go!”
SCOUTING FOR THE TRAIL
Lake Nipishish is approximately twenty miles in length, and at its broadest part ten or twelve miles in width. It extends in an almost due easterly direction from the place where we launched our canoes near its outlet. The shores are rocky and rise gradually into low, well-wooded hills, by which the lake is surrounded. Five miles from the outlet a rocky point juts out into the water, and above the point an arm of the lake reaches into the hills to the northward to a distance of six miles, almost at right angles to the main lake. In the arm there are several small, rocky islands which sustain a scrubby growth of black spruce and fir balsam.
Hitherto the Indian maps had been of little assistance to us. No estimate of distance could be made from them, and the lakes through which we had passed (not all of them shown on the map) were represented by small circles with nothing to indicate at what point on their shores the trail was to be found. Lake Nipishish, however, was drawn on a larger scale and with more detail, and we readily located the trail leading out of the arm which I have mentioned.
After a day’s work through several small lakes or ponds, with short intervening portages, and a trail on the whole well defined and easily followed, we came one afternoon to a good-sized lake of irregular shape which Pete promptly named Washkagama (Crooked Lake).
A stream flowed into Washkagama near the place where we went ashore, and it seemed to me probable that our route might be along this stream, which it was likely drained lakes farther up; but a search in the vicinity failed to uncover any signs of the trail, and the irregu-lar shape of the lake suggested several other likely places for it. We were, therefore, forced to go into camp, disappointing as it was, until we should know our position to a certainty.
The next day was showery, but we began in the morning a determined hunt for the trail. Stanton remained in camp to make needed repairs to the outfit; Easton went with Pete to the northward, while Richards and I in one of the canoes paddled to the eastern side of the lake arm, upon which we were encamped, to climb a barren hill from which we hoped to get a good view of the country, and upon reaching the summit we were not disappointed. A wide panorama was spread before us. To the north lay a great rolling country covered with a limitless forest of firs, with here and there a bit of sparkling water. A mile from our camp a creek, now and again losing itself in the green woods, rushed down to join Washkagama, anxious to gain the repose of the lake. To the northeast the rugged white hills, that we were hoping to reach soon, loomed up grand and majestic, with patches of snow, like white sheets, spread over their sides and tops. From Nipishish to Washkagama we had passed through a burned and rocky country where no new growth save scant underbrush and a few scattering spruce, balsam and tamarack trees had taken the place of the old destroyed forest. The dead, naked tree trunks which, gaunt and weather-beaten, still stood upright or lay in promiscuous confusion on the ground, gave this part of the country from our hilltop view an appearance of solitary desolation that we had not noticed when we were traveling through it. But this unregenerated district ended at Washkagama; and below it Nipishish, with its green-topped hills, seemed almost homelike.
The creek that I have mentioned as flowing into the lake a mile from our camp seemed to me worthy to be explored for the trail, and I determined to go there at once upon our return to camp, while Richards desired to climb a rock-topped hill which held its head above the timber line three or four miles to the northwest, that he might make topographical and geological observations there.
We returned to camp, and Richards, with a package of erbswurst in his pocket to cook for dinner and my rifle on his shoulder, started immediately into the bush, and was but just gone when Pete and Easton appeared with the report that two miles above us lay a large lake, and that they had found the trail leading from it to the creek I had seen from the hill. The lake lay among the hills to the northward, and the bits of water I had seen were portions of it. I was anxious to break camp and start forward, but this could not be done until Richards’ return. Easton, Pete and I paddled up to the creek’s mouth, therefore, and spent the day fishing, and landed eighty-seven trout, ranging from a quarter pound to four pounds in weight. The largest ones Stanton split and hung over the fire to dry for future use, while the others were applied to immediate need.
When Richards came into camp in the evening he brought with him an excellent map of the country that he had seen from the hill and reported having counted ten lakes, including the large one that Easton and Pete had visited. He also had found the trail and followed it back.
The next morning some tracking and wading up the creek was necessary before we found ourselves upon the trail with packs on our backs, and before twelve o’clock we arrived with all our outfit at the lake, which we shall call Minisinaqua. It was an exceedingly beautiful sheet of water, the main body, perhaps, ten or twelve miles in length, but narrow, and with many arms and indentations and containing numerous round green islands. The shores and surrounding country were well wooded with spruce, fir, balsam, larch, and an occasional small white birch.
I took my place in the larger canoe with Pete and Easton and left Stanton to follow with Richards. Pete’s eyes, as always, were scanning with keen scrutiny every inch of shore. Suddenly he straightened up, peered closely at an island, and in a stage whisper exclaimed “Caribou! Caribou! Don’t make noise! Paddle, quick!”
We saw them then—two old stags and a fawn—on an island, but they had seen us, too, or winded us more likely, and, rushing across the island, took to the water on the opposite side, making for the mainland. We bent to our paddles with all our might, hoping to get within shooting distance of them, but they had too much lead. We all tried some shots when we saw we could not get closer, but the deer were five hundred yards away, and from extra exertion with our paddles, we were unable to hold steady, and missed.
