PROVIDENCE TO SIMPSON, ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILES DOWN THE MACKENZIE
"Never the Spirit was born: the Spirit shall cease to be never.
Never was time, it was not; end and beginning are dreams.
Birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the Spirit,
Death hath not touched it at all, though dead the house of it seems."
We have just finished supper and are sitting reading on the upper deck
about seven o'clock, when a cry comes from below, followed by the
rushing back and forth of moccasined feet. In a flash Bunny Langford,
one of the engineers, has grabbed a lifebuoy, runs past us to the stern,
and throws it well out toward a floating figure.
It is De-deed, De-deed who had smilingly helped us aboard at Resolution
just twenty-four hours before. Finishing his turn at stoking, he had
gone to draw a bucket of water, leaned over too far, and fallen,
carrying the hatch with him. At first we think nothing of the incident,
as he is a good swimmer and the current is with him. As soon as the
startled people realise what has happened the steamer's engines are
reversed and a boat is lowered. We call out to De-deed to swim to the
buoy, but he doesn't see it or doesn't understand. The black head gets
smaller in the distance; it disappears, and comes up again. Down it goes
for the second time. A strange, constricted feeling comes into our
throats as we cry out, "Swim, De-deed, the boat is coming! They are
almost up to you!" The boat, pulling hard against the current, seems but
a dozen yards away. Will he hold up? As we look, the head sinks, _and it
does not come up_. Within a few feet of buoy and boat, the body of
De-deed disappears for the last time. We search for an hour or more with
grappling irons, but he is never seen again. A strange silence settles
down above and below deck, and all night long two faces flit before
us--the grave face of the mother calling down blessings on her boy, the
rallying smile of De-deed bidding her good-by and telling her all is
well. It is a brave and happy spirit which, in the "Little Lake" of the
Mackenzie, goes out with the current.
The Mackenzie River, "La Grande Rivière en Bas," as the people of
Resolution call it, on whose waters we are now fairly embarked, is the
greatest water-way in the British Empire, and of earth's great rivers
the one least traversed by man. Counting back from the headwaters of
either its more northerly tributary the Peace or its southern feeder the
Athabasca, the length of the river is three thousand miles. At Little
Lake, where it issues out of Great Slave Lake, the Mackenzie is eight
miles wide, and its delta a thousand miles below here has an expansion
of fifty miles. The average width of the stream, as we traverse it from
source to mouth, is a mile and a half, widening out often in its sweep
to two and a half to three miles.
From Little Lake the current is somewhat sluggish, the river bank seldom
exceeding one hundred feet in height until we reach what is known as
"The Head of the Line." Before the advent of steam on the Mackenzie,
when the patient voyager made his way up south from the ocean, it was
at this point that the tracking-line was exchanged for oars. The plains
bordering the river here are forested with white spruce and broken with
muskeg and lakes. The statistician on board works out that the volume of
water the Mackenzie carries to the sea is half a million feet a second.
No one is wise enough to challenge his calculation, and we merely hazard
a wonder if this most magnificent water-power will ever be used for
commercial and economic purposes. There is surely enough "white coal"
rushing by us to turn the wheels of the factories of a continent. The
Mackenzie is the only river whose basin is cut by a thousand mile range.
The sources of the Peace and the Liard lie on the west side of the
Rockies, from where these giant feeders bring their tribute to the main
river through passes in that range.
At intervals all the way down the river to Fort Simpson we are treated
on our right hand to views of the Horn Mountains, which slope away on
their north side but show a steep face to the south. Along our course
the bluish Devonian shales are capped by yellow boulder-clay.
We awaken on Friday, July 10th, to find ourselves at Rabbitskin River
and everybody busy carrying on wood for fuel. By ten o'clock we are at
Fort Simpson in latitude 62°, the old metropolis of the North. Fort
Simpson is built on an island where the Liard River joins the Mackenzie,
the river being a mile and a half wide at this point. The foundation of
the fort dates back to the beginning of the nineteenth century, when it
was known in fur annals as "The Forks of the Mackenzie."
