Jacques, the French miner.--A fearful abyss.--The Great
Cañon of the Peace River.--We are off on our western
way.--Unfortunate Indians.--A burnt baby.--The moose that
walks.
It was dusk when I reached the ruined hut which stood at the western
end of the portage. My men had long preceded me, and Kalder had supper
ready before the great fireplace. The fire shed its light upon a fourth
figure; it was that of Jacques, the French miner, five feet two inches
in height; miner, trapper, trader, and wanderer since he left his home
in Lorraine, near the war-famous citadel of Belfort, some twenty years
ago.
I brought one piece of news to the hut: it was that although the river
was free from ice opposite our resting-place, and to the end of the
reach in view, yet it was fast closed in for the twenty or thirty miles
which my mountain climb had enabled me to scan. So here in the midst of
the mountains we awaited the disruption of the ice and the opening of
our watery way.
The delay thus occasioned was unexpected, and fell heavily on my supply
of food; but rabbits and partridges were numerous, and Kalder’s gun
proved itself to be a worthy weapon at these denizens of the forest, as
well as at the beaver. On the evening of my arrival at the hut I had
seen two moose drinking on a sand-bar near the mouth of the Cañon, but
the river lay between me and them, and we could find no further trace
of them on the following day.
In one respect the delay was not irksome to me; it gave me an
opportunity of exploring a portion of the Great Cañon, and forming some
idea of the nature of the difficulties and dangers which made it an
impassable chasm for the hardiest _voyageurs_.
On the 29th of April the ice in the upper part of the river broke up,
and came pouring down with great violence for some hours; blocks of ice
many feet in thickness, and weighing several tons, came down the broad
river, crushing against each other, and lining the shore with huge
crystal masses.
The river rose rapidly, and long after dark the grating of the
ice-blocks in the broad channel below told us that the break-up must
be a general one; the current before our hut was running six miles an
hour, and the ice had begun to run early in the afternoon.
All next day the ice continued to run at intervals, but towards evening
it grew less, and at nightfall it had nearly ceased.
During the day I set out to explore the Cañon. Making my way along
the edge of what was, in ages past, the shore of a vast lake, I
gained the summit of a ridge which hung directly over the Cañon.
Through a mass of wrack and tangled forest I held on, guided by the
dull roar of waters until I reached an open space, where a ledge of
rock dipped suddenly into the abyss: on the outer edge of this rock
a few spruce-trees sprung from cleft and fissure, and from beneath,
deep down in the dark chasm, a roar of water floated up into the day
above. Advancing cautiously to the smooth edge of the chasm, I took
hold of a spruce-tree and looked over. Below lay one of those grim
glimpses which the earth holds hidden, save from the eagle and the
mid-day sun. Caught in a dark prison of stupendous cliffs (cliffs which
hollowed out beneath, so that the topmost ledge literally hung over the
boiling abyss of waters), the river foamed and lashed against rock and
precipice, nine hundred feet below me. Like some caged beast that finds
escape impossible on one side, it flew as madly and as vainly against
the other; and then fell back in foam and roar and raging whirlpool.
The rocks at the base held the record of its wrath in great trunks of
trees, and blocks of ice lying piled and smashed in shapeless ruin.
Looking down the Cañon towards the south, a great glen opened from the
west; and the sun, now getting low in the heavens, poured through this
valley a flood of light on red and grey walls of rugged rock; while
half the pine-clad hills lay dark in shade, and half glowed golden
in this level light; and far away, beyond the shadowy chasm and the
sun-lit glen, one great mountain-peak lifted his dazzling crest of snow
high into the blue air of the evening.
There are many indications above the mouth of the Cañon, that the
valley in which our hut stood was once a large lake. The beaches
and terrace levels are distinctly marked, but the barrier fall was
worn down into a rapid, and the Cañon became a slant of water for
some thirty miles. At the entrance the rock is worn smooth and
flat in many places, and huge cisterns have been hollowed in its
surface--“kettles,” as the _voyageur_ calls them--perfectly round, and
holding still the granite boulder which had chiselled them, worn to
the size and roundness of a cannon-ball from ages of revolution. Some
of these kettles are tiny as a tea-cup; others are huge as the tun of
Heidelberg.
