CHAPTER X.
Ataleof warfare.—Dog-sleds.—A missing link.—The North Sea.—“Winterers.”—Samuel Hearne.
Ataleof warfare.—Dog-sleds.—A missing link.—The North Sea.—“Winterers.”—Samuel Hearne.
Duringthe three months which had elapsed since his arrival at the Forks, Cerf-vola had led an idle life; he had led his train occasionally to Fort à la Corne, or hauled a light sled along the ice of the frozen rivers, but these were only desultory trips, and his days had usually passed in peace and plenty.
Perhaps I am wrong in saying peace, for the introduction of several strange dogs had occasioned much warfare, and although he had invariably managed to come off victorious, victory was not obtained without some loss. I have before remarked that he possessed a very large bushy tail. In time of war this appendage was carried prominently over his back, something after the manner of the plumes upon casque of knight in olden times, or the more modern helmet of dragoon in the era of the Peninsular War.
One day, while he was engaged in a desperatestruggle with a bumptious new-comer, a large ill-conditioned mongrel which had already been vanquished, seeing his victor fully occupied, deemed it an auspicious moment for revenge, and springing upon the bushy tail proceeded to attack it with might and main. The unusual noise brought me to the door in time to separate the combatants while yet the tail was intact, but so unlooked for had been the assault that it was found upon examination to be considerably injured. With the aid of a needle and thread it was repaired as best we could, Cerf-vola apparently understanding what the surgical operation meant, for although he indulged in plenty of uproar at every stitch no attempt at biting was made by him. He was now however sound in body and in tail, and he tugged away at his load in blissful ignorance that 1500 miles of labour lay before him.
I know not if my readers are acquainted with the manner in which dogs are used as draught animals in the great fur regions of the north. A dog sled is simply two thin oak or birch-wood boards lashed together with deer-skin thongs: turned up in front like a Norwegian snow shoe, it runs when light over hard snow or ice with great ease; its length is about nine feet, its breadth sixteen inches. Along its outer edges runs a leather lashing, through the loops of which a longleather line is passed, to hold in its place whatever may be placed upon it. From the front, close to the turned portion, the traces for draught are attached. The dogs, usually four in number, stand in tandem fashion, one before the other, the best dog generally being placed in front, as “foregoer,” the next best in rear as “steer-dog.” It is the business of the foregoer to keep the track, however faint it may be on lake or river. The steer-dog guides the sled, and prevents it from striking or catching in tree or root. An ordinary load for four dogs weighs from 2 to 400 lbs.; laden with 200 lbs. dogs will travel on anything like a good track, or on hard snow, about thirty or thirty-five miles in each day. In deep or soft snow the pace is of necessity slow, and twenty to twenty-five miles will form a fair day’s work.
If any one should ask what length of time dogs will thus travel day after day, I refer them to the following chapters, wherein the fortunes of Cerf-vola and his brethren, starting out to-day on a long journey, are duly set forth.
Some few miles west of the mission station called Prince Albert I parted from my friend Captain M——, who thus far had accompanied me. He was to return to Red River and Canada,viáCumberland and the lakes; I to hold my way across the frozen continent to the Pacific. Formany months each day would place a double day’s distance between us, but we still looked forward to another meeting, even though between us and that prospect there lay the breadth of all the savage continent.
A couple of days later I reached the Hudson’s Bay Company’s fort of Carlton, the great rendezvous of the winter packets between north and south. From north and west several of the leading agents of the fur company had assembled at Carlton to await the coming of the packet bearing news from the outer world. From Fort Simpson on the far Mackenzie, from Fort Chipewyan on the lonely lake Athabasca, from Edmonton on the Upper Saskatchewan, from Isle à la Crosse, dogs had drawn the masters of these remote establishments to the central station on the middle Saskatchewan. But they waited in vain for the arrival of the packet; with singular punctuality had their various trains arrived within a few days of each other from starting-points 2000 miles apart; yet after a few days’ detention these officers felt anxious to set out once more on their journey, and many a time the hill-side on which the packet must first appear was scanned by watchers, and all the boasted second sight and conjuring power of haggard squaw and medicine man was set at work to discover the whereaboutsof the “missing link” between the realms of civilization and savagery. To me the delay, except for the exigencies of time and distance, was not irksome. I was in the society of gentlemen whose lives had been passed in all portions of the great north, on the frozen shores of Hudson’s Bay, in the mountain fastnesses of the Chipewyan range, or midst the savage solitudes that lie where, in long, low-lying capes, and ice-piled promontories, the shore of America stretches out to meet the waves of the Northern Ocean.
