Still westward.--The dangers of the ice.--We enter the
main range.--In the mountains.--A grizzly.--Tho death
of the moose.--Peace River Pass.--Pete Toy.--The
Ominica.--“Travellers” at home.
We held our way up the river, fighting many a battle with the current.
Round the points the stream ran strong, and our canoe was a big,
lumbering affair, hollowed out of a single cotton-wood tree by Jacques,
years before on the Fraser River, and ill-adapted to the ice, which was
our most dangerous enemy. Many a near shave we had of being crushed
under its heavy floes as we coasted along beneath their impending
masses. When the river breaks up, portions of it stronger than the rest
remain still frozen. At the back of these the floating ice jams, and
the river rises rapidly behind the barrier thus flung across it. Then
the pack gives way, and the pent-up waters rapidly lower. But along the
shore, on either side, the huge blocks of ice lie stranded, heaped one
upon another, and the water, still falling, brushes off from beneath
the projecting pieces, leaving a steep wall of ice, sometimes twenty
and thirty feet, brightly rising above the water. Along these impending
masses we had to steer our canoe, and hazardous work it was, for every
now and again some huge fragment, many tons in weight, would slide
from its high resting-place, and crash into the river with a roar of
thunder, driving the billows before it half-way across the wide river,
and making our hearts jump half as much again.
At one point where the river ran with unusual velocity we battled long
beneath a very high ice-wall. Once or twice the current carried us
against its sides. We dared not touch it with our poles, for it hung by
a thread, so far did its summit project over our heads.
Gently we stole our way up from beneath it, and were still within
thirty yards of it when the great boulder, looming high, crashed into
the river.
On the fourth day we got clear of this shore ice, and drew near the
main range of the mountains. But there was one important question which
experience soon told me there was no cause for anxiety about--it was
the question of food.
Game was abundant; the lower hills were thickly stocked with blue
grouse--a noble bird, weighing between three and four pounds.
The bays of the river held beaver, swimming through the driftwood, and
ere we had reached the mountain gate a moose had fallen to my trusty
smooth-bore, in one of the grassy glens between the river and the snowy
range. It was literally a hunter’s paradise. This was the worst time of
the year, except for beaver, but necessity knows no game law, and the
wilderness at all times must feed its wanderers.
We usually camped a couple of hours before sun-down, for in this
northern land the daylight was more than long enough to stiffen our
shoulders, and make our arms ache from pole or paddle. Then came the
time to stretch one’s legs over these great grassy uplands, so steep,
yet so free of rock; so full of projecting point and lofty promontory,
beneath which the river lay in long silvery reaches, while around on
every side the mountains in masses of rock and snow, lay like giant
sentinels, guarding the great road which Nature had hewn through their
midst.
At the entrance to the main range, the valley of the river is about two
miles wide. The river itself preserves its general width of 250 to 300
yards with singular uniformity. The reaches are from one to three miles
in length, the banks are dry, the lower beaches are level and well
wooded, and the current becomes deeper and less rapid.
On the 8th of May we reached, early in the morning, the entrance to the
main range. A short rapid marks it, a rapid easy to run at all stages
of water, and up which we towed our canoe, carrying the more perishable
articles to save them from the spray--a precaution which was, however,
not necessary, as no water was shipped.
We were now in the mountains. From the low terrace along the shore they
rose in stupendous masses; their lower ridges clothed in forests of
huge spruce, poplar, and birch; their middle heights covered in dense
thickets of spruce alone; their summits cut into a thousand varied
peaks, bare of all vegetation, but bearing aloft into the sunshine 8000
feet above us the glittering crowns of snow which, when evening stilled
the breezes, shone reflected in the quiet waters, vast and motionless.
Wonderful things to look at are these white peaks, perched up so high
above our world. They belong to us, yet they are not of us. The eagle
links them to the earth; the cloud carries to them the message of the
sky; the ocean sends them her tempest; the air rolls her thunders
beneath their brows, and launches her lightnings from their sides; the
sun sends them his first greeting, and leaves them his latest kiss. Yet
motionless they keep their crowns of snow, their glacier crests of
jewels, and dwell among the stars heedless of time or tempest.
[Illustration: MOUNT GARNET WOLSELEY AND THE PEACE RIVER.]
