DOWN THE ATHABASCA ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FIVE MILES TO GRAND RAPIDS
"Set me in the urge and tide-drift
Of the streaming hosts a-wing!
Breast of scarlet, throat of yellow,
Raucous challenge, wooings mellow--
Every migrant is my fellow,
Making northward with the Spring."
--_Bliss Carman_.
If you have to do with Indian or half-breed boatmen in the North you
plan to begin your journey in the evening, even though you hope to run
only a few miles before nightfall. This ensures a good start next
morning, whereas it would be humanly impossible to tear men away from
the flesh-pots (beer pots) of Athabasca Landing early in any day. It
took these chaps all the afternoon to say good-bye, for each one in the
village had to be shaken hands with, every dog apostrophized by name.
The Athabasca Transport of which we form joyous part makes a formidable
flotilla: seven specially-built scows or "sturgeon-heads." Each runs
forty to fifty feet with a twelve-foot beam and carries ten tons. The
oars are twenty feet long. It takes a strong man to handle the
forty-foot steering-sweep which is mounted with an iron pivot on the
stern.
Our particular shallop is no different from the others, except that
there is a slightly raised platform in the stern-sheets, evidently a
dedication to the new Northern Manager of the H.B. Co. We share the
pleasant company of a fourth passenger, Mrs. Harding, on her way home to
Fort Resolution on Great Slave Lake. The second sturgeon-head carries
seven members of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, jolly laughing
chaps, for are not they, too, like us, off duty? Inspector Pelletier and
three men are to go with our Fur Transport as far as Resolution and then
diverge to the east, essaying a cross-continent cut from there to salt
water on Hudson Bay. For this purpose they ship two splendidly made
Peterborough canoes. The other three members of the force are young
chaps assigned to Smith's Landing on the Slave River, sent there to
protect the wood bison of that region, the world's last wild buffalo.
The third craft we observe with due respect as "the cook boat." The
remaining four scows carry cargo only,--the trade term being "pieces,"
each piece from eighty to a hundred pounds, a convenient weight for
carrying on the portages.
[Illustration: A "Sturgeon-head" at Athabasca]
[Illustration: "Farewell, Nistow!"]
June 6th at a quarter of seven saw the whole populace of Athabasca
Landing on the river bank--dogs, babies, the officials of the Hudson's
Bay, parson, priest, police, and even the barkeep,--and with the yelping
of dogs and "Farewell, Nistow!" we are off. We are embarked on a
2500-mile journey, the longest water route on the continent, down which
floats each year the food, clothing, and frugal supplies of a country as
big as Europe.
The river is running five miles an hour and there is no need of the
oars. The steersman is our admiration, as with that clumsy stern-sweep
he dodges rocks, runs riffles, and makes bends. The scow is made of
green wood, and its resilience stands it in good stead as, like a snake,
it writhes through tight channels or over ugly bits of water. Everybody
is in good humour; we are dreamers dreaming greatly. Why should we not
be happy? Mrs. Harding is homeward-bound, Mr. Brabant on a new rung of
the fur ladder of preferment, Inspector Pelletier and his associates
starting on a quest of their own seeking. Sitting low among the "pieces"
of the police boat, with only his head visible in the sunset glow, Dr.
Sussex builds air-castles of that eleemosynary hospital of his on the
Arctic Circle. The cook is whistling from the cook-boat. Five years ago
he graduated from a business college, but the preparation of bannock and
sow-belly appeals to the blood more insistently than trial balances and
the petty cash book. As for ourselves, the Kid's smile is almost audible
as she runs a loving hand over the oilskin cover of the camera. A
favourite expression of mine in the latitudes below when the world
smiled was, "Oh, I'm glad I'm alive and white!" On this exclamation I
start now, but stop at the word "white." North of Athabasca Landing
white gives place to a tint more tawny.
A hundred yards out, the Policemen are boyish enough to launch those
shiny Peterboroughs just to try them, and in and out among the big
sturgeon-heads, debonair dolphins, they dart. Then comes the rain, and
one by one the clumsy boats turn toward shore. There are some things
that even the enquiring mind cannot run to ground, things that just
happen out of the blue. For fifteen successive springs I have tried to
discover the first boy who brought marbles to school when marble-season
came in, and I have never yet been able to put my finger on that elusive
history-maker. So on this voyage, the fleet is started and stopped,
landings are made, camping-places decided upon, and no ear can detect
the sound of command.
