peoples. A dozen loungers, handsome, careless, graceful with the
inimitable elegance of the half-breed's leisure, chatted, rolled
cigarettes, and surveyed with heavy-eyed indolence such of the town as
could be viewed from the shade in which they lay. Three girls, in whose
dark cheeks glowed a rich French comeliness, were comparing purchases
near the store. A group of rivermen, spike-booted, short-trousered,
reckless of air, with their little round hats over one ear, sat
chair-tilted outside the "hotel." Across the dividing fences of two of
the blazoned gardens a pair of old crones gossiped under their breaths.
Some Indians smoked silently at the edge of one of the docks. In the
distance of the street's end a French priest added the quaintness of
his cassock to the exotic atmosphere of the scene. At once a pack of
the fierce sledge-dogs left their foraging for the offal of the
fisheries, to bound challenging in the direction of poor Deuce. That
highbred animal fruitlessly attempted to combine dignity with a
discretionary lurking between our legs. We made demonstrations with
sticks, and sought out the hotel, for it was about time to eat.
We had supper at a table with three Forest Rangers, two lumber-jacks,
and a cat-like handsome "breed" whose business did not appear. Then we
lit up and strolled about to see what we could see.
On the text of a pair of brass knuckles hanging behind the hotel bar I
embroidered many experiences with the lumberjack. I told of a Wisconsin
town where an enforced wait of five hours enabled me to establish the
proportion of fourteen saloons out of a total of twenty frame
buildings. I descanted craftily on the character of the woodsman out of
the woods and in the right frame of mind for deviltry. I related how
Jack Boyd, irritated beyond endurance at the annoyances of a stranger,
finally with the flat of his hand boxed the man's head so mightily that
he whirled around twice and sat down.
"Now," said Jack softly, "be more careful, my friend, or next time I'll
_hit_ you." Or of a little Irishman who shouted to his friends
about to pull a big man from pounding the life quite out of him, "Let
him alone! let him alone! I may be on top myself in a few minutes!" And
of Dave Walker, who fought to a standstill with his bare fists alone
five men who had sworn to kill him. And again of that doughty knight of
the peavie who, when attacked by an axe, waved aside interference with
the truly dauntless cry, "Leave him be, boys; there's an axe between
us!"
I tried to sketch, too, the drive, wherein a dozen times in an hour
these men face death with a smile or a curse--the raging untamed river,
the fierce rush of the logs, the cool little human beings poising with
a certain contemptuous preciosity on the edge of destruction as they
herd their brutish multitudes.
There was Jimmy, the river boss, who could not swim a stroke, and who
was incontinently swept over a dam and into the boiling back-set of the
eddy below. Three times, gasping, strangling, drowning, he was carried
in the wide swirl of the circle, sometimes under, sometimes on top.
Then his knee touched a sand-bar, and he dragged himself painfully
ashore. He coughed up a quantity of water, and gave vent to his
feelings over a miraculous escape. "Damn it all!" he wailed, "I lost my
peavie!"
"On the Paint River drive one spring," said I, "a jam formed that
extended up river some three miles. The men were working at the breast
of it, some underneath, some on top. After a time the jam apparently
broke, pulled downstream a hundred feet or so, and plugged again. Then
it was seen that only a small section had moved, leaving the main body
still jammed, so that between the two sections lay a narrow stretch of
open water. Into this open water one of the men had fallen. Before he
could recover, the second or tail section of the jam started to pull.
Apparently nothing could prevent him from being crushed. A man called
Sam--I don't know his last name--ran down the tail of the first
section, across the loose logs bobbing in the open water, seized the
victim of the accident by the collar, desperately scaled the face of
the moving jam, and reached the top just as the two sections ground
together with the brutish noise of wrecking timbers. It was a
magnificent rescue. Any but these men of iron would have adjourned for
thanks and congratulations.
"Still retaining his hold on the other man's collar, Sam twisted him
about and delivered a vigorous kick. '_There_, damn you!' said he.
That was all. They fell to work at once to keep the jam moving."