For two days we journeyed through this vast valley, along a wide,
beautiful river, tranquil as a lake, and bearing on its bosom, at
intervals, small isles of green forest. Now and again a beaver rippled
the placid surface, or a bear appeared upon a rocky point for a moment,
looked at the strange lonely craft, stretched out his long snout to
sniff the gale, and then vanished in the forest shore. For the rest all
was stillness; forest, isle, river and mountain--all seemed to sleep
in unending loneliness; and our poles grating against the rocky shore,
or a shot at some quick-diving beaver, alone broke the silence; while
the echo, dying away in the vast mountain cañons, made the relapsing
silence seem more intense.
Thus we journeyed on. On the evening of the 8th of May we emerged from
the pass, and saw beyond the extremity of a long reach of river a
mountain range running north and south, distant about thirty miles from
us. To the right and left the Rocky Mountains opened out, leaving the
river to follow its course through a long forest valley of considerable
width.
We had passed the Rocky Mountains, and the range before us was the
central mountain system of North British Columbia.
It was a very beautiful evening; the tops of the birch-trees were
already showing their light green leaves amidst the dark foliage of the
spruce and firs.
Along the shore, where we landed, the tracks of a very large grizzly
bear were imprinted freshly in the sand. I put a couple of bullets
into my gun and started up the river, with Cerf-vola for a companion.
I had got about a mile from the camp when, a few hundred yards ahead,
a large dark animal emerged from the forest, and made his way through
some lower brushwood towards the river. Could it be the grizzly? I lay
down on the sand-bank, and pulled the dog down beside me. The large
black animal walked out upon the sand-bar two or three hundred yards
above me. He proved to be a moose on his way to swim the river to the
south shore. I lay still until he had got so far on his way that return
to the forest would have been impracticable; then I sprang to my feet
and ran towards him. What a spring he gave across the sand and down
into the water! Making an allowance for the force of the current, I
ran towards the shore. It was a couple of hundred yards from me, and
when I gained it the moose was already three-parts across the river,
almost abreast where I stood, swimming for his very life, with his huge
unshapen head thrust out along the surface, the ears thrown forward,
while the large ripples rolled from before his chest as he clove his
way through the water.
It was a long shot for a rifle, doubly so for a smooth-bore; but old
experience in many lands, where the smooth-bore holds its own despite
all other weapons, had told me that when you do get a gun to throw a
bullet well, you may rely upon it for distances supposed to be far
beyond the possibilities of such a weapon; so, in a tenth of the time
it has taken me to say all this, I gave the moose the right barrel,
aiming just about his long ears. There was a single plunge in the
water; the giant head went down, and all was quiet. And now to secure
the quarry. Away down stream he floated, showing only one small black
speck above the surface; he was near the far side, too. Running down
shore I came within calling-distance of the camp, from which the smoke
of Kalder’s fire was already curling above the tree-tops. Out came
Kalder, Jacques, and A----. Of course it was a grizzly, and all the
broken flint-guns of the party were suddenly called into requisition.
If it had been a grizzly, and that I had been retiring before him
in skirmishing order, gods! what a support I was falling back upon!
A----‘s gun is already familiar to the reader; Kalder’s beaver-gun
went off about one shot in three; and Jacques possessed a weapon
(it had been discarded by an Indian, and Jacques had resuscitated it
out of the store of all trades which he possessed an inkling of) the
most extraordinary I had ever seen. Jacques always spoke of it in the
feminine gender. “She was a good gun, except that a trifle too much of
the powder came out the wrong way. He would back her to shoot ‘plum’
if she would only go off after a reasonable lapse of time, but it was
tiring to him to keep her to the shoulder for a couple of minutes
after he had pulled her trigger, and then to have her go off when he
was thinking of pulling the gun-coat over her again.” When she was put
away in the canoe, it was always a matter of some moment to place her
so that in the event of any sudden explosion of her pent-up wrath, she
might discharge herself harmlessly along the river, and on this account
she generally lay like a stern-chaser projecting from behind Jacques,
and endangering only his paddle.
All these maimed and mutilated weapons were now brought forth, and such
a loading and priming and hammering began, that, had it really been
a grizzly, he must have been utterly scared out of all semblance of
attack.
Kalder now mastered the position of affairs, and like an arrow he and
Jacques were into the canoe, and out after the dead moose. They soon
overhauled him, and, slipping a line over the young antlers, towed
him to the shore. We were unable to lift him altogether out of the
water, so we cut him up as he lay, stranded like a whale.
