proved a friend in need. He dictated a few telegrams that agitated the
people of a vast section of country between Ottawa and the Great Lakes.
And in the afternoon the answers came flying back. These were from
various points where Hudson Bay posts are situated. At one or two the
Indian trappers and hunters were all away on their winter expeditions;
from another a famous white hunter had just departed with a party of
gentlemen. At Mattawa, in Ontario, moose were close at hand and
plentiful, and two skilled Indian hunters were just in from a trapping
expedition; but the post factor, Mr. Rankin, was sick in bed, and the
Indians were on a spree. To Mattawa we decided to go. It is a
twelve-hour journey from New York to Montreal, and an eleven-hour
journey from Montreal to the heart of this hunters' paradise; so that,
had we known at just what point to enter the forest, we could have taken
the trail in twenty-four hours from the metropolis, as the artist had
predicted.
Our first taste of the frontier, at Peter O'Farrall's Ottawa Hotel, in
Mattawa, was delicious in the extreme. O'Farrall used to be game-keeper
to the Marquis of Waterford, and thus got "a taste of the quality" that
prompted him to assume the position he has chosen as the most lordly
hotel-keeper in Canada. We do not know what sort of men own our great
New York and Chicago and San Francisco hotels, but certainly they cannot
lead more leisurely, complacent lives than Mr. O'Farrall. He has a
bartender to look after the male visitors and the bar, and a matronly
relative to see to the women and the kitchen, so that the landlord
arises when he likes to enjoy each succeeding day of ease and
prosperity. He has been known to exert himself, as when he chased a man
who spoke slightingly of his liquor. And he was momentarily ruffled at
the trying conduct of the artist on this hunting trip. The artist could
not find his overcoat, and had the temerity to refer the matter to Mr.
O'Farrall.
"Sir," said the artist, "what do you suppose has become of my overcoat?
I cannot find it anywhere."
"I don't know anything about your botheration overcoat," said Mr.
O'Farrall. "Sure, I've throuble enough kaping thrack of me own."
The reader may be sure that O'Farrall's was rightly recommended to us,
and that it is a well-managed and popular place, with good beds and
excellent fare, and with no extra charge for the delightful addition of
the host himself, who is very tall and dignified and humourous, and who
is the oddest and yet most picturesque-looking public character in the
Dominion. Such an oddity is certain to attract queer characters to his
side, and Mr. O'Farrall is no exception to the rule. One of the
waiter-girls in the dining-room was found never by any chance to know
anything that she was asked about. For instance, she had never heard of
Mr. Rankin, the chief man of the place. To every question she made
answer, "Sure, there does be a great dale goin' on here and I know
nothin' of it." Of her the artist ventured the theory that "she could
not know everything on a waiter-girl's salary." John, the bartender, was
a delightful study. No matter what a visitor laid down in the
smoking-room, John picked it up and carried it behind the bar. Every one
was continually losing something and searching for it, always to observe
that John was able to produce it with a smile and the wise remark that
he had taken the lost article and put it away "for fear some one would
pick it up." Finally, there was Mr. O'Farrall's dog--a ragged,
time-worn, petulant terrier, no bigger than a pint-pot. Mr. O'Farrall
nevertheless called him "Fairy," and said he kept him "to protect the
village children against wild bears."
I shall never be able to think of Mattawa as it is--a plain little
lumbering town on the Ottawa River, with the wreck and ruin of once
grand scenery hemming it in on all sides in the form of ragged mountains
literally ravaged by fire and the axe. Hints of it come back to me in
dismembered bits that prove it to have been interesting: vignettes of
little school-boys in blanket suits and moccasins, of great-spirited
horses forever racing ahead of fur-laden sleighs, and of troops of
olive-skinned French-Canadian girls, bundled up from their feet to those
mischievous features which shot roguish glances at the artist--the
biggest man, the people said, who had ever been seen in Mattawa. But the
place will ever yield back to my mind the impression I got of the
wonderful preparations that were made for our adventure--preparations
that seemed to busy or to interest nearly every one in the village. Our
Indians had come in from the Indian village three miles away, and had
said they had had enough drink. Mr. John De Sousa, accountant at the
post, took charge of them and of us, and the work of loading a great
portage sleigh went on apace. The men of sporting tastes came out and
lounged in front of the post, and gave helpful advice; the Indians and
clerks went to and from the sleigh laden with bags of necessaries; the
harness-maker made for us belts such as the lumbermen use to preclude
the possibility of incurable strains in the rough life in the
wilderness. The help at O'Farrall's assisted in repacking what we needed
so that our trunks and town clothing could be stored. Mr. De Sousa sent
messengers hither and thither for essentials not in stock at the post.