Simpson is essentially a has-been. We look upon the warehouses of its
quadrangle with their slanting walls and dipping moss-covered roofs and
try to conjure up the time long past when all was smart and imposing. In
those days when the Indians brought in their precious peltries they were
received and sent out again with military precision and all that goes
with red tape and gold braid. Surely the musty archives of Simpson hold
stories well worth the reading! We would fain linger and dream in front
of this sun-dial across whose dulled face the suns of twenty lustrums
have cast their shadows, but we begrudge every moment not spent in
fossicking round the old buildings. We seek for threads which shall
unite this mid-summer day to all the days of glamour that are gone. In a
rambling building, forming the back of a hollow square, we come across
the mouldy remains of a once splendid museum of natural history, the
life work of one Captain Bell of the Old Company. It gives us a sorry
feeling to look at these specimens, now dropping their glass eyes and
exposing their cotton-batting vitals to the careless on-looker, while
the skeleton ribs of that canoe with which Dr. Richardson made history
so long ago add their share to the general desolation. In a journal of
the vintage of 1842 we read an appeal for natural history exhibits sent
to Fort Simpson by an official of the British Museum. He writes,
[Illustration: Hudson's Bay House, Fort Simpson]
"I may observe that in addition to the specimens asked for, any mice,
bats, shrew-mice, moles, lizards, snakes or other small quadrupeds or
reptiles would be acceptable. They may either be skinned or placed in
rum or strong spirits of any kind, a cut being first made in the side of
the body to admit the spirits to the intestines."
Of all the rare humour disclosed in the old records, this entry most
tickles my fancy.
I think of the little group that we had forgathered with at Chipewyan,
driven even in this year of grace to lavender-water and red ink, when
permits run dry. One turns back the clock to the time of the Chartists
and the year of the nuptials of the young Queen in England. We see up
here on the fringe of things the dour and canny but exceedingly humorous
Adam McBeaths, John Lee Lewises, and George Simpsons, the outer vedette
of the British Empire; and, seeing them, get some half-way adequate
conception of what a modicum of rum or "strong spirits of any kind"
meant in the way of cheer at old Fort Simpson in those days. When we try
to get a picture of one of these Hudson's Bay men gravely opening a
shrew-mouse, mole, or "other small quadruped," while his chum pours in
the _aqua vitae_ or precious conversation water, we declare that science
asks too much.
An outer stairway leading to the second story of a big building invites
us. Opening the door, we find ourselves in the midst of an old library,
and moth and rust, too, here corrupt. We close the door softly behind us
and try to realise what it meant to bring a library from England to Fort
Simpson a generation ago. First, there arose the desire in the mind of
some man for something beyond dried meat and bales of fur. He had to
persuade the authorities in England to send out the books.
Leather-covered books cost something six or seven decades ago, and the
London shareholders liked better to get money than to spend it. We see
the precious volumes finally coming across the Atlantic in wooden
sailing-ships to Hudson Bay, follow them on the long portages, watch
them shoot rapids and make journeys by winter dog-sled, to reach Simpson
at last on the backs of men. The old journals reveal stories of the
discussion evoked by the reading of these books afterward as, along with
the dried fish, deer-meat, and other inter-fort courtesies, they passed
from post to post. Was never a circulating library like this one. And
now the old books, broken-backed and disembowelled, lie under foot, and
none so poor to do them reverence. Everything is so old in this North
that there is no veneration for old things.
It is but a few years since the founder of this library died, and his
son now sits in his saddle at Fort Simpson. If you were to wander across
the court, as I did to-day, and look into the Sales Shop, you would see
the presentation sword of this last-generation Carnegie, ignobly slicing
bacon for an Indian customer. _Sic transit gloria mundi_!
