Cumberland---We bury poor Joe--A good Train of Dogs--The great
Marsh--Mutiny--Chicag the Sturgeon-fisher--A Night with a Medicine-man--
Lakes Winnipegoosis and Manitoba--Muskeymote eats his Boots--We reach the
Settlement--From the Saskatchewan to the Seine.
CUMBERLAND HOUSE, the oldest post of the Company in the interior, stands
on the south shore of Pine Island Lake; the waters of which seek the
Saskatchewan by two channels--Tearing River and Big-stone River. These
two rivers form, together with the Saskatchewan and the lake, a large
island, upon which stands Cumberland. Time moves slowly at such places
as Cumberland, and change is almost unknown. To-day it is the same as it
was 100 years ago. An old list of goods sent to Cumberland, from England
in 1783 had precisely the same items as one of 1870. Strouds, cotton,
beads, and trading-guns are still the wants of the Indian, and are still
traded for marten and musquash. In its day Cumberland has had
distinguished visitors. Franklin; in 1819, wintered at the fort, and a
sun-dial still stands in rear of the house, a gift from the great
explorer. We buried Joe Miller in the pine-shadowed graveyard near the
fort. Hard work it was with pick and crowbar to prise up the ice-locked
earth and to get poor Joe that depth which the frozen clay would seem to
grudge him. It was long after dark when his bed was ready, and by the
light of a couple of lanterns we laid him down in the great rest. The
graveyard and the funeral had few of those accessories of the modern
mortuary which are supposed to be the characteristics of civilized
sorrow. There was no mute, no crape, no parade--nothing of that imposing
array of hat-bands and horses by which man, even` in the face of the
mighty mystery, seeks still to glorify the miserable conceits of life;
but the silent snow-laden pine-trees, the few words of prayer read in the
flickering light of the lantern, the hush of nature and of night, made
accessions full as fitting, as all the muffled music and craped sorrow of
church and city.
At Cumberland I beheld for the first time a genuine train of dogs. There
was no mistake about them in shape or form, from fore-goer to hindermost
hauler. Two of them were the pure Esquimaux breed, the bush-tailed,
fox-headed, long-furred, clean-legged animals whose ears, sharp-pointed
and erect, sprung from a head embedded in thick tufts of woolly hair;
Pomeranians multiplied by four; the other two were a curious compound of
Esquimaux and Athabascan, with hair so long that eyes were scarcely
'visible. I had suffered so long from the wretched condition and
description of the dogs of the Hudson Bay Company, that I determined to
become the possessor of those animals, and, although I had to pay
considerably more than had ever been previously demanded as the price of
a train of dogs in the North, I was still glad, to get them at any
figure. Five hundred miles yet lay between me and Red River-five hundred
miles of marsh and frozen lakes, the delta of the Saskatchewan and the
great Lakes Winnipegoosis and Manitoba.
It was the last day of January when I got away from Cumberland with this
fine train of dogs and another 2 serviceable set which belonged to a
Swampy Indian named Bear, who had agreed to accompany me to Red River.
Bear was the son of the old man whose evolutions with the three pegs had
caused so much commotion among the Indians at Red River on the occasion
of my visit to Fort Garry eight months earlier. He was now to be my close
companion during many days and nights, and it may not be out of place
here to anticipate the verdict of three weeks, and to award him as a
voyageur, snow-shoer and camp-maker a place second to none in the long
list of my employees. Soon after quitting Cumberland we struck the
Saskatchewan River, and, turning eastward along it, entered the great
region of marsh and swamp. During five days our course lay through vast
expanses of stiff frozen reeds, whose corn-like stalks rattled harshly
against the parchment sides of the cariole as the dog-trains wound along
through their snow-covered roots. Bleak and dreary beyond expression
stretched this region of frozen swamp for fully 100 miles. The cold
remained all the time at about the same degree--20 below zero. The camps
were generally poor and miserable ones. Stunted willow is the chief
timber of the region, and fortunate did we deem ourselves when at
nightfall a low line of willows would rise above the sea of reeds to bid
us seek its shelter for the night. The snow became deeper as we
proceeded. At the Pasquia three feet lay level over the country, and the
dogs sank deep as they toiled along. Through this great marsh the
Saskatchewan winds in tortuous course, its flooded level in summer scarce
lower than the alluvial shores that line it. The bends made by the river
would have been too long to follow, so we held a straight track through
the marsh, cutting the points as we travelled. It was difficult to
imagine that this many-channelled, marsh-lined river could be the same
noble stream whose mountain birth I had beheld far away in the Rocky
Mountains, and whose central course had lain for so many miles through
the bold precipitous bank of the Western prairies.
