out, and what followed may be judged from the awful sight that met the
eyes of some government officials when the following spring they
stumbled across a rude hut strewn with human skeletons, and, in the pot
that hung over the long-dead ashes, some bones that were not those of an
animal.
Those dreadful days are happily past and gone. Few lives are lost on
Anticosti now. Four fine lighthouses send their cheering rays across
the anxious mariner's path, signal-guns and steam-whistles sound
friendly notes of warning when the frequent fogs dim the lights, and
half-a-dozen telegraph-stations at different points are ready to speed
at once the news of disaster to the mainland by means of the submarine
cable.
Where wrecks are plentiful, and the controlling hand of the law is
absent, wreckers are sure to be plentiful also. Anticosti has been no
exception to this rule. The island has had its share of those who did
not hesitate to pursue this nefarious business.
From the earliest times the place has held out attractions to the
fisherman and the hunter. The cod, halibut, herring, and other fish
that it pays to catch, abound along the coast; huge lobsters play
hide-and-seek among the sea-weeds, and very good salmon and trout may be
caught in some of the streams, while round-headed, mild-eyed seals spend
the greater part of the year sporting in the waves or basking on the
shore.
Then away inland there are, or used to be, bears, otters, martens, and
foxes, to be had for the shooting or trapping.
Coming first to fish and hunt, the fishermen and hunters in many cases
stayed to play the part of wreckers. There was a good deal more money
to be made out of the flotsam and jetsam that the storms sent their way
than out of fish or fur, and they made the most of their opportunities.
One thing, however, must be said in their behalf. They have never been
accused of luring vessels to destruction by false lights, or of
confirming their title to the goods cast up by the sea by acting upon
the principle that dead men are not competent witnesses in court, and by
despatching any of the shipwrecked who might have survived the disaster.
On the contrary, more than one unfortunate crew have owed the
preservation of their lives to these very wreckers.
The most renowned of them all--a man of whom it might in truth be said
that there was not a St. Lawrence pilot or a Canadian sailor who knew
him not by reputation, or a parish between Quebec and Gaspe where
marvellous tales were not told about him around the evening fire--was
Louis Olivier Gamache. In these stories he figured as the beau-ideal of
a pirate, half ogre, half sea-wolf, who enjoyed the friendship and
special protection of a familiar demon.
The learned and loquacious Abbe Ferland, in his dainty little volume of
"Opuscules," which I hold in my hand, tells us about this wonderful
Gamache, that, according to popular rumour, he had been seen to stand
upright upon the thwarts of his sloop, and command the demon to bring
him a capful of wind. Instantly his sails were filled, though the sea
around him was in a glassy calm, and away he went, while all about him
were vessels powerless to move.
During a trip to Rimouski he gave a grand supper to the devil, not to a
devil of the second class, but to the veritable old gentleman himself.
Aided by invisible assistants, he had massacred whole crews, and
appropriated to himself the rich cargoes of their vessels. When hotly
pursued by a government boat sent to capture him, and just about being
overtaken, both sloop and Gamache suddenly disappeared, leaving nothing
behind but a blue flame that went dancing over the waves in mocking
defiance of the disappointed minions of the law.
Upon such thrilling legends as these was founded the reputation of the
"Wizard of Anticosti," and so generally were they believed that the
genial abbe assures us that the majority of the mariners in the gulf
would rather have attempted to scale the citadel of Quebec than to
approach by night the bay where Gamache was known to have his
stronghold.
We can put plenty of confidence in the abbe, for in the year 1852 he had
the courage to pay the wizard a visit, and I am sorry that I have not
room to give the full particulars of that visit as they are brightly
presented by this ever-entertaining writer.
He found the terror-inspiring Gamache to be a tall, erect, and vigorous
old man, with snow-white hair but piercing eyes, who came forward to
meet his visitors with an easy, dignified bearing that betrayed no
concern or troubled conscience.