When I got back to the hut, night had fallen. At the end of the long
river-reach a new moon hung in the orange-tinted west; the river was
almost clear of ice, and it was resolved to start on the morrow.
There was a certain amount of vagueness in the programme before me. For
seventy miles the course was perfectly clear--there was, in fact, only
one road to follow--but at the end of that distance two paths lay open,
and circumstances could only determine the future route at that point.
If the reader will imagine an immense letter Y laid longitudinally from
west to east, he will have a fair idea of the Peace River above the
Cañon. The tail of the Y will be the seventy miles of river running
directly through the main range of the Rocky Mountains; the right arm
will be the Findlay, having its source 300 miles higher up in that
wilderness of mountains known as the Stickeen; the left arm will be
the Parsnip River, sometimes called by mistake the Peace River, having
its source 260 miles to the south near the waters of the upper Frazer.
Countless lesser streams (some of them, nevertheless, having their 200
miles of life) roll down into these main systems; and it would seem as
though the main channel had, like a skilful general, united all its
widely-scattered forces at the forks, seventy miles above us, before
entering on the gigantic task of piercing the vast barrier of the
central mountains.
Standing on the high ground at the back of the hut in which we awaited
the opening of the great river, and looking westward at the mountains
piled together in endless masses, it was difficult to imagine by
what process a mighty river had cloven asunder this wilderness of
rock,--giving us the singular spectacle of a wide, deep, tranquil
stream flowing through the principal mountain range of the American
continent.
May-day broke in soft showers of rain; the mountains were shrouded in
mist; the breeze was not strong enough to lift the gauze-like vapour
from the tree-tops on the south shore. By nine o’clock the mists began
to drift along the hill-sides; stray peaks came forth through rifts,
then shut themselves up again; until finally the sun drew off the
vapours, and clad mountain and valley in blue and gold.
We loaded the canoe, closed the door of the old shanty, and shoved off
upon our western way. There were four of us and one dog--two miners, my
half-breed Kalder, myself, and Cerf-vola. I had arranged with Jacques
to travel together, and I made him captain of the boat. None knew
better the secrets of the Upper Peace River; for ten years he had
delved its waters with his paddle, and its sand-bars with his miner’s
shovel.
Little Jacques--he was a curious specimen of humanity, and well worth
some study too. I have already said that he was small, but that does
not convey any idea of his real size. I think he was the smallest man I
ever saw--of course I mean a man, and not a dwarf; Jacques had nothing
of the dwarf about him--nay, he was a very giant in skill and craft of
paddle, and pluck and daring. He had lived long upon his own resources,
and had found them equal to most emergencies.
He could set his sails to every shift of fortune, and make some
headway in every wind. In summer he hunted gold; in winter he hunted
furs. He had the largest head of thick bushy hair I ever saw. He
had drawn 3000 dollars’ worth of pure gold out of a sand-pit on the
Ominica River during the preceding summer; he had now a hundred fine
marten-skins, the produce of his winter’s trapping. Jacques was rich,
but all the same, Jacques must work. As I have said, Jacques was a
native of Belfort. Belfort had proved a tough nut for Kaiser William’s
legions; and many a time as I watched this little giant in times of
peril, I thought that with 200,000 little Jacqueses one could fight
big Bismarck’s beery battalions as often as they pleased. Of course
Jacques had a pair of miner’s boots. A miner without a pair of miner’s
boots would be like Hamlet with Hamlet left out. When Jacques donned
these boots, and swung himself out on a huge forest trunk prostrate in
a rapid, and hewed away at the giant to give our canoe a passage, he
looked for all the world like his prototype the giant-killer, and the
boots became the seven-leagued friends of our early days.
How the big axe flew about his little head, until crash went the
monster, and Jacques sprang back to rock or boat as lively as a
squirrel.
He had many queer stories of early days, and could recount with pride
the history of the stirring times he had seen. What miner’s heart does
not soften at the recollection, in these degenerate days, of how the
Vigilants hanged six roughs one morning in the market-place of Frisco,
just two-and-twenty years ago?
We poled and paddled along the shore of the river; now on one side,
now on the other, dodging the heavy floes of ice which still came at
intervals along the current.