The scows tie up, and without undressing we sleep on board, pulling a
tarpaulin over us and letting the rain rain. At 5:30 next morning we
hear the familiar "Nistow! Nistow!" of the awakened camp. This word
literally means "brother-in-law," but it is the vocative used by the
Cree in speaking to anybody he feels kindly toward. The cook makes a
double entry with bacon and bannock, and there is exulting joy in our
soul. Who would napkins bear, or finger-bowls? We had put them far
behind, with the fardels.
It is the season of lengthening days and fading nights. At seven o'clock
we are in the river again, and for three glorious hours we float, first
one scow in front, then the other, social amenities in Cree being
shouted from boat to boat. Then, in one voice from three boats,
"Mooswa!" and far beyond white man's vision the boatmen sight a moose.
There is a little red tape about the ethics of taking off those precious
Peterboroughs which were to make history on the map, and in the delay
the moose wandered into pleasant pastures. The boatmen were very much
disgruntled, as the moose is treasure-trove, the chief fresh meat that
his world offers the Indian. From here to the Arctic are no domestic
animals, the taste of beef or mutton or pork or chicken is unknown,
bread gives place to bannock (with its consequent indigestion
"bannockburn"), and coffee is a beverage discredited. Tobacco to smoke,
strong, black, sweetened tea to drink from a copper kettle,--this is
luxury's lap.
The bowsman points to a rude cross on the right bank where a small
runway makes in, "Gon-sta-wa-bit" (man who was drowned), he volunteers.
Yesterday a Mounted Policeman buried there the body of an Indian man,
his wife and his baby, who fell through the ice in a dog-sled this
spring,--three in one grave, Lamartine's trinity, the Father, the
Mother, and the Child.
It is Sunday, and we have music from a li'l fiddle made by a squaw at
Lac Ste. Anne. Lac la Biche River we pass, and Calling River, and at
five in the evening are at Swift Current, Peachy Pruden's place, and
then Red Mud. Sunday night is clear and beautiful, and we float all
night. Making a pillow of a squat packing-case consigned to the
missionary at Hay River, and idly wondering what it might contain, I
draw up a canvas sheet. But it is too wonderful a night to sleep. Lying
flat upon our backs and looking upward, we gaze at the low heaven full
of stars, big, lustrous, hanging down so low that we can almost reach up
and pluck them. Two feet away, holding in both hands the stern sweep, is
the form of the Cree steersman, his thoughtful face a cameo against the
shadow of the cut-banks. At his feet another half-breed is wrapped in
his blanket, and from here to the bow the boat is strewn with these
human cocoons. The reclining friend breaks the silence with a word or
two of Cree in an undertone to the steersman, a screech-owl cries, from
high overhead drops down that sound which never fails to stir vagrant
blood--the "unseen flight of strong hosts prophesying as they go." It is
the wild geese feeling the old spring fret even as we feel it. In
imagination I pierce the distance and see the red panting throat of that
long-necked voyageur as he turns to shout back raucous encouragement to
his long, sky-clinging V.
Floating as we float, it is no longer a marvel to us that this North
holds so many scientific men and finished scholars--colonial Esaus
serving as cooks, dog-drivers, packers, trackers, oil-borers. The not
knowing what is round the next corner, the old heart-hunger for new
places and untrod ways,--who would exchange all this for the easy ways
of fatted civilization!
At five in the morning there is a drawing-in of the fleet to Pelican
Portage. Before two hours have passed the grasshopper has become a
burden, and it is 102° in the shade, and no shade to be had. We are now
a hundred miles from Athabasca Landing. On the left bank we come across
a magnificent gas-well with a gush of flame twenty or thirty feet in
height.
It seems that eleven years ago, seeking for petroleum, the Dominion
Government had a shaft sunk here; their boring apparatus was heavy, the
plunger with its attachment weighing nearly a ton. At eight hundred feet
the operator broke into an ocean of gas, and the pressure blew him with
plunger and appliances into the air as a ball comes from a cannon-bore.