Our canoes were turned into an arm of the lake leading to the northward. Amongst some islands we came upon a flock of five geese— two old ones and three young ones. The old ones had just passed through the molting season, and their new wing feathers were not long enough to bear them, and the young ones, though nearly full grown, had not yet learned to fly. Pete brought the mother goose and two of her children down with the shotgun, but father gander and the other youngster escaped, flapping away on the surface of the lake at a remarkable speed, and they were allowed to go with their lives without a chase.
We stumbled upon the trail leading from Lake Minisinaqua, almost immediately upon landing. Its course was in a northerly direction through the valley of a small river that emptied into the lake. This valley was inclosed by low hills, and the country, like that between Washkagama and Lake Minisinaqua, was well covered with the same varieties of small trees that were found there. For a mile and three-quarters, the stream along which the trail ran was too swift for canoeing, but it then expanded into miniature lakes or ponds which were connected by short rapids. Each of us portaged a load to the first pond, where the canoes were to be launched, and I directed Pete and Stanton to remain here, pluck the geese, and prepare two of them for an evening dinner, while Richards, Easton and I brought forward a second load and pitched camp.
This was Easton’s twenty-second birthday and it occurred to me that it would be a pleasant variation to give a birthday dinner in his honor and to have a sort of feast to relieve the monotony of our daily life, and give the men something to think about and revive their spirits; for “bucking the trail” day after day with no change but the gradual change of scenery does grow monotonous to most men, and the ardor of the best of them, especially men unaccustomed to roughing it, will become damped in time unless some variety, no matter how slight, can be brought into their lives. A good dinner always has this effect, for after men are immersed in a wilderness for several weeks, good things to eat take the first place in their thoughts and, to judge from their conversation, the attainment of these is their chief aim in life.
My instructions to Pete included the baking of an extra ration of bread to be served hot with the roast geese, and I asked Stanton to try his hand at concocting some kind of a pudding out of the few prunes that still remained, to be served with sugar as sauce, and accompanied by black coffee. Our coffee supply was small and it was used only on Sundays now, or at times when we desired an especial treat.
We were pretty tired when we returned with our second packs and dropped them on a low, bare knoll some fifty yards above the fire where Pete and Stanton were carrying on their culinary operations, but a whiff of roasting goose came to us like a tonic, and it did not take us long to get camp pitched.
“Um-m-m,” said Easton, stopping in his work of driving tent pegs to sniff the air now bearing to us appetizing odors of goose and coffee, “that smells like home.”
“You bet it does,” assented Richards. “I haven’t been filled up for a week, but I’m going to be to-night.”
At length dinner was ready, and we fell to with such good purpose that the two birds, a generous portion of hot bread, innumerable cups of black coffee, and finally, a most excellent pudding that Stanton had made out of bread dough and prunes and boiled in a canvas specimen bag disappeared.
How we enjoyed it! “No hotel ever served such a banquet,” one of the boys remarked as we filled our pipes and lighted them with brands from the fire. Then with that blissful feeling that nothing but a good dinner can give, we lay at full length on the deep white moss, peace-fully puffing smoke at the stars as they blinked sleepily one by one out of the blue of the great arch above us until the whole firmament was glittering with a mass of sparkling heaven gems. The soft perfume of the forest pervaded the atmosphere; the aurora borealis appeared in the northern sky, and its waves of changing light swept the heavens; the vast silence of the wilderness possessed the world and, wrapped in his own thoughts, no man spoke to break the spell. Finally Pete began a snatch of Indian song:
“Puhgedewawa enenewugNuhbuggesug kamiwauw.”
Then he drew from his pocket a harmonica, and for half an hour played soft music that harmonized well with the night and the surroundings; when he ceased, all but Richards and I went to their blankets. We two remained by the dying embers of our fire for another hour to enjoy the perfect night, and then, before we turned to our beds, made an observation for compass variation, which calculations the following morning showed to be thirty-seven degrees west of the true north.
Through Ponds and Marshes Northward Toward Otter Lake
Paddling through the ponds, polling and tracking through the rapids or portaging around them up the little river on which we were encamped the night before, brought us to Otter Lake, which was considerably larger than Lake Minisinaqua, but not so large as Nipishish. The main body was not over a mile and a half in width, but it had a number of bays and closely connected tributary lakes. Its eastern end, which we did not explore, penetrated low spruce and balsam-covered hills. To the north and northeast were rugged, rock-tipped hills, rising to an elevation of some seven hundred feet above the lake. The country at their base was covered with a green forest of small fir, spruce and birch, and near the water, in marshy places, as is the case nearly everywhere in Labrador, tamarack, but the hills themselves had been fire swept, and were gray with weather-worn, dead trees. On the summits, and for two hundred feet below, bare basaltic rock indicated that at this elevation they had never sustained any growth, save a few straggling bushes. On some of these hills there still remained patches of snow of the previous winter.
