down the river late one season. He hoped never to take another down so
late. He had got out of his course one night in the dangerous ways off
Crane Island, and finally dropped anchor to hold her against the crush
of ice. But the anchor chain snapped like shoe-string under the ice
pressure, and they were borne along on a glacier-field until they struck
on a reef--just what he had feared. Now, the ice could neither break
the reef nor drive them over it, but it ground its way right through the
schooner's stern, ripping her wide open, so that the river poured in,
and down they went until the yard-arms touched the hummocks, with pilot
and crew left to scramble over the floe as best they could in the
darkness, and wait for daylight on the frozen rocks.
At this the others, taking up the cue of thrilling happenings, told
stories of dangers on the river one after another until the tardy pilot,
who had jingled up meanwhile unnoticed, was in his turn forced to wait
for them.
"I was just putting off one night," began a tall man, who spoke better
English than the rest, "just putting off from this very place--"
"Thash nothing," interrupted the later comer, "I shaw sh-sword fish
clashe a wh-whale once off Saguenay River, an wh-whale--an sh-sword
fish--" then he mumbled to himself and dozed by the stove.
The tall man went on with his tale, which described how, on the night in
question, he was about to board a down-coming steamer of the Leyland
line (he was to take the place of the Montreal pilot), when she crashed
into a tramp steamer coming up in a head-on collision, and two sailors
sleeping in their bunks were instantly killed. He described the panic
that ensued, and told what they did, and wound up with a queer theory
(which he declared perfectly sound, and the others agreed with him) that
the growth of cities along the river is every year increasing the danger
of such night collisions through the dazzle of lights.
Presently we started for the boats. A burly line, with caps reaching
down, and collars reaching up, until everything was covered--ears,
forehead, chin, everything but a peeping place for nose and eyes. I can
still hear the squeak and crunch of snow under foot, and see the glare
of it. We passed a snow-field, where the river-buoys are left through
winter, spar-buoys, gas-buoys, and bell-buoys ranged along now like
great red tops numbed by the cold to sleep.
[Illustration: RIVER-BUOYS ON THE BANK FOR THE WINTER.]
Then they put off in the boats--three open boats--that are sleds as
well, with runners on the flat bottoms and ends turned up in an easy
slant, so that when the broken ice gets too thick for paddling they may
be hauled up to slide over it. This queer method of transit is practised
on the St. Lawrence, by those who dare, during certain weeks of winter
when the river is no longer open nor yet frozen into a solid ice-bridge,
but partly open and partly solid. So it was now.
The first rule of the boats is that every man lay hand to paddle and
work. There are no passengers here but the sick, and they are rarely
taken. Not that the pilots would mind paddling other men across, but the
other men would almost certainly freeze if they sat still. There is no
safety against the blasts that sweep this river, when the glass says
twenty below, but in vigorous, ceaseless exertion.
So there they go through the ice-choked river, swinging their paddles
lustily, every pilot of them, heads nodding under black astrakhan caps,
shoulders heaving, off for home. Now they strike the first solid place,
and the men forward climb out carefully and heave up the boat's nose a
couple of feet to see if the ice will hold her. Then all climb out, and
with dragging and pushing get ahead for a hundred feet or so. See, now
they stop and swing their arms! Already the pitiless wind is biting
through their furs. And think of that poor woman!
Presently they reach an open spot some dozen yards across, and all but
one take places in the boat, the stern man standing behind on the ice to
push off, and then, with nicely judged effort, spring aboard as he gives
the last impulse that shoots her into the river.
From the open space they paddle into a jam of grinding ice-blocks that
hold hard against them, but are scarce solid enough to bear the sledges.
They must work through somehow, poling and fending, to yonder heaped-up
ledge, where up they go again on a great rough raft of ice that will
test their muscles and their skill before they get across, and drift
them a quarter of a mile or so up-stream while they are doing it.
Up-stream, did I say? Yes, for there is this odd thing about the St.
Lawrence, even at Quebec, that its current streams up and down, up and
down, as the tide changes. For seven hours the river conquers the tide,
and the water runs down to sea. Then for five hours the tide conquers
the river, and the water runs up from the sea. So now, after all their
toiling, they are actually further from home than when they started.