On the 7th February we emerged from this desolate region of lake and
swamp, and saw before us in the twilight a ridge covered with dense
woods. It was the west shore of the Cedar Lake, and on the wooded
promontory towards which we steered some Indian sturgeon-fishers had
pitched their lodges. But I had not got thus far without much trouble and
vexatious resistance. Of the three men from Cumberland, one had utterly
knocked up, and the other two had turned mutinous. What cared they for my
anxiety to push on for Red River? What did it matter if the whole world
was at war? Nay, must I not be the rankest of impostors; for if there was
war away beyond the big sea, was that not the very reason why any man
possessing a particle of sense should take his time over the journey, and
be in no hurry to get back again to his house?
One night I reached the post of Moose Lake a few hours before daybreak,
having been induced to make the flank march by representations of the
wonderful train of dogs at that station, and being anxious to obtain
them in addition to my own: It is almost needless to remark that these
dogs had no existence except in the imagination of Bear and his
companion. Arrived at Moose Lake (one of the most desolate spots-I had'
ever looked upon), I found out that the dog-trick was not the only one
my men intended playing upon me, for a message was sent in by Bear to
the effect that his dogs were unable to stand the hard travel of the
past week, and that he could no longer accompany me. Here was a pleasant
prospect--stranded on the wild shores of the Moose Lake with one train of
dogs, deserted and deceived! There was but one course to pursue, and
fortunately it proved the right one. "Can you give me a guide to Norway
House?" I asked the Hudson Bay Company's half-breed clerk. "Yes." "Then
tell Bear that he can go," I said, "and the quicker he goes the better.
I will start for Norway House with my single train of dogs, and though
it will add eighty miles to my journey I will get from thence to Red
River down the length of Lake Winnipeg. Tell Bear he has the whole
North-west to choose from except Red River. He had better not go there;
for if I have to wait for six months For his arrival, I'll wait, just to
put him in prison for breach of contract." What a glorious institution
is the law! The idea of the prison, that terrible punishment in the
eyes of the wild man, quelled the mutiny, and I was quickly assured that
the whole thing was a mistake, and that Bear and his dogs were still at
my service. Glad was I then, on the night of the 7th, to behold the
wooded shores of the Cedar Lake rising out of the reeds of the great
marsh, and to know that by another sunset I would have reached the
Winnipegoosis and looked my last upon the valley of the Saskatchewan.
The lodge of Chicag the sturgeon-fisher was small; one entered almost on
all-fours, and once inside matters were not much bettered. To the
question, "Was Chicag at home?" one of his ladies replied that he was
attending a medicine-feast close by, and that he would soon be in. A
loud and prolonged drumming corroborated the statement of the medicine,
and seemed to indicate that Chicag was putting on the steam with the
Manito, having got an inkling of the new arrival. Meantime I inquired of
Bear as to the ceremony which was being enacted. Chicag, or the "Skunk,"
I was told, and his friends were bound to devour as many sturgeon and to
drink as much sturgeon oil as it was possible to contain. When that point
had been attained the ceremony might be considered over, and if the
morrow's dawn did not show the sturgeon nets filled with fish, all that
could be said upon the matter was that the Manito was oblivious to the
efforts of Chicag and his comrades. The drumming now reached a point that
seemed to indicate that either Chicag or the sturgeon was having a bad
time of it. Presently the noise ceased, the low door opened, and the
"Skunk" entered, followed by some ten or a dozen of his friends and
relations. How they all found room in the little hut remains a mystery,
but its eight-by-ten of superficial space held some eighteen persons, the
greater number of whom were greasy with the oil of the sturgeon. Meantime
a supper of sturgeon had been prepared for me, and great was the
excitement to watch me eat it. The fish was by no means bad; but I have
reason to believe that my performance in the matter of eating it was not
at all a success. It is true that stifling atmosphere, in tense heat, and
many varieties of nastiness and nudity are not promoters of appetite; but
even had I been given a clearer stage and more favourable conducers
towards voracity, I must still have proved but a mere nibbler of sturgeon
in the eyes of such a whale as Chicag.
