The axe had never hurried slow old servant decay. Once in a while we
came across a prostrate trunk lying in the trough of destruction its
fall had occasioned. But the rest of the time we trod a carpet to the
making of which centuries of dead forest warriors had wrapped
themselves in mould and soft moss and gentle dissolution. Sometimes a
faint rounded shell of former fair proportion swelled above the level,
to crumble to punkwood at the lightest touch of our feet. Or, again,
the simulacrum of a tree trunk would bravely oppose our path, only to
melt away into nothing, like the opposing phantoms of Aeneas, when we
placed a knee against it for the surmounting.
If the pine woods be characterized by cathedral solemnity, and the
cedars and tamaracks by certain horrifical gloom, and the popples by a
silvery sunshine, and the berry-clearings by grateful heat and the
homely manner of familiar birds, then the great hardwood must be known
as the dwelling-place of transparent shadows, of cool green lucency,
and the repository of immemorial cheerful forest tradition which the
traveller can hear of, but which he is never permitted actually to
know.
[Illustration: IN THIS LOVABLE MYSTERY WE JOURNEYED ALL THE REST OF
THAT MORNING.]
In this lovable mystery we journeyed all the rest of that morning. The
packs were heavy with the first day's weight, and we were tired from
our climb; but the deep physical joy of going on and ever on into
unknown valleys, down a long, gentle slope that must lead somewhere,
through things animate and things of an almost animate life, opening
silently before us to give us passage, and closing as silently behind
us after we had passed--these made us forget our aches and fatigues for
the moment.
At noon we boiled tea near a little spring of clear, cold water. As yet
we had no opportunity of seeing farther than the closing in of many
trees. We were, as far as external appearances went, no more advanced
than our first resting-place after surmounting the ridge. This effect
is constant in the great forests. You are in a treadmill--though a
pleasant one withal. Your camp of to-day differs only in non-essentials
from that of yesterday, and your camp of to-morrow will probably be
almost exactly like to-day's. Only when you reach your objective point
do you come to a full realization that you have not been the Sisyphus
of the Red Gods.
Deuce returning from exploration brought indubitable evidence of
porcupines. We picked the barbed little weapons from his face and nose
and tongue with much difficulty for ourselves and much pain for Deuce.
We offered consolation by voicing for his dumbness his undoubted
intention to avoid all future porcupines. Then we took up the afternoon
tramp.
Now at last through the trees appeared the gleam of water. Tawabinisáy
had said that Kawágama was the only lake in its district. We therefore
became quite excited at this sapphire promise. Our packs were thrown
aside, and like school-boys we raced down the declivity to the shore.
XIV.
ON WALKING THROUGH THE WOODS.
We found ourselves peering through the thicket at a little reed and
grass grown body of water a few acres in extent. A short detour to the
right led us to an outlet--a brook of width and dash that convinced us
the little pond was only a stopping-place in the stream, and not a
headwater as we had at first imagined. Then a nearer approach led us
past pointed tree-stumps exquisitely chiselled with the marks of teeth;
so we knew we looked, not on a natural pond, but on the work of
beavers.
I examined the dam more closely. It was a marvel of engineering skill
in the accuracy with which the big trees had been felled exactly along
the most effective lines, the efficiency of the filling in, and the
just estimate of the waste water to be allowed. We named the place
obviously Beaver Pond, resumed our packs, and pushed on.
Now I must be permitted to celebrate by a little the pluck of Dick. He
was quite unused to the tump-line, comparatively inexperienced in
woods-walking, and weighed but one hundred and thirty-five pounds. Yet
not once in the course of that trip did he bewail his fate. Towards the
close of this first afternoon I dropped behind to see how he was making
it. The boy had his head down, his lips shut tight together, his legs
well straddled apart. As I watched he stumbled badly over the merest
twig.
"Dick," said I, "are you tired?"
"Yes," he confessed frankly.
"Can you make it another half-hour?"
"I guess so; I'll try."
At the end of the half-hour we dropped our packs. Dick had manifested
no impatience--not once had he even asked how nearly time was up--but
now he breathed a deep sigh of relief.
"I thought you were never going to stop," said he simply.
From Dick those words meant a good deal. For woods-walking differs as
widely from ordinary walking as trap-shooting from field-shooting. A
good pedestrian may tire very quickly in the forest. No two successive
steps are of the same length; no two successive steps fall on the same
quality of footing; no two successive steps are on the same level.
Those three are the major elements of fatigue. Add further the facts
that your way is continually obstructed both by real difficulties--such
as trees, trunks, and rocks--and lesser annoyances, such as branches,
bushes, and even spider-webs. These things all combine against
endurance. The inexperienced does not know how to meet them with a
minimum of effort. The tenderfoot is in a constant state of muscular
and mental rigidity against a fall or a stumble or a cut across the
face from some one of the infinitely numerous woods scourges. This
rigidity speedily exhausts the vital force.
