down trees every day for the fire, and Pierre disappeared for hours
every now and then to look after traps set for otter, beaver, and
marten. Alphonse attended his horses and served as cook. He could
produce hotter tea than any other man in the world. I took mine for a
walk in the arctic cold three times a day, the artist learned to pour
his from one cup to another with amazing dexterity, and the Indians (who
drank a quart each of green tea at each meal because it was stronger
than our black tea) lifted their pans and threw the liquid fire down
throats that had been inured to high wines. Whenever the fire was low,
the cold was intense. Whenever it was heaped with logs, all the heat
flew directly through the roof, and spiral blasts of cold air were
sucked through every crack between logs in the cabin walls. Whenever the
door opened, the cabin filled with smoke. Smoke clung to all we ate or
wore. At night the fire kept burning out, and we arose with chattering
teeth to build it anew. The Indians were then to be seen with their
blankets pushed down to their knees, asleep in their shirts and
trousers. At meal-times we had bacon or pork, speckled or lake trout,
bread-and-butter, stewed tomatoes, and tea. There were two stools for
the five men, but they only complicated the discomfort of those who got
them; for it was found that if we put our tin plates on our knees, they
fell off; if we held them in one hand, we could not cut the pork and
hold the bread with the other hand; while if we put the plates on the
floor beside the tea, we could not reach them. In a month we might have
solved the problem. Life in that log shanty was precisely the life of
the early settlers of this country. It was bound to produce great
characters or early death. There could be no middle course with such an
existence.
[Illustration: THE CAMP AT NIGHT]
Partridge fed in the brush impudently before us. Rabbits bobbed about in
the clearing before the door. Squirrels sat upon the logs near by and
gormandized and chattered. Great saucy birds, like mouse-colored robins,
and known to the Indians as "meat-birds," stole our provender if we left
it out-of-doors half an hour, and one day we saw a red deer jump in the
bush a hundred yards away. Yet we got no game, because we knew there was
a moose-yard within two miles on one side and within three miles on the
other, and we dared not shoot our rifles lest we frighten the moose.
Moose was all we were after. There was a lake near by, and the trout in
those lakes up there attain remarkable size and numbers. We heard of
35-pound specked trout, of lake trout twice as large, and of enormous
muskallonge. The most reliable persons told of lakes farther in the
wilderness where the trout are thick as salmon in the British Columbia
streams--so thick as to seem to fill the water. We were near a lake that
was supposed to have been fished out by lumbermen a year before, yet it
was no sport at all to fish there. With a short stick and two yards of
line and a bass hook baited with pork, we brought up four-pound and
five-pound beauties faster than we wanted them for food. Truly we were
in a splendid hunting country, like the Adirondacks eighty years ago,
but thousands of times as extensive.
Finally we started for moose. Our Indians asked if they might take their
guns. We gave the permission. Alexandre, a thin, wiry man of forty
years, carried an old Henry rifle in a woollen case open at one end like
a stocking. He wore a short blanket coat and tuque, and trousers tied
tight below the knee, and let into his moccasin-tops. He and his brother
Francois are famous Hudson Bay Company trappers, and are two-thirds
Algonquin and one-third French. He has a typical swarthy, angular Indian
face and a French mustache and goatee. Naturally, if not by rank, a
leader among his men, his manner is commanding and his appearance grave.
He talks bad French fluently, and makes wretched headway in English.
Pierre is a short, thickset, walnut-stained man of thirty-five, almost
pure Indian, and almost a perfect specimen of physical development. He
seldom spoke while on this trip, but he impressed us with his strength,
endurance, quickness, and knowledge of woodcraft. Poor fellow! he had
only a shot-gun, which he loaded with buckshot. It had no case, and both
men carried their pieces grasped by the barrels and shouldered with the
butts behind them.
We set out in Indian-file, plunging at once into the bush. Never was
forest scenery more exquisitely beautiful than on that morning as the
day broke, for we breakfasted at four o'clock, and started immediately
afterwards. Everywhere the view was fairy-like. There was not snow
enough for snow-shoeing. But the fresh fall of snow was immaculately
white, and flecked the scene apparently from earth to sky, for there was
not a branch or twig or limb or spray of evergreen, or wart or fungous
growth upon any tree that did not bear its separate burden of snow. It
was a bridal dress, not a winding-sheet, that Dame Nature was trying on
that morning. And in the bright fresh green of the firs and pines we saw
her complexion peeping out above her spotless gown, as one sees the rosy
cheeks or black eyes of a girl wrapped in ermine.
