A Hudson’s Bay Fort.--It comes at last.--News from the
outside world.--Tame and wild Savages.--Lac Clair.--A
treacherous deed.--Harper.
The term “Fort” which so frequently occurs in these pages may perhaps
convey an erroneous impression to the reader’s mind. An imposing array
of rampart and bastion, a loop-holed wall or formidable fortalice may
arise before his mind’s eye as he reads the oft-recurring word. Built
generally upon the lower bank of a large river or lake, but sometimes
perched upon the loftier outer bank, stands the Hudson’s Bay Fort. A
square palisade, ten to twenty feet high, surrounds the buildings; in
the prairie region this defence is stout and lofty, but in the wooded
country it is frequently dispensed with altogether.
Inside the stockade some half-dozen houses are grouped together
in square or oblong form. The house of the Bourgeois and Clerks,
the store wherein are kept the blankets, coloured cloths, guns,
ammunition, bright handkerchiefs, ribbons, beads, &c., the staple
commodities of the Indian trade; another store for furs and peltries,
a building from the beams of which hang myriads of skins worth many a
gold piece in the marts of far-away London city;--martens and minks,
and dark otters, fishers and black foxes, to say nothing of bears and
beavers, and a host of less valuable furs. Then came the houses of the
men.
Lounging at the gate, or on the shore in front, one sees a half-breed
in tasselated cap, or a group of Indians in blanket robes or
dirty-white capôtes; everybody is smoking; the pointed poles of a
wigwam or two rise on either side of the outer palisades, and over
all there is the tapering flag-staff. A horse is in the distant river
meadow. Around the great silent hills stand bare, or fringed with
jagged pine tops, and some few hundred yards away on either side, a
rude cross or wooden railing blown over by the tempest, discoloured by
rain or snow-drift, marks the lonely resting-place of the dead.
Wild, desolate and remote are these isolated trading spots, yet it is
difficult to describe the feelings with which one beholds them across
some ice-bound lake, or silent river as the dog trains wind slowly
amidst the snow. Coming in from the wilderness, from the wrack of
tempest, and the bitter cold, wearied with long marches, footsore or
frozen, one looks upon the wooden house as some palace of rest and
contentment.
I doubt if it be possible to know more acute comfort, for its measure
is exactly the measure of that other extremity of discomfort which
excessive cold and hardship have carried with them. Nor does that
feeling of home and contentment lose aught for want of a welcome at the
threshold of the lonely resting-place. Nothing is held too good for the
wayfarer; the best bed and the best supper are his. He has, perhaps,
brought letters or messages from long absent friends, or he comes with
news of the outside world; but be he the bearer of such things, or only
the chance carrier of his own fortunes, he is still a welcome visitor
to the Hudson’s Bay Fort.
Three days passed away in rest, peace, and plenty. It was nearing
the time when another start would be necessary, for after all, this
Athabascan Fort was scarce a half-way house in my winter journey.
The question of departure was not of itself of consequence, but the
prospect of leaving for a long sojourn in deeper solitudes, without
one word of news from the outside world, without that winter packet
to which we had all looked so long, was something more than a mere
disappointment.
All this time we had been travelling in advance of the winter packet,
and as our track left a smooth road for whatever might succeed us,
we reckoned upon being overtaken at some point of the journey by the
faster travelling express. Such had not been the case, and now three
days had passed since our arrival without a sign of an in-coming
dog-train darkening the expanse of the frozen lake.
The morning of the 9th of March, however, brought a change. Far away
in the hazy drift and “poudre” which hung low upon the surface of
the lake, the figures of two men and one sled of dogs became faintly
visible. Was it only Antoine Tarungeau, a solitary “Freeman” from the
Quatre Fourche, going like a good Christian to his prayers at the
French Mission? Or was it the much-wished-for packet?
It soon declared itself; the dogs were steering for the fort, and not
for the mission. Tarungeau might be an indifferent church member, but
had the whole college of cardinals been lodged at Chipewyan they must
have rejoiced that it was not Tarungeau going to mass, and that it was
the winter packet coming to the fort.
What reading we had on that Sunday afternoon! News from the far-off
busy world; letters from the far-off quiet home; tidings of great men
passed away from the earth; glad news and sorry news, borne through
months of toil 1500 miles over the winter waste.
And now came a short busy time at the fort. A redistribution of the
packet had to be made. On to the north went a train of dogs for the
distant Yukon; on to the west went a train of dogs for the head of
the Peace River. In three days more I made ready to resume my journey
up the Peace River. Once more the sleds were packed, once more the
Untiring Cerf-vola took his place in the leading harness, and the word
“march” was given.
This time I was to be alone. My good friend, whose unvarying kindness
had made an acquaintanceship of a few weeks ripen into a friendship
destined I trust to endure for many years, was no longer to be my
companion.
He came, in company with another officer, some miles of the way, to see
me off; and then at the Quatre Fourche we parted, he to return to his
lonely fort, I to follow across the wide-spreading Lake Mamoway the
long trail to the setting sun.