In the evening we had gained a spot some twelve miles from the hut,
and we made our camp on a wooded flat set in a wide amphitheatre of
hills. The next morning broke wet and stormy, and we lay in camp
during the early part of the day. Towards mid-day the silence was
broken by the discharge of a gun at the opposite side of the river. We
at once answered it, and soon another report replied to ours. There
were Indians in the vicinity, so we might expect a visit. About an hour
later a most wretched group appeared at our camp. It consisted of two
half-clad women, one of whom carried a baby on her back; a wild-looking
boy, apparently about twelve or fourteen years of age, led the way,
carrying an old gun; two dogs brought up the rear. A glance at the dogs
showed that food, at least, was plentiful in the Indian camp--they were
fat and sleek. If an Indian has a fat dog, you may know that game is
abundant; if the dog is thin, food is scarce; if there be no dog at
all, the Indian is starving, and the dog has been killed and eaten by
his master. But to proceed:--
In a network of tattered blankets and dripping rags, these three
wretched creatures stalked into our camp; they were as wet as if they
had come underneath the river instead of across it; but that seemed
to give them little thought. Jacques understood a few words of what
they said, and the rest was made out by signs;--all the men were sick,
and had been sick for months. This boy and another were alone able to
hunt; but moose were plenty, and starvation had not come to supplement
sickness; the women were “packing” the men.
Reader, what do you imagine that means? I will soon tell you. It means
that when the camp moves--which it does every few days, as the game
gets hunted away from one locality--the women carried the men on their
backs in addition to the household gods. Literally these poor women
carried on their bent backs the house, the clothes, the food, the baby,
and the baby’s father.
What was the disease? They could not tell.
My slender stock of drugs was long since exhausted; I had nothing left
but the pain-killer. I gave them half of my last bottle, and had it
been the golden wealth of the sand-bars of this Peace River itself, it
could not have been more thought of. To add to their misfortunes, the
baby had come to grief about a week previously--it had tumbled head
foremost into the fire. It was now unslung from its mother’s back for
my inspection. Poor little Beaver! its face and head had got a dreadful
burning; but, thanks to mountain air and Indian hardiness, it was
getting all right.
Had I anything to rub on it? A little of the Mal de Raquette
porpoise-oil and pain-killer yet remained, and with such an antidote
the youthful Beaver might henceforth live in the camp-fire.
I know some excellent Christians at home who occasionally bestow
a shilling or a half-crown upon a poor man at a church-door or a
street-crossing, not for the humanity of the act, but just to purchase
that amount of heaven in the next world. I believe they could tell you
to a farthing how much of Paradise they had purchased last week or the
week before. I am not sure that they are quite clear as to whether the
quantity of heaven thus purchased, is regulated by the value set on the
gift by the beggar or by the rich man; but if it be by the value placed
on it by him who gets it, think, my Christian friends, think what a
field for investment does not this wilderness present to you. Your
shilling spent here amongst these Indians will be rated by them at more
than its weight in gold; and a pennyworth of pain-killer might purchase
you a perpetuity of Paradise.
Jacques, an adept in Indian trade, got a large measure of dried moose
meat in exchange for a few plugs of tobacco; and the Indians went away
wet, but happy.
One word more about Indians--and I mean to make it a long word and a
strong word, and perhaps my reader will add, a wrong word; but never
mind, it is meant the other way.
This portion of the Beaver tribe trade to Hudson’s Hope, the fort we
have but lately quitted.
Here is the story of a trade made last summer by “the moose that walks.”
“The moose that walks” arrived at Hudson’s Hope early in the spring. He
was sorely in want of gunpowder and shot, for it was the season when
the beaver leave their winter houses, and when it is easy to shoot
them. So he carried his thirty marten-skins to the fort, to barter them
for shot, powder, and tobacco.
There was no person at the Hope. The dwelling-house was closed, the
store shut up, the man in charge had not yet come up from St. John’s;
now what was to be done? Inside that wooden house lay piles and piles
of all that the walking moose most needed; there was a whole keg of
powder; there were bags of shot and tobacco--there was as much as the
moose could smoke in his whole life.