Some women, even, were set at work to make "neaps" for us, a neap being
a sort of slipper or unlaced shoe made of heavy blanketing and worn
outside one's stockings to give added warmth to the feet.
"You see, this is no casual rabbit-hunt," said the artist. The remark
will live in Mattawa many a year.
The Hudson Bay Company's posts differ. In the wilderness they are forts
surrounded by stockades, but within the boundaries of civilization they
are stores. That at Winnipeg is a splendid emporium, while that at
Mattawa is like a village store in the United States, except that the
top story is laden with guns, traps, snow-shoes, and the skins of wild
beasts; while an outbuilding in the rear is the repository of scores of
birch-bark canoes--the carriages of British America. Mr. Rankin, the
factor there, lay in a bed of suffering and could not see us. Yet it
seemed difficult to believe that we could be made the recipients of
greater or more kindly attentions than were lavished upon us by his
accountant, Mr. De Sousa. He ordered our tobacco ground for us ready for
our pipes; selected the finest from among those extraordinary blankets
that have been made exclusively for this company for hundreds of years;
picked out the largest snow-shoes in his stock; bade us lay aside the
gloves we had brought, and take mittens such as he produced, and for
which we thanked him in our hearts many times afterwards; planned our
outfit of food with the wisdom of an old campaigner; bethought himself
to send for baker's bread; ordered high legs sewed on our moccasins--in
a word, he made it possible for us to say afterwards that absolutely
nothing had been overlooked or slighted in fitting out our expedition.
[Illustration: ANTOINE, FROM LIFE]
As I sat in the sleigh, tucked in under heavy skins and leaning at royal
ease against other furs that covered a bale of hay, it seemed to me that
I had become part of one of such pictures as we all have seen,
portraying historic expeditions in Russia or Siberia. We carried
fifteen hundred pounds of traps and provisions for camping, stabling,
and food for men and beasts. We were five in all--two hunters, two
Indians, and a teamster. We set out with the two huge mettlesome horses
ahead, the driver on a high seat formed of a second bale of hay,
ourselves lolling back under our furs, and the two Indians striding
along over the resonant cold snow behind us. It was beginning to be
evident that a great deal of effort and machinery was needed to "make a
hunter" of a city man, and that it was going to be done thoroughly--two
thoughts of a highly flattering nature.
We were now clad for arctic weather, and perhaps nothing except a mummy
was ever "so dressed up" as we were. We each wore two pairs of the
heaviest woollen stockings I ever saw, and over them ribbed bicycle
stockings that came to our knees. Over these in turn were our "neaps,"
and then our moccasins, laced tightly around our ankles. We had on two
suits of flannels of extra thickness, flannel shirts, reefing jackets,
and "capeaux," as they call their long-hooded blanket coats, longer than
snow-shoe coats. On our heads we had knitted tuques, and on our hands
mittens and gloves. We were bound for Antoine's moose-yard, near Crooked
Lake.
The explanation of the term "moose-yard" made moose-hunting appear a
simple operation (once we were started), for a moose-yard is the
feeding-ground of a herd of moose, and our head Indian, Alexandre
Antoine, knew where there was one. Each herd or family of these great
wild cattle has two such feeding-grounds, and they are said to go
alternately from one to the other, never herding in one place two years
in succession. In this region of Canada they weigh between 600 and 1200
pounds, and the reader will help his comprehension of those figures by
recalling the fact that a 1200-pound horse is a very large one. Whether
they desert a yard for twelve months because of the damage they do to
the supply of food it offers to them, or whether it is instinctive
caution that directs their movements, no one can more than conjecture.