The flow of gas was so heavy that it clogged his drills with maltha and
sand, and from then to now the gas has been escaping. To-day the sound
of the escape ricochets up and down the palisaded channel so that we
cannot hear each other speak. There is gas enough here, if we could pipe
it and bring it under control, to supply with free illumination every
city of prairie Canada. It has destroyed all vegetation for a radius of
twenty yards; but, oddly enough, outside this range of demarcation the
growth is more luxuriant and comes earlier and stays later than that of
the surrounding country. One redheaded Klondiker, ignorant of gas and
its ways, ten years ago struck a match to this escaping stream, was
blown into the bushes beyond, and came out minus hair, eye-brows and red
beard--the quickest and closest shave he ever had. The shells of birds'
eggs, tea-leaves from many a cheering copper-kettle, tufts of
rabbit-hair, and cracked shin-bones of the moose, with here a greasy
nine of diamonds, show, this Stromboli of the Athabasca to be the
gathering-place of up and down-river wanderers. You can boil a kettle or
broil a moose-steak on this gas-jet in six minutes, and there is no
thought of accusing metre to mar your joy. The Doctor has found a
patient in a cabin on the high bank, and rejoices. The Indian has
consumption. The only things the Doctor could get at were rhubarb pills
and cod-liver oil, but these, with faith, go a long way. They may have
eased the mind of poor Lo, around whose dying bunk we hear the relatives
scrapping over his residuary estate of rusty rifle, much-mended
fishing-net, and three gaunt dogs.
We pass House River, and the devout cross themselves and murmur a
prayer. The point is marked by a group of graves covered with canvas.
Here years ago a family of four, travelling alone, contracted
diphtheria, and died before help could reach them. There is another
legend of which the boatmen unwillingly speak, the story of the
_Wetigo_, or Indian turned cannibal, who murdered a priest on this
lonely point, and ate the body of his victim. The taste for human flesh,
Philip Atkinson assures us, grows with the using, and this lunatic of
long ago went back to the camps, secured an Indian girl as bride,
carried her to this point, took her life, and ate of her flesh. It is a
gruesome story.
[Illustration: Grand Rapids on the Athabasca River]
Now begin the rapids, ninety miles of which we are to run. This rough
water on the Athabasca is one of the only two impediments to navigation
on the long course between Athabasca Landing and the Polar Ocean. These
first rapids, frankly, are a disappointment. The water is high, higher
than it has been for ten years, so the boiling over the boulders is not
very noticeable. The Pelican Rapid and the Stony we shoot without
turning a hair; the Joli Fou is a bit more insistent, but, as the cook
says, "nothing to write home about."
We drift in a drowsy dream of delight, and in the evening arrive at the
head of Grand Rapids. If we had looked slightingly on the rough water
passed, what we now see would satisfy the greediest. We tie up and get a
good view of what lies ahead, and get also our first real introduction
to the mosquito. In mid-stream he had not bothered us much, but after
supper it rained a little, the day had been warm, and with cymbals,
banners, and brass-bands, he comes in cohorts to greet us. The scows
have their noses poked into the bank, the men have built smudge fires in
front, but we decide that the best way to escape the mosquito is to go
to bed. We lie down in the stern-sheets with our clothes on, make
night-caps of our Stetson hats, pull the veils down over our necks, and
try to sleep, but it is no avail. Each one of these mosquitoes is a
Presbyterian mosquito and it has been ordained that this night he is to
taste of white blood. It rains incessantly, and that hot hole in which
we lie is one brown cloud of mosquitoes. The men on the bank have
finally given it up as a bad job, and they set round the fires smoking
and slapping different parts of their persons, swearing volubly in
English. For the Cree language is devoid of invective. In the morning we
are a sorry crowd, conversation is monosyllabic and very much to the
point. It is the first serious trial to individual good-humour. When
each one of your four million pores is an irritation-channel of
mosquito-virus it would be a relief to growl at somebody about
something. But the sun and smiles come out at the same time, and, having
bled together, we cement bonds of friendship. What did Henry the Fifth
say on the eve of Agincourt,--"For he to-day who sheds his blood with me
shall be my brother"?