Through a rent in the parchment window the moose looked at all these
wonderful things, and at the red flannel shirts, and at the four flint
guns, and the spotted cotton handkerchiefs, each worth a sable skin at
one end of the fur trade, half a sixpence at the other. There was tea,
too--tea, that magic medicine before which life’s cares vanished like
snow in spring sunshine.
The moose sat down to think about all these things, but thinking only
made matters worse. He was short of ammunition, therefore he had no
food, and to think of food when one is very hungry is an unsatisfactory
business. It is true that “the moose that walks” had only to walk in
through that parchment window, and help himself till he was tired. But
no, that would not do.
“Ah!” my Christian friend will exclaim, “Ah! yes, the poor Indian had
known the good missionary, and had learnt the lesson of honesty and
respect for his neighbour’s property.”
Yes; he had learnt the lesson of honesty, but his teacher, my friend,
had been other than human. The good missionary had never reached the
Hope of Hudson, nor improved the morals of “the moose that walks.”
But let us go on.
After waiting two days he determined to set off for St. John, two full
days’ travel. He set out, but his heart failed him, and he turned back
again.
At last, on the fourth day he entered the parchment window, leaving
outside his comrade, to whom he jealously denied admittance. Then he
took from the cask of powder three skins’ worth, from the tobacco four
skins’ worth, from the shot the same; and sticking the requisite number
of martens in the powder-barrel and the shot-bag and the tobacco-case,
he hung up his remaining skins on a nail to the credit of his account,
and departed from this El Dorado, this Bank of England of the Red man
in the wilderness, this Hunt and Roskell of Peace River.
And when it was all over he went his way, thinking he had done a very
reprehensible act, and one by no means to be proud of. Poor moose that
walks! in this trade for skins you are but a small item!
Society muffles itself in your toil-won sables in distant cities, while
you starve and die out in the wilderness.
The credit of your twenty skins, hung to the rafter of Hudson’s Hope,
is not a large one; but surely there is a Hope somewhere else, where
your account is kept in golden letters, even though nothing but the
clouds had baptized you, no missionary had cast water on your head, and
God only knows who taught you to be honest.
Let me not be misunderstood in this matter. I believe, gentlemen
missionaries, you mean well by this Indian. I will go further; you
form, I think, almost the only class who would deal fairly by him,
but you go to work in a wrong direction; your mode of proceeding is a
mistake. If you would only be a little more human, and a little less
divine--if you would study the necessities of the savage races amidst
whom you have cast your lot--what good might ye not effect?
This Cree, this Blackfoot, this Chipewyan, this Beaver--what odds is
it, in the name of all goodness, whether he fully understands the
numbered or unnumbered things you tell him. Teach him the simple creed
which you would teach a child. He is starving, and the feast you give
him is of delicate and subtle food, long since compounded from the
brain of schoolman and classicist. He is naked, and you would clothe
him in mysterious raiment and fine tissue, which time has woven out
of the webs of doubt and inquiry. All this will not warm him from the
terrible blast of winter, or shelter him from the drenching rains of
early summer. He has many faults, some virtues, innumerable wants.
Begin with these. Preach against the first; cultivate the second;
relieve as much as possible the third. Make him a good man before you
attempt to make him an indifferent Christian. In a word, do more for
his body; and after a bit, when you have taught him to help his wife
in toil and trouble--to build a house and to live in it--to plant a
few potatoes when the ground thaws, and to hoe them out ere it hardens
again--when you have loosed the bands of starvation, nakedness, and
hardship from the grasp in which they now hold him, then will come the
moment for your books and your higher teaching. And in his hut, with a
well-filled stomach, he will have time to sift truth from falsehood,
amidst all the isms and arians under the guise of which you come to
teach him. But just now he is only a proletarian and an open-arian, and
not much even of these. Meantime I know that you wish well by him. You
are ready to teach him--to tell him about a host of good, and some very
indifferent, persons; but lo! in the middle of your homilies he falls
asleep, and his sleep is the sleep of death. He starves and dies out
before you. Of course I know the old old answer: “He is hopeless; we
have tried everything; we can do nothing.” How often have I not been
told, “He is hopeless; we can do nothing for this Red man!” But will
any person dare to say that men such as this Indian at Hudson’s Hope
are beyond the cure of man? If they be, then your creed must be a poor
weak thing.