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Etext prepared by Martin Schub <schub@isd.net>
A WOMAN'S WAY THROUGH UNKNOWN LABRADOR
An Account of the Exploration of the Nascaupee and George Rivers
By Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior
Published October 1908
TO
ELLEN VAN DER VOORT HUBBARD
HIS MOTHER, WHOM HE LOVED
AND
LEONIDAS HUBBARD
HIS FATHER, WHO WAS ONE OF
HIS HEROES
PREFACE
This book is the result of a determination on my part to complete
Mr. Hubbard's unfinished work, and having done this to set before
the public a plain statement, not only of my own journey, but of
his as well. For this reason I have included the greater part of
Mr. Hubbard's diary, which he kept during the trip, and which it
will be seen is published exactly as he wrote it, and also George
Elson's account of the last few days together, and his own
subsequent efforts.
I hope that this may go some way towards correcting misleading
accounts of Mr. Hubbard's expedition, which have appeared
elsewhere. It is due also to the memory of my husband that I
should here put on record the fact that my journey with its
results--geographical and otherwise--is the only one over this
region recognised by the geographical authorities of America and
Europe.
The map which is found accompanying this account of the two
journeys sets forth the work I was able to accomplish. It does not
claim to be other than purely pioneer work. I took no observations
for longitude, but obtained a few for latitude, which served as
guiding points in making my map. The controlling points of my
journey [Northwest River post, Lake Michikamau and its outlet, and
the mouth of the George River] were already astronomically fixed.
The route map of the first Hubbard Expedition is from one drawn for
me by George Elson, with the few observations for latitude recorded
by Mr. Hubbard in his diary as guiding points. My husband's maps,
together with other field notes and records, I have not had access
to, as these have never been handed over to me.
Grateful acknowledgment is here made of my indebtedness to Mr.
Herbert L. Bridgman and Mr. Harold T. Ellis for their help and
counsel in my work.
Here, too, I would express my sincere appreciation of the
contribution to the book from Mr. Cabot, who, descendent of the
ancient explorers, is peculiarly well fitted to speak of Labrador.
The great peninsula has been, as he terms it, his "playground," and
by canoe in summer or on snowshoes in winter he has travelled
thousands of miles in the interior, thus placing himself in closest
touch with it.
To Dr. Cluny Macpherson for his generous service I am deeply
grateful.
To George Elson for his loyal devotion to Mr. Hubbard and myself my
debt of gratitude must ever remain unpaid.
To Dr. James E. C. Sawyer, my beloved pastor, I am indebted for the
title of my book.
MINA BENSON HUBBARD
CONTENTS
I. LEONIDAS HUBBARD, JR.
II. SLIPPING AWAY INTO THE WILDERNESS
III. CLIMBING THE RAPIDS
IV. DISASTER WHICH THREATENED DEFEAT
V. TO THE BEND OF THE RIVER
VI. CROSS COUNTRY TO SEAL LAKE WATERS
VII. OFF FOR MICHIRAMAU
VIII. SCARING THE GUIDES
IX. MOUNT HUBBARD AND WINDBOUND LAKE
X. MICHIKAMAU
XI. STORM-BOUND ON MICHIKAMATS
XII. THE MIGRATING CARIBOU
XII. ACROSS THE DIVIDE
XIV. THROUGH THE LAKES OF THE UPPER GEORGE
XV. THE MONTAGNAIS INDIANS
XVI. THE BARREN GROUND PEOPLE
XVII. THE RACE FOR UNGAVA
XVIII. THE RECKONING
DIARY OF LEONIDAS HUBBARD, JR.
NARRATIVE BY GEORGE ELSON
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The Author
Leonidas Hubbard, Jr.
Where Romance Lingers
Deep Ancient Valleys
George Elson
Job
Gilbert
On Into the Wilderness
The Fierce Nascaupee
The White Man's Burden
Making Canoe Poles
Job Was in His Element
Coming Down the Trail with Packs
Washing-Day
On the Trail
In the Heart of the Wilderness
Solitude (Seal Lake)
Joe
Skinning the Caribou
The Fall
Wild Maid Marion
Gertrude Falls
Breakfast on Michikamau
Stormbound
From an Indian Grave
A Bit of the Caribou Country
The Indians' Cache
Bridgman Mountains
The Camp on the Hill
A Montagnais Type
The Montagnais Boy
Nascaupees in Skin Dress
Indian Women and Their Rome
With the Nascaupee Women
The Nascaupee Chief and Men
Nascaupee Little Folk
A North Country Mother and Her Little Ones
Shooting the Rapids,
The Arrival at Ungava
A Bit of the Coast
A Rainy Camp
Working Up Shallow Water
Drying Caribou Meat and Mixing Bannocks
Great Michikamau
Carrying the Canoe Up the Hill on the Portage
Launching
In the Nascaupee Valley
A Rough Country
The French Post at Northwest River
Hudson's Bay Company Post as Northwest River
Night-Gloom Gathers
Map of Eastern Labrador showing Route
A WOMAN'S WAY THROUGH UNKOWN LABRADOR
CHAPTER I
LEONIDAS HUBBARD, JR.
