The Peace River.--Volcanos.--M. Jean Batiste St. Cyr.--Half
a loaf is better than no bread.--An oasis in the
desert.--Tecumseh and Black Hawk.
It is possible that the majority of my readers have never heard of the
Peace River. The British empire is a large one, and Britons can get
on very well without knowing much of any river, excepting perhaps the
Thames, a knowledge of which, until lately, Londoners easily obtained
by the simple process of smelling. Britannia it is well known rules the
waves, and it would be ridiculous to expect rulers to bother themselves
much about the things which they rule. Perchance, in a score of years
or so, when our lively cousins bring forth their little Alaska Boundary
question, as they have already brought forth their Oregon, Maine, and
San Juan boundary questions, we may pay the Emperor of Morocco, or some
equally enlightened potentate, the compliment of asking him to tell us
whether the Peace River has always been a portion of the British
empire? or whether we knew the meaning of our own language when we
framed the treaty of 1825? Until then, the Peace River may rest in the
limbo of obscurity; and in any case, no matter who should claim it, its
very name must indicate that it was never considered worth fighting
about.
[Illustration: THE VALLEY OF THE PEACE RIVER.]
Nevertheless the Peace River is a large stream of water, and some time
or other may be worth fighting for too. Meantime we will have something
to say about it.
Like most of the streams which form the headwaters of the great
Mackenzie River system, the Peace River has its sources west of the
Chipewyan or Rocky Mountains. Its principal branch springs from a wild
region called the Stickeen, an alpine land almost wholly unknown. There
at a presumed elevation of 6000 feet above the sea level, amidst a vast
variety of mountain peaks, the infant river issues from a lake to begin
its long voyage of 2500 miles to the Arctic Sea.
This region is the birthplace of many rivers, the Yukon, the Liard,
the Peace River, and countless streams issue from this impenetrable
fastness. Situated close to the Pacific shore, at their source, these
rivers nevertheless seek far distant oceans. A huge barrier rises
between them and the nearest coast. The loftiest range of mountains in
North America here finds its culminating point; the coast or cascade
range shoots up its volcanic peaks to nigh 18,000 feet above the
neighbouring waves. Mounts Cri-Hon and St. Elias cast their crimson
greeting far over the gloomy sea, and Ilyamna and Island Corovin catch
up the flames to fling them further to Kamchatka’s fire-bound coast.
The Old World and the New clasp hands of fire across the gloomy
Northern Sea; and amidst ice and flame Asia and America look upon each
other.
Through 300 miles of mountain the Peace River takes its course,
countless creeks and rivers seek its waters; 200 miles from its
source it cleaves the main Rocky Mountain chain through a chasm whose
straight, steep cliffs frown down on the black water through 6000 feet
of dizzy verge. Then it curves into the old ocean bed, of which we have
already spoken, and for 500 miles it flows in a deep, narrow valley,
from 700 to 800 feet below the level of the surrounding plateau. Then
it reaches a lower level, the banks become of moderate elevation,
the country is densely wooded, the large river winds in serpentine
bends through an alluvial valley; the current once so strong becomes
sluggish, until at last it pours itself through a delta of low-lying
drift into the Slave River, and its long course of 1100 miles is ended.
For 900 miles only two interruptions break the even flow of its waters.
A ridge of limestone underlies the whole bed of the river at a point
some 250 miles from its mouth, causing a fall of eight feet with a
short rapid above it. The other obstacle is the mountain cañon on the
outer and lower range of the Rocky Mountains, where a portage of twelve
miles is necessary.
In its course through the main chain of the Rocky Mountains no break
occurs, the current runs silently under the immense precipice as though
it fears to awaken even by a ripple the sleeping giant at whose feet it
creeps.
Still keeping west, we began to ascend the Peace River; we had struck
its banks more than 100 miles above its delta, by making this direct
line across Lac Clair and the intervening ridges.
Peace River does not debouch into Lake Athabasca, but as we have said
into the Slave River some twenty miles below the lake; at high water,
however, it communicates with Athabasca through the canal-like channel
of the Quatre Fourche, and when water is low in Peace River, Athabasca
repays the gift by sending back through the same channel a portion of
her surplus tide.
Since leaving Lac Clair I had endured no little misery; the effects of
that long day’s travel from the river Athabasca had from the outset
been apparent, and each day now further increased them. The muscles of
ancles and instep had become painfully inflamed, to raise the snow-shoe
from the ground was frequently no easy matter, and at last every step
was taken in pain. I could not lie upon my sled because the ground was
rough and broken, and the sled upset at every hill side into the soft
snow; besides there was the fact that the hills were short and steep,
and dogs could not easily have dragged me to the summit. There was
nothing for me but to tramp on in spite of aching ancles.