His house appeared to be a perfect arsenal of deadly weapons. No fewer
than a dozen guns, many of them double-barrelled, grimly adorned the
walls of the first room they entered, and every other room up to the
very garret had at least two or three more, loaded and capped; they hung
upon racks, surrounded by powder-flasks, shot-bags, swords, sabres,
daggers, bayonets, and pistols, in most imposing profusion.
The house itself was something of a fortress. Every possible precaution
had been taken to prevent persons entering it without the permission of
its master. All the doors and windows were strongly barred and
shuttered, and so complete were the defences that one man inside might
have defied twenty outside. In the sheds, arranged in the most orderly
manner, were long rows of barrels, bales, casks, and other gifts of the
sea.
Such was the den of the dreaded wrecker, a man not one tithe so bad as
wild rumour made him, but who, nevertheless, took pains to intensify the
public feeling about himself, in order that he might be the more
undisturbed in the solitude he had chosen for himself in that strange,
wild place.
He had not always been alone, either. Twice had a woman been found
willing to brave the rigours of his life for love of him, and in both
cases they had succumbed to the terrible loneliness and desolation. His
second wife died suddenly, while he was off on a hunting-trip in
mid-winter; and he returned, after a fortnight's absence, to find her
frozen form clasping to its icy breast the bodies of their two little
children, the one five and the other six years old.
"That is how they will find me some day. Each one in their turn. Ah!
well--since she is dead we can only bury her."
That was all the strange, taciturn man said to his companion, a hunter
who had been with him, and yet he had always shown his wife the greatest
kindness and affection. It was not that he was heartless, but that he
would rather have died than reveal the depth of his feeling.
He amused the abbe very much by relating the various devices to which he
had resorted in order to heighten his reputation for diabolic
associations. He would go to a country inn, for instance, order a
supper for two to be served in a private room, stating that he expected
a gentleman in sable garments to share it with him.
When the supper was ready he would then lock himself up in the room,
polish the supper off unaided, and summon the astonished landlady to
clear the remains away, as he and his friend had supped and were
satisfied. He would further increase their mystification by sundry
rappings, and inexplicable openings and shuttings of doors.
He could also employ more sinister means of protecting himself when
necessary. One day, when he was quite alone, a canoe glided into the
bay, and presently a gigantic Montagnais Indian stepped ashore, armed to
the teeth, and advanced with a firm step towards the house.
He was evidently crazed with fire-water, and Gamache felt in no mood to
try a tussle with so brawny an opponent. Standing in the doorway, with
a rifle in his hands, he called out in his sternest tones,--
"Stop! I forbid you to advance."
The intruder took not the slightest notice of him.
"Take another step and I fire," shouted Gamache. The step was taken,
but before it could be repeated, the rifle spoke and the Indian fell,
his thigh-bone smashed with the bullet. In an instant Gamache was
beside the wounded man. Removing his weapons, he lifted him to his
shoulder, and bore him tenderly to the house, and there nursed him until
he was completely recovered.
Then filling his canoe with provisions, he sent him back to his tribe,
with a warning never to intrude upon Gamache again unless he wanted a
bullet through his head instead of his thigh.
In 1854, Louis Olivier Gamache died, like his poor wife, alone and
unattended. For weeks no one had visited his abode, and when at last
some seafarers chanced that way they found only the corpse of the once
dreaded wizard, whose supposed league with evil spirits did not avail to
save him from fulfilling his own prophecy.
The wrecks continue at Anticosti. Not long ago the shattered skeletons
of four fine ocean steamers might have been seen upon its fatal shores,
but with Gamache the reign of the wreckers ended, never to return.
*A LUMBER CAMP.*
There is no summer in a Canadian lumber camp; that is to say, there is
nobody in the camp in summer, which amounts to the same thing. The
season of activity in the camps, or the "shanties" as they are generally
called, extends from late September to early April, and all summer long
they are left to the care of birds that chirp and squirrels that chatter
on the roof.
In the month of September the Canadian lumberman joins the gang of
sturdy, active men who are bound for the "shanties," where a winter of
hard work awaits them. For him the forests exist only to be
remorselessly cut down; but though he may never stop to think about it,
his is a very romantic and fascinating occupation.
