UP THE PEACE TO VERMILION
"What lies ahead no human mind can know,
To-morrow may bring happiness or woe.
We cannot carry charts, save the hope that's in our hearts
As along the unknown trail we blithely go."
When we leave Chipewyan August 17th, the fall hunt of waveys has already
begun. We learn afterwards that the Loutit boys alone made a bag of
sixteen hundred of these birds which, salted down, form a considerable
part of the winter food of the old Fort. Mrs. William Johnson comes down
to see us embark. She has overwhelmed us with generous kindness at our
every visit to Chipewyan, kindness we cannot soon forget. It is a small
group which now starts out in the little tug on the bosom of the mighty
Peace,--Major Routledge, R.N.W.M.P., Mr. and Mrs. John Gaudet with their
two olive-branches "Char-lee" and "Se-li-nah," now returning to Lesser
Slave Lake from a visit to Fort Good Hope, Miss Brown and myself.
This part of the journey we are to enjoy more keenly than all that has
gone before. Rising on the western side of the Rocky Mountains, the
Peace River is the largest affluent of the Mackenzie, being already a
splendid stream when it cuts through that range. With but one break, the
Peace River affords a nine hundred mile stretch of navigation, and we
can justly describe the country through which it flows as a plateau in
which the river has made for itself a somewhat deep valley. Extensive
grassy plains border it on both sides, and north of Fort Vermilion
country of this character extends to the valley of the Hay River.
Crossing the Quatre Fourches, an offshoot of the Peace at the Lake
Athabasca edge, we turn our faces due west to a land of promise. The
Mackenzie River and the banks of the Great Slave may some day afford
homes to a busy and prosperous populace, but there are many fertile and
more accessible lands to be settled first. With the Peace River Country
there is no conjecture, for it is merely a question of the coming of the
railway. Given a connection with the world to the south, the district
watered by the Peace will at once support a vast agrarian population.
The advance riders are already on the ground.
It is not our intent to go to the expense of using a steamer for our
whole journey up the Peace. Scows will allow us to proceed more
leisurely and to see more as we go, so the second day we turn the
steamer back and transfer ourselves and our belongings into a little
open craft or model-boat _The Mee-wah-sin._ We have a crew of five men,
one on the steering-sweep and four to track, and in this wise we make
our way for three hundred miles up the great river to Fort Vermilion.
One day we improvise a sail and so make fifty miles in a favourable
wind, but, with this exception, every other mile of the journey is by
patient towing.
Incidents are many. The first morning after we turned back the little
tug, the Kid and I left the slow trackers behind and were glad to
stretch ourselves in a long forenoon's tramp along the sandy beach. The
mosquitoes were practically gone and for the first time all summer one
could really enjoy the woods, where a tang of autumn in the air made
every breath a tonic draught. Exulting in the fact that we were alive,
we turned a sharp corner and came suddenly face to face with a grey
wolf, loping along at a swinging pace at the water's edge, muzzle close
to the ground! To make the story worth telling, one should have
something to say of "yawning jaws" and "bloodshot eyes" and "haunches
trembling for a spring." But this grey wolf simply refused to play that
part. He took one look at us, evidently didn't approve, and turned up
from his tracks quietly into the cottonwoods above. As we on our side
had brought neither gun nor camera from the _Mee-wah-sin_, we are unable
to punctuate the story by either pelt or picture. _Sic transit lupus_!
A week out from Chipewyan, where the Swan River makes into the Peace, we
came one glorious afternoon upon a camp of Crees, the family of the
_Se-weep-i-gons_. They had just killed two bears. We bought the skins
and a large portion of meat from them, and Mrs. _Se-weep-i-gon_ very
kindly added to the feast of fat things some high-bush cranberries "in a
present." As an excuse for listening to their soft voices, before we
left the camp we asked the name of every member of the little group,
scratching the list down on a piece of birchbark. The Crees evidently
considered this an official ceremony, for after we had paid our score
and shaken hands with everybody from Grandpa to the latest baby and were
well out in mid-stream, Mrs. _Se-weep-i-gon_ came running down to the
bank to call us back. Rowing to the shore we found that she had
remembered one more child whose name she wanted to add to the list. She
assured us that this one too had a little brass cross hanging round his
neck, so we will be sure to know him if we meet him in the woods.
We lived for the next two days on bear-meat and cranberries.
[Illustration: Evening on the Peace]
So one wonderful day follows another as our little boat is towed first
against one bank then another of this majestic stream. The forest growth
is a marvel. We measure one morning three of the spruce trees to which
our tent-ropes are tied, and get for base measurement six feet eight
inches, five feet two inches, and five feet respectively. The trees
averaged ninety feet in height and would give perhaps one thousand feet
to each tree. The autumn tints on the willows and alders of the high
river-banks are indescribably beautiful. We pass through one hundred
miles of a veritable field of the cloth of gold. We look out of our
tent-flaps at night on this living glory, and wake up to it again with
each new morning sun.
One Sunday evening at dusk we slip into the Hudson's Bay post where the
Little Red River makes into the Peace, the dear home of Tom Kerr, his
Scottish wife, and their four bairns. Let me try to give the picture.
