A _tale_ of warfare.--Dog-sleds.--A missing link.--The North
Sea.--“Winterers.”--Samuel Hearne.
During the three months which had elapsed since his arrival at
the Forks, Cerf-vola had led an idle life; he had led his train
occasionally to Fort à la Corne, or hauled a light sled along the ice
of the frozen rivers, but these were only desultory trips, and his days
had usually passed in peace and plenty.
Perhaps I am wrong in saying peace, for the introduction of several
strange dogs had occasioned much warfare, and although he had
invariably managed to come off victorious, victory was not obtained
without some loss. I have before remarked that he possessed a very
large bushy tail. In time of war this appendage was carried prominently
over his back, something after the manner of the plumes upon casque of
knight in olden times, or the more modern helmet of dragoon in the era
of the Peninsular War.
One day, while he was engaged in a desperate struggle with a bumptious
new-comer, a large ill-conditioned mongrel which had already been
vanquished, seeing his victor fully occupied, deemed it an auspicious
moment for revenge, and springing upon the bushy tail proceeded to
attack it with might and main. The unusual noise brought me to the door
in time to separate the combatants while yet the tail was intact, but
so unlooked for had been the assault that it was found upon examination
to be considerably injured. With the aid of a needle and thread it was
repaired as best we could, Cerf-vola apparently understanding what
the surgical operation meant, for although he indulged in plenty of
uproar at every stitch no attempt at biting was made by him. He was now
however sound in body and in tail, and he tugged away at his load in
blissful ignorance that 1500 miles of labour lay before him.
I know not if my readers are acquainted with the manner in which dogs
are used as draught animals in the great fur regions of the north. A
dog sled is simply two thin oak or birch-wood boards lashed together
with deer-skin thongs: turned up in front like a Norwegian snow shoe,
it runs when light over hard snow or ice with great ease; its length
is about nine feet, its breadth sixteen inches. Along its outer edges
runs a leather lashing, through the loops of which a long leather line
is passed, to hold in its place whatever may be placed upon it. From
the front, close to the turned portion, the traces for draught are
attached. The dogs, usually four in number, stand in tandem fashion,
one before the other, the best dog generally being placed in front, as
“foregoer,” the next best in rear as “steer-dog.” It is the business
of the foregoer to keep the track, however faint it may be on lake or
river. The steer-dog guides the sled, and prevents it from striking or
catching in tree or root. An ordinary load for four dogs weighs from 2
to 400 lbs.; laden with 200 lbs. dogs will travel on anything like a
good track, or on hard snow, about thirty or thirty-five miles in each
day. In deep or soft snow the pace is of necessity slow, and twenty to
twenty-five miles will form a fair day’s work.
If any one should ask what length of time dogs will thus travel day
after day, I refer them to the following chapters, wherein the fortunes
of Cerf-vola and his brethren, starting out to-day on a long journey,
are duly set forth.
Some few miles west of the mission station called Prince Albert I
parted from my friend Captain M----, who thus far had accompanied me.
He was to return to Red River and Canada, _viá_ Cumberland and the
lakes; I to hold my way across the frozen continent to the Pacific.
For many months each day would place a double day’s distance between
us, but we still looked forward to another meeting, even though between
us and that prospect there lay the breadth of all the savage continent.
A couple of days later I reached the Hudson’s Bay Company’s fort of
Carlton, the great rendezvous of the winter packets between north and
south. From north and west several of the leading agents of the fur
company had assembled at Carlton to await the coming of the packet
bearing news from the outer world. From Fort Simpson on the far
Mackenzie, from Fort Chipewyan on the lonely lake Athabasca, from
Edmonton on the Upper Saskatchewan, from Isle à la Crosse, dogs had
drawn the masters of these remote establishments to the central station
on the middle Saskatchewan. But they waited in vain for the arrival of
the packet; with singular punctuality had their various trains arrived
within a few days of each other from starting-points 2000 miles apart;
yet after a few days’ detention these officers felt anxious to set out
once more on their journey, and many a time the hill-side on which the
packet must first appear was scanned by watchers, and all the boasted
second sight and conjuring power of haggard squaw and medicine man was
set at work to discover the whereabouts of the “missing link” between
the realms of civilization and savagery. To me the delay, except for
the exigencies of time and distance, was not irksome. I was in the
society of gentlemen whose lives had been passed in all portions of
the great north, on the frozen shores of Hudson’s Bay, in the mountain
fastnesses of the Chipewyan range, or midst the savage solitudes that
lie where, in long, low-lying capes, and ice-piled promontories, the
shore of America stretches out to meet the waves of the Northern Ocean.