Glad to escape from the suffocating hole, I emptied my fire-bag of
tobacco among the group and got out into the cold night-air. What a
change! Over the silent snow-sheeted lake, over the dark isles and the
cedar shores, the moon was shining amidst a deep blue sky. Around were
grouped a few birch-bark wigwams. My four dogs, now well known and trusty
friends, were holding high carnival over the heads and tails of Chicag's
feast. In one of the wigwams, detached from the rest, sat a very old man
wrapped in a tattered blanket. He was splitting wood into little pieces,
and feeding a small fire in the centre of the lodge, while he chattered
to himself all the time. The place was clean, and as I watched the little
old fellow at his work I decided to make my bed in his lodge. He was no
other than Parisiboy, the medicine-man of the camp, the quaintest little
old savage I had ever encountered. Two small white mongrels alone shared
his wigwam. "See," he said, "I have no one with me but these two dogs."
The curs thus alluded to felt themselves bound to prove that they were
cognizant of the fact by shoving forward their noses one on each side of
old Parisiboy, an impertinence on their part which led to their sudden
expulsion by being pitched headlong out of the door. Parisiboy now
commenced a lengthened exposition of his woes. "His blanket was old and
full of holes, through which the cold found easy entrance. He was a very
great medicine-man, but he was very poor, and tea was a luxury which he
seldom tasted." I put a handful of tea into his little kettle, and his
bright eyes twinkled with delight under their shaggy brows. "I never go
to sleep," he continued; "it is too cold to go to sleep; I sit up all
night splitting wood and smoking and keeping the fire alight; if I had
tea I would never lie down at all." As I made my bed he continued to sing
to himself, chatter and laugh with a peculiar low chuckle, watching me
all the time. His first brew of tea was quickly made; hot and strong, he
poured it into a cup, and drank it with evident delight; then in went
more water on the leaves and down on the fire again went the little
kettle.` But I was not permitted to lie down without interruption. Chicag
headed a deputation of his brethren, and grew loud over the recital of
his grievances. Between the sturgeon and the Company he appeared to think
himself victim, but I was unable to gather whether the balance of
ill-treatment lay on the side of the fish or of the corporation. Finally
I got rid of the lot, and crept into my bag. Parisiboy sat at the other
side of the fire, grinning and chuckling and sipping his tea. All night
long I heard through my fitful sleep his harsh chuckle and his song.
Whenever I opened my eyes, there was the little old man in the same
attitude, crouching over the fire, which he sedulously kept alight. How
many brews of tea he made, I can't say; but when daylight came he was
still at the work, and as I replenished the kettle the old leaves seemed
well-nigh bleached by continued boilings.
That morning I got away from the camp of Chicag, and crossing one arm of
Cedar Lake reached at noon the Mossy Portage. Striking into the cedar
Forest at this point, I quitted for good the Saskatchewan. Just three
Months earlier I had struck its waters at the South Branch, and since
that day fully 1600 miles of travel had carried me far along its shores.
The Mossy Portage is a low swampy ridge dividing the waters of Cedar Lake
from those of Lake Winnipegoosis. From one lake to the other is a
distance of about four miles. Coming from the Cedar Lake the portage is
quite level until it reaches the close vicinity of the Winnipegoosis,
when there is a steep descent of some forty feet to gain the waters of
the latter lake. These two lakes are supposed to lie at almost the same
level, but I shall not be surprised if a closer examination of their
respective heights proves the Cedar to be some thirty feet higher than
its neighbour the Winnipegoosis. The question is one of considerable
interest, as the Mossy Portage will one day or other form the easy line
of communication between the waters of Red River and those of
Saskatchewan.
It was late in the afternoon when we got the dogs on the broad bosom of
Lake Winnipegoosis, whose immense surface spread out south and west until
the sky alone bounded the prospect. But there were many islands scattered
over the sea of ice that lay rolled before us; islands dark with the
pine-trees that covered them, and standing out in strong relief from the
dazzling whiteness amidst which they lay. On one of these islands we
camped, spreading the robes under a large pine-tree and building up a
huge fire from the wrecks of bygone storms. This Lake Winnipegoosis, or
the "Small Sea,'" is a very large expanse of water measuring about 120
miles in length and some 30 in width. Its shores and islands are densely
wooded with the white spruce, the juniper, the banksian pine, and the
black spruce, and as the traveller draws near the southern shores he
beholds again the dwarf white-oak which here reaches its northern limit.
This growth of the oak-tree may be said to mark at present the line
between civilization and savagery. Within the limit of the oak lies the
country of the white man; without lies that Great Lone Land through which
my steps have wandered so far. Descending the Lake Winnipegoosis to Shoal
Lake, I passed across the belt of forest which. Lies between the two
lakes, and emerging again upon Winnipegoosis crossed it in a long day's
journey to the Waterhen River. This river carries the surplus water of
Winnipegosis into the large expanse of Lake Manitoba. For another
hundred miles this lake lays its length towards the south, but here the
pine-trees have vanished, and birch and poplar alone cover the shores.