We paddled eastward along the northern shore of the lake. Once we saw a caribou swimming far ahead of us, but he discovered our approach and took to the timber before we were within shooting distance of him. A flock of sawbill ducks avoided us. No sign of Indians was seen, and four miles up the lake we stopped upon a narrow, sandy point that jutted out into the water for a distance of a quarter mile, to pitch camp and scout for the trail. All along the point and leading back into the bush, were fresh caribou tracks, where the animals came out to get the benefit of the lake breezes and avoid the flies, which torment them terribly. Natives in the North have told me of caribou having been worried to death by the insects, and it is not improbable. The “bulldogs” or “stouts,” as they are sometimes called, which are as big as bumblebees, are very vicious, and follow the poor caribou in swarms. The next morning a caribou wandered down to within a hundred and fifty yards of camp, and Pete and Stanton both fired at it, but missed, and it got away unscathed.
After breakfast, with Pete and Easton, I climbed one of the higher hills for a view of the surrounding country. Near the foot of the hill, and in the depth of the spruce woods, we passed a lone Indian grave, which we judged from its size to be that of a child. It was inclosed by a rough fence, which had withstood the pressure of the heavy snows of many winters and a broken cross lay on it. From the summit of the hill we could see a string of lakes extending in a general northwesterly direction until they were lost in other hills above, and also numerous lakes to the south, southwest, east and northeast. We could count from one point nearly fifty of these lakes, large and small. To the north and northwest the country was rougher and more diversified, and the hills much higher than any we had as yet passed through.
Down by our camp it had been excessively warm, but here on the hilltop a cold wind was blowing that made us shiver. We found a few scattered dry sticks, and built a fire under the lee of a high bowlder, where we cooked for luncheon some pea-meal porridge with water that Pete, with foresight, had brought with him from a brook that we passed half way down the hillside. We then continued our scouting tour several miles inland, climbing two other high hills, from one of which an excellent view was had of the string of lakes penetrating the northwestern hills. Everywhere so far as our vision extended the valleys were comparatively well wooded, but the treeless, rock-bound hills rose grimly above the timber line.
When we returned to camp we were still unsettled as to where the trail left the lake, but there was one promising bay that had not been explored, and Richards and Easton volunteered to take a canoe and search this bay. They were supplied with tarpaulin, blankets, an ax and one day’s rations, and started immediately.
I felt some anxiety as to our slow progress. August was almost upon us and we had not yet reached Seal Lake. Here, as at other places, we had experienced much delay in finding the trail, and we did not know what difficulties in that direction lay before us. I had planned to reach the George River by early September, and the question as to whether we could do it or not was giving me much concern.
Pete and Stanton had been in bed and asleep for an hour, but I was still awake, turning over in my mind the situation, and planning to-morrow’s campaign, when at ten o’clock I heard the soft dip of paddles, and a few moments later Richards and Easton appeared out of the night mist that hung over the lake, with the good news that they had found the trail leading northward from the bay.
SEAL LAKE AT LAST
A thick, impenetrable mist, such as is seldom seen in the interior of Labrador, hung over the water and the land when we struck camp and began our advance. For two days we traveled through numerous small lakes, making several short portages, before we came to a lake which we found to be the headwaters of a river flowing to the northwest. This lake was two miles long, and we camped at its lower end, where the river left it. Portage Lake we shall call it, and the river that flowed out of it Babewendigash.
The portage into the lake crossed a sand desert, upon which not a drop of water was seen, and instead of the usual rocks there were uncovered sand and gravel knolls and valleys, where grew only occasional bunches of very stunted brush; the surface of the sand was otherwise quite bare and sustained not even the customary moss and lichens. The heat of the sun reflected from the sand was powerful. The day was one of the most trying ones of the trip, and the men, with faces and hands swollen and bleeding from the attacks of not only the small black flies, which were particularly bad, but also the swarms of “bulldogs,” complained bitterly of the hardships. When we halted to eat our luncheon one of the men remarked, “Duncan said once that if there are no flies there, hell can’t be as bad as this, and he’s pretty near right.”
The river left the lake in a rapid, and while Pete was making his fire, Richards, Easton and I went down to catch our supper, and in half an hour had secured forty-five good-sized trout—sufficient for supper that night and breakfast and dinner the next day.
Since leaving Otter Lake, caribou signs had been plentiful, fresh trails running in every direction. Pete was anxious to halt a day to hunt, but I decreed otherwise, to his great disappointment.
The scenery at this point was particularly fine, with a rugged, wild beauty that could hardly be surpassed. Below us the great, bald snow hills loomed very close at hand, with patches of snow glinting against the black rocks of the hills, as the last rays of the setting sun kissed them good-night. Nearer by was the more hospitable wooded valley and the shining river, and above us the lake, placid and beautiful, and beyond it the line of low sand hills of the miniature desert we had crossed. One of the snow hills to the northwest had two knobs resembling a camel’s back, and was a prominent landmark. We christened it “The Camel’s Hump.”