At the camp I tried my remedies, but all were useless. From
pain-killer, moose fat, laudanum and porpoise oil I concocted a
mixture, which I feel convinced contains a vast fortune for any
enterprising professor in the next century, and which even in these
infant ages of “puffing” might still be made to realize some few
millions of dollars; but nevertheless, my poor puffed foot resisted
every attempt to reduce it to symmetry, or what was more important, to
induce it to resume work.
That sixteen-hour day had inflamed its worst passions, and it had
struck for an “eight-hour movement.” One can afford to laugh over it
all now, but then it was gloomy work enough; to make one step off the
old hidden dog-track of the early winter was to sink instantly into
the soft snow to the depth of three or four feet, and when we camped
at night on the wooded shore, our blankets were laid in a deep furrow
between lofty snow walls, which it had taken us a full hour to scoop
out. At last, after six days of weary travel through ridge and along
river reach, we drew near a house.
Where the little stream called the Red River enters from the south the
wide channel of the Peace River, there stands a small Hudson’s Bay
post. Here, on the evening of the 17th of March, we put in for the
night. At this solitary post dwelt M. Jean Batiste St. Cyr; an old
and faithful follower of the Hudson’s Bay Company. When the powerful
North-West Fur Company became merged into the wealthier but less
enterprising corporation of the Hudson’s Bay, they left behind them
in the North a race of faithful servitors--men drawn in early life
from the best rural _habitans_ of Lower Canada--men worthy of that old
France from which they sprung, a race now almost extinct in the north,
as indeed it is almost all the world over. What we call “the spirit of
the age” is against it; faithful service to powers of earth, or even
to those of Heaven, not being included in the catalogue of virtues
taught in the big school of modern democracy.
From one of this old class of French Canadians, M. Jean Batiste St. Cyr
was descended.
Weary limbs and aching ancles pleaded for delay at this little post,
but advancing spring, and still more the repeated assaults of my
servant and his comrades upon my stock of luxuries, urged movement
as the only means of saving some little portion of those good things
put away for me by my kind host at Chipewyan. It seems positively
ridiculous now, how one could regard the possession of flour and
sugar, of sweet cake and sweet pemmican, as some of the most essential
requisites of life. And yet so it was. With the grocer in the
neighbouring street, and the baker round the corner, we can afford to
look upon flour and sugar as very common-place articles indeed; but if
any person wishes to arrive at a correct notion of their true value in
the philosophy of life let him eliminate them from his daily bill of
fare, and restrict himself solely to moose meat, grease, and milkless
tea. For a day or two he will get on well enough, then he will begin to
ponder long upon bread, cakes, and other kindred subjects; until day
by day he learns to long for bread, then the Bath buns of his earlier
years will float in enchanting visions before him; and like Clive at
the recollection of that treasure-chamber in the Moorshedabad Palace,
he will marvel at the moderation which left untouched a single cake
upon that wondrous counter.
It is not difficult to understand the feelings which influenced a
distant northern Missionary, when upon his return to semi-civilization,
his friends having prepared a feast to bid him welcome, he asked them
to give him bread and nothing else. He had been without it for years,
and his mind had learned to hunger for it more than the body.
My servitor, not content with living as his master lived, was helping
the other rascals to the precious fare. English half-breed, French
ditto, and full Christian Swampy had apparently formed an offensive
and defensive alliance upon the basis of a common rascality, Article
I. of the treaty having reference to the furtive partition of my best
white sugar, flour, and Souchong tea; things which, when they have to
be “portaged” far on men’s shoulders in a savage land, are not usually
deemed fitted for savage stomachs too.
One night’s delay, and again we were on the endless trail; on along
the great silent river, between the rigid bordering pines, amidst the
diamond-shaped islands where the snow lay deep and soft in “shnay” and
“batture,” on out into the long reaches where the wild March winds
swept the river bed, and wrapt isle and shore in clouds of drift.
On the evening of the 19th of March our party drew near a lonely post,
which, from the colour of the waters in the neighbouring stream, bears
the name of Fort Vermilion. The stormy weather had sunk to calm; the
blue sky lay over mingled forest and prairie; far off to the north and
south rose the dark outlines of the Reindeer and Buffalo Mountains;
while coming from the sunset and vanishing into the east, the great
silent river lay prone amidst the wilderness of snow.