[Illustration: A MOOSE BULL FIGHT]
Mile after mile we walked, up mountain and down dale, slapped in the
faces by twigs, knocking snow down the backs of our necks, slipping
knee-deep in bog mud, tumbling over loose stones, climbing across
interlaced logs, dropping to the height of one thigh between tree
trunks, sliding, falling, tight-rope walking on branches over thin ice,
but forever following the cat-like tread of Alexandre, with his
seven-league stride and long-winded persistence. Suddenly we came to a
queer sort of clearing dotted with protuberances like the bubbles on
molasses beginning to boil. It was a beaver meadow. The bumps in the
snow covered stumps of trees the beavers had gnawed down. The Indians
were looking at some trough like tracks in the snow, like the trail of a
tired man who had dragged his heels. "Moose; going this way," said
Alexandre; and we turned and walked in the tracks. Across the meadow and
across a lake and up another mountain they led us. Then we came upon
fresher prints. At each new track the Indians stooped, and making a
scoop of one hand, brushed the new-fallen snow lightly out of the
indentations. Thus they read the time at which the print was made. "Las'
week," "Day 'fore yesterday," they whispered. Presently they bent over
again, the light snow flew, and one whispered, "This morning."
[Illustration: ON THE MOOSE TRAIL]
Stealthily Alexandre swept ahead; very carefully we followed. We dared
not break a twig, or speak, or slip, or stumble. As it was, the breaking
of the crust was still far too audible. We followed a little stream, and
approached a thick growth of tamarack. We had no means of knowing that a
herd of moose was lying in that thicket, resting after feeding. We knew
it afterwards. Alexandre motioned to us to get our guns ready. We each
threw a cartridge from the cylinder into the barrel, making a "click,
click" that was abominably loud. Alexandre forged ahead. In five minutes
we heard him call aloud: "Moose gone. We los' him." We hastened to his
side. He pointed at some tracks in which the prints were closer together
than any we had seen.
"See! he trot," Alexandre explained.
In another five minutes we had all but completed a circle, and were on
the other side of the tamarack thicket. And there were the prints of the
bodies of the great beasts. We could see even the imprint of the hair of
their coats. All around were broken twigs and balsam needles. The moose
had left the branches ragged, and on every hand the young bark was
chewed or rubbed raw. Loading our rifles had lost us a herd of moose.
[Illustration: IN SIGHT OF THE GAME--"NOW SHOOT!"]
Back once again at the beaver dam, Alexandre and Pierre studied the
moose-tramped snow and talked earnestly. They agreed that a desperate
battle had been fought there between two bull moose a week before, and
that those bulls were not in the "yard" where we had blundered. They
examined the tracks over an acre or more, and then strode off at an
obtuse angle from our former trail. Pierre, apparently not quite
satisfied, kept dropping behind or disappearing in the bush at one side
of us. So magnificent was his skill at his work that I missed him at
times, and at other times found him putting his feet down where mine
were lifted up without ever hearing a sound of his step or of his
contact with the undergrowth. Alexandre presently motioned us with a
warning gesture. He slowed his pace to short steps, with long pauses
between. He saw everything that moved, heard every sound; only a deer
could throw more and keener faculties into play than this born hunter.
He heard a twig snap. We heard nothing. Pierre was away on a side
search. Alexandre motioned us to be ready. We crept close together, and
I scarcely breathed. We moved cautiously, a step at a time, like
chessmen. It was impossible to get an unobstructed view a hundred feet
ahead, so thick was the soft-wood growth. It seemed out of the question
to try to shoot that distance. We were descending a hill-side into
marshy ground. We crossed a corner of a grove of young alders, and saw
before us a gentle slope thickly grown with evergreen--tamarack, the
artist called it. Suddenly Alexandre bent forward and raised his gun.