What are the books which this sub-Arctic library sent out? We get down
on the floor and gently touch the historic old things. Isn't it Johnson
who says, "I love to browse in a library"? Judging by the dust and
cobwebs, there hasn't been much browsing done among these volumes for
years. Present-day Simpson has seldom "fed on the dainties that are bred
in a book." Here is a first edition of _The Spectator_, and next it a
_Life of Garrick_, with copies of _Virgil_, and all _Voltaire_ and
_Corneille_ in the original. A set of Shakespeare with exquisite line
drawings by Howard shows signs of hard reading, and so does the _Apology
for the Life of Mr. Colly Cibber_. One wonders how a man embedded in
Fort Simpson, as a fly in amber, would ever think of sending to the
_Grand Pays_ for _Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy_, yet we find it here,
cheek by jowl with _The Philosophy of Living or the Way to Enjoy Life
and Its Comforts. The Annual Register of History, Politics, and
Literature of the Year 1764_ looks plummy, but we have to forego it. The
lengthy titles of the books of this vintage, as for instance, _Death-Bed
Triumphs of Eminent Christians, Exemplifying the Power of Religion in a
Dying Hour_, bring to mind the small boy's definition of
porridge--"fillin', but not satis-fyin'." Two more little books with big
titles are _Actors' Budget of Wit and Merriment, Consisting of
Monologues, Prologues and Epilogues_, and _The London Prisons, with an
Account of the More Distinguished Persons Who Have Been Confined in
Them_.
But the book that most tempts our cupidity is _Memoirs of Miss A---- n,
Who Was Educated For a Nun, with Many Interesting Particulars_. We want
that book, we want to take it on with us and read it when we reach the
Land of the Eskimo, where the Mackenzie slips into the Arctic by all its
silver mouths. We lift the volume up, and put it down again, and we
hunger to steal it. Jekyll struggles with Hyde. At last the Shorter
Catechism and the Westminster Confession of Faith triumph; we put it
down and softly close the door behind us. And ever since we have
regretted our Presbyterian training.
At Fort Simpson, it is like walking across a churchyard or through an
old cathedral. Here men lived and wrought and hoped, cut off from their
kind, and did it all with no thought of being heroic. We walk along the
shore to watch Indian women busied in making a birchbark canoe and in
washing clothes with washboards--the old order and the new. A little
dive into the mosquito-ridden woods discloses a wonderful patch of
Pyrola and a nest of Traills' flycatcher, and makes us wish that the
minutes were longer and the mosquitoes fewer. What a beautiful tiling
this Pyrola is, with its inverted anthers and the cobwebby margins of
its capsule! Its bracted, nodding flowers run through all shades of
white, pale yellow, and dark yellow.
Down on the beach we chat with a prospector and his son, a lad of
fifteen, who are building a skiff in which to ascend the Liard, hunting
gold. Yesterday a Mr. and Mrs. Carl and a Mr. and Mrs. Hall passed us on
the river. Outfitted for two years, they will prospect for gold in the
Nahanni Mountains and toward the headwaters of the Liard. One of the
couples has just come out from Glasgow and this is their honeymoon. We
half envy them their journey. Can anything compare with the dear
delights of travelling when you do not know and nobody knows just what
lies round the next corner?
[Illustration: A Slavi Family at Fort Simpson]
The dogs at Simpson are "wicked." Picking our way among them, I
particularly approve this term of the natives, attributing as it does a
human conception and malice aforethought to these long-legged wraiths.
The first articulate sound an Indian child of the Mackenzie learns to
make is "Mash!" an evident corruption of the French "_Marche_." This is
what Shakespeare meant when he speaks of "a word to throw at a dog." A
brown baby just emerged from the cocoon stage of the moss-bag toddles
with uplifted pole into a bunch of these hungry mongrels and disperses
them with a whack of the stick and the lordly "Mash!" of the superior
animal. For our own part we are "scared stiff," but follow along in the
wake of our infant protector to a wee wooden church which staggers under
the official title, "The Cathedral of St. David."