Along the whole line of the western shores of these lakes the bold ridges
of the Pas, the Porcupine, Duck, and Riding Mountains rise over the
forest-covered swamps which lie immediately along the water. These four
mountain ranges never exceed an elevation of 1600 feet above the sea.
They are wooded to the summits, and long ages ago their rugged cliffs
formed, doubtless, a fitting shore-line to that great lake whose
fresh-water billows were nursed in a space twice larger than even
Superior itself can boast of; but, as has been stated in an earlier
chapter, that inland ocean has long since shrunken into the narrower
limits of Winnipeg, Winnipegoosis, and Manitoba-the Great Sea, the Little
Sea, and the Straits of the God.
I have not dwelt upon the days of travel during which we passed down the
length of these lakes. From the camp of Chicag I had driven my own train
of dogs; with Bear the sole companion of the journey. Nor were these days
on the great lakes by any means the dullest of the journey, Cerf Volant,
Tigre, Cariboo, and Muskeymote gave ample occupation to their driver.
Long before Manitoba was reached they had learnt a new lesson-that men
were not all cruel to dogs in camp or on the road. It is true that in the
learning of that lesson some little difficulty was occasioned by the
sudden loosening and disruption of ideas implanted by generations of
cruelty in the dog-mind of my train. It is true that Muskeymote, in
particular, long held aloof from offers of friendship, and then suddenly
passed from the excess of caution to the extreme of imprudence,
imagining, doubtless, that the millennium had at length arrived, and
that dogs were henceforth no more to haul. But Muskeymote was soon set
right upon that point, and showed no inclination to repeat his mistake.
Then there was Cerf Volant, that most perfect Esquimaux. Cerf Volant
entered readily into friendship, upon an under-standing of an additional
half-fish at supper every evening. No alderman ever loved his turtle
better than did Cerf Volant love his white fish; but I rather think that
the white fish was better earned than the turtle--however we will let
that be matter of opinion. Having satisfied his hunger, which, by the
way, is a luxury only allowed to the hauling-dog once a day, Cerf Volant
would generally establish himself in close proximity to my feet,
frequently on the top of the bag, from which coigne of vantage he would
exchange fierce growls with any dog who had the temerity to approach us.
None of our dogs were harness-eaters, a circumstance that saved us the
nightly trouble of placing harness and cariole in the branches of a tree.
On one or two occasions Muskeymote, however, ate his boots. "Boots!" the
reader will exclaim; "how came Muskeymote to possess boots? We have heard
of a puss in boots, but a dog, that is something new." Nevertheless
Muskeymote had his boots, and ate them, too. This is how a dog is put in
boots. When the day is very cold--I don't mean in your reading of that
word, reader, but in its North-west sense--when the morning, then, comes
very cold, the dogs travel fast, the drivers run to try and restore the
circulation, and noses and cheeks which grow white beneath the bitter
blast are rubbed with snow caught-quickly from the ground without pausing
in the rapid stride; on such mornings, and they are by no means uncommon,
the particles of snow which adhere to the feet of the dog form sharp
icicles between his toes, which grow larger and larger as he travels. A
nowing old hauler will stop every now and then, and tear out these
icicles with his teeth, but a young dog plods wearily along leaving his
footprints in crimson stains upon the snow behind him. When he comes into
camp, he lies down and licks his poor wounded feet, but the rest is only
for a short time, and the next start makes them worse than before. Now
comes the time for boots. The dog-boot is simply a fingerless glove drawn
on over the toes and foot, and tied by a running string of leather round
the wrist or ankle of the animal; the boot itself is either made of
leather or strong white cloth. Thus protected, the dog will travel for
days and days with wounded feet, and get no worse, in fact he will
frequently recover while still on the journey. Now Muskeymote, being a
young dog, had not attained to that degree of wisdom which induces older
dogs to drag the icicles from their toes, and consequently Muskeymote had
to be duly booted every morning--a cold operation it was too, and many a
run had I to make to the fire while it was being performed, holding my
hands into the blaze for a moment and then back again to the dog. Upon
arrival in camp these boots should always be removed from the dogs feet,
and hung up in the smoke of the fire, with moccassins of the men, to dry.
