Down The Peace River.
We had now to descend the river, and our first night in the boats
was a bad one. A small but exceedingly diligent variety of mosquito
attacked us unprepared; but no ordinary net could have kept them
out, anyway. It was a case of heroic endurance, for Beelzebub
reigned. The immediate bank of the river was now somewhat low
in places, and along it ran a continuous wall, or layer, of
sandstone of a uniform height. The stream was vast, with many
islands in its course, and whole forests of burnt timber were
passed before we reached Battle River, 170 miles down, and which,
on the 25th, we left behind us towards evening. Next morning we
reached Wolverine Point, a dismal hamlet of six or seven cabins,
with a graveyard in their midst. The majority of the half-breeds
of the locality had collected here, the others being out hunting.
This is a good farming country. Eighteen miles north-west of
Paddle River there is a prairie, we were told, of rich black
soil, twenty-five miles long and from one to five miles wide,
and another south-west of Wolverine, about nine miles in
diameter and thirty-six in circumference--clean prairie and
good soil, and covered with luxuriant grass and pea-vine. The
latter, I think, is watered by a stream called "The Keg," or
"Keg of Rum." Wolverine is also a region of heavy spruce timber,
and fish are abundant in the various streams which join the Peace
River, though not in the Peace itself.
We were now approaching Vermilion, the banks of the river constantly
decreasing in height as we descended, until they became quite low.
Beneath a waning moon in the south, and an exquisite array of gold
and scarlet clouds in the east, which dyed the whole river a
delicate red, we floated down to the hamlet of Vermilion. The
place proved to be a rather extensive settlement, with yellow
wheat-fields and much cattle, for it is a fine hay country. The
pioneer Canadians at Vermilion were the Lawrence family, which has
been settled there for over twenty years. They were original
residents of Shefford County, Eastern Townships, and set out from
Montreal for Peace River in April, 1879, making the journey to
Vermilion, by way of Fort Carlton, Isle a la Crosse and Fort McMurray,
in four months and some ten days. The elder Mr. Lawrence had been
engaged under Bishop Bompas to conduct a mission school at Chipewyan,
but after a time removed to Vermilion, where he organized another
school, which he conducted until 1891. He then resigned, and began
farming on his own account, and, by and by, with great pains and
expense, brought in a flour mill, whose operation stimulated
settlement, and speedily reduced the price of flour from $25 to $8
a sack. Unfortunately, this useful mill was burnt in April preceding
our visit. The yield of grain, moreover, most of it wheat, was
estimated at 10,000 bushels, and the turning of the mill was
therefore not only a great loss to Mr. Lawrence, but a severe blow
to the place. The population interested in farming was estimated
at about three hundred souls, thus forming the nucleus of a very
promising settlement, now, of course, at its wits' end for gristing.
Vermilion seemed to be a very favourable supply point in starting
other settlements, being in touch by water with Loon River, Hay
River, and other points east and north, where there is abundance
of excellent land. For the present, and pending railway development,
it was plain that the great and pressing requirement of the region
was a good waggon road by way of Wahpoośkow to Athabasca Landing,
a distance of three hundred miles, thus avoiding the dangerous
rapids of the Athabasca, or the long detour by way of Lesser Slave
Lake, and making communication easy in winter time.
From Mr. Erastus Lawrence, the head of the family, we got definite
information regarding the region and its prospects for agriculture.
We spent Sunday at his comfortable home, and examined his farm
carefully. In front of the house was a field of wheat, 110 acres
in extent, as fine a field as we had ever seen anywhere, and of
this they had not had a failure, he said, during all their farming
experience, the return never falling below fourteen bushels to the
acre, in the worst of years, twenty-five being about the average
yield. They sowed late in April, but reaped generally about the 15th
of August. They had never, he said, been seriously injured by frost
since 1884, and in fact no frost had occurred to injure wheat since
1887. There was abundance of hay, and 10,000 head of stock, he
believed, could be raised at that very point. Many hogs were raised,
with great profit, bacon and pork being, of course, high-priced. One
of the sons, Mr. E. H. Lawrence, said he had raised sixteen pigs,
which at eighteen months dressed 370 pounds apiece. At that time
there were about 500 head of cattle, 250 horses, and 200 pigs in the
settlement.
After service at the Reverend Mr. Scott's neat little church,
we returned to Mr. Lawrence's, and enjoyed an excellent dinner,
including home-cured ham, fresh eggs, butter and cream. That was
a notable Sunday for us in the wilds, and seldom to be repeated.
Strange to say, we found the true locust here, our old Red River
pest, which had quartered itself on the settlement more than once.