[Illustration: A Slavi Type from Fort Simpson]
We have had occasion to speak of the splendid service rendered to
Northern and Western Canada by the Hudson's Bay Company and by the Royal
Northwest Mounted Police. A third factor through the years has been
building Empire with these. Are we not as a people too prone to minimise
the great nation-building work performed by the scattered missionaries
in the lone lands beyond the railway? Ostensibly engaged in the work of
saving souls, Canadian missionaries, both Roman and English, have opened
the gates of commerce, prosecuted geographical discovery, tried to
correct social evils, and added materially to our store of exact
science. Through their influence, orphanages have been founded, schools
established, and hospitals opened. Creeds take a secondary place to
deeds in this land, and when you discuss a man, be he cleric or layman,
the last thing you ask is, "To what church does he belong?"
Incidentally, it does seem rather odd that with Scottish blood running
through the veins of nine-tenths of the people of this North as yet no
Presbyterian missionary has penetrated beyond the latitude of Edmonton.
The great Churches of England and Rome, north of the Athabasca, divide
the field between them.
The records of the whole missionary world show no more striking figure
than that of Bishop Bompas of the Anglican Church. We have already had
two glimpses of this young Cockney curate; once, hoisting his homemade
Union Jack on the ox-cart at St. Cloud, and, again, passing north as the
wild-fowl flew south in October, 1865, chronicled by the Chipewyan
scribe merely as "a Protestant missionary coming in a canoe from the
Portage." In the forty years of missionary life which intervened between
his coming into the North and his death in the Yukon just two years ago,
only twice did the Bishop emerge from these Northern fastnesses. It is
literal truth to state that no one on any part of the world's map has
ever made so many long and toilsome journeys as did this man. With his
sheep scattered over a country a million square miles in extent, we
might compare a parochial visit of this parson to a barge-journey from
London to Constantinople, replacing the European capitals by Hudson's
Bay forts, and substituting for Europe's vineyards and pleasant vales an
unbroken line of jack-pine and muskeg.
We are told that Bishop Bompas's father was Dicken's prototype for
Sergeant Buzfuz. A new vista would open up to the counsel for Mrs.
Bardell could he turn from his chops and tomato-sauce to follow the
forty-years' wandering in the wilderness of this splendid man of God,
who succeeded, if ever man succeeds, in following Paul's advice of
keeping his body under.
Bishops Bompas was one of the greatest linguists the Mother Country ever
produced. Steeped in Hebrew and the classics when he entered the
Northland, he immediately set himself to studying the various native
languages, becoming thoroughly master of the Slavi, Beaver, Dog-Rib, and
Tukudk dialects. When Mrs. Bompas sent him a Syriac testament and
lexicon, he threw himself with characteristic energy into the study of
that tongue. There is something in the picture of this devoted man
writing Gospels in Slavi, primers in Dog-Rib, and a Prayer Book in
syllabic Chipewyan, which brings to mind the figure of Caxton bending
his silvered head over the blocks of the first printing-press in the old
Almonry so many years before. What were the "libraries" in which this
Arctic Apostle did his work? The floor of a scow on the Peace, a hole in
the snow, a fetid corner of an Eskimo hut. His "Bishop's Palace," when
he was not afloat, consisted of a bare room twelve feet by eight, in
which he studied, cooked, slept, and taught the Indians.
They tell you stories up here of seeing the good Bishop come back from a
distant journey to some isolated tribe, followed at heel by a dozen
little Indian babies, his disciples for the days to come. Bishop Bompas
lived in one continent, but manifested in two, keeping himself closely
in touch with the religious and Church growth of the Old World. When the
British press had been given over to any particular
religious-controversial subject, and the savants had finally disposed of
the matter to their own satisfaction, travelling out by summer traverse
or winter dog-sled would come a convincing pamphlet by Bishop Bompas, to
upset altogether the conclusions of the wranglers.