If the life of the wanderer possesses many moments of keen enjoyment,
so also has it its times of intense loneliness; times when no
excitement is near to raise the spirits, no toil to render thought
impossible; nothing but a dreary, hopeless prospect of labour, which
takes day after day some little portion from that realm of space
lying before him, only to cast it to augment that other dim land of
separation which lies behind him.
Honest Joe Gargery never with his blacksmith hand nailed a sadder truth
upon the wheel of time, than when he defined life to be made up of
“partings welded together.” But in civilization generally when we part
we either look forward to meeting again at some not remote period, or
we have so many varied occupations, or so many friends around us, that
if the partings are welded together, so also are the meetings.
In the lone spaces it is different. The endless landscape, the monotony
of slow travel, the dim vision of what lies before, seen only in the
light of that other dim prospect lying behind; lakes, rivers, plains,
forests, all hushed in the savage sleep of winter;--these things bring
to the wanderer’s mind a sense of loneliness almost as vast as the
waste which lies around him.
On the evening of the 12th of March I camped alone in the wilderness.
Far as eye could reach, on every side, there lay nothing but hard,
drifted snow, and from its surface a few scant willows raised their
dry leafless saplings. True, three or four men were busy scraping the
deep snow from the lee side of some low willow bushes, but they were
alien in every thought and feeling; and we were separated by a gulf
impossible to bridge: so that I was virtually alone. I will not say on
whose side the fault lay, and possibly the admission may only prove a
congeniality of feeling between myself and my train; but, for all that,
I felt a far stronger tie of companionship with the dogs that drew my
load, than for the men with whom I now found myself in company.
They were by no means wild; far from it, they were eminently tame. One
of them was a scoundrel of a very low type, as some of his actions will
hereafter show. In him the wild animal had been long since destroyed,
the tame brute had taken its place.
The man who had been my servant from the Saskatchewan was a French
half-breed; strong, active, and handsome, he was still a sulky,
good-for-nothing fellow. One might as well have tried to make friends
with a fish to which one cast a worm, as with this good-looking,
good-for-nothing man. He had depth sufficient to tell a lie which
might wear the semblance of truth for a day; and cunning enough to
cheat without being caught in the actual fact. I think he was the most
impudent liar I have ever met. The motive which had induced him to
accept service in this long journey was, I believe, a domestic one. He
had run away with a young English half-breed girl, and then ran away
from her. If she had only known the object of her affections as well as
I did, she would have regarded the last feat of activity as a far less
serious evil than the first.
The third man was a Swampy Indian of the class one frequently meets
in the English-speaking settlement on Red River. Taken by himself, he
was negatively good; but placed with others worse than himself, he was
positively bad. He was, however, a fair traveller, and used his dogs
with a degree of care and attention seldom seen amongst the half-breeds.
Small wonder, then, that with these three worthies who, though
strangers, now met upon a base of common rascality, that I should feel
myself more completely alone than if nothing but the waste had spread
around me. Full thirty days of travel must elapse ere the mountains,
that great break to which I looked so long, should raise their snowy
peaks across my pathway.
The lameness of the last day’s travel already gave ominous symptoms of
its presence. The snow was deeper than I had yet seen it; heretofore,
at the longest, the forts lay within five days’ journey of each other;
now there was one gap in which, from one post to the next, must, at the
shortest, be a twelve days’ journey.
At dawn, on the 13th of March, we quitted our burrow in the deep drift
of the willow bushes, and held our way across what was seemingly a
shoreless sea.
The last sand ridge or island top of Lake Athabasca had sunk beneath
the horizon, and as the sun came up, flashing coldly upon the level
desert of snow, there lay around us nought but the dazzling surface of
the frozen lake.
Lac Clair, the scene of our present day’s journey, is in reality an arm
of the Athabasca. Nothing but a formation of mud and drift, submerged
at high summer water, separated it from the larger lake; but its
shores vary much from those of its neighbour, being everywhere low and
marshy, lined with scant willows and destitute of larger timber. Of
its south-western termination but little is known, but it is said to
extend in that direction from the Athabasca for fully seventy miles
into the Birch Hills. Its breadth from north to south would be about
half that distance. It is subject to violent winter storms, accompanied
by dense drift; and from the scarcity of wood along its shores, and the
absence of distinguishing landmarks, it is much dreaded by the winter
_voyageur_.
The prevailing north-east wind of the Lake Athabasca has in fact the
full sweep of 250 miles across Lac Clair. To lose one’s way upon it
would appear to be the first rule of travel amongst the trip-men of
Fort Chipewyan. The last adventure of this kind which had taken place
on its dim expanse had nearly a tragic end.
On the southern shore of the lake three moose had been killed. When
the tidings reached the fort, two men and two sleds of dogs set off
for the “cache;” it was safely found, the meat packed upon the sleds,
and all made ready for the return. Then came the usual storm: dense
and dark the fine snow (dry as dust under the biting cold) swept the
surface of the lake. The sun, which on one of these “poudre” days in
the North seems to exert as much influence upon the war of cold and
storm as some good bishop in the Middle Ages was wont to exercise
over the belligerents at Cressy or Poictiers, when, as it is stated,
“He withdrew to a neighbouring eminence, and there remained during
the combat;”--the sun, I say, for a time, seemed to protest, by his
presence, against the whole thing, but then finding all protests
equally disregarded by the wind and cold, he muffled himself up in the
nearest cloud and went fast asleep until the fight was over.