They should have set out just before the turn of tide (that was their
plan), but they waited until just after the turn, and will pay for the
delay and their yarn spinning with an hour more of this ice-fighting
than they need have had--and an hour out there is a long, long time.
Even here, on the bank, much less than an hour is enough of time. The
cold grows piercing. The day is drawing to a close. The sky is dull. The
river grinds on with its grayish burden. On the heights of Levis,
opposite, some lights of early evening break out. There also pilots
live, Indians come from an Indian village down the river, where they
make the peerless birch canoes. All along this grand St. Lawrence live
men whose business it is to face unusual perils, whose nerve fails them
not, whether paddling some frail bark through furious rapids or guiding
a steamboat down a raging torrent, with many lives in their keeping.
We must see more of these men, and watch them at their work. We must see
the Iroquois pilots at their reservation near Montreal, the lads Lord
Wolseley took with him up the Nile to brave its cataracts, when the
English set out, in 1884, to bring relief to Gordon. We must see "Big
John," famous now for years as wheelsman of the great excursion boats
that shoot the rage of waters at Lachine. We must see the raftsmen, too,
and--ah, but it is cold here!--let us climb the cliff again and find
some shelter.
III
NOW WE WATCH THE MEN WHO SHOOT THE FURIOUS RAPIDS AT LACHINE
WOULD you see the most skilful pilots in the world, men who know all the
tricks with ocean liners and the Indian tricks as well, who fight the
rush of seventy-foot tides in the Bay of Fundy, or drive their frail
canoes through furious gorges, or coolly turn the nose of a thousand-ton
steamboat into the white jaws of rock-split rapids where a yard either
way or a second's doubt would mean destruction, or hitch long hawsers to
a log raft big as a city block (the lumber in a single raft may be worth
a hundred thousand dollars), and swing her down a tumbling waterway
hundreds of miles, with a peril in every one, and land her safe? If you
would see all this, go to the wonderful St. Lawrence, which sweeps in
wide and troubled reaches from the Great Lakes to the sea.
Of course I do not mean that any one man can do all these things,--that
would be asking too much,--but each in his own line, half-breed or
Indian or fur-bundled voyageur, has such quickness of eye, such surety
of hand, that you will be glad to watch the rafters on their rafts, and
ask no more of them, or the canoeists at their paddles, or the big-craft
pilots at their wheels.
Let us stand on the long iron bridge that spans the St. Lawrence just
above Montreal, the very place to study the river as it narrows and
runs swifter for its smashing plunge through yonder rapids to the east,
the dreaded Lachine Rapids, whose snarling teeth flash white in the sun.
Look down into the greenish rush, and see how the waters hurl past these
good stone piers, sharp-pointed up-stream against the tearing of winter
ice! Here goes the torrent of Niagara and the inland ocean of Superior
and Erie and Ontario, all crushed into a funnel of land by this big
island at the left that blocks the flow, and gorged by the in-pour of
the Ottawa a few miles back that brings down the floods of southern
Canada. As fast as a horse can gallop runs the river here, and faster
and faster it goes as the long slant takes it, ten, twelve, fourteen
miles an hour (which is something for a river), until a dozen islands
strewn across the funnel's lower end goad the rapids to their greatest
rage. Here is where they kill. Then suddenly all is quiet, and the
river, spreading to a triple width, rests, after its madness, in
Montreal's placid harbor.
[Illustration: "BIG JOHN" STEERING A BOAT THROUGH THE LACHINE RAPIDS.]
Standing here, I think of my first experience in shooting these rapids
(it was on one of the large river boats), and I must confess that it
gave me no very thrilling sense of danger. There were two or three
plunges, to be sure, at the steepest part, and a little swaying or
lurching, but, so far as movement goes, nothing to disturb one
accustomed to the vicissitudes of, say, ordinary trolley-car navigation.