It was on an occasion when this custom had been forgotten that Muskeymote
performed the feat we have already mentioned, of eating his boots.
The night-camps along the lakes were all good ones; it took some time to
clear away the deep snow and to reach the ground, but wood for fire and
young spruce tops for bedding were plenty, and fifteen minutes axe work
sufficed to fell as many trees as our fire needed for night and morning.
From wooded point to wooded point we journeyed on over the frozen lakes;
the snow lying packed into the crevices and uneven places of the ice
formed a compact level surface, upon which the dogs scarce marked the
impress of their feet, and the sleds and cariole bounded briskly after
the train, jumping the little wavelets of hardened snow to the merry
jingling of innumerable bells. On snow such as this dogs will make a run
of forty miles in a day, and keep that pace for many days in succession,
but in the soft snow of the woods or the river thirty miles will form a
fair day's work for continuous travel.
On the night of the 19th of February we made our last camp on the ridge
to the south of Lake Manitoba, fifty miles from Fort Garry. Not without
a feeling of regret was the old work gone through for the last time--the
old work of tree-cutting, and fire-making, and supper-frying, and
dog-feeding. Once more I had reached those confines of civilization on
whose limits four months earlier I had made my first camp on the
shivering Prairie of the Lonely Grave; then the long journey lay before
me, now the unnumbered scenes of nigh 3000 miles of travel were spread
out in that picture which memory sees in the embers of slow-burning
fires, when the night-wind speaks in dreamy tones to the willow branches
and waving grasses. And if there be those among my readers who can il
comprehend such feelings, seeing only in this return the escape from
savagery to civilization--from the wild Indian to the Anglo-American,
from the life of toil and hardship to that of rest and comfort-then words
would be useless to throw light upon the matter, or to better enable
such men to understand that it was possible to look back with keen regret
to the wild days of the forest and the prairie. Natures, no matter how we
may mould them beneath the uniform pressure of the great machine called
civilization, are not all alike, and many men's minds echo in some shape
or other the voice of the Kirghis woman, which says, "Man must keep
moving; for, behold, sun, moon, stars, water, beast, bird, fish, all are
in movement: it is but the dead and the earth that remain in one place."
There are many who have seen a prisoned lark sitting on its perch,
looking listlessly through the bars, from some brick wall against which
its cage was hung; but at times, when the spring comes round, and a bit
of grassy earth is put into the narrow cage, and, in spite of smoke and
mist, the blue sky looks a moment on the foul face of the city, the little
prisoner dreams himself free, and, with eyes fixed on the blue sky
and feet clasping the tiny turf of green sod, he pours forth into the dirty
street those notes which nature taught him in the never-to-be-forgotten
days of boundless freedom. So I have seen an Indian, far down
in Canada, listlessly watching the vista of a broad river whose waters
and whose shores once owned the dominion of his race; and when I told him
of regions where his brothers still built their lodges midst the
wandering herds of the stupendous wilds, far away towards that setting
sun upon 'which his eyes were fixed, there came a change over his
listless look, and when he spoke in answer there was in his voice an echo
from that bygone time when the Five Nations were a mighty power on the
shores of the Great Lakes. Nor are such as these the only prisoners of
our civilization. He who has once tasted the unworded freedom of the
Western wilds must ever feel a sense of constraint within the boundaries
of civilized life. The Russian is not the only man who has the Tartar
close underneath his skin. That Indian idea of the earth being free to
all men catches quick and lasting hold of the imagination--the mind
widens out to grasp the reality of the lone space and cannot shrink again
to suit the requirements of fenced divisions. There is a strange
fascination in the idea, "Wheresoever my horse wanders there is my
home;" stronger perhaps is that thought than any allurement of wealth, or
power, or possession given us by life. Nor can after-time ever wholly
remove it; midst the smoke and hum of cities, midst the prayer of
churches, in street or salon, it needs but little cause to recall again
to the wanderer the image of the immense meadows where, far away at the
portals of the setting sun, lies the Great Lone Land.
It is time to close. It was my lot to shift the scene of life with
curious rapidity. In a shorter space of time than it had taken to
traverse the length of the Saskatchewan, I stood by the banks of that
river whose proud city had just paid the price of conquest in blood and
ruin--yet I witnessed a still heavier ransom than that paid to German
robbers. I saw the blank windows of the Tuileries red with the light of
flames fed from five hundred years of history, and the flagged courtyard
of La Roquette running deep in the blood of Frenchmen spilt by France,
while the common enemy smoked and laughed, leaning on the ramparts of St.
Denis.