We were at the beginning of our first carry, now--a stretch of about two
miles through the woods. The canoes were quickly unloaded, and as I
looked more carefully at the various bags and baskets of supplies, I
realized that they were constructed with a view of being connected with
a man's back. I had heard and read a good deal about portages and I
realized in a general way that the canoes had to be carried from one
water system to another, but somehow I had never considered the baggage.
Naturally I did not expect it to get over of its own accord, and when I
came to consider the matter I realized that a man's back was about the
only place where it could ride handily and with reasonable safety. I
also realized that a guide's life is not altogether a holiday excursion.
I felt sorry for the guides. I even suggested to Eddie that he carry a
good many of the things. I pointed out that most of them were really
his, anyway, and that it was too bad to make our faithful retainers lug
a drug store and sporting goods establishment, besides the greater part
of a provision warehouse. Eddie sympathized with the guides, too. He was
really quite pathetic in his compassion for them, but he didn't carry
any of the things. That is, any of those things.
It is the etiquette of portage--of Nova Scotia portage, at least--that
the fisherman shall carry his own sporting paraphernalia--which is to
say, his rods, his gun, if he has one, his fishing basket and his
landing net. Also, perhaps, any convenient bag of tackle or apparel when
not too great an inconvenience. It is the business of the guides to
transport the canoes, the general outfit, and the stores. As this was to
be rather a long carry, and as more than one trip would be necessary, it
was proposed to make a half-way station for luncheon, at a point where a
brook cut the trail.
But our procession did not move immediately. In the first place one of
the canoes appeared to have sprung a leak, and after our six-mile paddle
this seemed a proper opportunity to rest and repair damages. The bark
craft was hauled out, a small fire scraped together and the pitch pot
heated while the guides pawed and squinted about the boat's bottom to
find the perforation. Meantime I tried a few casts in the lake, from a
slanting rock, and finally slipped in, as was my custom. Then we found
that we did not wish to wait until reaching the half-way brook before
having at least a bite and sup. It was marshy and weedy where we were
and no inviting place to serve food, but we were tolerably wet, and we
had paddled a good way. We got out a can of corned beef and a loaf of
bread, and stood around in the ooze, and cut off chunks and chewed and
gulped and worked them down into place. Then we said we were ready, and
began to load up. I experimented by hanging such things as landing nets
and a rod-bag on my various projections while my hands were to be
occupied with my gun and a tackle-bag. The things were not especially
heavy, but they were shifty. I foresaw that the rod-bag would work
around under my arm and get in the way of my feet, and that the landing
nets would complicate matters. I tied them all in a solid bunch at last,
with the gun inside. This simplified the problem a good deal, and was an
arrangement for which I had reason to be thankful.
It was interesting to see our guides load up. Charles, the Strong, had
been well named. He swung a huge basket on his back, his arms through
straps somewhat like those which support an evening gown, and a-top of
this, other paraphernalia was piled. I have seen pack burros in Mexico
that were lost sight of under their many burdens and I remembered them
now, as our guides stood forth ready to move. I still felt sorry for
them (the guides, of course) and suggested once more to Eddie that he
should assume some of their burdens. In fact, I was almost willing to do
so myself, and when at the last moment both Charlie and Del stooped and
took bundles in each hand, I was really on the very point of offering to
carry something, only there was nothing more to carry but the canoes,
and of course they had to be left for the next trip. I was glad, though,
of the generous impulse on my part. There is always comfort in such
things. Eddie and I set out ahead.
There is something fine and inspiring about a portage. In the first
place, it is likely to be through a deep wood, over a trail not
altogether easy to follow. Then there is the fascinating thought that
you are cutting loose another link from everyday mankind--pushing a
chapter deeper into the wilderness, where only the more adventurous ever
come. Also, there is the romantic gipsy feeling of having one's
possessions in such compass that not only the supplies themselves, but
the very means of transportation may be bodily lifted and borne from one
water link to another of that chain which leads back ever farther into
the unknown.
I have suggested that a portage trail is not always easy to follow. As a
matter of fact the chances are that it will seldom be easy to follow. It
will seldom be a path fit for human beings. It won't be even a decent
moose path, and a moose can go anywhere that a bird can. A carry is
meant to be the shortest distance between two given places and it
doesn't strive for luxury. It will go under and over logs, through
scratchy thickets and gardens of poison ivy. It will plow through swamps
and quicksands; it will descend into pits; it will skin along the sharp
edge of slippery rocks set up at impossible angles, so that only a
mountain goat can follow it without risking his neck. I believe it would
climb a tree if a big one stood directly in its path.