There was one present who in the past seven months had travelled by
horse and canoe, boat and dog train, full 4000 miles; and another,
destined to be my close companion during many weeks, whose matchless
determination and power of endurance had carried him in a single winter
from the Lower Mackenzie River to the banks of the Mississippi.
Here, while we await the winter packet, let me sketch with hasty and
imperfect touch the lives of those who, as the “winterers” of the great
Company of Adventurers trading into Hudson’s Bay, have made their homes
in the wilderness.
Two hundred and sixty-two years ago, a French adventurer under the
banner of Samuel de Champlain wintered with an Indian tribe on the
shores of the Upper Ottawa. In the ensuing spring he returned to
Montreal, recounted his adventures, and became the hero of an hour.
Beyond the country of the Ottawas he described a vast region, and from
the uttermost sources of the Ottawa a large river ran towards the north
until it ended in the North Sea. He had been there he said, and on the
shore lay the ribs of an English vessel wrecked, and the skeletons of
English sailors who had been drowned or murdered. His story was a false
one, and ere a year had passed he confessed his duplicity; he had not
been near the North Sea, nor had he seen aught that he described.
Yet was there even more than a germ of truth in his tale of wreck and
disaster, for just one year earlier in this same North Sea, a brave
English sailor had been set adrift in an open boat, with half a dozen
faithful seamen; and of all the dark mysteries of the merciless ocean,
no mystery lies wrapt in deeper shadow than that which hangs over the
fate of Hudson.
But the seventeenth century was not an age when wreck or ruin could
daunt the spirit of discovery. Here in this lonely North Sea, the palm
of adventure belonged not to France alone. Spain might overrun the
rich regions of the tropics, Richelieu (prototype of the great German
chancellor of to-day) might plant the _fleur-de-lis_ along the mighty
St. Lawrence, but the north--the frozen north--must be the land of
English enterprise and English daring. The years that followed the
casting away of the fearless Hudson saw strange vessels coasting the
misty shores of that weird sea; at first, to seek through its bergs
and ice floes, its dreary cloud-wrapt fiords and inlets, a passage to
the land where ceaseless sunshine glinted on the spice-scented shores
of fabulous Cathay; and later on, to trade with the savages who clad
themselves in skins, which the fairest favourites of Whitehall or
the Louvre (by a strange extreme wherein savagery joined hands with
civilization) would be proud to wrap round their snowy shoulders.
Prosecuted at first by desultory and chance adventurers, this trade in
furs soon took definite form and became a branch of commerce. On the
lonely sea-shores wooden buildings rose along the estuaries of rivers
flowing from an unknown land. These were honoured by the title of fort
or factory, and then the ships sailed back to England ere the autumn
ice had closed upon the waters; while behind in Rupert’s Fort, York
Factory, Churchill, or Albany (names which tell the political history
of their day), stayed the agents, or “winterers,” whose work it was to
face for a long season of hardship, famine, and disease, a climate so
rigorous that not unfrequently, when the returning vessel rose upon
the distant sea line, scarce half the eyes that had seen her vanish
were there to watch her return. And they had other foes to contend
with. Over the height of land, away by the great lakes, and along the
forest shores of the St. Lawrence, the adventurers of another nation
had long been busy at the mingled work of conquest and traffic. The
rival Sultans of France and England could, midst the more pressing
cares of their respective harems, find time occasionally to scribble
“Henri” or “Charles” at the foot of a parchment scroll which gave a
continent to a company; it little mattered whether Spaniard, Frenchman,
or Briton had first bestowed the gift, the rival claimants might fight
for the possession as they pleased. The geography of this New World was
uncertain, and where Florida ended or Canada began was not matter of
much consequence. But the great cardinal, like the great chancellor,
was not likely to err in the matter of boundaries. “If there should be
any doubt about the parts, we can take the whole,” was probably as good
a maxim then as now; and accordingly we find at one sweep the whole
northern continent, from Florida to the Arctic Circle, handed over to a
company of which the priest-soldier was the moving spirit.