There was one present who in the past seven months had travelled by horse and canoe, boat and dog train, full 4000 miles; and another, destined to be my close companion during many weeks, whose matchless determination and power of endurance had carried him in a single winter from the Lower Mackenzie River to the banks of the Mississippi.
Here, while we await the winter packet, let me sketch with hasty and imperfect touch the lives of those who, as the “winterers” of the great Company of Adventurers trading into Hudson’s Bay, have made their homes in the wilderness.
Two hundred and sixty-two years ago, a French adventurer under the banner of Samuel de Champlain wintered with an Indian tribe on the shores of the Upper Ottawa. In the ensuing spring he returnedto Montreal, recounted his adventures, and became the hero of an hour. Beyond the country of the Ottawas he described a vast region, and from the uttermost sources of the Ottawa a large river ran towards the north until it ended in the North Sea. He had been there he said, and on the shore lay the ribs of an English vessel wrecked, and the skeletons of English sailors who had been drowned or murdered. His story was a false one, and ere a year had passed he confessed his duplicity; he had not been near the North Sea, nor had he seen aught that he described.
Yet was there even more than a germ of truth in his tale of wreck and disaster, for just one year earlier in this same North Sea, a brave English sailor had been set adrift in an open boat, with half a dozen faithful seamen; and of all the dark mysteries of the merciless ocean, no mystery lies wrapt in deeper shadow than that which hangs over the fate of Hudson.
But the seventeenth century was not an age when wreck or ruin could daunt the spirit of discovery. Here in this lonely North Sea, the palm of adventure belonged not to France alone. Spain might overrun the rich regions of the tropics, Richelieu (prototype of the great German chancellor of to-day) might plant thefleur-de-lisalong the mighty St. Lawrence, but the north—thefrozen north—must be the land of English enterprise and English daring. The years that followed the casting away of the fearless Hudson saw strange vessels coasting the misty shores of that weird sea; at first, to seek through its bergs and ice floes, its dreary cloud-wrapt fiords and inlets, a passage to the land where ceaseless sunshine glinted on the spice-scented shores of fabulous Cathay; and later on, to trade with the savages who clad themselves in skins, which the fairest favourites of Whitehall or the Louvre (by a strange extreme wherein savagery joined hands with civilization) would be proud to wrap round their snowy shoulders.
Prosecuted at first by desultory and chance adventurers, this trade in furs soon took definite form and became a branch of commerce. On the lonely sea-shores wooden buildings rose along the estuaries of rivers flowing from an unknown land. These were honoured by the title of fort or factory, and then the ships sailed back to England ere the autumn ice had closed upon the waters; while behind in Rupert’s Fort, York Factory, Churchill, or Albany (names which tell the political history of their day), stayed the agents, or “winterers,” whose work it was to face for a long season of hardship, famine, and disease, a climate so rigorous that not unfrequently, whenthe returning vessel rose upon the distant sea line, scarce half the eyes that had seen her vanish were there to watch her return. And they had other foes to contend with. Over the height of land, away by the great lakes, and along the forest shores of the St. Lawrence, the adventurers of another nation had long been busy at the mingled work of conquest and traffic. The rival Sultans of France and England could, midst the more pressing cares of their respective harems, find time occasionally to scribble “Henri” or “Charles” at the foot of a parchment scroll which gave a continent to a company; it little mattered whether Spaniard, Frenchman, or Briton had first bestowed the gift, the rival claimants might fight for the possession as they pleased. The geography of this New World was uncertain, and where Florida ended or Canada began was not matter of much consequence. But the great cardinal, like the great chancellor, was not likely to err in the matter of boundaries. “If there should be any doubt about the parts, we can take the whole,” was probably as good a maxim then as now; and accordingly we find at one sweep the whole northern continent, from Florida to the Arctic Circle, handed over to a company of which the priest-soldier was the moving spirit.