[Illustration: CUTTING UP THE MOOSE.]
Directly opposite a huge cone mountain rose up some eight or nine
thousand feet above us, and just ere evening fell over the scene, his
topmost peak, glowing white in the sunlight, became mirror’d in most
faithful semblance in the clear quiet river, while the life-stream
of the moose flowed out over the tranquil surface, dyeing the nearer
waters into brilliant crimson.
If some painter in the exuberance of his genius had put upon canvas
such a strange contrast of colours, people would have said it is not
true to nature; but nature has many truths, and it takes many a long
day, and not a few years’ toil, to catch a tenth of them. And, my dear
friend with the eye-glass--you who know all about nature in a gallery
and with a catalogue--you may take my word for it.
And now, ere quitting, probably for ever, this grand Peace River
Pass--this immense valley which receives in its bosom so many other
valleys, into whose depths I only caught a moment’s glimpse as we
floated by their outlets--let me say one other word about it.
Since I left the Wild North Land, it has been my lot to visit the
chief points of interest in Oregon, California, the Vale of Shasta, and
the Yosemite. Shasta is a loftier mountain than any that frown above
the Peace River Pass. Yosemite can boast its half-dozen waterfalls,
trickling down their thousand feet of rock; but for wild beauty, for
the singular spectacle of a great river flowing tranquilly through a
stupendous mountain range,--these mountains presenting at every reach a
hundred varied aspects,--not the dizzy glory of Shasta nor the rampart
precipices of Yosemite can vie with that lonely gorge far away on the
great Unchagah.
On the 9th of May we reached the Forks of the river, where the two main
streams of the Parsnip and the Findlay came together. A couple of miles
from their junction a second small rapid occurs; but, like the first
one, it can be run without difficulty.
Around the point of junction the country is low and marshy, and when we
turned into the Findlay, it was easy to perceive from the colour of the
water that the river was rising rapidly.
Some miles above the Forks there is a solitary hut on the south bank of
the river. In this hut dwelt Pete Toy, a miner of vast repute in the
northern mining country.
Some ten years ago Pete had paddled his canoe into these lonely
waters. As he went, he prospected the various bars. Suddenly he struck
one of surpassing richness. It yielded one dollar to the bucket, or one
hundred dollars a day to a man’s work. Pete was astonished; he laid up
his canoe, built this hut, and claimed the bar as his property. For a
long time it yielded a steady return; but even gold has a limit--the
bar became exhausted. Where had all his gold come from?
Ah, that is the question! Even to-day, though the bank has been washed
year after year, “it is still rich in colour;” but the “pay-dirt” lies
too far from the water’s edge, hence the labour is too great.
Well, Pete, the Cornish miner, built his hut and took out his gold; but
that did not satisfy him. What miner ever yet was satisfied? Pete went
in for fifty things; he traded with the Indians, he trapped, he took
an Indian wife; yet, through all, he maintained a character for being
as honest and as straightforward a miner as ever found “a colour” from
Mexico to Cariboo.
My little friend Jacques expected to meet his old brother miner Pete at
his hut; but, as we came within five miles of it, a beaver swam across
the river. We all fired at him, and when the smoke had vanished, I
heard Jacques mutter, “Pete’s not hereabouts, or that fellow wouldn’t
be there.” He was right, for, when we reached the hut an hour later,
we found a notice on the door, saying that Pete and two friends had
departed for the Ominica just six days earlier, being totally out of
all food, and having only their guns to rely upon. Now this fact of
Pete’s absence rendered necessary new arrangements, for here the two
courses I have already alluded to lay open--either to turn south, along
the Parsnip; or north and west, along the Findlay and Ominica.
The current of the Parsnip is regular; that of the Ominica is wild and
rapid. But the Parsnip was already rising, and at its spring level it
is almost an impossibility to ascend it, owing to its great depth;
while the Ominica, though difficult and dangerous in its cañons, is
nevertheless possible of ascent, even in its worst stage of water.
I talked the matter over with Jacques, as we sat camped on the gold-bar
opposite Pete Toy’s house. Fortunately we had ample supplies of meat;
but some luxuries, such as tea and sugar, were getting dangerously low,
and flour was almost exhausted. I decided upon trying the Ominica.