I instanced, too, some of the feats of river-work these men could
perform. Of how Jack Boyd has been known to float twenty miles without
shifting his feet, on a log so small that he carried it to the water on
his shoulder; of how a dozen rivermen, one after the other, would often
go through the chute of a dam standing upright on single logs; of
O'Donnell, who could turn a somersault on a floating pine log; of the
birling matches, wherein two men on a single log try to throw each
other into the river by treading, squirrel fashion, in faster and
faster rotation; of how a riverman and spiked boots and a saw-log can
do more work than an ordinary man with a rowboat.
I do not suppose Dick believed all this--although it was strictly and
literally true--but his imagination was impressed. He gazed with
respect on the group at the far end of the street, where fifteen or
twenty lumber-jacks were interested in some amusement concealed from
us.
"What do you suppose they are doing?" murmured Dick, awestricken.
"Wrestling, or boxing, or gambling, or jumping," said I.
We approached. Gravely, silently, intensely interested, the
cock-hatted, spikeshod, dangerous men were playing--croquet!
The sight was too much for our nerves. We went away.
The permanent inhabitants of the place we discovered to be friendly to
a degree.
The Indian strain was evident in various dilution through all. Dick's
enthusiasm grew steadily until his artistic instincts became
aggressive, and he flatly announced his intention of staying at least
four days for the purpose of making sketches. We talked the matter
over. Finally it was agreed. Deuce and I were to make a wide circle to
the north and west as far as the Hudson's Bay post of Cloche, while
Dick filled his notebook. That night we slept in beds for the first
time.
That is to say, we slept until about three o'clock. Then we became
vaguely conscious, through a haze of drowse--as one becomes conscious
in the pause of a sleeping-car--of voices outside our doors. Some one
said something about its being hardly much use to go to bed. Another
hoped the sheets were not damp. A succession of lights twinkled across
the walls of our room, and were vaguely explained by the coughing of a
steamboat. We sank into oblivion until the calling-bell brought us to
our feet.
I happened to finish my toilet a little before Dick, and so descended
to the sunlight until he might be ready. Roosting on a gray old boulder
ten feet outside the door were two figures that made me want to rub my
eyes.
The older was a square, ruddy-faced man of sixty, with neatly trimmed,
snow-white whiskers. He had on a soft Alpine hat of pearl gray, a
modishly cut gray homespun suit, a tie in which glimmered an opal pin,
wore tan gloves, and had slung over one shoulder by a narrow black
strap a pair of field-glasses.
The younger was a tall and angular young fellow, of an eager and
sophomoric youth. His hair was very light and very smoothly brushed,
his eyes blue and rather near-sighted, his complexion pink, with an
obviously recent and superficial sunburn, and his clothes, from the
white Panama to the broad-soled low shoes, of the latest cut and
material. Instinctively I sought his fraternity pin. He looked as
though he might say "Rah! Rah!" something or other. A camera completed
his outfit.
Tourists! How in the world did they get here? And then I remembered the
twinkle of the lights and the coughing of the steamboat. But what in
time could they be doing here? Picturesque as the place was, it held
nothing to appeal to the Baedeker spirit. I surveyed the pair with some
interest.
"I suppose there is pretty good fishing around here," ventured the
elder.
He evidently took me for an inhabitant. Remembering my faded blue shirt
and my floppy old hat and the red handkerchief about my neck and the
moccasins on my feet, I did not blame him.
"I suppose there are bass among the islands," I replied.
We fell into conversation. I learned that he and his son were from New
York.
He learned, by a final direct question which was most significant of
his not belonging to the country, who I was. By chance he knew my name.
He opened his heart.
"We came down on the _City of Flint_," said he. "My son and I are
on a vacation. We have been as far as the Yellowstone, and thought we
would like to see some of this country. I was assured that on this date
I could make connection with the _North Star_ for the south. I
told the purser of the _Flint_ not to wake us up unless the
_North Star_ was here at the docks. He bundled us off here at
three in the morning. The _North Star_ was not here; it is an
outrage!"
He uttered various threats.
"I thought the _North Star_ was running away south around the
Perry Sound region," I suggested.
"Yes, but she was to begin to-day, June 16, to make this connection."
He produced a railroad folder. "It's in this," he continued.
"Did you go by that thing?" I marvelled.
"Why, of course," said he.
"I forgot you were an American," said I. "You're in Canada now."