Two steps forward gave us his view. Five moose were fifty yards away,
alarmed and ready to run. A big bull in the front of the group had
already thrown back his antlers. By impulse rather than through reason I
took aim at a second bull. He was half a height lower down the slope,
and to be seen through a web of thin foliage. Alexandre and the artist
fired as with a single pull at one trigger. The foremost bull staggered
and fell forward, as if his knees had been broken. He was hit twice--in
the heart and in the neck. The second bull and two cows and a calf
plunged into the bush and disappeared. Pierre found that bull a mile
away, shot through the lungs.
It had taken us a week to kill our moose in a country where they were
common game. That was "hunter's luck" with a vengeance. But at another
season such a delay could scarcely occur. The time to visit that
district is in the autumn, before snow falls. Then in a week one ought
to be able to bag a moose, and move into the region where caribou are
plenty.
Mr. Remington, in the picture called "Hunting the Caribou," depicts a
scene at a critical moment in the experience of any man who has
journeyed on westward of where we found our moose, to hunt the caribou.
There is a precise moment for shooting in the chase of all animals of
the deer kind, and when that moment has been allowed to pass, the chance
of securing the animal diminishes with astonishing rapidity--with more
than the rapidity with which the then startled animal is making his
flight, because to his flight you must add the increasing ambush of the
forest. What is true of caribou in this respect is true of moose and red
deer, elk and musk-ox in America, and of all the horned animals of the
forests of the other great hemisphere. Every hunter who sees Mr.
Remington's realistic picture knows at a glance that the two men have
stolen noiselessly to within easy rifle-shot of a caribou, and that
suddenly, at the last moment, the animal has heard them.
[Illustration: SUCCESS]
Perhaps he has seen them, and is standing--still as a Barye bronze--with
his great, soft, wondering eyes riveted upon theirs. That is a situation
familiar to every hunter. His prey has been browsing in fancied
security, and yet with that nervous prudence that causes these timid
beasts to keep forever raising their heads, and sweeping the view around
them with their exquisite sight, and analyzing the atmosphere with
their magical sense of smell. In one of these cautious pauses the
caribou has seen the hunters. Both hunters and hunted seem instantly to
turn to stone. Neither moves a muscle or a hair. If the knee or the foot
of one of the men presses too hard upon a twig and it snaps, the caribou
is as certain to throw his head high up and dart into the ingulfing
net-work of the forest trunks and brush as day is certain to follow
night. But when no movement has been made and no mishap has alarmed the
beast, it has often happened that the two or more parties to this
strangely thrilling situation have held their places for minutes at a
stretch--minutes that seemed like quarters of an hour. In such cases the
deer or caribou has been known to lower his head and feed again, assured
in its mind that the suspected hunter is inanimate and harmless. Nine
times in ten, though, the first to move is the beast, which tosses up
its head, and "Shoot! shoot!" is the instant command, for the upward
throwing of the head is a movement made to put the beast's great antlers
into position for flight through the forest.
[Illustration: HUNTING THE CARIBOU--"SHOOT! SHOOT!"]
The caribou has very wide, heavy horns, and they are almost always
circular--that is, the main part or trunk of each horn curves outward
from the skull and then inward towards the point, in an almost true
semicircle. They are more or less branched, but both the general shape
of the whole horns and of the branches is such that when the head is
thrown up and back they aid the animal's flight by presenting what may
be called the point of a wedge towards the saplings and limbs and small
forest growths through which the beast runs, parting and spreading every
pair of obstacles to either side, and bending every single one out of
the way of his flying body. The caribou of North America is the reindeer
of Greenland; the differences between the two are very slight. The
animal's home is the arctic circle, but in America it feeds and roams
farther south than in Europe and Asia. It is a large and clumsy-looking
beast, with thick and rather short legs and bulky body, and, seen in
repose, gives no hint of its capacity for flight. Yet the caribou can
run "like a streak of wind," and makes its way through leaves and brush
and brittle, sapless vegetation with a modicum of noise so slight as to
seem inexplicable. Nature has ingeniously added to its armament, always
one, and usually two, palmated spurs at the root of its horns, and
these grow at an obtuse angle with the head, upward and outward
towards the nose. With these spurs--like shovels used sideways--the
caribou roots up the snow, or breaks its crust and disperses it, to get
at his food on the ground. The caribou are very large deer, and their
strength is attested by the weight of their horns. I have handled
caribou horns in Canada that I could not hold out with both hands when
seated in a chair. It seemed hard to believe that an animal of the size
of a caribou could carry a burden apparently so disproportioned to his
head and neck. But it is still more difficult to believe, as all the
woodsmen say, that these horns are dropped and new ones grown every
year.