Thus began the long strife between France andEngland in North America,—a strife which only ended under the walls of Quebec. The story of their bravery, their endurance, their constancy, their heroism, has been woven into deathless history by a master-hand.1To France belongs the glory of the Great West—not the less her glory because the sun has set for ever upon her empire. Nothing remains to her. Promontory or lonely isle, name of sea-washed cape, or silent lake, half mistily tells of her former dominion. In the deep recesses of some north-western lake or river-reach the echoes still waken to the notes of some old Frenchchanson, as the half Indianvoyageur, ignorant of all save the sound, dips his glistening paddle to the cadence of his song. But of all that Cartier and Champlain, De Monts, La Salle, Marquette, Frontenac, and Montcalm lived and died for—nothing more remains.
1Francis Parkman.
1Francis Parkman.
Poor France! In the New World and in the Old history owes thee much. Yet in both hast thou paid the full measure of thy people’s wrong.
But to return. The seventeenth century had not closed ere the sea of Hudson became the theatre of strife, the wooden palisades of the factories were battered or burnt down; and one fine day in August, 1697, a loud cannonadeboomed over the sullen waters, and before the long summer twilight had closed, the “Hampshire,” with her fifty-two guns on high poop or lofty forecastle, lay deep beneath the icy sea, her consorts the Frenchman’s prize. Nor had she gone down before a foe more powerful, but to the single frigate of Le Moyne d’Iberville, a child of Old and New France, the boldest rover that e’er went forth upon the Northern Seas. Some fifteen years later France resigned her claim to these sterile shores. Blenheim, Ramilies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet had given to England the sole possession of the frozen north.
And now for nigh seventy years the English Company pursued unmolested its trade along the coast. A strong fort, not of wood and lath and stockade, but of hard English brick and native granite hewn by English hands, rose near the estuary of the Churchill River. To this fort the natives came annually along the English river bearing skins gathered far inland, along the shores of the Lake of the Hills, and the borders of the great river of the north.
With these natives wandered back an Englishman named Samuel Hearne; he reached the Lake Athabasca, and on all sides he heard of large rivers, some coming from south and west, others flowing to the remotest north. Hewandered on from tribe to tribe, reacted a great lake, descended a great river to the north, and saw at last the Arctic Sea.
Slowly did the Fur Company establish itself in the interior. It was easier to let the natives bring down the rich furs to the coast than to seek them in these friendless regions. But at last a subtle rival appeared on the scene; the story of the North-West Fur Company has often been told, and in another place we have painted the effects of that conflict; here it is enough to say that when in 1822 the north-west became merged into the older corporation, posts or forts had been scattered throughout the entire continent, and that henceforth from Oregon to Ungava, from Mingan to the Mackenzie, the countless tribes knew but one lord and master, the Company of Adventurers from England trading into Hudson’s Bay.
What in the meantime was the work of those wintering agents whose homes were made in the wilderness? God knows their lives were hard. They came generally from the remote isles or highlands of Scotland, they left home young, and the mind tires when it thinks upon the remoteness of many of their fur stations. Dreary and monotonous beyond words was their home life, and hardship was its rule. To travel on foot1000 miles in winter’s darkest time, to live upon the coarsest food, to see nought of bread or sugar for long months, to lie down at night under the freezing branches, to feel cold such as Englishmen in England cannot even comprehend, often to starve, always to dwell in exile from the great world. Such was the routine of their lives. The names of these northern posts tell the story of their toil. “Resolution,” “Providence,” “Good Hope,” “Enterprise,” “Reliance,” “Confidence;” such were the titles given to these little forts on the distant Mackenzie, or the desolate shores of the great Slave Lake. Who can tell what memories of early days in the far away Scottish isles, or Highland glen, must have come to these men as the tempest swept the stunted pine-forest, and wrack and drift hurled across the frozen lake—when the dawn and the dusk, separated by only a few hours’ daylight, closed into the long, dark night. Perchance the savage scene was lost in a dreamy vision of some lonely Scottish loch, some Druid mound in far away Lewis, some vista of a fireside, when storm howled and waves ran high upon the beach of Stornoway.