There was an unusual excitement and interest in Mr. Hubbard's face
when he came home one evening in January of 1903.
We had just seated ourselves at the dinner-table, when leaning
forward he handed me a letter to read. It contained the very
pleasing information that we were shortly to receive a, for us,
rather large sum of money. It was good news, but it did not quite
account for Mr. Hubbard's present state of mind, and I looked up
enquiringly.
"You see, Wife, it means that I can take my Labrador trip whether
anyone sends me or not," he said triumphantly.
His eyes glowed and darkened and in his voice was the ring of a
great enthusiasm, for he had seen a Vision, and this trip was a
vital part of his dream.
The dream had begun years ago, when a boy lay out under the apple
trees of a quiet farm in Southern Michigan with elbows resting on
the pages of an old school geography, chin in palms and feet in
air. The book was open at the map of Canada, and there on the
other page were pictures of Indians dressed in skins with war
bonnets on their heads; pictures of white hunters also dressed in
skins, paddling bark canoes; winter pictures of dog-teams and
sledges, the driver on his snow-shoes, his long whip in hand. The
boy would have given all the arrow-heads he had for just one look
at what he saw pictured there.
He was born, this boy, of generations of pioneer ancestors, the
line of his mother's side running back to Flanders of three hundred
years ago, through Michael Paulus Van Der Voort, who came to
America from Dendermonde, East Flanders, and whose marriage on 18th
November, 1640, to Marie Rappelyea, was the fifth recorded marriage
in New Amsterdam, now New York. A branch runs back in England to
John Rogers the martyr. It is the boast of this family that none
of the blood has ever been known to "show the white feather."
Among those ancestors of recent date of whose deeds he was
specially proud, were the great-grandfather, Samuel Rogers, a
pioneer preacher of the Church of Christ among the early settlers
of Kentucky and Missouri, and the Grandfather Hubbard who took his
part in the Indian fights of Ohio's early history. On both
mother's and father's side is a record of brave, high-hearted,
clean-living men and women, strong in Christian faith, lovers of
nature, all of them, and thus partakers in rich measure of that
which ennobles life.
The father, Leonidas Hubbard, had come "'cross country" from
Deerfield, Ohio, with gun on shoulder, when Michigan was still a
wilderness, and had chosen this site for his future home. He had
taught in a school for a time in his young manhood; but the call of
the out-of-doors was too strong, and forth he went again. When the
responsibilities of life made it necessary for him to limit his
wanderings he had halted here; and here on July 12th, 1872, the son
Leonidas Hubbard, Jr., was born.
He began by taking things very much to heart, joys and sorrows
alike. In his play he was always setting himself some
unaccomplishable task, and then flying into a rage because he could
not do it. The first great trouble came with the advent of a baby
sister who, some foolish one told him, would steal from him his
mother's heart. Passionately he implored a big cousin to "take
that little baby out and chop its head off."
Later he found it all a mistake, that his mother's heart was still
his own, and so he was reconciled.
From earliest recollection he had listened with wide eyes through
winter evenings, while over a pan of baldwin apples his father
talked with some neighbour who had dropped in, of the early days
when they had hunted deer and wolves and wild turkeys over this
country where were now the thrifty Michigan farms. There were,
too, his father's stories of his own adventures as hunter and miner
in the mountains of the West.
It seemed to him the time would never come when he would be big
enough to hunt and trap and travel through the forests as his
father had done. He grew so slowly; but the years did pass, and at
last one day the boy almost died of gladness when his father told
him he was big enough now to learn to trap, and that he should have
a lesson tomorrow. It was the first great overwhelming joy.
There was also a first great crime.
While waiting for this happy time to come he had learned to do
other things, among them to throw stones. It was necessary,
however, to be careful what was aimed at. The birds made tempting
marks; but song-birds were sacred things, and temptation had to be
resisted.
One day while he played in the yard with his little sister,
resentment having turned to devotion, a wren flew down to the wood
pile and began its song. It happened at that very moment he had a
stone in his hand. He didn't quite have time to think before the
stone was gone and the bird dropped dead. Dumb with horror the two
gazed at each other. Beyond doubt all he could now expect was to
go straight to torment. After one long look they turned and walked
silently away in opposite directions. Never afterwards did they
mention the incident to each other.