It is not the especial beauty of Frederic Remington's drawings and
paintings that they are absolutely accurate in every detail, but it is
one of their beauties, and gives them especial value apart from their
artistic excellence. He draws what he knows, and he knows what he draws.
This scene of the electrically exquisite moment in a hunter's life, when
great game is before him, and the instant has come for claiming it as
his own with a steadily held and wisely chosen aim, will give the reader
a perfect knowledge of how the Indians and hunters dress and equip
themselves beyond the Canadian border. The scene is in the wilderness
north of the Great Lakes. The Indian is of one of those tribes that are
offshoots of the great Algonquin nation. He carries in that load he
bears that which the plainsmen call "the grub stake," or quota of
provisions for himself and his employer, as well as blankets to sleep
in, pots, pans, sugar, the inevitable tea of those latitudes, and much
else besides. Those Indians are not as lazy or as physically degenerate
as many of the tribes in our country. They turn themselves into
wonderful beasts of burden, and go forever equipped with a long, broad
strap that they call a "tomp line," and which they pass around their
foreheads and around their packs, the latter resting high up on their
backs. It seems incredible, but they can carry one hundred to one
hundred and fifty pounds of necessaries all day long in the roughest
regions. The Hudson Bay Company made their ancestors its wards and
dependents two centuries ago, and taught them to work and to earn their
livelihood.
V
BIG FISHING
In October every year there are apt to be more fish upon the land in the
Nepigon country than one would suppose could find life in the waters.
Most families have laid in their full winter supply, the main exceptions
being those semi-savage families which leave their fish out--in
preference to laying them in--upon racks whereon they are to be seen in
rows and by the thousands.
Nepigon, the old Hudson Bay post which is the outfitting place for this
region, is 928 miles west of Montreal, on the Canadian Pacific Railway,
and on an arm of Lake Superior. The Nepigon River, which connects the
greatest of lakes with Lake Nepigon, is the only roadway in all that
country, and therefore its mouth, in an arm of the great lake, is the
front door to that wonderful region. In travelling through British
Columbia I found one district that is going to prove of greater interest
to gentlemen sportsmen with the rod, but I know of no greater fishing
country than the Nepigon. No single waterway or system of navigable
inland waters in North America is likely to wrest the palm from this
Nepigon district as the haunt of fish in the greatest plenty, unless we
term the salmon a fresh-water fish, and thus call the Fraser, Columbia,
and Skeena rivers into the rivalry. There is incessant fishing in this
wilderness north of Lake Superior from New-year's Day, when the ice has
to be cut to get at the water, all through the succeeding seasons, until
again the ice fails to protect the game. And there is every sort of
fishing between that which engages a navy of sailing vessels and men,
down through all the methods of fish-taking--by nets, by spearing, still
fishing, and fly-fishing. A half a dozen sorts of finny game succumb to
these methods, and though the region has been famous and therefore much
visited for nearly a dozen years, the field is so extensive, so well
stocked, and so difficult of access except to persons of means, that
even to-day almost the very largest known specimens of each class of
fish are to be had there.
If we could put on wings early in October, and could fly down from
James's Bay over the dense forests and countless lakes and streams of
western Ontario, we would see now and then an Indian or hunter in a
canoe, here and there a lonely huddle of small houses forming a Hudson
Bay post, and at even greater distances apart small bunches of the
cotton or birch-bark tepees of pitiful little Cree or Ojibaway bands.
But with the first glance at the majestic expanse of Lake Superior there
would burst upon the view scores upon scores of white sails upon the
water, and near by, upon the shore, a tent for nearly every sail. That
is the time for the annual gathering for catching the big, chunky,
red-fleshed fish they call the salmon-trout. They catch those that weigh
from a dozen to twenty-five or thirty pounds, and at this time of the
year their flesh is comparatively hard.