Who would worry about mosquitoes with that splendid spectacular of the
Grand Rapids at our feet? The great flood (Kitchee Abowstik) is divided
into two channels by an island probably half a mile in length, with its
long axis parallel to the flow of the river, and this island solves the
question of progress. The main channel to the left is impassable; it is
certain death that way. Between the island and the right shore is a
passage which on its island side, with nice manipulation, is practicable
for empty boats. Then the problem before us is to run the rough water at
the near end of the island, tie up there, unload, transfer the pieces by
hand-car over the island to its other end, let the empty scows down
carefully through the channel by ropes, and reload at the other end.
Between the bank where we are and the island ahead is a stretch of
roaring water dangerous enough looking. We have learned ere this,
however, to sit tight and watch for events. The careless Indians have
straightened into keen-eyed, responsible voyageurs, each muscle taut,
every sense alert. Our boat goes first, one half-breed with huge pole
braces himself as bowsman, the most able man takes the stern sweep, the
others stand at the oars. Fifteen minutes of good head-work brings us to
the island and we step out with relief. The other boats follow and
anchor, and we have opportunity at close range to inspect these worst
rapids of the Athabascan chain. The current on the west side of the
dividing island looks innocent, and we understand how the greenhorn
would choose this passage-way, to his destruction.
[Illustration: Portage at Grand Rapids Island]
The transportation of pieces occupied four days, every moment of which
we enjoyed. Grand Rapids Island is prodigal in wild flowers,--vetches,
woodbine, purple and pink columbines, wild roses, several varieties of
false Solomon's seal, our persisting friend dwarf cornel, and,
treasure-trove, our first anemone,--that beautiful buttercup springing
from its silvered sheath--
"And where a tear has dropt a wind-flower blows."
I measured a grass-stem and found it two feet three inches high, rising
amid last year's prostrate growth.
[Illustration: Our transport at Grand Rapids Island]
At Grand Rapids Island we overtook two scows which had preceded us from
The Landing and whose crews had waited here to assist in the transport.
It gave us opportunity to observe these sixty representative half-breeds
from Lac la Biche. Tall, strong, happy-go-lucky, with no sordid strain
in their make-up, they are fellows that one cannot help feeling sympathy
for. A natural link between the East and the West, the South of Canada
and the North, they have bridged over the animosity and awkwardness
with which the Red race elsewhere has approached the White.
[Illustration: Cheese-shaped Nodules, Grand Rapids Island]
In a glade our camp is made, inside our tents we arrange the
mosquito-bar (a tent within a tent looking something like a good-sized
dog-kennel), and here we lie in our blankets. The hum of the foiled
mosquito is unction to our souls. It is a relief, too, to remove the
day's clothing, the first time in ninety-six hours.
The Athabasca here cuts through a cretaceous sandstone,--soft,
yellowish, homogeneous. In passing Grand Rapids Island it has a fall of
ninety feet. The river has weathered the banks into vertical cliffs four
or five hundred feet high, imbedded in which are wonderful cheese-shaped
nodules, some the size of baseballs, some as big as mill-stones. The
river-bed is strewn thick with these concretions from which the swift
current has worn the softer matrix away, and many of the stones are as
spherical as if turned out by a hand-lathe. The sandstone banks opposite
the island are overlain with a stratum of lignite three or four feet
thick, which burns freely and makes acceptable fuel. Sections of fossil
trees are also seen, and the whole thing is fascinating, one's great
wish being for a larger knowledge of geology so as to read aright this
strange page of history in stone.
Timber along the Athabasca has suffered much from forest fires. What we
see is largely second growth,--Banksian pine, fir, spruce, birch, and
aspen. The aspen is the first deciduous tree to leaf. Tall, slender,
delicate, its bole is clean as an organ-pipe and its terraced feathery
branches seem to float in air.
Across the roaring water swallows are nesting in the clayey cliffs:--
"This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendant bed and procreant cradle:
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed,
The air is delicate."
We learn that half-breeds share the Scottish superstition that it is
unlucky to disturb bank-swallows.