September is one of the loveliest months in the Canadian calendar. The
days are still long and sunny. The heat of summer has passed away, and
the chill of autumn not yet come. One cloudless day follows another,
and nature seems to be doing her best to make existence a delight. This
is the time when the shantymen gather into gangs, and by rail or steamer
journey northward until they pass the limits of settlement. Then taking
to "shanks' mare" they make their way into the depths of the forest.
Let us follow a gang that is going upon a "limit" still untouched by the
axe, far up the Black River, a tributary of the Ottawa, a hundred miles
or more from the nearest village. This gang consists of about forty
men, including the foremen, clerk, carpenter, cook, and chore-boy, all
active, sturdy, and good-natured fellows. Most of them are
French-Canadians--_habitans_, as the local term is--but English, Scotch,
and Irish are found among them too, and quite often swarthy, wild-eyed
men whose features tell plainly of Indian blood.
Scouts have previously selected the best site for the camp. It is
usually in the midst of the "bunch" of timber to be cut, so that little
time may be lost in going and coming. On arriving, the first thing done
by the gang is to build the shanty, which is to be its home during the
long, cold winter.
This edifice makes no pretence to architectural beauty, but nothing
could be better adapted to its purpose. It is an illustration of
simplicity and strength combined. With all hands helping heartily, a
shanty forty feet long by twenty-eight feet wide can be put up in five
days. Meantime the builders live in tents.
This is the way they go about it:--First of all, a number of trees are
cut down. The trunks, cleared of all their branches, are sawed into
proper lengths, and then laid one upon another until an enclosure with
walls eight feet high is obtained. Upon the top of these walls strong
girders are stretched, which are supported in the centre by four great
pillars called "scoop-bearers."
Then comes the roof. A Canadian shanty roof is neither tiled nor
shingled, but "scooped." What is a "scoop"? It is a piece of timber
something like a very long railway tie, one side of which is hollowed
out, trough-wise, clear to the ends. Place two of these side by side,
with the concave sides upward, and then lay another on top of them,
concave side down, so that the edges overlap and fall into the troughs,
and you have a roof that will defy the heaviest rains or wildest
snow-storms that Canada can produce.
A floor of roughly-flattened timbers having been laid and a door cut, it
only remains to construct the "camboose," or fireplace, and the bunks,
and the shanty is complete; provided, of course, every cranny in the
walls has been chinked with moss and mud, and a bank of earth thrown up
all around the outside to make sure that no draughts can sneak in when
the mercury is far below zero.
The "camboose" is quite an important affair, and occupies the place of
honour in the centre of the room between the four massive scoop-bearers.
Its construction is as rude and simple as that of the rest of the
shanty. A bank of sand about two feet deep and six feet square makes
the hearth. Over it hang two wooden cranes that hold the capacious
kettles, which are always full of the pea-soup or fat salt pork that
constitute the chief items in the shantymen's bill of fare.
A mighty fire roars and crackles unceasingly upon the hearth, its smoke
escaping through a square hole in the roof--a hole so big that one may
lie in the bunks and study the stars. This rude chimney secures the
best of ventilation to the shantymen. The bunks, which are simply
sloping platforms about seven feet in length, running around three sides
of the room, offer the sweet allurement of the soft side of a plank to
the tired toilers at the close of the day.
Such is a shanty of the good old-fashioned sort. In later days such
refinements of civilization as windows, stoves, and tables have been
added by progressive lumbermen, but there are still scores of shanties
to which the above description applies.
The shantymen are now ready to begin operations against the great trees
that have been standing all about, silent, unconscious spectators of the
undertaking. The forty men are divided according to the nature of their
work. The clerk, cook, and chore-boy are the "home-guard." The others,
according to their various abilities, are choppers, road-cutters,
teamsters, sawyers, and chainers.
The only duty requiring explanation is that of chore-boy. It is usually
performed by the youngest member of the gang, although sometimes it
falls to the lot of a man well up in years. The chore-boy is the cook's
assistant and general utility worker of the shanty. He has to chop the
firewood, draw the water, wash the dishes, and perform a multitude of
such odd jobs, in return for which he is apt to get little thanks and
much abuse.