Engaged in making this great catch are the boats of the Indians from far
up the Nepigon and the neighboring streams; of the chance white men of
the region, who depend upon nature for their sustenance; and of Finns,
Norwegians, Swedes, and others who come from the United States side, or
southern shore, to fish for their home markets. These fish come at this
season to spawn, seeking the reefs, which are plentiful off the shore in
this part of the lake. Gill nets are used to catch them, and are set
within five fathoms of the surface by setting the inner buoy in water of
that depth, and then paying the net out into deeper water and anchoring
it. The run and the fishing continue throughout October. As a rule,
among the Canadians and Canada Indians a family goes with each boat--the
boats being sloops of twenty-seven to thirty feet in length, and capable
of carrying fifteen pork barrels, which are at the outset filled with
rock-salt. Sometimes the heads of two families are partners in the
ownership of one of these sloops, but, however that may be, the custom
is for the women and children to camp in tents along-shore, while the
men (usually two men and a boy for each boat) work the nets. It is a
stormy season of the year, and the work is rough and hazardous,
especially for the nets, which are frequently lost.
Whenever a haul is made the fish are split down the back and cleaned.
Then they are washed, rolled in salt, and packed in the barrels. Three
days later, when the bodies of the fish have thoroughly purged
themselves, they are taken out, washed again, and are once more rolled
in fresh salt and put back in the barrels, which are then filled to the
top with water. The Indians subsist all winter upon this October catch,
and, in addition, manage to exchange a few barrels for other provisions
and for clothing. They demand an equivalent of six dollars a barrel in
whatever they get in exchange, but do not sell for money, because, as I
understand it, they are not obliged to pay the provincial license fee as
fishermen, and therefore may not fish for the market. Even sportsmen who
throw a fly for one day in the Nepigon country must pay the Government
for the privilege. The Indians told me that eight barrels of these fish
will last a family of six persons an entire winter. Such a demonstration
of prudence and fore-thought as this, of a month's fishing at the
threshold of winter, amounts to is a rare one for an Indian to make, and
I imagine there is a strong admixture of white blood in most of those
who make it. The full-bloods will not take the trouble. They trust to
their guns and their traps against the coming of that wolf which they
are not unused to facing.
Up along the shores of Lake Nepigon, which is thirty miles by an air
line north of Lake Superior, many of the Indians lay up white-fish for
winter. They catch them in nets and cure them by frost. They do not
clean them. They simply make a hole in the tail end of each fish, and
string them, as if they were beads, upon sticks, which they set up into
racks. They usually hang the fishes in rows of ten, and frequently
store up thousands while they are at it. The Reverend Mr. Renison, who
has had much to do with bettering the condition of these Indians, told
me that he had caught 1020 pounds of white-fish in two nights with two
gill nets in Lake Nepigon. It is unnecessary to add that he cleaned his.
[Illustration: INDIANS HAULING NETS ON LAKE NEPIGON]
Lake Nepigon is about seventy miles in length, and two-thirds as wide,
at the points of its greatest measurement, and is a picturesque body of
water, surrounded by forests and dotted with islands. It is a famous
haunt for trout, and those fishermen who are lucky may at times see
scores of great beauties lying upon the bottom; or, with a good guide
and at the right season, may be taken to places where the water is
fairly astir with them. Fishermen who are not lucky may get their
customary experience without travelling so far, for the route is by
canoe, on top of nearly a thousand miles of railroading; and one mode of
locomotion consumes nearly as much time as the other, despite the
difference between the respective distances travelled. The speckled
trout in the lake are locally reported to weigh from three to nine
pounds, but the average stranger will lift in more of three pounds'
weight than he will of nine. Yet whatever they average, the catching of
them is prime sport as you float upon the water in your picturesque
birch-bark canoe, with your guide paddling you noiselessly along, and
your spoon or artificial minnow rippling through the water or glinting
in the sunlight. You need a stout bait-rod, for the gluttonous fish are
game, and make a good fight every time. The local fishermen catch the
speckled beauties with an unpoetic lump of pork.
A lively French Canadian whom I met on the cars on my way to Nepigon
described that region as "de mos' tareeble place for de fish in all over
de worl'." And he added another remark which had at least the same
amount of truth at the bottom of it. Said he: "You weel find dere dose
Mees Nancy feeshermans from der Unite State, which got dose
hunderd-dollar poles and dose leetle humbug flies, vhich dey t'row
around and pull 'em back again, like dey was afraid some feesh would
bite it. Dat is all one grand stupeedity. Dose man vhich belong dere put
on de hook some pork, and catch one tareeble pile of fish. Dey don't
give a ---- about style, only to catch dose feesh."