I examined numbers of them, and found the scarlet egg of the
ichneumon fly under many of the shards. No one seemed to know
exactly how they came, whether in flight or otherwise; but there
they were, devouring some barley, but living mainly upon grass,
which they seemed to prefer to grain. They had appeared nine years
before our coming, and disappeared, and then, three years before,
had come again.
We found quarters in a large building at the fort, which was in
charge of Mr. Wilson, whose wife was a daughter of my old friend,
Chief-factor Clarke, of Prince Albert, her brother having charge
of the trading store. The post is a substantial one, and the
store large, well stocked, and evidently the headquarters of an
extensive trade. At such posts, which have generally a fringe
of settlement, the Company's officers and their families, though,
of course, cut off from the outer world, lead, if somewhat
monotonous, by no means irksome lives. Books, music, cards and
dances serve to while away spare time, and an occasional wedding,
lasting, as it generally does, for several days, stirs the little
community to its core. But sport, in a region abounding with game
of all kinds, is the great time-killer, giving the longed-for
excitement, and contributing as well to the daily bill of fare the
very choicest of human food. Such a life is indeed to be envied
rather than commiserated, and we met with few, if any, who cared to
leave it. But such posts are the "plums" of the service, and are few
and far between. At many of the solitary outposts life has a very
different colour. ["At an outpost," says Mr. Bleasdell Cameron,
"where a clerk is alone with his Indian servant, the life is
wearisome to a degree, and privation not infrequently adds to the
hardship of it. Supplies may run short, and in any case he is
expected to stock himself with fish, taken in nets from the lake,
near which his post is situated, for his table and his dogs, as well
as to augment his larder by the expert and diligent use of his gun.
Rare instances have occurred where, through accident, supplies had
not reached the far-out posts for which they were intended, and the
men had literally died of starvation. Out of a York boat's crew,
which was taking up the annual supplies for a post far up among
the Rocky Mountains, on a branch of the Mackenzie River, two or
three men were drowned, and the ice beginning to take, the boat was
obliged to put back to the district headquarters. The three men
at the outpost were left for some weeks without the supplies, and
when, after winter had set in, and it became possible to reach them
with dog trains, and provisions were at length sent them, two were
found dead in the post, while the third man was living by himself in
a small hut some distance from the fort buildings. The explanation
he gave was that he had removed to where there was a chance of
keeping himself alive by snaring rabbits, which were more plentiful
than at the post. But a suggestion of cannibalism surrounded the
affair, for only the bones of his companions were found, and they
were in the open chimney-place. Nothing was done, however, and I
myself saw the survivor many times in after years."]
At dinner Mr. Wilson told us of a very curious circumstance the
previous fall, at the Loon River, some eighty miles south of
Vermilion--something, indeed, that very much resembled volcanic
action. Indians hunting there were surprised by a great shower of
ashes all over the country, thick enough to track moose by, whilst
others in canoes were bewildered in dense clouds of smoke. Dr. Wade,
a traveller who had just come in from Loon River, said he had
discovered three orifices, or "wells," as he called them, out of
which he thought the ashes might have been ejected. As there were
no forest fires to account for the phenomena, they were rather
puzzling.
We had begun taking depositions almost as soon as we arrived, and
had a very busy time, working late and early in order to get away
by the first of August. There were some interesting people here,
"Old Lizotte" and his wife in particular. He was another of the
"Ancient Mariners" who had left Lachine fifty-five years before
with Governor Simpson--a man still of unshaken nerve and muscles
as hard as iron. One by one these old voyageurs are passing away,
and with them and their immediate successors the tradition
perishes.
There was another character on the Vermilion stage, namely, old
King Beaulieu. His father was a half-breed who had been brought
up amongst the Dog Ribs and Copper Indians, and some eighty years
back had served as an interpreter at Fort Chipewyan. It was he
who at Fort Wedderburne sketched for Franklin with charcoal on
the floor the route to the Coppermine River, the sketch being
completed to and along the coast by Black Meat, an old Chipewyan
Indian. King Beaulieu himself was Warburton Pike's right-hand man
in his trip to the Barren Lands. He had his own story, of course,
about the sportsman, which we utterly discredited. He had joined
the Indian Treaty here, but repented, almost flinging his payment
in our face, and demanding scrip instead. One of his sons asked
me if the law against killing buffalo had not come to an end. I
said, "No! the law is stricter than ever--very dangerous now to kill
buffalo." Asking him what he thought the band numbered, he said,
"About six hundred," and added, "What are we poor half-breeds to
do if we cannot shoot them?" Pointing out the abundance of moose
in the country, and that if they shot the buffalo they would soon
be exterminated, he still grumbled, and repeated, "What are we
poor half-breeds to do?" I have no doubt whatever that they do
shoot them, since the band is reported to have diminished to about
250 head. Immediate steps should certainly be taken to punish and
prevent poaching, or this band, the only really wild one on the
continent, will soon be extinct.