A new life began for him with his trapping. He learned to fish as
well, for besides being a hunter, his father was an angler of
State-wide reputation. The days on which his father accompanied
him along the banks of the St. Joe, or to some more distant stream,
were very specially happy ones. His cup was quite filled full
when, on the day he was twelve years old, a rifle all his own was
placed in his hands. Father and son then hunted together.
While thus growing intimate with the living things of the woods and
streams, his question was not so much "What?" as "Why?" As reading
came to take a larger part in life and interest to reach out to
human beings, again his question was "Why?" So when other heroes
took their places beside his father for their share of homage, they
were loved and honoured for that which prompted their achievements
more than for the deeds themselves.
Passionately fond of history, with its natural accompaniment
geography, he revelled, as does every normal boy, in stories of the
wars, Indian stories and tales of travel and adventure. His
imagination kindled by what he had read, and the oft-repeated tales
of frontier life in which the courage, endurance, and high honour
of his own pioneer forefathers stood out strong and clear, it was
but natural that the boy under the apple trees should feel romance
in every bit of forest, every stream; that his thoughts should be
reaching towards the out-of-the-way places of the earth where life
was still that of the pioneer with the untamed wilderness lying
across his path, and on into the wilderness itself.
Though born with all the instincts of the hunter, he was born also
with an exquisitely tender and sympathetic nature, which made him
do strange things for a boy.
One day a toad hopped into the beeyard and his father was about to
kill it. The boy petitioned for its life and carried it away. It
came back. Again it was carried away. Again it returned and this
time was taken clear to the river.
Once a much loved aunt came to visit at his home bringing the
little sister a beautiful, new doll. That night she trotted off to
bed hugging the new treasure close. The boy did not love dolls;
but when he saw the old, rag baby left lonely and forsaken be
quietly picked it up and carried it to bed with him.
Years afterwards, when on a canoe trip on the Moose River, a
disconsolate looking little Indian dog came and sat shyly watching
us while we broke camp. We learned that the Indian owners had gone
to the bush leaving him to fare as he might through the coming
winter. When our canoe pushed out into the river there was an
extra passenger. We brought him home to Congers, where he
immediately carried consternation into the neighbouring chicken
yards, convinced that he had found the finest partridge country on
earth.
When sixteen the boy went to attend the Angola (Indiana) Normal
School. Here his decision for Christ was made. He was baptized
and united with the Church of Christ. Three years later his
teaching took him to Northern Michigan where be found a wider range
than he had yet known, and in the great pine forests of that
country he did his first real exploring. Here were clear, cold
streams with their trout and grayling, and here, when his work
admitted, he hunted and fished and dreamed out his plans, his
thoughts turning ever more insistently to the big, outside world
where his heroes did their work.
He entered the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1893. High
strung and sensitive, with a driving energy and ambition to have
part in the larger work of the world, be suffered during the early
part of his course all the agonies that come to those of such a
nature while they grope in the dark for that which they are fitted
to do. He reached out in many directions in his effort to provide
the needful money to enable him to take his course, but without a
sense of special fitness in any. It came however with his earliest
attempts in journalistic work. The discovery with its measure of
self-recognition brought a thrill that compensated for all the dark
hours. He now felt assured of success.
His life in the University was one of varied and unceasing
activity. In his studies history, literature, psychology claimed
his special interest. He was an enthusiast in athletics, and found
his field in running and boxing. The contest was as the wine of
life to him. He was active in the literary and debating societies,
and prominent in the Student's Christian Association, attending and
taking part in the work of the local branch of the Church of
Christ. His first newspaper work was done as an amateur on the
college press. Then came assignments from the local dailies and
correspondence for the Detroit papers.
He possessed the "news sense" to an unusual degree, delighting to
take "beats" from under the very feet of his brother reporters.
In 1897 while he was still in Ann Arbor, just before Dr. James B.
Angell, President of the University, left on his mission to Turkey,
a telegram came from a Detroit evening paper directing him to see
Dr. Angell and ask why he had changed his date of sailing.
Dr. Angell was not in the habit of telling reporters what he did
not wish them to know, and when asked the question replied:
"Haven't a word to say. I really don't know anything new at all."
Then with a smile which he fondly believed to be inscrutable, he
remarked: "Why, I don't even know whether I'll go to Turkey or
not."
A few minutes later those last words of the President were reported
over the wires, without the sarcasm and without the smile. That
very evening, in big headlines on the first page, it was announced
that there was some hitch, and that President Angell might not go
as Minister to the Court of the Sultan.