However, when I came to the reason of this fairly smooth descent, and
saw what it means to stand at the wheel through that treacherous
channel, I found my wonder growing. I thought of the lion-tamer, whose
skill is shown not so much by what happens while he is in the cage as by
what does not happen. A hundred ways there are of doing the wrong thing
with one of these boats, and only a single way of doing the right
thing. For four miles the pilot must race along a squirming, twisting,
plunging thread of water, that leaps ahead like a greyhound, and changes
its crookedness somewhat from day to day with wind and tide. In that
thread alone is safety; elsewhere is ruin and wreck. Instantly he must
read the message of a boiling eddy or the menace of a beckoning reef,
and take it this way or that instantly, for there are the hungry rocks
on either hand. He must know things without seeing them; must feel the
pulse of the rapids, as it were, so that when a mist clouds his view, or
the shine of a low-hung rainbow dazzles him, he may still go right. It
is a fact that with all the pilots in this pilot-land, and all the hardy
watermen born and brought up on the St. Lawrence, there are not
ten--perhaps not six--men in Canada to-day, French or English or Indian,
who would dare this peril. For all other rapids of the route, the
Gallop Rapids, the Split-rock Rapids, the Cascades, and the rest, there
are pilots in plenty; but not for those of Lachine. And, to use the same
simile again, I saw that the shooting of these Lachine Rapids is like
the taming of a particularly fierce lion; it is a business by itself
that few men care to undertake.
So it came that I sought out one of these few, Fred Ouillette, pilot and
son of a pilot, an idol in the company's eyes, a hero to the boys of
Montreal, a figure to be stared at always by anxious passengers as he
peers through the window atop the forward deck, a man whom people point
to as he passes: "There's the fellow that took us through the rapids.
That's Ouillette." This unsought notoriety has made him shy. He does not
like to talk about his work or tell you how it feels to do this thing. A
dash of Indian blood is in him, with some of the silent, stoic, Indian
nature. Yet certain facts he vouchsafed, when I went to his home, that
help one to an understanding of the pilot's life.
He emphasized this, for instance, as essential in a man who would face
that fury of waters, he must not be afraid. One would say that the
rapids feel where the mastery is, whether with them or with the pilot,
and woe to him if pounding heart or wavering hand betray him. The rapids
will have no mercy. And there are pilots, it appears, who know the
Lachine Rapids, every foot of them, and could do Ouillette's work
perfectly if Ouillette were standing near, yet would fail utterly if
left alone. Every danger they can overcome but the one that lies in
themselves. They cannot brave their own fear. He cited the case of a
pilot's son who had worked in the Lachine Rapids for years, helping his
father, and learned the river as well as a man can know it. At the old
man's death, this son announced that he would take his father's place,
and shoot the rapids as they always had done; yet a season passed, then
a second season, and always he postponed beginning, and, with one excuse
or another, took his boats through the Lachine Canal, a safe but tame
short cut, not likely to draw tourists.
"Not start heem right, that fadder," said Ouillette. "Now too late. Now
nevair he can learn heem right."
"Why, how should he have started him?" I asked.
"Same way like my fadder start me." And then, in his jerky Canadian
speech, he explained how this was.
Ouillette went back to his own young manhood, to the years when he, too,
stood by his father's side and watched him take the big boats down. What
a picture he drew in his queer, rugged phrases! I could see the old
pilot braced at the six-foot wheel, with three men in oilskins standing
by to help him put her over, Fred one of the three. And it was "Hip!"
"Bas!" "Hip!" "Bas!" ("Up!" "Down!" "Up!" "Down!") until the increasing
roar of the cataract drowned all words, and then it was a jerk of
shoulders or head, this way or that, while the men strained at the
spokes. Never once was the wheel at rest after they entered the rapids,
but spinning, spinning always, while the boat shot like a snake through
black rocks and churning chasms.
[Illustration: FRED OUILLETTE, THE YOUNG PILOT.]
They used to take the boats--as Ouillette takes them still--at Cornwall,
sixty miles up the river, and, before coming to Lachine, they would
shoot the swift Coteau Rapids, where many a life has gone, then the
terrifying Cedar Rapids, which seem the most dangerous of all, and
finally, the Split-rock Rapids, which some say are the most dangerous.
And each year, as the season opened, Fred would ask his father to let
him take the wheel some day when the river was high and the rocks well
covered, and the boat lightly laden, wishing thus to try the easiest
rapids under easiest conditions. But his father would look at him and
say: "Do you know the river, my son? Are you sure you know the river?"
And Fred would answer: "Father, I think I do." For how could he be sure
until he had stood the test?