Their yards are always where soft wood is plentiful and water is near,
and during a winter they will feed over a region from half a mile to a
mile square. The prospect of going directly to the fixed home of a herd
of moose almost robbed the trip of that speculative element that gives
the greatest zest to hunting. But we knew not what the future held for
us. Not even the artist, with all his experience, conjectured what was
in store for us. And what was to come began coming almost immediately.
The journey began upon a good highway, over which we slid along as
comfortably as any ladies in their carriages, and with the sleigh-bells
flinging their cheery music out over a desolate valley, with a leaden
river at the bottom, and with small mountains rolling all about. The
timber was cut off them, except here and there a few red or white pines
that reared their green, brush-like tops against the general blanket of
snow. The dull sky hung sullenly above, and now and then a raven flew
by, croaking hoarse disapproval of our intrusion. To warn us of what we
were to expect, Antoine had made a shy Indian joke, one of the few I
ever heard: "In small little while," said he, "we come to all sorts of a
road. Me call it that 'cause you get every sort riding, then you sure be
suited."
At five miles out we came to this remarkable highway. It can no more be
adequately described here than could the experiences of a man who goes
over Niagara Falls in a barrel. The reader must try to imagine the most
primitive sort of a highway conceivable--one that has been made by
merely felling trees through a forest in a path wide enough for a team
and wagon. All the tree stumps were left in their places, and every here
and there were rocks; some no larger than a bale of cotton, and some as
small as a bushel basket. To add to the other alluring qualities of the
road, there were tree trunks now and then directly across it, and, as a
further inducement to traffic, the highway was frequently interrupted by
"pitch holes." Some of these would be called pitch holes anywhere. They
were at points where a rill crossed the road, or the road crossed the
corner of a marsh. But there were other pitch holes that any intelligent
New Yorker would call ravines or gullies. These were at points where one
hill ran down to the water-level and another immediately rose
precipitately, there being a watercourse between the two. In all such
places there was deep black mud and broken ice. However, these were mere
features of the character of this road--a character too profound for me
to hope to portray it. When the road was not inclined either straight
down or straight up, it coursed along the slanting side of a steep hill,
so that a vehicle could keep to it only by falling against the forest
at the under side and carroming along from tree to tree.
[Illustration: THE PORTAGE SLEIGH ON A LUMBER ROAD]
Such was the road. The manner of travelling it was quite as astounding.
For nothing short of what Alphonse, the teamster, did would I destroy a
man's character; but Alphonse was the next thing to an idiot. He made
that dreadful journey at a gallop! The first time he upset the sleigh
and threw me with one leg thigh-deep between a stone and a tree trunk,
besides sending the artist flying over my head like a shot from a sling,
he reseated himself and remarked: "That makes tree time I upset in dat
place. Hi, there! Get up!" It never occurred to him to stop because a
giant tree had fallen across the trail. "Look out! Hold tight!" he would
call out, and then he would take the obstruction at a jump. The horses
were mammoth beasts, in the best fettle, and the sleigh was of the
solidest, strongest pattern. There were places where even Alphonse was
anxious to drive with caution. Such were the ravines and unbridged
waterways. But one of the horses had cut himself badly in such a place a
year before, and both now made it a rule to take all such places flying.
Fancy the result! The leap in air, and then the crash of the sled as it
landed, the snap of the harness chains, the snorts of the winded beasts,
the yells of the driver, the anxiety and nervousness of the passengers!
At one point we had an exciting adventure of a far different sort. There
was a moderately good stretch of road ahead, and we invited the Indians
to jump in and ride a while. We noticed that they took occasional
draughts from a bottle. They finished a full pint, and presently
Alexandre produced another and larger phial. Every one knows what a
drunken Indian is, and so did we. We ordered the sleigh stopped and all
hands out for "a talk." Firmly, but with both power and reason on our
side; we demanded a promise that not another drink should be taken, or
that the horses be turned towards Mattawa at once. The promise was
freely given.