Heretofore the streams had been taking a generally southerly direction, but this river flowed to the northwest, which was most encouraging, for running in that direction it could have but one outlet-the Nascaupee River.
A portage in the morning, then a short run on the river, then another portage, around a shallow rapid, and we were afloat again on one of the prettiest little rivers I have ever seen. The current was strong enough to hurry us along. Down we shot past the great white hills, which towered in majestic grandeur high above our heads, in some places rising almost perpendicularly from the water, with immense heaps of debris which the frost had detached from their sides lying at their base. The river was about fifty yards wide, and in its windings in and out among the hills almost doubled upon itself sometimes. The scenery was fascinating. One or two small lake expansions were passed, but generally there was a steady current and a good depth of water. “This is glorious!” some one exclaimed, as we shot onward, and we all appreciated the relief from the constant portaging that had been the feature of our journey since leaving the Nascaupee River.
The first camp on this river was pitched upon the site of an old Indian camp, above a shallow rapid. The many wigwam poles, in varying states of decay, together with paddles, old snowshoes, broken sled runners, and other articles of Indian traveling paraphernalia, in-dicated that it had been a regular stopping place of the Indians, both in winter and in summer, in the days when they had made their pilgrimages to Northwest River Post. Near this point we found some beaver cuttings, the first that we had seen since leaving the Crooked River.
Babewendigash soon carried us into a large lake expansion, and six hours were consumed paddling about the lake before the outlet was discovered. At first we thought it possible we were in Seal Lake, but I soon decided that it was not large enough, and its shape did not agree with the description of Seal Lake that Donald Blake and Duncan McLean had given me.
We Shall Call the River Babewendigash
During the morning I dropped a troll and landed the first namaycush of the trip—a seven-pound fish. The Labrador lakes generally have a great depth of water, and it is in the deeper water that the very large namaycush, which grow to an immense size, are to be caught. Our outfit did not contain the heavy sinkers and larger trolling spoons necessary in trolling for these, and we therefore had to content ourselves with the smaller fish caught in the shallower parts of the lakes. We had two more portages before we shot the first rapid of the trip, and then camped on the shores of a small expansion just above a wide, shallow rapid where the river swung around a ridge of sand hills. This ridge was about two hundred feet in elevation, and followed the river for some distance below. In the morning we climbed it, and walked along its top for a mile or so, to view the rapid, and suddenly, to the westward, beheld Seal Lake. It was a great moment, and we took off our hats and cheered. The first part of our fight up the long trail was almost ended.
The upper part of the rapid was too shallow to risk a full load in the canoes, so we carried a part of our outfit over the ridge to a point where the river narrowed and deepened, then ran the rapid and picked up our stuff below. Not far from here we passed a hill whose head took the form of a sphinx and we noted it as a remarkable landmark. Stopping but once to climb a mountain for specimens, at twelve o’clock we landed on a sandy beach where Babewendigash River emptied its waters into Seal Lake. We could hardly believe our good fortune, and while Pete cooked dinner I climbed a hill to satisfy myself that it was really Seal Lake. There was no doubt of it. It had been very minutely described and sketched for me by Donald and Duncan. We had halted at what they called on their maps “The Narrows,” where the lake narrowed down to a mere strait, and that portion of it below the canoes was hidden from my view. It stretched out far to the northwest, with some distance up a long arm reaching to the west. A point which I recognized from Duncan’s description as the place where the winter tilt used by him and Donald was situated extended for some distance out into the water. The entire length of Seal Lake is about forty miles, but only about thirty miles of it could be seen from the elevation upon which I stood. Its shores are generally well wooded with a growth of young spruce. High hills surround it.
We visited the tilt as we passed the point and, in accordance with an arrangement made with Duncan, added to our stores about twenty-five pounds of flour that he had left there during the previous winter. Five miles above the point where Babewendigash River empties into Seal Lake we entered the Nascaupee, up which we paddled two miles to the first short rapid. This we tracked, and then made camp on an island where the river lay placid and the wind blew cool and refreshing.
Long we sat about our camp fire watching the glories of the northern sunset, and the new moon drop behind the spruce-clad hills, and the aurora in all its magnificence light our silent world with its wondrous fire. Finally the others left me to go to their blankets.
When I was alone I pushed in the ends of the burning logs and sat down to watch the blaze as it took on new life. Gradually, as I gazed into its depths, fantasy brought before my eyes the picture of another camp fire. Hubbard was sitting by it. It was one of those nights in the hated Susan Valley. We had been toiling up the trail for days, and were ill and almost disheartened; but our camp fire and the relaxation from the day’s work were giving us the renewed hope and cheer that they always brought, and rekindled the fire of our half-lost enthusiasm. “Seal Lake can’t be far off now,” Hubbard was saying. “We’re sure to reach it in a day or two. Then it’ll be easy work to Michikamau, and we ’ll soon be with the Indians after that, and forget all about this hard work. We’ll be glad of it all when we get home, for we’re going to have a bully trip.” How much lighter my pack felt the next day, when I recalled his words of encouragement! How we looked and looked for Seal Lake, but never found it. It lay hidden among those hills that were away to the northward of us, with its waters as placid and beautiful as they were to-day when we passed through it. I had never seen Michikamau. Was I destined to see it now?