He looked his bewilderment, so I hunted up Dick. I detailed the
situation. "He doesn't know the race," I concluded. "Soon he will be
trying to get information out of the agent. Let's be on hand."
We were on hand. The tourist, his face very red, his whiskers very
white and bristly, marched importantly to the agent's office. The
latter comprised also the post-office, the fish depot, and a general
store. The agent was for the moment dickering _in re_ two pounds
of sugar. This transaction took five minutes to the pound. Mr. Tourist
waited. Then he opened up. The agent heard him placidly, as one who
listens to a curious tale.
"What I want to know is, where's that boat?" ended the tourist.
"Couldn't say," replied the agent.
"Aren't you the agent of this company?"
"Sure," replied the agent.
"Then why don't you know something about its business and plans and
intentions?"
"Couldn't say," replied the agent.
"Do you think it would be any good to wait for the _North Star_?
Do you suppose they can be coming? Do you suppose they've altered the
schedule?"
"Couldn't say," replied the agent.
"When is the next boat through here?"
I listened for the answer in trepidation, for I saw that another
"Couldn't say" would cause the red-faced tourist to blow up. To my
relief, the agent merely inquired,--
"North or south?"
"South, of course. I just came from the north. What in the name of
everlasting blazes should I want to go north again for?"
"Couldn't say," replied the agent. "The next boat south gets in next
week, Tuesday or Wednesday."
"Next week!" shrieked the tourist.
"When's the next boat north?" interposed the son.
"To-morrow morning."
"What time?"
"Couldn't say; you'd have to watch for her."
"That's our boat, dad," said the young man.
"But we've just _come_ from there!" snorted his father; "it's
three hundred miles back. It'll put us behind two days. I've got to be
in New York Friday. I've got an engagement." He turned suddenly to the
agent. "Here, I've got to send a telegram."
The agent blinked placidly. "You'll not send it from here. This ain't a
telegraph station."
"Where's the nearest station?"
"Fifteen mile."
Without further parley the old man turned and walked, stiff and
military, from the place. Near the end of the broad walk he met the
usual doddering but amiable oldest inhabitant.
"Fine day," chirped the patriarch in well-meant friendliness. "They
jest brought in a bear cub over to Antoine's. If you'd like to take a
look at him, I'll show you where it is."
The tourist stopped short and glared fiercely.
"Sir," said he, "damn your bear!" Then he strode on, leaving grandpa
staring after him.
In the course of the morning we became quite well acquainted, and he
resigned. The son appeared to take somewhat the humorous view all
through the affair, which must have irritated the old gentleman. They
discussed it rather thoroughly, and finally decided to retrace their
steps for a fresh start over a better-known route. This settled, the
senior seemed to feel relieved of a weight. He even saw and relished
certain funny phases of the incident, though he never ceased to
foretell different kinds of trouble for the company, varying in range
from mere complaints to the most tremendous of damage suits.
He was much interested, finally, in our methods of travel, and then, in
logical sequence, with what he could see about him. He watched
curiously my loading of the canoe, for I had a three-mile stretch of
open water, and the wind was abroad. Deuce's empirical boat wisdom
aroused his admiration. He and his son were both at the shore to see me
off.
Deuce settled himself in the bottom. I lifted the stern from the shore
and gently set it afloat. In a moment I was ready to start.
"Wait a minute! Wait a minute!" suddenly cried the father.
I swirled my paddle back. The old gentleman was hastily fumbling in his
pockets. After an instant he descended to the water's edge.
"Here," said he, "you are a judge of fiction; take this."
It was his steamboat and railway folder.
IX.
ON FLIES.
All the rest of the day I paddled under the frowning cliffs of the hill
ranges. Bold, bare, scarred, seamed with fissures, their precipice
rocks gave the impression of ten thousand feet rather that only so many
hundreds. Late in the afternoon we landed against a formation of
basaltic blocks cut as squarely up and down as a dock, and dropping off
into as deep water. The waves _chug-chug-chugged_ sullenly against
them, and the fringe of a dark pine forest, drawn back from a breadth
of natural grass, lowered across the horizon like a thunder-cloud.