"But what is that stuff? Let me see it," one of the hunters asked.
"It is de 'igh wine," said Alexandre.
"High wine? Alcohol?" exclaimed the hunter, and, impulse being quicker
than reason sometimes, flung the bottle high in air into the bush. It
was an injudicious action, but both of us at once prepared to defend
and re-enforce it, of course. As it happened, the Indians saw that no
unkindness or unfairness was intended, and neither sulked nor made
trouble afterwards.
We were now deep in the bush. Occasionally we passed "a brule," or tract
denuded of trees, and littered with trunks and tops of trunks rejected
by the lumbermen. But every mile took us nearer to the undisturbed
primeval forest, where the trees shoot up forty feet before the branches
begin. There were no houses, teams, or men. In a week in the bush we saw
no other sign of civilization than what we brought or made. All around
us rose the motionless regiments of the forest, with the snow beneath
them, and their branches and twigs printing lacework on the sky. The
signs of game were numerous, and varied to an extent that I never heard
of before. There were few spaces of the length of twenty-five feet in
which the track of some wild beast or bird did not cross the road. The
Indians read this writing in the snow, so that the forest was to them as
a book would be to us. "What is that?" "And that?" "And that?" I kept
inquiring. The answers told more eloquently than any man can describe it
the story of the abundance of game in that easily accessible wilderness.
"Dat red deer," Antoine replied. "Him fox." "Dat bear track; dat
squirrel; dat rabbit." "Dat moose track; pass las' week." "Dat
pa'tridge; dat wolf." Or perhaps it was the trail of a marten, or a
beaver, or a weasel, or a fisher, mink, lynx, or otter that he pointed
out, for all these "signs" were there, and nearly all were repeated
again and again. Of the birds that are plentiful there the principal
kinds are partridge, woodcock, crane, geese, duck, gull, loon, and owl.
[Illustration: THE TRACK IN THE WINTER FOREST]
When the sun set we prepared to camp, selecting a spot near a tiny rill.
The horses were tethered to a tree, with their harness still on, and
blankets thrown over them. We cleared a little space by the road-side,
using our snow-shoes for shovels. The Indians, with their axes, turned
up the moss and leaves, and levelled the small shoots and brushwood.
Then one went off to cut balsam boughs for bedding, while the other set
up two crotched sticks, with a pole upon them resting in the crotches,
and throwing the canvas of an "A" tent over the frame, he looped the
bottom of the tent to small pegs, and banked snow lightly all around it.
The little aromatic branches of balsam were laid evenly upon the ground,
a fur robe was thrown upon the leaves, our enormous blankets were spread
half open side by side, and two coats were rolled up and thrown down for
pillows. Pierre, the second Indian, made tiny slivers of some soft wood,
and tried to start a fire. He failed. Then Alexandre Antoine brought two
handfuls of bark, and lighting a small piece with a match, proceeded to
build a fire in the most painstaking manner, and with an ingenuity that
was most interesting. First he made a fire that could have been started
in a teacup; then he built above and around it a skeleton tent of bits
of soft wood, six to nine inches in length. This gave him a fire of the
dimensions of a high hat. Next, he threw down two great bits of timber,
one on either side of the fire, and a still larger back log, and upon
these he heaped split soft wood. While this was being done, Pierre
assailed one great tree after another, and brought them crashing down
with noises that startled the forest quiet. Alphonse had opened the
provision bags, and presently two tin pails filled with water swung from
saplings over the fire, and a pan of fat salt pork was frizzling upon
the blazing wood. The darkness grew dead black, and the dancing flames
peopled the near forest with dodging shadows. Almost in the time it has
taken me to write it, we were squatting on our heels around the fire,
each with a massive cutting of bread, a slice of fried pork in a tin
plate, and half a pint of tea, precisely as hot as molten lead, in a tin
cup. Supper was a necessity, not a luxury, and was hurried out of the
way accordingly. Then the men built their camp beside ours in front of
the fire, and followed that by felling three or more monarchs of the
bush. Nothing surprised me so much as the amount of wood consumed in
these open-air fires. In five days at our permanent camp we made a great
hole in the forest.