We were now on our boats again, and heading for the Chutes, as they
are called, the one obstruction to the navigation of Peace River
for over six hundred miles. We debarked at the head of the rapids
above the Grand Fall, and walked to their foot along a shelving
and slippery portage, skirting the very edge of the torrent. The
Crees call this Meátina Poẃistik--"The Real Rapid"--the cataract
farther on being the Nepegabaḱetik--"Where the Water Falls."
Returning to the "Decharge," I ran the rapids with Cyr and Baptiste
in one of the boats, a glorious sensation, reminding one, though
shorter, of the Grand Rapids of the Saskatchewan, the waves being
great, and the danger spiced by the tremendous vortex ahead. The
rapids are about four hundred yards in length, and extend quite
across the river, which is here of an immense width. A heavy but
brief rainstorm had set in, and it was some time before we could
reload and drop down to the head of the "Chaudiere," if I may call
it so, for the vortex much resembles the "Big Kettle" at Ottawa.
That night we spent in the York boat, its keel on the rocks and
painter tied to a tree, and, lulled by the roar of the cataract,
slept soundly until morning.
These falls cut somewhat diagonally across the river, the vortex
being at the right bank, and close in-shore, concentred by a limestone
shelf extending to the bank, flanked on the left, and at an acute
angle, by a deeply-indented reef of rock. Looking up the river,
the view to the west seems inclosed by a long line of trees, which,
in the distance, appear to stand in the water. Thence the vast
stream sweeps boldly into the south, and with a rush discharges
down the rapids, and straight over the line of precipice, in a
vast tumultuous greyish-drab torrent which speedily emerges into
comparatively still water below. The rock here is an exceedingly
hard, mottled limestone, resembling the stone at St. Andrew's
Rapids on Red River. Where exposed it is pitted or bitten into
by the endless action of wind and water, and lies in thick layers,
forming an irregular dyke all along the shore, over the surface
of which passes the portage, some forty yards in length. Though
short, it is a nasty one, running along a shelf of rock into which
great gaps have been gored by the torrent. Large quantities of
driftwood were stuck in the rapids above, and a big pile of it
had lodged at the south angle of the cataract, over which our
boats had to be drawn, and dropped down, with great care and
difficulty. A rounded, tall island lies, or rather stands, below
the falls, towards the north shore, whose sheer escarpments and
densely wooded top are very curious and striking. Two sister
islands and another above the falls, all four being about a mile
apart, stand in line with each other, as if they had once formed
parts of an ancient marge, and, below the falls, the torrent
has wrought out a sort of bay from the rock, the bank, which
is high here, giving that night upon its grassy slope, overhung
with dense pine woods, a picturesque camp to our boatmen.
The vast river, the rapids and the falls form a majestic picture,
not only of material grandeur, but of power to be utilized some
day in the service of man. Though formidable, they will yet
be surmounted by modern locks; and should Smith's Rapids, on
the Great Slave River, be overcome by canalling, there would
then be developed one of the longest lines of inland navigation
on the continent.
The Red River, which joins the Peace about twenty-five miles below
the Chutes, flows from the south with a course, it was said, of
about two hundred miles, and up this beautiful stream there are
extensive prairies. The soil is very rich at the confluence, and
we noticed that in the garden at the little Hudson's Bay Company's
post, where we transacted our business, vegetables and potatoes
were further advanced than at Vermilion, and some ears of wheat
were almost ripe. From statements made we judged this to be a
region well worth special investigation; it was, in fact, one
of the most inviting points for settlement we had seen on our
journey.
Following down the Peace, some shoaly places were met with in the
afternoon, the banks being low, sandy and uniform, with open woods
to the south. The current was stately, but so slow that oars had
often to be used. A chilly sunset was followed by an exceedingly
brilliant display of Northern Lights, called by the Crees Pahkugh́
ka Neématchik--"The Dance of the Spirits." This generally presages
change; but the day was fine, and next morning we passed what
are called the Lower Rapids, below which the banks are lined by
precipitous walls of limestone, the river narrowing to less than
half of its previous width.
Landing at Peace Point, the traditional scene of the peace between
the Beavers and the Chipewyans, or between the Beavers and the
Crees, as Mackenzie says, or all three, we found it to be a wide
and beautiful table-like prairie, begirt with aspens, on which we
flushed a pack of prairie chickens. Below it, and looking upward
beyond an island, a line of timber, fringed along the water's
edge with willows, sweeps across the view, met half-way by a wall
of Devonian rock, whose alternate glitter and shade, in the strong
sunshine streaming from the east, seemed almost spectral.