Others of the migrant host travel in upper air more quickly than we on
water, and have left us far behind,--swans, the Canada goose, great
flocks of brant, waveys by the millions, followed by their cousins of
the duck tribe,--spoon-bill, canvas-back, mallard, pin-tail, ring-neck,
wood duck, and merganser. The geese will not stop until they have passed
the Arctic Circle. Why people use the word "goose" as synonym for
stupidity is beyond the ken of the ordinary observer. The text-books
tell us tritely that the goose lives to be a hundred years. If she does,
she may exclaim with the Churchmen, "Yet are my years but labour and
sorrow." The little chaps who have their birthday parties among
sub-Arctic reeds are surrounded with enemies from the first day they
crack their baby shells. Lynx and raccoon prey upon them by land, eagles
and owls swoop upon them as they swim; and as with one eye they scan the
sky above them, a greedy pike is apt to snap their web-feet from under
them and draw them to a watery grave.
The cadets of the Hudson's Bay Company exchange courtesies with the
Mounted Police, each considering himself a distinct cut above the other.
One Mounted Policeman, whose duty it had been to escort the crazed
Russian Doukhobortsi on one of their "altogether" pilgrimages, is hailed
across the circle, "Here, lend us your knife, you nursemaid to the
Douks." "Who spoke?" yawned the Policeman. "Was it that fur-pup of the
Hudson's Bay?" "Yes," retorted the first, "and I'm glad I'm it; you
couldn't pay me to wear a red coat and say 'Sir' to a damned little
Frenchman, even if you are going to blaze a trail to Hudson Bay."
Some one asks Sergeant Joyce to tell his Bible story. He says, "Oh,
about Coal-Oil Johnnie! It was the cub's first year in the service, and
he got off with some civilians and was drunk for a week. When he was in
the Guard Room awaiting court-martial he had lots of time 'to sit in
clink, admirin' 'ow the world was made.' Likewise he was very dry. There
was nothing for him to amuse himself with but a paper of pins. He took
the pillow of his cot and used the whole bunch of pins in working on it
the one word 'Hagar,' in letters six inches high. The inspecting officer
came in and the pin sign caught his eye. He spelled it out letter by
letter, 'H-a-g-a-r,--what was the matter with him?' Johnnie retorted,
'The him was a her, and she died of thirst in the wilderness.' The
inspecting officer says to Johnnie, 'Well, that would never happen to
you.'"
A peculiar drumming wafts from the shore-line. "Pa-pas-ku," says one of
the Cree lads, pulling his pipe from his mouth and listening. Young
Hudson's Bay to my enquiring look returns, "The Canadian ruffed grouse,"
which Sussex elucidated, "_Bonasa umbellus logata_," at which we all
feel very much relieved.
The Kid was pressing specimens, and, holding up a branch, the Mounted
Policeman next her said, "Young jackpine, I think." "It belongs to the
Conifer family," corrects the Doctor. "Oh!" says the Mounted Policeman,
with a sniff, "then we'll give it back to 'em the next time one of the
Conifer boys comes round." The man of the river and the woods hates a
Latin name, and any stray classic knowledge you have is best hidden
under a napkin. The descriptive terms men use here are crisp and to the
point. The vicious habit of giving birds bad names is one that grows,
and you never know when the scientific have come to a finality. For
instance, little Robin Red-Breast _("the pious bird with scarlet
breast_" whose nest with four eggs the Kid discovered to-day), has
successively lived through three tags, "_Turdus migratorius_,"
"_Planesticus migratorius_," and "_Turdus canadensis_." If he had not
been an especially plucky little beggar he would have died under the
libels long ago. For my own part I cannot conceive how a man with good
red blood in his veins could look a chirky little robin in the eye and
call him to his face a "_Planesticus migratorius_," when as chubby
youngster he had known the bird and loved him as Robin Red-Breast. One
is inclined to ask with suspicion, "Is naming a lost art?" Any new
flower discovered these days, every clever invention in the realm of
machinery, is forthwith saddled with an impossible name. If it had not
been easy to clip the term "automobile" down to the working stub "auto,"
the machine would never have run our streets. Again, the decimal system
is conceded to be far ahead of the asinine "five and one-half yards make
one rod, pole or perch"; the only reason why the commonsense thing does
not supersede the foolish one is that the sensible measurement has the
fool tag on it. Who could imagine ever going into a store and asking for
seven decimetres and nine centimetres of picture-moulding, or dropping
into the corner grocery to buy a hectolitre of green onions? When man
dug gold and iron and tin out of the earth he made things with them. Now
when we discover a new mineral we dub it "molybdenum" and let it rust in
innocuous ease. When man loses the art of nervous speech, his power of
action goes with it. And as we ruminate, the _Bonasa umbellus togata_
drums on.