We did not get through with entire safety. The guides, shod in their
shoepacks, trained to the business, went along safely enough, though
they lurched a good deal under their heavy cargoes and seemed always on
the verge of disaster. Eddie and I did not escape. I saw Eddie slip, and
I heard him come down with a grunt which I suspected meant damage. It
proved a serious mishap, for it was to one of his reels, a bad business
so early in the game. I fell, too, but I only lost some small areas of
skin which I knew Eddie would replace with joy from a bottle in his
apothecary bag.
But there were things to be seen on that two-mile carry. A partridge
flew up and whirred away into the bushes. A hermit thrush was calling
from the greenery, and by slipping through very carefully we managed to
get a sight of his dark, brown body. Then suddenly Eddie called to me to
look, and I found him pointing up into a tree.
"Porky, Porky!" he was saying, by which I guessed he had found a
porcupine, for I had been apprised of the numbers in these woods. "Come,
here's a shot for you," he added, as I drew nearer. "Porcupines damage a
lot of trees and should be killed."
I gazed up and distinguished a black bunch clinging to the body of a
fairly large spruce, near the top. "He doesn't seem to be damaging that
tree much," I said.
"No, but he will. They kill ever so many. The State of Maine pays a
bounty for their scalps."
I looked up again. Porky seemed to be inoffensive enough, and my killing
blood was not much aroused.
"But the hunters and logmen destroy a good many more trees with their
fires," I argued. "Why doesn't the State of Maine and the Province of
Nova Scotia pay a bounty for the scalps of a few hunters and logmen?"
But Eddie was insistent. It was in the line of duty, he urged, to
destroy porcupines. They were of no value, except, perhaps, to eat.
"Will you agree to eat this one if I shoot him?" I asked, unbundling my
rifle somewhat reluctantly.
"Of course--that's understood."
I think even then I would have spared Porky's life, but at that moment
he ran a little way up the tree. There was something about that slight
movement that stirred the old savage in me. I threw my rifle to my
shoulder, and with hasty aim fired into the center of the black bunch.
I saw it make a quick, quivering jump, slip a little, and cling fast.
There was no stopping now. A steady aim at the black ball this time, and
a second shot, followed by another convulsive start, a long slide, then
a heavy thudding fall at our feet--a writhing and a twisting--a moaning
and grieving as of a stricken child.
And it was not so easy to stop this. I sent shot after shot into the
quivering black, pin-cushioned ball before it was finally still--its
stained, beautifully pointed quills scattered all about. When it was
over, I said:
"Well, Eddie, they may eat up the whole of Nova Scotia, if they want
to--woods, islands and all, but I'll never shoot another, unless I'm
starving."
We had none of us starved enough to eat that porcupine. In the first
place he had to be skinned, and there seemed no good place to begin. The
guides, when they came up, informed us that it was easy enough to do
when you knew how, and that the Indians knew how and considered
porcupine a great delicacy. But we were not Indians, at least not in the
ethnological sense, and the delicacy in this instance applied only to
our appetites. I could see that Eddie was anxious to break his vow, now
that his victim was really dead by my hand. We gathered up a few of the
quills--gingerly, for a porcupine quill once in the flesh, is said to
work its way to the heart--and passed on, leaving the black pin cushion
lying where it fell. Perhaps Porky's death saved one or two more trees
for the next Nova Scotia fire.
There were no trout for luncheon at our half-way halt. The brook there
was a mere rivulet, and we had not kept the single small fish caught
that morning. Still I did not mind. Not that I was tired of trout so
soon, but I began to suspect that it would require nerve and resolution
to tackle them three times a day for a period of weeks, and that it
might be just as well to start rather gradually, working in other things
from time to time.
I protested, however, when Del produced a can of Columbia River salmon.
That, I said, was a gross insult to every fish in the Nova Scotia
waters. Canned salmon on a fishing trip! The very thought of it was an
offense; I demanded that it be left behind with the porcupine. Never, I
declared, would I bemean myself by eating that cheap article of
commerce--that universally indigenous fish food--here in the home of the
chief, the prince, the _ne plus ultra_ of all fishes--the Nova Scotia
trout.
So Del put the can away, smiling a little, and produced beans. That was
different. One may eat beans anywhere under the wide sky.