So it went on from year to year, and Ouillette was almost despairing of
a chance to show himself worthy of his father's teaching, when,
suddenly, the chance came in a way never to be forgotten. It was late in
the summer, and the rapids, being low, were at their very worst, since
the rocks were nearer the surface. Besides that, on this particular day
they were carrying a heavy load, and the wind was southeast, blowing
hard--the very wind to make trouble at the bad places. They had shot
through all the rapids but the last, and were well below the Lachine
bridge when the elder Ouillette asked the boy, "My son, do you know the
river?"
And Fred answered as usual, without any thought of what was coming next,
"Father, I think I do."
They were just at the danger-point now, and all the straining waters
were sucking them down to the first plunge.
"Then take her through," said the old man, stepping back; "there is the
wheel."
"My fadder he make terreeble thing for me--too much terreeble thing,"
said Ouillette, shaking his head at the memory.
But he took her through somehow, half blinded by the swirl of water and
the shock. At the wheel he stood, and with a touch of his father's hand
now and then to help him, he brought the boat down safely. There was a
kind of Spartan philosophy in the old man's action. His idea was that,
could he once make his son face the worst of this business and come out
unharmed, then never would the boy know fear again, for all the rest
would be easier than what he had already done. And certainly his plan
worked well, for Fred Ouillette has been fearless in the rapids ever
since.
"Have you lost any lives?" I asked, reaching out for thrilling stories.
"Nevair," said he.
"Ever come near it?"
He looked at me a moment, and then said quietly: "Always, sair, we come
near it."
[Illustration: THE INDIAN PILOTS RESCUE PASSENGERS FROM THE STEAMER ON
THE ROCKS.]
Then he told of cases where at the last moment he had seen some mad risk
in going down, and had turned his steamer in the very throat of the
torrent, and, with groaning wheels and straining timbers, fought his way
back foot by foot to safety. Once a fog dropped about them suddenly, and
once the starboard rudder-chain broke. This last was all but a disaster,
for they were down so far that the river must surely have conquered the
engines had they tried to head up-stream. Ouillette saw there was only
one way to save his boat and the lives she carried, and, putting the
wheel hard aport, for the port chain held, he ran her on the rocks. And
there she lay, the good steamboat _Spartan_, all that night, with
passengers in an anguish of excitement, while Indian pilots from
Caughnawaga made it quite clear what _they_ were good for--put off
swiftly in their little barks straight into that reeling flood, straight
out to the helpless boat, then back to shore, each bearing two or three
of the fear-struck company. Then out again and back again until darkness
came. Then out again and back again when darkness had fallen. Think of
that! Hour after hour, with paddles alone, these dauntless sons of
Iroquois braves fought the rapids, triumphed over the rapids, and
brought to land through the night and the rage of waters every soul on
that imperiled vessel!
Another instance he gave, showing the admirable alertness of these
Indians, as well as their skill with the canoe. It was in the summer of
1900, late of an afternoon, and so heavy was the August heat that even
on the river the passengers were gasping for air. Shortly after they
entered the cataract several persons saw a large man climb to the top of
a water-tank on the hurricane-deck, and seat himself there in one of the
folding deck-chairs. The man's purpose was, evidently, to seek a cooler
spot than he had found below, and the boat was running so steadily that
no one thought of danger. Indeed, there would have been no danger had
not the gentleman fallen into a comfortable doze just as Ouillette
steadied the boat for her first downward leap and then brought her over
to starboard with a jerk, which jerk so effectually disturbed the large
man's slumbers that the first thing he knew he was shot off his rickety
chair, over the side of the water-tank, clean over the steamboat's
decks, down, splash! into the St. Lawrence at a point where it is not
good for any man to be. He was right in the main sweep of the river,
where one may live for twenty minutes if he can keep afloat so long, but
scarcely longer, since twenty minutes will bring him to the last rush of
rapids, where swimmers do not live.
[Illustration: "MAN OVERBOARD!" AN INDIAN CANOE TO THE RESCUE.]
What happened after this I have from an eye-witness, who rushed back
with others at the cry, "Man overboard!" and joined in a reckless
throwing over of chairs, boxes, and life-preservers that profited
little, for the man was left far behind by the steamboat, which could
do nothing--and Ouillette could do nothing--but whistle a hoarse
danger-warning and go its way. A magnificent swimmer he must have been,
this rudely awakened tourist, for the passengers, crowded astern, could
follow the black speck that was his head bobbing along steadily,
undisturbed, one would say, by dangers, apparently going up-stream as
the steamboat gained on him--really coming down-stream with the full
force of the current, and yielding to it entirely, all strength saved
for steering. Not a man on the boat believed that the swimmer would come
out alive, and, helpless to save, they stood there in sickening
fascination, watching him sweep down to his death.