Deuce and I made camp with the uneasy feeling of being under inimical
inspection. A cold wind ruffled lead-like waters. No comfort was in the
prospect, so we retired early. Then it appeared that the coarse grass
of the park had bred innumerable black flies, and that we had our work
cut out for us.
The question of flies--using that, to a woodsman, eminently connotive
word in its wide embracement of mosquitoes, sandflies, deer-flies,
black flies, and midges--is one much mooted in the craft. On no
subject are more widely divergent ideas expressed. One writer claims
that black flies' bites are but the temporary inconvenience of a
pin-prick; another tells of boils lasting a week as the invariable
result of their attentions; a third sweeps aside the whole question as
unimportant to concentrate his anathemas on the musical mosquito; still
a fourth descants on the maddening midge, and is prepared to defend his
claims against the world. A like dogmatic partisanship obtains in the
question of defences. Each and every man possessed of a tongue
wherewith to speak or a pen wherewith to write, heralds the particular
merits of his own fly-dope, head-net, or mosquito-proof tent-lining.
Eager advocates of the advantages of pork fat, kerosene, pine tar,
pennyroyal, oil of cloves, castor oil, lollacapop, or a half hundred
other concoctions, will assure you, tears in eyes, that his is the only
true faith. So many men, so many minds, until the theorist is confused
into doing the most uncomfortable thing possible--that is, to learn by
experience.
As for the truth, it is at once in all of them and in none of them. The
annoyance of after-effects from a sting depends entirely on the
individual's physical makeup. Some people are so poisoned by mosquito
bites that three or four on the forehead suffice to close entirely the
victim's eyes. On others they leave but a small red mark without
swelling. Black flies caused festering sores on one man I accompanied
to the woods. In my own case they leave only a tiny blood-spot the size
of a pin-head, which bothers me not a bit. Midges nearly drove crazy
the same companion of mine, so that finally he jumped into the river,
clothes and all, to get rid of them. Again, merely my own experience
would lead me to regard them as a tremendous nuisance, but one quite
bearable. Indians are less susceptible than whites; nevertheless I have
seen them badly swelled behind the ears from the bites of the big
hardwood mosquito.
You can make up your mind to one thing: from the first warm weather
until August you must expect to cope with insect pests. The black fly
will keep you busy until late afternoon; the midges will swarm you
about sunset; and the mosquito will preserve the tradition after you
have turned in. As for the deer-fly, and others of his piratical breed,
he will bite like a dog at any time.
To me the most annoying species is the mosquito. The black fly is
sometimes most industrious--I have seen trout fishermen come into camp
with the blood literally streaming from their faces--but his great
recommendation is that he holds still to be killed. No frantic slaps,
no waving of arms, no muffled curses. You just place your finger calmly
and firmly on the spot. You get him every time. In this is great,
heart-lifting joy. It may be unholy joy, perhaps even vengeful, but it
leaves the spirit ecstatic. The satisfaction of _murdering_ the
beast that has had the nerve to light on you just as you are reeling in
almost counterbalances the pain of a sting. The midge, again, or
punkie, or "no-see-'um," just as you please, swarms down upon you
suddenly and with commendable vigour, so that you feel as though
red-hot pepper were being sprinkled on your bare skin; and his
invisibility and intangibility are such that you can never tell whether
you have killed him or not; but he doesn't last long, and dope routs
him totally. Your mosquito, however, is such a deliberate brute. He has
in him some of that divine fire which causes a dog to turn around nine
times before lying down.
Whether he is selecting or gloating I do not know, but I do maintain
that the price of your life's blood is often not too great to pay for
the cessation of that hum.
"Eet is not hees bite," said Billy the half-breed to me once--"eet is
hees sing."
I agree with Billy. One mosquito in a tent can keep you awake for
hours.
As to protection, it is varied enough in all conscience, and always
theoretically perfect. A head-net falling well down over your chest, or
even tied under your arm-pits, is at once the simplest and most
fallacious of these theories. It will keep vast numbers of flies out,
to be sure. It will also keep the few adventurous discoverers in, where
you can neither kill nor eject. Likewise you are deprived of your pipe;
and the common homely comfort of spitting on your bait is totally
denied you. The landscape takes on the prismatic colours of refraction,
so that, while you can easily make out red, white, and blue Chinese
dragons and mythological monsters, you are unable to discover the more
welcome succulence, say, of a partridge on a limb. And the end of that
head-net is to be picked to holes by the brush, and finally to be
snatched from you to sapling height, whence your pains will rescue it
only in a useless condition. Probably then you will dance the war-dance
of exasperation on its dismembered remains. Still, there are times--in
case of straight-away river paddling, or open walking, or lengthened
waiting--when the net is a great comfort. And it is easily included in
the pack.