There is one tale of this man which only those can appreciate who travel
his trail. An Indian lad confides to us, "Yes, my name is William
Carpenter--Bishop Bompas gave me my name, he was a good man. He wouldn't
hurt anybody, he never hit a dog, he wouldn't kill a mosquito. He had
not much hair on his head, and when it was _meetsu_, when the Bishop eat
his fish, he shoo that mosquito away and he say, 'Room for you, my
little friend, and room for me, but this is not your place: go.'"
We call upon the present incumbents of the little church of St. David.
They are young people, the Rev. and Mrs. Day, putting in their first
year in this Northern charge. Their home with its spotless floors and
walls papered with old copies of _The Graphic_ and _Illustrated London
News_ is restful and attractive. The garden of the parsonage shows an
amount of patient work on the part of some one. Potatoes eighteen
inches high and peas twice the height of this, with turnips and cabbages
and cauliflower are good to look at. There are records to show that,
years ago, Fort Simpson produced tomatoes and decent crops of barley.
[Illustration: Interior of St. David's Cathedral]
Entering the little church we see the neat font sent here by Mrs.
Bompas, "In dear memory of Lucy May Owindia, baptised in this Church,
January, 1879." Owindia was one of the many red waifs that the good
Bishop and Mrs. Bompas took into their big hearts. Her story is a sad
one. Along the beach at Simpson, _Friday_, an Indian, in a burst of
ungovernable temper murdered his wife and fled, leaving their one baby
to perish. It was not until next day that the little one was found,
unconscious and dying. The Bishop and Mrs. Bompas took the child into
their loving care. To the name Owindia, which means _The Weeping One_,
was added the modern Lucy May, and the little girlie twined herself
closely round the hearts of her protectors. When the time seemed ripe,
Owindia was taken back to England to school, but the wee red plant would
not flourish in that soil. She sickened and died. Hence the memorial and
the inscription we read this July day. Much history of militant energy,
much of endurance, and countless chapters of benevolence did the good
Bishop write into the history of the North before, off on the Yukon side
in 1906, "God's finger touched him and he slept."
Missionaries of the present day are not without their troubles. Mrs. Day
tells of potato-whiskey making in some illicit still back in the
mosquito-woods, the results of which she fears; and, even as we speak,
an Indian lunatic pokes his head through the palings of the
potato-patch. From far back in Fort Nelson, British Columbia, and from
Fort Liard, the Hudson's Bay men have come to make their reports to Mr.
Brabant at Simpson. They brought their wives and babies with them,
brought also a quantity of beautiful porcupine-quill work, Fort Liard
being one of the few places in the North where this art flourishes.
Tomorrow they will start back, tacking against the stream, as the
imported brides are doing before them.
To dive into the journals of the past, of which the loft above the
offices here at Simpson is full, is even more interesting than talking
with the people of the present. We take 1837, the year which saw the
accession in England of the young and well-beloved Queen, and from
these musty books unearth a running commentary of what is doing in Fort
Simpson in that year.
"_1837, January 1_. The people were brought into the Hall, and enjoyed
their meal with great appetites, being also treated to a glass of wine
and a fathom of tobacco and a pipe. Wind East."
"_1837, February 11_. Rabbits are numerous, but the ladies of the
Establishment make no great effort in snaring them."
"_1837, February 14_. Late last night arrived a woman, _Thawyase_, and a
boy, the family of the late _Thoesty_. They have all come to take refuge
here as they are starving. The woman at dusk decoyed old Jack away to
camp in the woods--and the old fellow has found a mate."
One wonders if either _Thawyase_, the decoyed Jack, or the old
chronicler was conscious of the fact that this was St. Valentine's Day.
"_1837, March 27_. Two geese have been seen to-day, the first this
season."
"_1837, May 2_. _Marcel_ sowed some oats. Mosquitoes begin to become
annoying."
"_1837, May 5_. Wild fowl are beginning to frequent the small lakes of
the neighbourhood. The willows and young trees are now budding forth
beautifully."