Then suddenly rang out a cry: "Look! There! A canoe!" And out from the
shadows and shallows off-shore shot a slender prow with a figure in bow
and stern. The Indians were coming to the rescue! They must have started
even as the man fell,--such a thing it is to be an Indian!--and, with a
knowledge of the rapids that is theirs alone, they had aimed the swift
craft in a long slant that would let them overtake the swimmer just
here, at this very place where now they were about to overtake him, at
this very place where presently they did overtake him and draw him up,
all but exhausted, from as close to the brink of the Great Rapids as
ever he will get until he passes over them. Then they paddled back.
IV
WHAT CANADIAN PILOTS DID IN THE CATARACTS OF THE NILE
AND now suppose we follow these Indians to their reservation at
Caughnawaga, where the government has given them land and civic rights
and encouragement to peaceful ways. The surest time of year to find the
pilots at home is the winter season; for then, with navigation frozen
up, they have weeks to spend drifting along in the sleepy village life,
waiting for the spring. There, in many a hearth-fire circle,--only,
alas! the hearth is a commonplace shiny stove more often than not,--we
may listen to tales without end of rapids and river, while the men smoke
solemnly, and the women do beadwork and moccasins for the next year's
peddling. We may hear "Big Baptiste" tell for what exploits of the
paddle his head came to be on the ten-dollar bills of Canada, set in
dignity and feathers; and hear "Big John," famous for years as a
steamboat pilot, describe his annual shooting of the Lachine Rapids at
the opening of navigation, when, first of all the pilots, he goes down
in his canoe,--this is a time-honored custom,--so that the others may be
sure that it is safe to follow.
He will give us the story, too, amid nods of approval, of shooting these
same rapids for a wager on a certain New Year's Day, and coming down
safely, ice and all. There, sir, is the paddle he used, if you doubt the
tale, and the canoe lies out in the snow.
And be sure we shall not have been long in Caughnawaga without hearing
of the proud part these Indians took in the British expedition up the
Nile in 1884 to relieve Khartum. Treasured in more than one household
are these words of Lord Wolseley, written to the governor-general of
Canada: "I desire to place on record not only my own opinion, but that
of every officer connected with the management of the boat columns, that
the services of these voyageurs has been of the greatest possible
value.... They have on many occasions shown not only great skill but
also great courage in navigating their boats through difficult and
dangerous waters."
"How many men did Caughnawaga send on this expedition?" I inquired.
"Fifty-five men besides Louis Jackson," said one of the Indians.
"Oh," said I; "and--and who is Louis Jackson?"
The Indian's face showed plain disgust that there should be any one who
did not know all about Louis Jackson.
"Louis Jackson was the leader. He is our chief man. He lives over
there."
It resulted in my calling on Mr. Jackson, a big, powerful man, fully
meriting, I should say, the high opinion in which he is held. If there
is any Indian strain in him it must be very slight; he would pass,
rather, for an uncommonly energetic Englishman, with such a fund of
adventure to his credit, and so entertaining a way of drawing upon it,
that one would listen for hours while he talks.
Jackson made clear to me what important duty was given the Canadian
voyageurs in this Nile campaign. By their success or failure in taking
heavy-laden boats up the cataracts Lord Wolseley proposed to decide
whether the troops for Gordon's relief should go straight up the Nile or
around by the Red Sea and the desert. It was the river if they
succeeded; it was the desert if they failed: and twenty thousand
soldiers waited at Alexandria in a fever of impatience while Jackson and
his band, with some hundreds of voyageurs from other provinces, let it
be seen if their training on the St. Lawrence would serve against river
perils in ancient Egypt. Lord Wolseley was confident it would, for
during the Riel rebellion he had found out what stuff was in these men.
Still he dared not start his army until it was certain those formidable
cataracts could be surmounted. And that meant a month, let the men
strain as they might at paddles and hauling-lines--a month to wait, a
month for Gordon to wait.
[Illustration: THE PILOT, "BIG JOHN."]