The choppers have the most important and interesting part of the work.
They always work in pairs, and go out against the trees armed with a
keen axe apiece and a crosscut-saw between them. Having selected their
victim--say a splendid pine, towering more than a hundred feet in the
air--they take up their position at each side. Soon the strokes of the
axes ring out in quick succession. For some time the yellow chips fly
fast, and presently a shiver runs through the tree's mighty frame. One
of the choppers cries warningly to the other, who hastens to get out of
the way. A few more strokes are given with nice skill. Then comes a
rending crack, whose meaning cannot be mistaken; and the stately tree,
after quivering a moment as though uncertain which way to fall, crashes
headlong to the ground, making a wide swath through the smaller trees
standing near.
A good chopper can lay his tree almost exactly where he likes, and yet
somehow accidents are of frequent occurrence. Every winter additions are
made to the long list of men whom the trees have succeeded in involving
in their own ruin. A gust of wind, the proximity of another tree, or
some such influence may cause the falling trunk to swerve, and fall with
fatal force upon the unwary chopper.
The tree felled, the next proceeding is to strip it of its branches, and
saw it up into as many logs as can be got from it. Two, three, four, or
even as many as five logs may be obtained from a single tree--the length
of each being thirteen and a half feet or sixteen and a half according
to the quality. The odd half-foot is allowed for the "brooming" of the
ends as the logs make their rough journey down the streams to the mills.
[Illustration: LUMBERING. _Page_ 266.]
Eighty logs felled, trimmed, and sawed is quite an ordinary day's work
for one pair of choppers; and when the choppers have been
"striving"--that is, each pair trying its best to outdo the others--six
hundred logs have been turned in by a single pair as the splendid result
of a week's work.
The logs are at first piled up on "roll-ways," which are simply two
tree-trunks placed a little distance apart. Later on, when the
road-makers have done their part, the teamsters bear them off to the
bank of the stream or out upon the ice of the lake, where they wait the
coming of spring to begin their journey by water to the mills.
The shantyman leads a free, hearty, healthy life. From dawn until dark
he works in the open air, exercising lungs and muscles. When the autumn
rains are over, and the snow has come to stay, he breathes for four
months the clear, cold, bracing air of the Canadian winter, fragrant
with the scent of pine and cedar. No matter how fond of drink he may
be, not one drop of liquor can he have, although he may and does drink
long and deep from the "cup that cheers."
His fare possesses at least two sterling merits. It is substantial in
quality and unlimited in quantity. He enjoys it most when the day's
work is over, and, no less weary than hungry, he trudges home to the
shanty. There he finds the warm welcome of a steaming supper awaiting
him.
Drawn up about the blazing fire he sees a pot of excellent pea-soup, a
boiler of strong tea, a big pan full of fat pork fried and floating in
gravy, another pan containing slices of cold boiled pork, huge loaves of
bread baked in great iron pots buried deep in the ashes of the
"camboose"--and better than city baker ever made--and a pile of bright
tin basins.
Picking up two of the basins, he fills one with soup and the other with
tea. Helping himself to a generous slice of the hot bread, he makes use
of it as a plate for a slice of the pork. Then he retires to the edge
of his bunk, and with the aid of his clasp-knife discusses this solid if
not varied repast.
There is not much change in the bill of fare all winter. Occasionally,
perhaps, if the roads permit, fresh beef "on foot" will be sent up from
the depot, and the lumbermen may enjoy the luxury of steaks and roasts.
Quite often, too, a bit of game will fall in their way while they are
working in the woods. Great is the rejoicing when Francois or Alec
succeeds in bringing down a fat deer. Bear-steak, too, is not unknown.
The bear is trapped in a "dead fall," or small hut above the door of
which a heavy log is hung in such a way that it drops with crushing
force upon the bear pushing in to get at the bait.