The fire burned low. Only a few glowing coals remained, and as they blackened my picture dissolved. The aurora, like a hundred searchlights, was whipping across the sky. The forest with its hidden mysteries lay dark beneath. A deep, impenetrable silence brooded over all. The vast, indescribable loneliness of the wilderness possessed my soul. I tried to shake off the feeling of desolation as I went to my bed of boughs.
To-morrow a new stage of our journey would begin. It was ho for Michikamau!
WE LOSE THE TRAIL
Saturday morning, August fifth, broke with a radiance and a glory seldom equaled even in that land of glorious sunrises and sunsets. A flame of red and orange in the east ushered in the rising sun, not a cloud marred the azure of the heavens, the moss was white with frost, and the crisp, clear atmosphere sweet with the scent of the new day. Labrador was in her most amiable mood, displaying to the best advantage her peculiar charms and beauties.
While we ate a hurried breakfast of corn-meal mush, boiled fat pork and tea, and broke camp, Michikamau was the subject of our conversation, for now it was ho for the big lake! A rapid advance was expected upon the river, and the trail above, where it left the Nascaupee to avoid the rapids which the Indians had told us about, would probably be found without trouble. So this new stage of our journey was begun with something of the enthusiasm that we had felt the day we left Tom Blake’s cabin and started up Grand Lake.
We had gone but a mile when Pete drew his paddle from the water and pointed with it at a narrow, sandy beach ahead, above which rose a steep bank. Almost at the same instant I saw the object of his interests—a buck caribou asleep on the sand. The wind was blowing toward the river, and maintaining absolute silence, we landed below a bend that hid us from the caribou. Fresh meat was in sight and we must have it, for we were hungry now for venison. To cover the retreat of the animal should it take alarm, Pete was to go on the top of the bank above it, Easton to take a stand opposite it and I a little below it. We crawled to our positions with the greatest care; but the caribou was alert. The shore breeze carried to it the scent of danger, and almost before we knew, that we were discovered it was on its feet and away. For a fraction of a second I had one glimpse of the animal through the brush. Pete did not see it when it started, but heard it running up the shore, and away be started in that direction, running and leaping recklessly over the fallen tree trunks. Presently the caribou turned from the river and showed itself on the burned plateau above, two hundred yards from Pete. The Indian halted for a moment and fired—then fired again. I hastened up and came upon Pete standing by the prostrate caribou and grinning from ear to ear.
Pete, Standing by the Prostrate Caribou, Was Grinning from Ear to Ear
The carcass was quickly skinned and the meat stripped from the bones and carried to the canoe. Here on the shore we made a fire, broiled some thick luscious steaks, roasted some marrow bones and made tea. All the bones except the marrow bones of the legs were abandoned as an unnecessary weight. Pete broke a hole through one of the shoulder blades and stuck it on a limb of a tree above the reach of animals. That, you know, insures further good luck in hunting. It is a sort of offering to the Manitou. We took the skin with us. “Maybe we need him for something,” said Pete. “Clean and smoke him nice, me; maybe mend clothes with him.”
The larger pieces of our venison were to be roasted when we halted in the evening. We could not dally now, and I chose this method of preserving the meat, rather than “jerk” it (that is, dry it in the open air over a smoky fire), which would have necessitated a halt of three or four days.
Within three hours after we had first seen the caribou we were on our way again. The river up which we were passing was from two to four hundred yards in width, and with the exception of an occasional rock, had a gravelly bottom, and the banks were generally low and gravelly. A little distance back ridges of low hills paralleled the stream, and on the south side behind the lower ridge was a higher one of rough hills; but none of them with an elevation above the valley of more than three hundred feet. The country had been burned on both sides of the river and there was little new growth to hide the dead trees.
Twenty-five miles above Seal Lake we encountered a rapid which necessitated a mile and a half portage around it. Where we landed to make the portage I noticed along the edge of the sandy beach a black band about two feet in width. I thought at first that the water had discolored the sand, but upon a closer examination discovered that it was nothing more nor less than myriads of our black fly pests that had lost their lives in the water and been washed ashore.
We had much rain and progress was slow and difficult in the face of a strong wind and current. Seven or eight miles above the rapid around which we had portaged we passed into a large expansion of the river which the Indians at Northwest River Post had told us to look for, and which they called Wuchusknipi (Big Muskrat) Lake.