"_1837, May 18_. _Hope_ began to plough this morning with the bull, but
as this is the first time he has been yoked, the day's work is found to
be but poor."
"_1837, May 19_. Felix and Roderick McLeod made twelve bags of pemmican
to-day."
_1837, May 21_. The Mackenzie River broke up to-day, and continued
drifting pretty thick till evening."
"_1837, June 18_. Some of the Indians killed a bear before the door and
it supplied us with a little fresh meat."
"_1837, June 19_. Flies so numerous that we are under the necessity of
putting our cattle into the stable, otherwise they will fall victims to
the cruel insects."
"_1837, June 20_. Weather very suffocating, thermometer 85 above at
three p.m., not as much as a cloud to be seen in the firmament and not
the least air to afford any refreshment; this along with the solitude of
the time is enough to make people dull. No Indian from any quarter: well
supplied with ammunition last spring, they forget us when they can get
their own mouths satisfied. Ashley grinding barley in the steel mill."
"_1837, June 21_. _Le Mari_ has just brought in some fish and a little
bearskin in order to get a chemise, he says he is not able to hunt
without a chemise, as there are so many flies just now. I have taken it
upon myself to give him the shirt on credit."
Here a new hand writes the records, untrammelled by any orthographic
rules.
"_1837, June 24_. Flys very numerus and trublsome to the Cattel."
"_1837, July 11_. Starvan Indians going and coming ourly."
"_1837, July 13_. Six squas arrived with plenty Bearrys--that's all they
subsist on in this part of the River."
"_1837, July 26_. Barley is getting ripe. But small birds nip off the
ends of the stalks as fast as it ripens."
"_1837, August 23_. Last night the bull broke into one of the gardens
where oats was sown and eat the whole up."
"_1837, September 18_. An Express arrived from Fort Norman with
despatches from the Gentlemen of the Arctic Discovery Expedition, and it
is most satisfying to learn that the first object of the Expedition was
successfully accomplished: on the 4th August the Company's flag was
planted on Point Barrow."
"_1837, September 19th_. _Louson_ put parchment in the window-frames."
"_1837, October 11_. Ice is forming since yesterday along the beach."
"_1837, November 1_. This being the holiday for All Saints, the men
though no saints celebrated it off duty. The weather cold but fine."
"_1837, November 2_. I have been these two days occupied with the
blacksmith in making an oven, and this evening it being finished we give
it a fair trial by placing a large trout in it for supper and it is
found to answer most excellently."
"_1837, November 3_. Strong northwest wind with drift and cold. About
one o'clock of last night the Aurora had a most unusual appearance,
seemingly black in place of the white commonly observed and forming an
arch from east to west, consisting of five streaks, here and there
broken off."
"_1827, November 5_. Blacksmith making iron runners for our traineaux
from old gun-barrels."
"_1837, November 30_. This being the anniversary of the Tutelar Saint of
Scotland, we had in addition to our usual dinner a roasted swan and a
moose-nose, a rice pudding, a cranberry tart, and a glass of wine."
"_1837, December 1_. I was obliged to give four pounds of dried meat to
the dogs for there are some that are almost dead and they et all the
windows of the Forge."
"_1837, December 2_. Three of the Fort women fell into a fit of
insanity and kept all of the men at the Fort to hold them and prevent
them devouring themselves."
_December 25_. Thermometer 35 below the cypher this morning, this being
Christmas no labour done. Wind N.W."
"_1838, January 1_. The morning was ushered in by a salute fired by our
people at the windows and doors, after which they came to wish us a
Happy New Year--and in return, in conformity to the custom of the
country they were treated, the men with half a glass of brandy each, and
the women with a kiss, and the whole of them with as many cakes as they
choose to take and some raisins. One of our gentlemen who had a bottle
of shrub treated them to a glass, and after some chit-chat conversation
they retired, firing a salute on going out. In the evening they played
at Blind-man's-buff, concluding the fête by a supper in the Hall. I also
gave each of the men a fathom of twist tobacco and a clay pipe."