Next in order come the various "dopes." And they are various. From the
stickiest, blackest pastes to the silkiest, suavest oils they range,
through the grades of essence, salve, and cream. Every man has his own
recipe--the infallible. As a general rule, it may be stated that the
thicker kinds last longer and are generally more thoroughly effective,
but the lighter are pleasanter to wear, though requiring more frequent
application. At a pinch, ordinary pork fat is good. The Indians often
make temporary use of the broad caribou leaf, crushing it between their
palms and rubbing the juices on the skin. I know by experience that
this is effective, but very transitory. It is, however, a good thing to
use when resting on the trail, for, by the grace of Providence, flies
are rarely bothersome as long as you are moving at a fair gait.
This does not always hold good, however, any more than the best
fly-dope is always effective. I remember most vividly the first day of
a return journey from the shores of the Hudson Bay. The weather was
rather oppressively close and overcast.
We had paddled a few miles up river from the fur trading-post, and then
had landed in order to lighten the canoe for the ascent against the
current. At that point the forest has already begun to dwindle towards
the Land of Little Sticks, so that often miles and miles of open
muskegs will intervene between groups of the stunted trees. Jim and I
found ourselves a little over waist deep in luxuriant and tangled
grasses that impeded and clogged our every footstep. Never shall I
forget that country--its sad and lonely isolation, its dull lead sky,
its silence, and the closeness of its stifling atmosphere--and never
shall I see it otherwise than as in a dense brown haze, a haze composed
of swarming millions of mosquitoes. There is not the slightest
exaggeration in the statement. At every step new multitudes rushed into
our faces to join the old. At times Jim's back was so covered with them
that they almost overlaid the colour of the cloth. And as near as we
could see, every square foot of the thousands of acres quartered its
hordes.
We doped liberally, but without the slightest apparent effect. Probably
two million squeamish mosquitoes were driven away by the disgust of our
medicaments, but what good did that do us when eight million others
were not so particular? At the last we hung bandanas under our hats,
cut fans of leaves, and stumbled on through a most miserable day until
we could build a smudge at evening.
For smoke is usually a specific. Not always, however: some midges seem
to delight in it. The Indians make a tiny blaze of birch bark and pine
twigs deep in a nest of grass and caribou leaves. When the flame is
well started, they twist the growing vegetation canopy-wise above it.
In that manner they gain a few minutes of dense, acrid smoke, which is
enough for an Indian. A white man, however, needs something more
elaborate.
The chief reason for your initial failure in making an effective smudge
will be that you will not get your fire well started before piling on
the damp smoke-material. It need not be a conflagration, but it should
be bright and glowing, so that the punk birch or maple wood you add
will not smother it entirely. After it is completed, you will not have
to sit coughing in the thick of fumigation, as do many, but only to
leeward and underneath. Your hat used as a fan will eddy the smoke
temporarily into desirable nooks and crevices. I have slept without
annoyance on the Great Plains, where the mosquitoes seem to go in
organized and predatory bands, merely by lying beneath a smudge that
passed at least five feet above me. You will find the frying-pan a
handy brazier for the accommodation of a movable smoke to be
transported to the interior of the tent. And it does not in the least
hurt the frying-pan. These be hints, briefly spoken, out of which at
times you may have to construct elaborate campaigns.
But you come to grapples in the defence of comfort when night
approaches. If you can eat and sleep well, you can stand almost any
hardship. The night's rest is as carefully to be fore-assured as the
food that sustains you. No precaution is too elaborate to certify
unbroken repose. By dark you will discover the peak of your tent to be
liberally speckled with insects of all sorts. Especially is this true
of an evening that threatens rain. Your smudge-pan may drive away the
mosquitoes, but merely stupefies the other varieties. You are forced to
the manipulation of a balsam fan.