When we pass the parallel of 55°N. we come into a very wealth of new
words, a vocabulary that has found its way into no dictionary but which
is accepted of all men. The steep bank opposite us is a "cut bank," an
island or sandbar in a river is a "batture." A narrow channel is called
a "she-ny," evidently a corruption of the French _chenal_. When it leads
nowhere and you have to back down to get out, you have encountered a
"blind she-ny." The land we have come from is known as "Outside" or "_Le
Grand Pays_." Anywhere other than where we sit is "that side," evidently
originating from the viewpoint of a man to whom all the world lay either
on this side or that side of the river that stretched before him. When
you obtain credit from a Hudson's Bay store, you "get debt." A Factor's
unwillingness to advance you goods on credit would be expressed thus,
"The Company will give me no debt this winter." From here northward the
terms "dollars" and "cents" are unheard. An article is valued at "three
skins" or "eight skins" or "five skins," harking back to the time when a
beaver-skin was the unit of money. The rate of exchange to-day is from
four skins to two skins for a dollar. Trapping animals is "making fur."
"I made no fur last winter and The Company would give me no debt," is a
painful picture of hard times. Whenever an Indian has a scanty larder,
he is "starving," and you may be "starving" many moons without dying or
thinking of dying. "Babiche" in the North is the tie that binds, and
"sinew" is the thread, babiche being merely cured rawhide from moose or
caribou, the sinew the longitudinal strands taken from either side of
the spinal column of the same animals.
[Illustration: Scouts of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police]
There is but one thing on this planet longer than the equator, and that
is the arm of British justice, and the Mounted Police, these chaps
sprawling at our feet, are the men who enforce it. The history of other
lands shows a determined fight for the frontier, inch by inch
advancement where an older civilization pushes back the native,--there
are wars and feuds and bloody raids. Not so here. When the homesteader
comes down the river we are threading and, in a flood, colonization
follows him, he will find British law established and his home ready.
The most compelling factor making for dignity and decency in this
border-country is the little band of red-coated riders, scarcely a
thousand in number. Spurring singly across the plains that we have
traversed since leaving Winnipeg, they turn up on lone riverway or
lakeside in the North just when most wanted.
Varied indeed is this man's duty,--"nursemaid to the Doukhobor" was a
thrust literally true. His, too, was the task on the plains of seeing
that the Mormon doesn't marry overmuch. He brands stray cattle,
interrogates each new arrival in a prairie-waggon, dips every doubtful
head of stock, prevents forest-fires, keeps weather records, escorts a
lunatic to an asylum eight hundred miles away, herds wood bison on the
Slave, makes a cross-continent dash from Great Slave Lake to Hudson Bay,
preserves the balance of power between American whaler and Eskimo on the
Arctic edge!
At one time the roll-call of one troup of Mounted Police included in its
rank and file three men who had held commissions in the British service,
an ex-midshipman, a son of a Colonial Governor, a grandson of a
Major-General, a medical student from Dublin, two troopers of the Life
Guards, an Oxford M.A., and half a dozen ubiquitous Scots. Recently an
ex-despatch-bearer from De Wet joined the force at Regina, and although
the cold shoulder was turned on him for a day or two, he soon made good.
One of the young fellows stretched before us, now going to Fort Smith to
round up wood bison, was born in Tasmania, ran away from school at
fourteen, sheared sheep and hunted the wallaby, stoked a steamer from
Australia to England and from England to Africa, and in the early days
of bicycles was a professional racer.
Constable Walker, lying lazily on his back blowing blue spirals into
the air, has in the long winter night made more than once, with dogs,
that perilous journey from the Yukon to the Mackenzie mouth (one
thousand miles over an unknown trail), carrying to the shut-in whalers
their winter mail. On one of these overland journeys he cut off the tips
of his four toes. His guide fainted, but Walker took babiche and,
without a needle, sewed up the wound. On this trip he was fifty-seven
days on the trail, during five days of which the thermometer hovered
between sixty-two and sixty-eight degrees below.