A gladsome sight was the little fort, with smoke curling from its
snow-laden roof, its cattle standing deep in comfortable straw-yard,
and its master at the open gateway, waiting to welcome me to his home:
pleasant to any traveller in the wilderness, but doubly so to me, whose
every step was now taken in the dull toil of unremitting pain.
Physicians have termed that fellow-feeling which the hand sometimes
evinces for the hand, and the eye for the eye, by the name of
“sympathy.” It is unfortunate that these ebullitions of affection which
the dual members of our bodies manifest towards each other, should
always result in doubling the amount of pain and inconvenience suffered
by the remainder of the human frame. For a day or two past my right
foot had shown symptoms of sharing the sorrows of its fellow-labourer;
and however gratifying this proof of good feeling should have been, it
was nevertheless accompanied by such an increase of torture that one
could not help wishing for more callous conduct in the presence of Mal
de Raquette.
A day’s journey north of the Peace River at Fort Vermilion, a long line
of hills approaching the altitude of a mountain range stretches from
east to west. At the same distance south lies another range of similar
elevation. The northern range bears the name of the Reindeer; the
southern one that of the Buffalo Mountains. These names nearly mark the
two great divisions of the animal kingdom of Northern America.
It is singular how closely the habits of those two widely differing
animals, the reindeer and the buffalo, approximate to each other. Each
have their treeless prairie, but seek the woods in winter; each have
their woodland species; each separate when the time comes to bring
forth their young; each mass together in their annual migrations. Upon
both the wild man preys in unending hostility. When the long days of
the Arctic summer begin to shine over the wild region of the Barren
Grounds, the reindeer set forth for the low shores of the Northern
Ocean; in the lonely wilds whose shores look out on the Archipelago
where once the ships of England’s explorers struggled midst floe and
pack, and hopeless iceberg, the herds spend the fleeting summer season,
subsisting on the short grass, which for a few weeks changes these
cold, grey shores to softer green.
With the approach of autumn the bands turn south again, and uniting
upon the borders of the barren grounds, spend the winter in the forests
which fringe the shores of the Bear, Great Slave, and Athabascan Lakes.
Thousands are killed by the Indians on this homeward journey; waylaid
in the passes which they usually follow, they fall easy prey to Dog-rib
and Yellow-knife and Chipewyan hunter; and in years of plenty the forts
of the extreme north count by thousands the fat sides of Cariboo, piled
high in their provision stores.
But although the hills to the north and south of Vermilion bore the
names of Reindeer and Buffalo, upon neither of these animals did the
fort depend for its subsistence. The Peace River is the land of the
moose; here this ungainly and most wary animal has made his home, and
winter and summer, hunter and trader, along the whole length of 900
miles, between the Peace and Athabasca, live upon his delicious venison.
Two days passed away at Fort Vermilion; outside the March wind blew
in bitter storm, and drift piled high around wall and palisade. But
within there was rest and quiet, and many an anecdote of time long
passed in the Wild North Land.
Here, at this post of Vermilion, an old veteran spent the winter of
his life; and from his memory the scenes of earlier days came forth
to interest the chance wanderer, whose footsteps had led him to this
lonely post. Few could tell the story of these solitudes better than
this veteran pensioner. He had come to these wilds while the century
was yet in its teens. He had seen Tecumseh in his glory, and Black Hawk
marshal his Sauk warriors, where now the river shores of Illinois wave
in long lines of yellow corn. He had spoken with men who had seen the
gallant La Perouse in Hudson’s Bay, when, for the last time in History,
France flew the _fleur-de-lis_ above the ramparts of an English fort in
this northern land.
The veteran explorers of the Great North had been familiar to his
earlier days, and he could speak of Mackenzie and Frazer and Thompson,
Harmon and Henry, as men whom he had looked on in his boyhood.
For me these glimpses of the bygone time had a strange charm. This
mighty solitude, whose vastness had worn its way into my mind; these
leagues and leagues of straight, tall pines, whose gloomy moan
seemed the voice of 3000 miles of wilderness; these rivers so hushed
and silent, save when the night owl hooted through the twilight; all
this sense of immensity was so impressed on the imagination by recent
travel, that it heightened the rough colouring of the tale which linked
this shadowy land of the present with the still more shadowy region of
the past.
Perhaps at another time, when I too shall rest from travel, it will be
my task to tell the story of these dauntless men; but now, when many a
weary mile lies before me, it is time to hold westward still along the
great Unchagah.
The untiring train was once again put into the moose-skin harness,
after another night of wild storm and blinding drift; and with crack of
whip and call to dog, Vermilion soon lay in the waste behind me.