The correspondents of the morning papers hastened to see President
Angell, who insisted that if he had made such a remark it was in
fun. But it was unavailing. The despatch had stirred up the
officials in Washington, and the morning papers that printed the
President's explanation printed over it the official statement,
that the Porte was objecting to Dr. Angell, on account of his close
relationship with the Congregational Missionary Board.
After his graduation in 1897, he took a position on the staff of a
Detroit evening paper. Much of the two years of his newspaper work
there was spent in Lansing covering State politics. In this line
of work lay his chief interest, though he by no means confined
himself to it.
His work made it possible for him to indulge his bent for dipping
into the by-ways of human life. Utterly fearless, resolute,
persistent, there was yet in his manner a beautiful simplicity, a
gentleness and interest that rarely failed to disarm and win
admission where he desired to enter. Added to this equipment were
a fine sense of humour, a subtle sympathy, and a passionate
tenderness for anyone or anything lonely or neglected or in
trouble. So, as only the few do, he learned "Why."
Here amidst the struggles and temptations, the joys and
disappointments, the successes and mistakes of his busy life, one
hero rose surely to a place above all others, a place that was
never usurped--"the man, Christ Jesus," worshipped in the years
that were left, not only as the Redeemer of the world, but as his
ideal hero.
This was his manliest man, so grandly strong and brave, yet so
inexpressibly sweet-spirited and gentle, with a great human heart
that, understanding so wholly, was yet so little understood; that
in the midst of overwhelming work and care and loneliness hungered
for human love and sympathy, giving so generously of its own great
store, receiving so little in return. Here he found the strong
purpose, the indomitable will, the courage that, accepting the hard
things of life, could yet go unfalteringly forward, to the
accomplishment of a great work, even though there was ever before
Him the consciousness that at the end must come the great
sacrifice.
In 1899 he decided to launch out into the wider field, which
journalistic work in the East offered, and in the summer of that
year he came to New York. Many were the predictions of brother
reporters and friends that he would starve in the great city. It
was a struggle. He knew no one, had letters to no one, but that
was rather as he wished it than otherwise. He liked to test his
own fitness. It meant risk, but he knew his own capabilities and
believed in his own resourcefulness. He had thoroughly convinced
himself that the men who achieve are those who do what other men
are afraid to do. The difficulty would be to get an opening. That
done, he had no fear of what would follow.
He began his quest with a capital of less than five dollars. There
were many disappointments, much weariness, and a long fast which
came near to persuading him that his friends' predictions were
perhaps about to be fulfilled. _But he got his opening._
Staggering with weakness, he had lived for two days in momentary
dread of arrest for drunkenness. Then just when it seemed that he
could go no farther, a former acquaintance from the West, of whose
presence in the city he was aware, met him. Among the first
questions was: "Do you need money?" and forthwith a generous
fifteen dollars was placed in his hand. That day one of his
special stories was accepted, and only a few days later he was
taken on the staff of the _Daily News_, where soon the best
assignments of the paper were given him.
Do you know why you are getting the best work to do here?" asked
one of the new friends.
"Why?"
"It's because you're _white_."
This position he retained until May of the following year, meantime
contributing to the editorial page of _The Saturday Evening Post_.
Then an attack of typhoid lost him his position; but he had made
loyal friends, who delighted to come to his aid. Something of the
quality of his own loyalty is expressed in an entry in his diary
shortly after leaving the hospital. "Many good lessons in human
nature. Learned much about who are the real friends, who may be
trusted _to a finish_, who are not _quitters_, but it shall not be
written." During the period of his convalescence which he spent
among the Shawangunk Mountains of Sullivan County, New York, he
decided that if it were possible he would not go back to newspaper
work. A friend had sent him a letter of introduction to the editor
of _Outing_, which in August he presented, and was asked to bring
in an article on the preservation of the Adirondack Park as a
national playground. The article proved acceptable, and
thenceforth most of his work was done for that magazine.
In September he wrote his friend, Mr. James A. Leroy.
"MY DEAR JIM,--I think that regardless of your frightful neglect I
shall be obliged to write you another note expressing sense of
under-obligationness to you for that letter. It is the best thing
I've run up against so to speak. As a result of it I am to have
the pleasure of hastening Detroitward. There I shall register at
the House. I shall sit in the window with my feet higher than my
head, and wear a one-hundred-and-fifty-dollar-a-week air of
nonchalance. When the festive Detroit reporter shys past looking
hungrily at the cafe, I'll look at my watch with a wonder-if-it's-
time-to-dress-for-dinner air and fill his soul with envy. This has
been the dream that has haunted me ever since those childhood days
when you and I ate at Spaghetti's and then went to the House to
talk it over. I shall carry out the dire scheme and then--well,
then, if Fate says for me to hustle across the Great Divide, I'll
go with the feeling that life has not been in vain."