For a time the men held their way across the lake; then the dogs
became bewildered; the leading driver turned to his companion, and
telling him to drive both trains, he strode on in front of his dogs to
give a “lead” in the storm.
Driving two trains of loaded dogs is hard work; the second driver could
not keep up, and the man in front deliberately increasing his pace
walked steadily away, leaving his comrade to the mercies of cold and
drift. He did this coward act with the knowledge that his companion had
only three matches in his possession, he having induced him to give up
the rest to Indians whom they had fallen in with.
The man thus abandoned on the dreaded lake was a young Hudson’s Bay
clerk, by no means habituated to the hardships of such a situation. But
it requires little previous experience to know when one is lost. The
dogs soon began to wander, and finally headed for where their instinct
told them lay the shore. When they reached the shore night had fallen,
the wind had gone down, but still the cold was intense; it was the
close of January, the coldest time of the year, when 80° of frost is
no unusual occurrence. At such a time it was no easy matter to light
a fire; the numbed, senseless hands cannot find strength to strike a
match; and many a time had I seen a hardy _voyageur_ fail in his first
attempts with the driest wood, and with full daylight to assist him.
But what chance had the inexperienced hand, with scant willow sticks
for fuel and darkness to deceive him? His wood was partly green, and
one by one his three matches flashed, flickered, and died out.
No fire, no food--alone somewhere on Lac Clair in 40° to 50° below
zero! It was an ugly prospect. Wrapping himself in a blanket, he got
a dog at his feet and lay down. With daylight he was up, and putting
the dogs into harness set out; but he knew not the landmarks, and he
steered heedless of direction. He came at last to a spring of open
water; it was highly charged with sulphur, and hence its resistance to
the cold of winter. Though it was nauseous to the taste he drank deeply
of it; no other spring of water existed in all the wide circle of the
lake.
For four days the wretched man remained at this place; his sole hope
lay in the chance that men would come to look for him from the fort,
but ere that would come about a single night might suffice to terminate
his existence.
These bad nights are bad enough when we have all that food and fuel
can do. Men lose their fingers or their toes sometimes in the hours of
wintry daylight, but here fire there was none, and food without fire
was not to be had. The meat upon the sled had frozen almost as solid as
the stone of a quarry.
He still hoped for relief, but had he known of the conduct of the
ruffian whose desertion had thus brought him to this misery his hope
would have been a faint one.
On the day following his desertion, the deserter appeared at the Quatre
Fourche; he pretended to be astounded that his comrade had not turned
up. On the same evening he reached Fort Chipewyan: he told a plausible
story of having left his companion smoking near a certain spot on the
north side of the lake; on his return to the spot the sleds were gone,
and he at once concluded they had headed for home. Such was his tale.
A search expedition was at once despatched, but acting under the
direction of the scoundrel Harper no trace of the lost man could be
found.
No wonder! for the scene of his desertion lay many miles away to the
south, but the villain wished to give time for cold and hunger to do
their work; not for any gratification of hatred or revenge towards his
late comrade, but simply because “dead men tell no tales.” Upon the
return of this unsuccessful expedition suspicions were aroused; the man
was besought to tell the truth, all would be forgiven him if he now
confessed where it was he had left his companion. He still however
asserted that he had left him on the shore of the lake at a spot marked
by a single willow. Again a search party goes out, but this time under
experienced leadership, and totally disregarding the story of the
deserter.
Far down, near the south shore of the lake, the quick eye of a
French half-breed caught the faint print of a snow-shoe edge on the
hard drifted surface; he followed the clue--another print--and then
another;--soon the shore was reached, and the impress of a human form
found among the willows.
Never doubting for an instant that the next sight would be the frozen
body of the man they sought for (since the fireless camping-place
showed that he was without the means of making a fire), the searchers
went along. They reached the Sulphur Spring, and there, cold, hungry,
but safe, sat the object of their search. Five days had passed, yet he
had not frozen!
If I wished to learn more of the deserter Harper, I had ample
opportunity of doing so. His villainous face formed a prominent object
at my camp fire. He was now the packet bearer to Fort Vermilion on the
Peace River; he was one of the worthies I have already spoken of.
We crossed Lac Clair at a rapid pace, and reached at dusk the
north-western shore; of course we had lost ourselves; but the evening
was calm and clear, and the error was set right by a two-hours’
additional march.
It was piercingly cold when, some time after dark, the shore was
gained; but wood was found by the yellow light of a full moon, and a
good camp made on a swampy island. From here our path lay through the
woods and ridges nearly due west again.
On the fourth day after leaving Fort Chipewyan we gained a sandy ridge
covered with cypress, and saw beneath us a far-stretching valley;
beyond, in the distance to the north and west, the blue ridges of the
Cariboo Mountains closed the prospect. In the valley a broad river lay
in long sweeping curves from west to east.
We were on the banks of the Peace River.