High gravelly banks, rising in terraces sometimes fully fifty feet above the water’s edge, had now become the feature of the stream. The current increased in strength, and only for short distances above Wuchusknipi, where the river occasionally broadened, were we able to paddle. The tracking lines were brought into service, one man hauling each canoe, while the others, wading in the water, or walking on the bank with poles where the stream was too deep to wade, kept the canoes straight in the current and clear of the shore. Once when it became necessary to cross a wide place in the river a squall struck us, and Richards and Stanton in the smaller canoe were nearly swamped. The strong head wind precluded paddling, even when the current would otherwise have permitted it.
Finally the sky cleared and the wind ceased to blow; but with the calm came a cause for disquietude. A light smoke had settled in the valley and the air held the odor of it, suggesting a forest fire somewhere above. This would mean retreat, if not disaster, for when these fires once start rivers and lakes prove small obstacles in their path. From a view-point on the hills no dense smoke could be discovered, only the light haze that we had seen and smelled in the valley, and we therefore decided that the gale that had blown for several days from the northwest may have carried it for a long distance, even from the district far west of Michikamau, and that at any rate there was no cause for immediate alarm.
The ridges with an increasing altitude were crowding in upon us more closely. Once when we stopped to portage around a low fall we climbed some of the hills that were near at hand that we might obtain a better knowledge of the topography of the country than could be had from the confined river valley. Away to the northwest we found the country to be much more rugged than the district we had recently passed through. Observations showed us that the highest of the hills we were on had an elevation of six hundred feet above the river. We had but a single day of fine weather and then a fog came so thick that we could not see the opposite banks of the Nascaupee, and after it a cold rain set in which made our work in the icy current doubly hard. One morning I slipped on a bowlder in the river and strained my side, and for me the remainder of the day was very trying. That evening we reached a little group of three or four islands, where the Nascaupee was wide and shallow, but just above the islands it narrowed down again and a low fall occurred. Not far from the fall a small river tumbled down over the rocks a sheer thirty feet, and emptied into the Nascaupee. Since leaving Seal Lake we had passed two rivers flowing in from the north, and this was the second one coming from the south, marking the point on the Indian map where we were to look for the portage trail leading to the northward. Therefore a halt was made and camp was pitched.
During the night the weather cleared, and Pete, Richards and Easton were dispatched in the morning to scout the country to the northward in search of the trail and signs of Indians. The ligaments of my side were very stiff and sore from the strain they received the previous day, and I remained in camp with Stanton to write up my records, take an inventory of our food supply, and consider plans for the future.
It was August twelfth. How far we had still to go before reaching Michikamau was uncertain, but, in view of our experiences below Seal Lake and the difficulties met with in finding and following the old Indian trail there, our progress would now, for a time at least, if we traveled the portage route, be slower than on the river where we had done fairly well. True, our outfit was much lighter than it had been in the beginning, and we were in better shape for packing and were able to carry heavier loads. Still we must make two trips over every portage, and that meant, for every five miles of advance, fifteen miles of walking and ten of those miles with packs on our backs. Had we not better, therefore, abandon the further attempt to locate the trail and, instead, follow the river which was beyond doubt the quicker and the easier route? My inclinations rebelled against this course. One of the objects of the expedition, for it was one of the things that Hubbard had planned to do, was to locate the old trail, if possible. To abandon the search for it now, and to follow the easier route, seemed to me a surrender.
On the other hand, should we not find game or fish and have delays scouting for the trail, it would be necessary to go on short rations before reaching Michikamau, for enough food must be held back to take us out of the country in safety.
In my present consideration of the situation it seemed to me highly improbable that we could reach George River Post in season to connect with the Hudson’s Bay Company’s steamerPelican, which touches there to land supplies about the middle of September, and that is the only steamer that ever visits that Post. Not to connect with thePelicanwould, therefore, mean imprisonment in the north for an entire year, or a return around the coast by dog train in winter. The former of these alternatives was out of the question; the latter would be impossible with an encumbrance of four men, for dog teams and drivers in the early winter are usually all away to the hunting grounds and hard to engage. I therefore concluded that but one course was open to me. Three of the men must be sent back and with a single companion I would push on to Ungava. This, then, was the line of action I decided upon.
Toward evening gathering clouds augured an early renewal of the storm, and Stanton and I had just put up the stove in the tent in anticipation of it when Pete and Easton, the latter thoroughly fagged out, came into camp.
“Well, Pete,” I asked, “what luck?”
“Find trail all right,” he answered. “Can’t follow him easy. Long carry. First lake far, maybe eleven, twelve mile. Little ponds not much good for canoe. Trail old. Not used long time. All time go up hill.”
“Where’s Richards?” I inquired, noticing his absence.
“Left us about four miles back to take a short cut to the river and follow it down to camp,” said Easton. “He thought you might want to know how it looked above, and perhaps keep on that way instead of tackling the portage, for the trail’s going to be mighty hard. It looks as though the river would be better.”
We waited until near dark for Richards, but he did not come. Then we ate our supper without him.
The rain grew into a downpour and darkness came, but no Richards, and at length I became alarmed for his safety. I pushed back the tent flaps and peered out into the pitchy darkness and pouring rain.