Thus began the long strife between France and England in North
America,--a strife which only ended under the walls of Quebec. The
story of their bravery, their endurance, their constancy, their
heroism, has been woven into deathless history by a master-hand.[1]
To France belongs the glory of the Great West--not the less her glory
because the sun has set for ever upon her empire. Nothing remains
to her. Promontory or lonely isle, name of sea-washed cape, or
silent lake, half mistily tells of her former dominion. In the deep
recesses of some north-western lake or river-reach the echoes still
waken to the notes of some old French _chanson_, as the half Indian
_voyageur_, ignorant of all save the sound, dips his glistening paddle
to the cadence of his song. But of all that Cartier and Champlain, De
Monts, La Salle, Marquette, Frontenac, and Montcalm lived and died
for--nothing more remains.
[1] Francis Parkman.
Poor France! In the New World and in the Old history owes thee much.
Yet in both hast thou paid the full measure of thy people’s wrong.
But to return. The seventeenth century had not closed ere the sea
of Hudson became the theatre of strife, the wooden palisades of the
factories were battered or burnt down; and one fine day in August,
1697, a loud cannonade boomed over the sullen waters, and before the
long summer twilight had closed, the “Hampshire,” with her fifty-two
guns on high poop or lofty forecastle, lay deep beneath the icy sea,
her consorts the Frenchman’s prize. Nor had she gone down before a foe
more powerful, but to the single frigate of Le Moyne d’Iberville, a
child of Old and New France, the boldest rover that e’er went forth
upon the Northern Seas. Some fifteen years later France resigned her
claim to these sterile shores. Blenheim, Ramilies, Oudenarde, and
Malplaquet had given to England the sole possession of the frozen north.
And now for nigh seventy years the English Company pursued unmolested
its trade along the coast. A strong fort, not of wood and lath and
stockade, but of hard English brick and native granite hewn by English
hands, rose near the estuary of the Churchill River. To this fort the
natives came annually along the English river bearing skins gathered
far inland, along the shores of the Lake of the Hills, and the borders
of the great river of the north.
With these natives wandered back an Englishman named Samuel Hearne; he
reached the Lake Athabasca, and on all sides he heard of large rivers,
some coming from south and west, others flowing to the remotest north.
He wandered on from tribe to tribe, reacted a great lake, descended a
great river to the north, and saw at last the Arctic Sea.
Slowly did the Fur Company establish itself in the interior. It was
easier to let the natives bring down the rich furs to the coast than
to seek them in these friendless regions. But at last a subtle rival
appeared on the scene; the story of the North-West Fur Company has
often been told, and in another place we have painted the effects
of that conflict; here it is enough to say that when in 1822 the
north-west became merged into the older corporation, posts or forts had
been scattered throughout the entire continent, and that henceforth
from Oregon to Ungava, from Mingan to the Mackenzie, the countless
tribes knew but one lord and master, the Company of Adventurers from
England trading into Hudson’s Bay.
What in the meantime was the work of those wintering agents whose homes
were made in the wilderness? God knows their lives were hard. They
came generally from the remote isles or highlands of Scotland, they
left home young, and the mind tires when it thinks upon the remoteness
of many of their fur stations. Dreary and monotonous beyond words was
their home life, and hardship was its rule. To travel on foot 1000
miles in winter’s darkest time, to live upon the coarsest food, to see
nought of bread or sugar for long months, to lie down at night under
the freezing branches, to feel cold such as Englishmen in England
cannot even comprehend, often to starve, always to dwell in exile
from the great world. Such was the routine of their lives. The names
of these northern posts tell the story of their toil. “Resolution,”
“Providence,” “Good Hope,” “Enterprise,” “Reliance,” “Confidence;” such
were the titles given to these little forts on the distant Mackenzie,
or the desolate shores of the great Slave Lake. Who can tell what
memories of early days in the far away Scottish isles, or Highland
glen, must have come to these men as the tempest swept the stunted
pine-forest, and wrack and drift hurled across the frozen lake--when
the dawn and the dusk, separated by only a few hours’ daylight, closed
into the long, dark night. Perchance the savage scene was lost in a
dreamy vision of some lonely Scottish loch, some Druid mound in far
away Lewis, some vista of a fireside, when storm howled and waves ran
high upon the beach of Stornoway.