Later, January 14th of the following year, to the same friend who
was then in Manila as secretary to Dean Worcester.
"You may think it wondrous strange that I should be here in Canada
in mid-winter when I could as well be south. There is a mystery,
and since you are on the other side of the world I don't mind
telling. I am here on a filibustering expedition. I made a firm
resolution some months ago that a certain portion of Canada should
be annexed to the United States. I am here fostering annexation
sentiment, and have succeeded so well that the consent is
unanimous, and the annexation will occur just as soon as L. H.,
junior, is able to pay board for two, which will probably be a
matter of a few weeks. So don't be surprised if you receive a
square envelope containing an announcement which reads something
like this:
Mr. and Mrs. ______
of Bewdley, Ontario,
announce the ________ of their daughter
___________
to
MR. LEONIDAS HUBBARD, JR.
On his return to New York, a short time later, he was assigned a
trip through the Southern States. Hence a telegram, on January
29th, to a quiet Canadian town. On January 31st a quiet wedding in
a little church in New York, and then five months in the mountains
of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and among the forests and
cotton plantations of Mississippi.
Besides the work done for the magazine on this trip, he gave the
_Atlantic Monthly_ two articles, "The Moonshiner at Home," and
"Barataria: The Ruins of a Pirate Kingdom."
During the fall, winter and early spring, our home was in
Wurtsboro, Sullivan County, New York, a quaint old village in the
beautiful Mamakating valley. Here he hunted and fished and worked,
February found him on a snowshoe trip in Northern Quebec with the
Montagnais Indian trappers, the outcome of which was his "Children
of the Bush."
On April 1st, 1902, he entered the office as assistant editor of
_Outing_. Here was a new field and another opportunity for testing
his fitness. He threw himself into the work with characteristic
energy and enthusiasm, and his influence on the magazine was marked
from the first. He soon succeeded in projecting into it something
of his own passionately human personality. In the fall of that
year a noted angler commented to him on the change in it and his
responsibility.
"When a big salmon comes to the top, there is a great swirl on the
water. You don't see the salmon, but you know he is there," he
said.
Office work left little time for writing; but in the early autumn
of that year a vacation trip to the north shore of Lake Superior
gave him two articles, "Where Romance Lingers," and "Off Days on
Superior's North Shore."
In January 1903 the trip to Labrador was decided on, and his
preparation for it begun. Before the winter was over his plans
were made. On May 13th it was arranged with the magazine that it
should go as an Outing expedition. The preparation held for him
the many difficulties and trials common to such undertakings, but
also, perhaps, more than the usual pleasures.
The big map of Labrador looked back from the wall of the little
study in Congers. We stood before it a long time discussing plans
and possibilities. Then an eager, happy face was turned to me as
he told how he would write the story and how he would have grown
when he came home again.
On June 20th he sailed from New York with his little party.
In January following came that short message, "Mr. Hubbard died
October 18th in the interior of Labrador."
In March were received the letters containing that final record of
his life, which took from the hearts of those who loved him best
the intolerable bitterness, because it told that he had not only
dreamed his dream--_he had attained his Vision._
It was a short, full life journey, and a joyous, undaunted heart
that traversed it. Almost the most beautiful of its attributes was
the joyousness.
He was "glad of Life because it gave him a chance to love and to
work and to play."
He never failed to "look up at the stars."
He thought "every day of Christ."
Sometimes towards evening in dreary November, when the clouds hang
heavy and low, covering all the sky, and the hills are solemn and
sombre, and the wind is cold, and the lake black and sullen, a
break in the dark veil lets through a splash of glorious sunshine.
It is so very beautiful as it falls into the gloom that your breath
draws in quick and you watch it with a thrill. Then you see that
it moves towards you. All at once you are in the midst of it, it
is falling round you and seems to have paused as if it meant to
stay with you and go no farther.
While you revel in this wonderful light that has stopped to enfold
you, suddenly it is not falling round you any more, and you see it
moving steadily on again, out over the marsh with its bordering
evergreens, touching with beauty every place it falls upon, forward
up the valley, unwavering, without pause, till you are holding your
breath as it begins to climb the hills away yonder.
It is gone.
The smoke blue clouds hang lower and heavier, the hills stand more
grimly solemn and sombre, the wind is cold, the lake darker and
more sullen, and the beauty has gone out of the marsh.
Then--then it is night.
But you do not forget the _Light_.
You know it still shines--somewhere.