But that first night in the open air, abed with nature, with British
America for a bedroom! Only I can tell of it, for the others slept. The
stillness was intense. There was no wind and not an animal or bird
uttered a cry. The logs cracked and sputtered and popped, the horses
shook their chains, the men all snored--white and red alike. The horses
pounded the hollow earth; the logs broke and fell upon the cinders; one
of the men talked in his sleep. But over and through it all the
stillness grew. Then the fire sank low, the cold became intense, the
light was lost, and the darkness swallowed everything. Some one got up
awkwardly, with muttering, and flung wood upon the red ashes, and
presently all that had passed was re-experienced.
The ride next day was more exciting than the first stage. It was like
the journey of a gun-carriage across country in a hot retreat. The sled
was actually upset only once, but to prevent that happening fifty times
the Indians kept springing at the uppermost side of the flying vehicle,
and hanging to the side poles to pull the toppling construction down
upon both runners. Often we were advised to leap out for safety's sake;
at other times we wished we had leaped out. For seven hours we were
flung about like cotton spools that are being polished in a revolving
cylinder. And yet we were obliged to run long distances after the
hurtling sleigh--long enough to tire us. The artist, who had spent years
in rude scenes among rough men, said nothing at the time. What was the
use? But afterwards, in New York, he remarked that this was the roughest
travelling he had ever experienced.
The signs of game increased. Deer and bear and wolf and fox and moose
were evidently numerous around us. Once we stopped, and the Indians
became excited. What they had taken for old moose tracks were the
week-old footprints of a man. It seems strange, but they felt obliged to
know what a man had gone into the bush for a week ago. They followed the
signs, and came back smiling. He had gone in to cut hemlock boughs; we
would find traces of a camp near by. We did. In a country where men are
so few, they busy themselves about one another. Four or five days later,
while we were hunting, these Indians came to the road and stopped
suddenly, as horses do when lassoed. With a glance they read that two
teams had passed during the night, going towards our camp. When we
returned to camp the teams had been there, and our teamster had talked
with the drivers. Therefore that load was lifted from the minds of our
Indians. But their knowledge of the bush was marvellous. One point in
the woods was precisely like another to us, yet the Indians would leap
off the sleigh now and then and dive into the forest to return with a
trap hidden there months before, or to find a great iron kettle.
[Illustration: PIERRE, FROM LIFE]
"Do you never get lost?" I asked Alexandre.
"Me get los'? No, no get los'."
"But how do you find your way?"
"Me fin' way easy. Me know way me come, or me follow my tracks, or me
know by de sun. If no sun, me look at trees. Trees grow more branches
on side toward sun, and got rough bark on north side. At night me know
by see de stars."
We camped in a log-hut Alexandre had built for a hunting camp. It was
very picturesque and substantial, built of huge logs, and caulked with
moss. It had a great earthen bank in the middle for a fireplace, with an
equally large opening in the roof, boarded several feet high at the
sides to form a chimney. At one corner of the fire bank was an ingenious
crane, capable of being raised and lowered, and projecting from a
pivoted post, so that the long arm could be swung over or away from the
fire. At one end of the single apartment were two roomy bunks built
against the wall. With extraordinary skill and quickness the Indians
whittled a spade out of a board, performing the task with an axe, an
implement they can use as white men use a penknife, an implement they
value more highly than a gun. They made a broom of balsam boughs, and
dug and swept the dirt off the floor and walls, speedily making the
cabin neat and clean. Two new bunks were put up for us, and bedded with
balsam boughs and skins. Shelves were already up, and spread with pails
and bottles, tin cups and plates, knives and forks, canned goods, etc.
On them and on the floor were our stores.
[Illustration: ANTOINE'S CABIN]
We had a week's outfit, and we needed it, because for five days we could
not hunt on account of the crust on the snow, which made such a noise
when a human foot broke through it that we could not have approached any
wild animal within half a mile. On the third day it rained, but without
melting the crust. On the fourth day it snowed furiously, burying the
crust under two inches of snow. On the fifth day we got our moose.