About noon, on the 10th of May, we set out for the Ominica, with high
hopes of finding the river still low enough to allow us to ascend it.
Ten miles above Toy’s hut the Ominica enters the Peace River from the
south-west. We reached its mouth on the morning of the 11th, and
found it high and rapid. There was hard work in store for us, and the
difficulties of passing the Great Cañon loomed ominously big. We pushed
on, however, and that night reached a spot where the river issued from
a large gap in a high wall of dark rock. Above, on the summit of this
rock, pine-trees projected over the river. We were at the door of the
Ominica cañon. The warm weather of last week had done its work, and
the water rushed from the gate of the cañon in a wild and impetuous
torrent. We looked a moment at the grim gate which we had to storm on
the morrow, and then put in to the north shore, where, under broad and
lofty pines, we made our beds for the night.
The Findlay River, as it is called, after the fur-trader, who first
ascended it, has many large tributaries. It is something like a huge
right hand spread out over the country, of which the middle finger
would be the main river, and the thumb the Ominica. There is the North
Fork, which closely hugs the main Rocky Mountain range. There is the
Findlay itself, a magnificent river, flowing from a vast labyrinth of
mountains, and being unchanged in size or apparent volume, 120 miles
above the Forks we had lately left. At that distance it issues from a
cañon similar to that at whose mouth we are now camped; and there is
the second South Fork, a river something smaller than the Ominica, from
whose mouth it is distant about a hundred miles.
Of these rivers nothing is known. These few items are the result of
chance information picked up from the solitary miner who penetrated
to this cañon’s mouth, and from the reports which a wandering band
of Sickanies give of the vast unknown interior of the region of the
Stickeen. And yet it is all British territory. It abounds with game;
its scenery is as wild as mountain peak and gloomy cañon can make it;
it is free from fever or malaria. In it Nature has locked up some of
her richest treasures--treasures which are open to any strong, stout
heart who will venture to grasp them.
I know not how it is, but sometimes it seems to me that this England of
ours is living on a bygone reputation; the sinew is there without the
soul!
It is so easy to be a traveller in an easy chair--to lay out a map and
run one’s finger over it and say, “This river is the true source of the
Hunky-dorum, and that lake finds its outlet in the Rumtifoozle;” and it
is equally easy, particularly after our comfortable dinner at the club,
to stroll over to the meeting of the Society for the Preservation of
Sticklebacks in Tahitian Seas, and to prove to the fashionable audience
there assembled, that a stickleback was the original progenitor of the
human race.
Our modern Briton can be a traveller without any trouble. He is a
member of “the Club,” and on the strength of his membership he can
criticize “that fellow Burton,” or “that queer fish Palgrave,” and
prove to you how, if that “poor devil” Hayward had tried the Chittral
Pass instead of the Palmirsteppe, “he would never have come to grief,
you know.”
I know one or two excellent idiots, who fancy they are wits because
they belong to the Garrick. It is quite as easy to be a traveller by
simply belonging to a Travellers’ Club.
Now all this would be a very harmless pastime, if something more
serious did not lie behind it; just as the mania to dress ourselves
in uniform and carry a rifle through the streets, would also be a
very harmless, if a very useless, pastime, if a graver question did
not again lie hidden beneath “our noble Volunteers;” but the club
traveller and the club soldier are not content with the _rôle_ of
lounging mediocrity for which nature destined them. They must needs
stand between the spirit of England’s better genius, and England’s real
toilers of the wilds. They must supervise and criticize and catechize,
and generally play the part of Fuz-buz to the detriment of everything
which redounds to the true spirit of England’s honour in the fair field
of travel and discovery.
Let there be no mistake in this matter. To those veterans who
still stand above the waves of time, living monuments of England’s
heroism, in Arctic ice or Africa’s sun, we owe all honour and love
and veneration. They are the old soldiers of an army, passed from the
world, and when Time sums up the record of their service here below, it
will be but to hand up the roll to the Tribunal of the Future.
But it is of the younger race of whom we would speak--that race who buy
with gold the right to determine what England shall do, and shall not
do, in the wide field of geographical research; who are responsible
for the wretched exploratory failures of the past few years; who have
allowed the palm of discovery and enterprise to pass away to other
nations, or to alien sons. But if we were to say all we think about
this matter, we might only tire the reader, and stop until doomsday at
the mouth of this Black Cañon of the Ominica.