“He’ll never get in to-night,” I remarked. “No,” said some one, “and he’ll have a hard time of it out there in the rain.” There was nothing to do but wait. Pete rummaged in his bag and produced a candle (we had a dozen in our outfit), sharpened one end of a stick, split the other end for two or three inches down, forced open the split end and set the candle in it and stuck the sharpened end in the ground, all the while working in the dark. Then he lit the candle.
I do not know how long we had been sitting by the candle light and putting forth all sorts of conjectures about Richards and his uncomfortable position in the bush without cover and the probable reasons for his failure to return, when the tent front opened and in he came, as wet as though he had been in the river.
“Well, Richards,” I asked, when he was comfortably settled at his meal, “what do you think of the river?”
“The river!” he paused between mouthfuls to exclaim, “that’s the only thing within twenty miles that I didn’t see. I’ve been looking for it for four hours, but it kept changing its location and I never found it till I struck camp just now.”
“Now, boys,” said I, when all the pipes were going, “I’ve something to say to you. Up to this time we’ve had no real hardships to meet. We’ve had hard work, and it’s been most trying at times, but there’s been no hardship to endure that might not be met with upon any journey in the bush. If we go on weshallhave hardships, and perhaps, some pretty severe ones. There’ll soon be sleet and snow in the air, and cold days and shivery nights, and the portages will be long and hard. On the whole, there’s been plenty to eat—not what we would have had at home, perhaps, but good, wholesome grub—and we’re all in better condition and stronger than when we started, but flour and pork are getting low, lentils and corn meal are nearly gone, and short rations, with hungry days, are soon to come if we don’t strike game, and you know how uncertain that is. I cannot say what is before us, and I’m not going to drag you fellows into trouble. I’m going to ask for one volunteer to go on with me to Ungava with the small canoe, and let the rest return from here with the other canoe and what grub they need to take them out. Who wants to go home?”
It came to them like a shock. Outside, the wind howled through the trees and dashed the rain spitefully against the tent. The water dripped through on us, and the candle flickered and sputtered and almost went out. In the weird light I could see the faces of the men work with emotion. For a moment no one spoke. Finally Richards, in a tone of reproach that made me feel sorry for the very suggestion, asked: “Do you think there’s a quitter here?”
The loyalty and grit of the men touched my heart. Not one of them would think of leaving me. Nothing but a positive order would have turned them back, and I decided to postpone our parting until we reached Michikaumau at least, if it could be postponed so long consistently with safety.
The next day was Sunday, and it was spent in rest and in preparation for our advance up the trail. The weather was damp and cheerless, with rain falling intermittently throughout the day.
To cover a possible retreat a cache was made near our camp of thirty pounds of pemmican in tin cans and forty-five pounds of flour and some tea in a waterproof bag. A hole was dug in the ground and the provisions were deposited in it, then covered with stones as a pro-tection from animals.
By Monday morning the storm had gained new strength, and steadily and pitilessly the rain fell, accompanied by a cold, northwest wind.
What narrowly escaped being a serious accident occurred when we halted that day for dinner. Easton was cutting firewood, when suddenly he dropped the ax he was using with the exclamation “That fixes me!” He had given himself what looked at first like an ugly cut near the shin bone. Fortunately, however, upon examination, it proved to be only a flesh wound and not sufficiently severe to interfere with his traveling. Stanton dressed the cut. Our adhesive plaster we found had become useless by exposure and electrician’s tape was substituted for it to draw the flesh together.
On the evening of the second day after leaving the Nascaupee, our tent was pitched upon the site of an extensive but ancient Indian camp beside a mile-long lake, four hundred and fifty feet above the river. Five ponds had been passeden route, but all of them so small it was scarcely worth while floating the canoe in any of them.
In these two days we had covered but eleven miles, but during the whole time the wind had driven the rain in sweeping gusts into our faces and made it impossible for a man, single-handed, to portage a canoe. Thus, with two men to carry each canoe we had been compelled to make three loads of our outfit, and this meant fifty-five miles actual walking, and thirty-three miles of this distance with packs on our backs. The weather conditions had made the work more than hard— it was heartrending—as we toiled over naked hills, across marshes and moraines, or through dripping brush and timber land.
A beautiful afternoon, two days later, found us paddling down the first lake worthy of mention since leaving the Nascaupee River. The azure sky overhead shaded to a pearly blue at the horizon, with a fleecy cloud or two floating lazily across its face. The atmosphere was perfect in its purity, and only the sound of screeching gulls and the dip of our paddles disturbed the quiet of the wilderness. Lake Bibiquasin, as we shall call it, was five miles in length and nestled between ridges of low, moss-covered hills. It lay in a southeasterly and northwesterly direction, and rested upon the summit of a sub-sidiary divide that we had been gradually ascending. A creek ran out of its northwesterly end, flowing in that direction.