Sometimes the shantymen do a little trapping on their own account. One
of them, who wished to obtain a fine bear-skin, paid dearly for his
prize. He had set his steel spring trap, and returning after an
interval, found that it had disappeared. The marks in the snow made
tracking easy; and hurrying along, he presently reached a great log over
which the trap had evidently been dragged. His haste made him careless,
and springing across the broad trunk without stopping to reconnoitre, he
threw himself right into the arms of the bear. The animal, weary of
dragging the heavy trap, was resting on the other side.
The hunted creature was furious with pain. The shanty-man's only weapon
was his sheath-knife, which he drew and stabbed the bear again and again
in the breast. But stab as he might he could not loose the brute's
fatal grasp. Next day his comrades, anxiously following up his trail,
found him dead, with the dead bear's paws still holding him fast.
The shantyman's recess comes when the evening meal has been despatched.
He has an hour or more before bed-time. It is pipes all round, and song
and joke and story win generous applause from the not over-critical
audience. The French-Canadians are especially fond of singing. They
have many songs, some of which, like "A la claire fontaine" and "En
roulant ma boule," are full of spirit and beauty. If Francois or Alec
has remembered to bring his fiddle with him--and he seldom forgets
it--the singing is sure to be followed by dancing as the evening goes
on.
Bedtime comes early in the shanty. By nine o'clock, at the latest, all
have "turned in." The process of going to bed consists simply in taking
off one's coat and boots, and rolling up snugly in a couple of thick
blankets. Many a millionaire would gladly give one of his millions for
the ability to sleep as soundly and restfully in his soft bed as does
the shantyman upon his pine boards.
In the dusk of early morning the foreman's loud voice is heard calling
to the men,--
"Turn out now, and get your breakfast!"
The lumberman has been asleep ten good hours, but he feels as if he had
just lain down!
Sunday is the day the shantyman likes best. No work is done upon that
day. He can spend the time as he pleases. Generally he is content to
lounge about smoking, and enjoying the luxury of doing nothing. A
religious service is so rare a treat that when there is one all attend
it without reference to their creed.
Thus the long winter slips by. The logs accumulate upon the river bank
or out upon the icy lake. When the warm days of spring come the
lumberman's labours are at an end, so far as the shanty is concerned.
The great spring drive begins. The logs start upon their journey
southward, and the shantyman becomes a river-driver. Armed with
pike-pole or camp-hook, he hurries his awkward squads of logs down
stream as a shepherd drives his flock to market.
This is often a very exciting and dangerous occupation. The Canadian
rivers abound in falls and rapids, past which the flocks of tree-trunks
have to be guided skilfully. Many a time the river-driver's life is in
peril as he wades through the turbulent, ice-cold water, or leaps from
rock to rock, or from log to log, in his efforts to prevent his charges
from stranding.
When the drive is finished the shantyman's labours are over, until the
return of autumn recalls him to the forest.
[Illustration: Lacrosse headpiece]
*LACROSSE.*
What the game of cricket is to England, and the game of base-ball to the
United States, is the game of lacrosse to Canada; and yet it is worth
noting that, both cricket and base-ball flourish in Canada, which goes
to show that the young Canadian seeks for quantity as well as quality in
his sport.
The Indians invented lacrosse, just as they invented the canoe, the
snow-shoe, and the toboggan, and it is not likely that their pale-face
brother will be able to invent something surpassing any of them. How
long ago they invented lacrosse is a question not even Parkman nor
Catlin can tell us. The redskins have never had newspapers, and seem to
have been poor hands at keeping diaries; consequently we can never hope
to know when first the Iroquois champion team, led by the famous chief
"Throw-the-ball-half-a-mile," defeated the Cree champions under the no
less renowned "Stop-it-with-his-stomach-every-time."
Catlin, who saw it played by six hundred, eight hundred, or even one
thousand Choctaws at a time, tells us that the players would trip and
throw each other, and sometimes take flying leaps over the heads of
their stooping opponents, or dart between their extended legs. "There
are times," he adds, "when the ball gets to the ground, when there is a
confused mass of sticks, shins, and bloody noses." I may add on my own
account that those times are not altogether past and gone. Scratched
shins and crimsoned noses are still to be found on the lacrosse-field.