Tom had been off all day cutting meadowgrass, and now wended his way
home with a load of it in a little Old Country cart drawn by a wall-eyed
mare. At her side frisked a foal, and two great stag-hounds ran back and
forward between the master and his home by the riverside. Three children
bounded out to greet their father. "Oh! Daddy, Daddy, the red coo broke
away from the byre and is far awa on the ither side o' the burn!" Here,
in a nutshell, you have the difference between the Mackenzie River of
to-day and the Peace River. On the Mackenzie, swarthy forms are in
evidence, Cree and French is spoken on all sides, there are no great
fields of waving grain, and the dog is the only domestic animal. On the
Peace is an essentially white race, cows, chickens, trustworthy old
nags, porridge for breakfast, "the tongue that Shakespeare spake,"
rendered in an accent born far ayont the Tweed. Right across the mouth
of the Little Red River, Tom Kerr has a fishing scine. We go down with
him to lift it, after the cows have been brought back to the narrow
path. The net yields seven fish and they are of five different
species,--trout, ling, sucker, jack-fish, and something else that Tom
calls a "Maria." Daily this net is set, and for three hundred and
sixty-five days every year it furnishes food for the family, in summer
in the flowing water, and in winter under the ice. You couldn't starve
at Little Red River if you wanted to. This is one of the most beautiful
spots in the whole North Countree. Long after Tom and we and Mrs. Tom
are under the gowans, and the little Kerrs possess the land, there will
be populous cities along the Peace, and millionaires will plant their
summer villas on the beauteous spot where we now stand.
[Illustration: Our Lobsticks on the Peace]
Bidding the bairns good-bye, we press onward on our way, Tom Kerr
accompanying us. A great honour awaits us round the next corner, when
the boatmen announce that they are going to make us each a lobstick. We
land, as pleased as Punch over the suggestion. We now know what it feels
like when the philanthropist of a village takes his after-dinner walk
through the square and sees the sparrows drinking from the memorial
fountain surmounted with his own bust, done in copper, life-size. It
takes fully two hours to trim the trees into significant shape, but the
beauty of this particular kind of Cook's Tour is that you go down when
you like and stop when you want to. The lobsticks furnished, the men
form a circle and discharge their muskets in salute, and on we go. We
learn that the ethics of lobsticks is that each of these men, should
Fate take him past this point again, will salute the lobstick just made
and send a strong thought across the spruce-tops to us. There is a
reverse to the shield. Should we, at any time before this journey ends,
fail to make good, the men on the return voyage will cut the lobstick
down. We are going to make no impertinent enquiries regarding the
ulterior fate of these family trees. Is it not sufficient glory to say,
"On the Peace River we _had_ a lobstick"?
The Chutes of the Peace! These will live forever with the Ramparts of
the Mackenzie as the two most majestic visions which the whole North
Land gave us. We had not been prepared for that wonderful spectacle
which met us as we turned a sharp point in the river. The torrent roars
for four or five hundred yards of rapid riverway before coming to its
great drop. The rock-reef over which the cataract falls extends quite
across the mighty Peace, here a river of immense width. Measured in feet
and inches, the Chutes of the Peace must take second place to Niagara,
yet they impress us as Niagara never did. The awesome silence of this
land so pregnant with possibilities, a land which, though it echo now
only the quiet foot of the Cree, is so unmistakably a White Man's
Country, intensifies the sense of majesty and power which here takes
possession of us. The men talk of the water-power furnished by the great
falls, and hazard guesses of the future economic purposes to which it
will be put. For our own part, our one wish is to get away from the
noise of even these subdued voices and in silence feast our very souls
on this manifestation of the power of God. The thoughts that we feel
cannot be put into words. Why attempt the impossible?
[Illustration: The Chutes of the Peace]
Our way lies beyond this, and the Chutes have to be overcome. These
half-breeds know exactly what to do in every emergency which arises.
Only one of the men has traversed this river before, and he gives
orders. We strip our little _Mee-wah-sin_ of her temporary masts and
canvas awning and take out all our belongings. Everybody works. A
purchase is obtained by throwing a pulley and rope over a nearby
jack-pine, and the boat is pulled out bodily from the water. Then the
crew drag her along the shore well beyond the head of the rapid, and we
make camp.
[Illustration: Pulling out the _Mee-wah-sin_]
These delicious nights within the tent are memories that will remain
through all the years to come. It is cool and silent and productive of
thought. We are selfishly glad that fifty people went out by Athabasca
ways, leaving to us all the mighty reaches and pleasant pastures of the
Peace. The midnight is flooded by a glorious moon, and the thoughts born
this afternoon of that stupendous fall have driven sleep far away.
Opening the tent-flap, I slip through the camp of sleeping Indians to
the edge of the fast-flowing stream. The feeling is insistent here which
has been ever-present since we entered this valley of the Peace--here is
the home prepared and held in waiting for the people who are to follow.
"Listening there, I heard all tremulously
Footfalls of Autumn passing on her way,
And in the mellow silence every tree
Whispered and crooned of hours that are to be.
Then a soft wind like some small thing astray
Comes sighing soothingly."