Until now we had found the trail with little difficulty, but here we were baffled. A search in the afternoon failed to uncover it, and we were forced to halt, perplexed again as to our course. Camp was pitched in a grove of spruces at the lower end of the lake. Not far from us was an old hunting camp which Pete said was “most hundred years old,” and he was not far wrong in his estimate, for the frames upon which the Indians had stretched skins and the tepee poles crumbled to pieces when we touched them.
Strange to say, not a fish of any description had been seen for several days and not one could be induced to rise to fly or bait, and our net was always empty now. Game, too, was scarce. There were no fresh caribou tracks this side of the Nascaupee River, and but one duck and one spruce partridge had been killed. The last bit of our venison was eaten the day before. It was pretty badly spoiled and turning a little green in color, but Pete washed it well several times and we all avoided the lee side of the kettle while it was cooking. It was pronounced “not so bad.”
Another day was lost on Lake Bibiquasin in an ineffectual hunt for the trail. I scouted alone all day and in my wanderings came upon the first ptarmigans of the trip and shot one of them with my rifle. The others flew away. They wore their mottled summer coat, as it was still too early for them to don their pure white dress of winter.
During my scouting trip I also discovered the first ripe bake-apple berries we had seen. This is a salmon-colored berry resembling in size and shape the raspberry, and grows on a low plant like the strawberry.
On Saturday morning, August nineteenth, the temperature was four degrees below the freezing point, and the ground was stiff with frost. In a further search on the north side of the lake opposite our camp we found an old blaze and a trail leading from it along a ridge and through marshes to a small lake. This was the only trail that we could find anywhere, so we decided to follow it, though it did not bear all the earmarks of the portage trail we had been tracing—it was decidedly more ancient. We started our work with a will. It was a hard portage and we sometimes sank knee deep into the marsh and got mired frequently, but finally reached the lake.
Indian signs now completely disappeared. Down the lake, where a creek flowed out, was a bare hill, and Pete and I climbed it. From its summit we could easily locate the creek taking a turn to the north and then to the northeast and, finally, flowing into one of a series of lakes extending in an easterly and westerly direction. The land was comparatively flat to the eastward and the lakes no doubt fed a river flowing out of that end, probably one of those that we had noted as joining the Nascaupee on its north side. To the north of these lakes were high, rugged ridges. It was possible there was an opening in the hills to the westward, where they seemed lower; we could not tell from where we were, but we determined to portage along the creek into the lakes with that hope.
Again the smoke of a forest fire hung in the valleys and over the hills, and the air was heavy with the smell of it, which revived the former uneasiness, but by the next day every trace of it had disappeared.
Another day found us afloat upon the first of the lakes. Several short carries across necks of land took us from this lake into the one which Pete and I had seen extending back to the ridges to the westward, and which we shall call Lake Desolation.
On the northern shore of Lake Desolation we stopped to climb a mountain. A decided change in the features of the country had taken place since leaving Lake Bibiquasin, and the low moss-covered hills had given place to rough mountains of bare rock. To the northward from where we stood nothing but higher mountains of similar formation met our view—a great, rolling vista of bare, desolate rocks. To the westward the country was not, perhaps, so rough, though there, too, in the far distance could be discerned the tops of rugged hills breaking the line of the horizon. Through a valley in that direction was distinguishable, with a considerable interval between them, a string of small lakes or ponds. This valley led up from the western end of Lake Desolation, and there was no other possible place for the trail to leave the lake. The valley was the only opening.
Our mountain climbing had consumed a good part of an afternoon, and it was evening when finally we reached the western end of the lake and pitched our camp near a creek flowing in. As we paddled we tried our trolls, but were not rewarded with a single strike. When camp was made the net was stretched across the creek’s mouth and we tried our rods in the stream for trout, but our efforts were useless. No fish were caught.
The prospect for game had not improved, in fact was growing steadily worse. We were now in a country that had been desolated by a forest fire within four or five years. The moss under foot had not renewed itself and where any of it remained at all, it was charred and black. The trees were dead and the land harbored almost no life. It seemed to me that even the fish had been scalded out of the water and the streams had never restocked themselves.
A thorough search was made for Indian signs, but there were absolutely none. There was nothing to show that any human being had ever been here before us. Back on Lake Bibiquasin we had lost the trail and now on Lake Desolation we were far and hopelessly astray, with only the compass to guide us.
After supper the men sat around the camp fire, smoking and talking of their friends at home, while I walked alone by the lake shore. It was a wild scene that lay before me—the aurora, with its waves of changing color flashing weirdly as they swept and lighted the sky, the dead trees everywhere like skeletons gray and gaunt, the blazing camp fire in the foreground, with the figures lying about it and the little white tent in the background. Somewhere hidden in the depths of that vast and silent wilderness to the westward lay Michikamau.
There was no mark on the face of the earth to direct us on our road. We must blaze a new trail up that valley and over those ridges that looked so dark and forbidding in the uncertain light of the aurora. We must find Michikamau.