The heavily timbered island added to the effect, and, with a patch
of limestone on its cheek, formed a strikingly beautiful foreground.
The only exciting incident of the day was the vigorous chase, by some
of the party, of an old pair of moulting gray geese with their young,
all, of course, unable to fly. It was pitiful to watch the clever
and fearless actions of the old birds as decoys, falling victims,
at last, to parental love. Indeed, they were not worth eating, and
to kill them was a sin. But when were there ever scruples over
food on Peace River, that theatre of mighty feats of gormandism?
I have already hinted at those masterpieces of voracity for which
the region is renowned; yet the undoubted facts related around our
camp-fires, and otherwise, a few of which follow, almost beggar
belief. Mr. Young, of our party, an old Hudson's Bay officer, knew
of sixteen trackers who, in a few days, consumed eight bears, two
moose, two bags of pemmican, two sacks of flour, and three sacks of
potatoes. Bishop Grouard vouched for four men eating a reindeer at
a sitting. Our friend, Mr. d'Eschambault, once gave Oskinnéqu--"The
Young Man"--six pounds of pemmican, who ate it all at a meal, washing
it down with a gallon of tea, and then complained that he had not had
enough. Sir George Simpson states that at Athabasca Lake, in 1820, he
was one of a party of twelve who ate twenty-two geese and three ducks
at a single meal. But, as he says, they had been three whole days
without food. The Saskatchewan folk, however, known of old as the
Gens de Blaireaux--"The People of the Badger Holes"--were not behind
their congeners. That man of weight and might, our old friend,
Chief-factor Belanger--drowned, alas, many years ago with young
Simpson at Sea Falls--once served out to thirteen men a sack of
pemmican weighing ninety pounds. It was enough for three days; but,
there and then, they sat down and consumed it all at a single meal,
not, it must be added, without some subsequent and just pangs of
indigestion. Mr. B. having occasion to pass the place of eating, and
finding the sack of pemmican, as he supposed, in his path, gave it
a kick; but, to his amazement, it bounded aloft several yards, and
then lit. It was empty! When it is remembered that, in the old
buffalo days, the daily ration per head at the Company's prairie
posts was eight pounds of fresh meat, which was all eaten, its
equivalent being two pounds of pemmican, the enormity of this
Gargantuan feast may be imagined. But we ourselves were not bad
hands at the trencher. In fact, we were always hungry. So I do not
reproduce the foregoing facts as a reproach, but rather as a meagre
tribute to the prowess of the great of old--the men of unbounded
stomach!
On the afternoon of the 4th we rounded Point Providence, the soil
exposures sandy, the timber dense but slender, and early next
morning reached the Quatre Fourches, which was at that time flowing
into Lake Athabasca. It is simply a waterway of some thirty miles
in length, which connects Peace River with the lake, and resembles,
in size and colour, Red River in Manitoba. It is one of "the
rivers that turn"--so called from their reversing their current
at different stages of water. A small stream of this kind connects
the South Saskatchewan with the Qu'Appelle, and another, a navigable
river, the Lower Saskatchewan with Cumberland Lake. The Quatre
Fourches is thus both an inlet and an outlet, but not of the lake
in a right sense. The real outlet is the Rocher River, which joins
the Peace River at the intersection of latitude 59 with the 111.30th
degree of longitude, beyond which the united streams are called
the Great Slave River.
The Quatre Fourches--"The Four Forks"--gets its name from the
junction of a channel which connects a small lake called the Mamawee
with the south-west angle of Lake Athabasca, Fort Chipewyan being
situated on an opposite shore upon an arm of the lake, here about
six miles wide. The stream is sluggish, and is thickly wooded to the
water's edge, with here and there an exposure of red granite. It is
a very beautiful stream, and it was a pleasure to get out of the
great river and its oppressive vastness into the familiar-looking,
homely water, its eastern rocks and exquisite curves and bends.
Rounding a point, we came upon a camp of Chipewyans drying fish and
making birch-bark canoes, all of them fat, dirty, like ourselves,
and happy; and, passing on, at dusk we reached the outlet and the
lake.
It was blowing hard, but we decided to cross to the fort, where
a light had been run up for our guidance, and which, by vigorous
rowing, we reached by midnight. Here Mr. Laird was waiting to
receive us, the other Commissioners having departed for Fort
McMurray and Wahpoośkow.
Next morning we saw the lake to better advantage. It is called by
the Chipewyans Kaytaylaýtooway, namely, "The Lake of the Marsh,"
corresponding to the Athapuskow of the Crees, corrupted into the
Rabasca of the French voyageurs, and meaning "The Lake of the Reeds."
At one time, it may be mentioned, it was also known as "The Lake
of the Hills," and its great tributary, the Athabasca, was the Elk
River; but these names have not survived.