So much for the philosophy of it. Its practical side might be
infinitely extended. Woodsmen are tough and enduring and in good
condition; but no more so than the average college athlete. Time and
again I have seen men of the latter class walked to a standstill. I
mean exactly that. They knew, and were justly proud, of their physical
condition, and they hated to acknowledge, even to themselves, that the
rest of us were more enduring. As a consequence they played on their
nerve, beyond their physical powers. When the collapse came it was
complete. I remember very well a crew of men turning out from a lumber
camp on the Sturgeon River to bring in on a litter a young fellow who
had given out while attempting to follow Bethel Bristol through a hard
day. Bristol said he dropped finally as though he had been struck on
the head. The woodsman had thereupon built him a little fire, made him
as comfortable as possible with both coats, and hiked for assistance. I
once went into the woods with a prominent college athlete. We walked
rather hard over a rough country until noon. Then the athlete lay on
his back for the rest of the day, while I finished alone the business
we had come on.
Now, these instances do not imply that Bristol, and certainly not
myself, were any stronger physically, or possessed more nervous force,
than the men we had tired out. Either of them on a road could have
trailed us, step for step, and as long as we pleased. But we knew the
game.
It comes at the last to be entirely a matter of experience. Any man can
walk in the woods all day at some gait. But his speed will depend on
his skill. It is exactly like making your way through heavy, dry sand.
As long as you restrain yourself to a certain leisurely plodding, you
get along without extraordinary effort, while even a slight increase of
speed drags fiercely at your feet. So it is with the woods. As long as
you walk slowly enough, so that you can pick your footing and lift
aside easily the branches that menace your face, you will expend little
nervous energy. But the slightest pressing, the slightest inclination
to go beyond what may be called your physical foresight, lands you
immediately in difficulties. You stumble, you break through the brush,
you shut your eyes to avoid sharp switchings. The reservoir of your
energy is open full cock. In about an hour you feel very, very tired.
This principle holds rigidly true of every one, from the softest
tenderfoot to the expertest forest-runner. For each there exists a
normal rate of travel, beyond which are penalties. Only, the
forest-runner, by long use, has raised the exponent of his powers.
Perhaps as a working hypothesis the following might be recommended:
_One good step is worth six stumbling steps; go only fast enough to
assure that good one._
You will learn, besides, a number of things practically which memory
cannot summon to order for instance here. "Brush slanted across your
path is easier lifted over your head and dropped behind you than pushed
aside," will do as an example.
A good woods-walker progresses without apparent hurry. I have followed
the disappearing back of Tawabinisáy when, as my companion elegantly
expressed it, "if you stopped to spit you got lost." Tawabinisáy
wandered through the forest, his hands in his pockets, humming a little
Indian hymn. And we were breaking madly along behind him with the
crashing of many timbers.
Of your discoveries probably one of the most impressive will be that in
the bright lexicon of woodscraft the word "mile" has been entirely left
out. To count by miles is a useless and ornamental elegance of
civilization. Some of us once worked hard all one day only to camp
three miles downstream from our resting-place of the night before. And
the following day we ran nearly sixty with the current. The space of
measured country known as a mile may hold you five minutes or five
hours from your destination. The Indian counts by time, and after a
little you follow his example. "Four miles to Kettle Portage" means
nothing. "Two hours to Kettle Portage" does. Only when an Indian tells
you two hours you would do well to count it as four.
Well, our trip practically amounted to seven days to nowhere; or
perhaps seven days to everywhere would be more accurate. It was all in
the high hills until the last day and a half, and generally in the
hardwood forests. Twice we intersected and followed for short distances
Indian trails, neither of which apparently had been travelled since the
original party that had made them. They led across country for greater
or lesser distances in the direction we wished to travel, and then
turned aside. Three times we blundered on little meadows of
moose-grass. Invariably they were tramped muddy like a cattle-yard
where the great animals had stood as lately as the night before.
Caribou were not uncommon. There were a few deer, but not many, for the
most of the deer country lies to the south of this our district.
Partridge, as we had anticipated, lacked in such high country.
In the course of the five days and a half we were in the hills we
discovered six lakes of various sizes. The smallest was a mere pond;
the largest would measure some three or four miles in diameter. We came
upon that very late one afternoon. A brook of some size crossed our
way, so, as was our habit, we promptly turned upstream to discover its
source. In the high country the head-waters are never more than a few
miles distant; and at the same time the magnitude of this indicated a
lake rather than a spring as the supply. The lake might be Kawágama.
Our packs had grown to be very heavy, for they had already the weight
of nine hours piled on top. And the stream was exceedingly difficult to
follow. It flowed in one of those aggravating little ravines whose
banks are too high and steep and uneven for good footing, and whose
beds are choked with a too abundant growth. In addition, there had
fallen many trees over which one had to climb. We kept at it for
perhaps an hour. The brook continued of the same size, and the country
of the same character. Dick for the first time suggested that it might
be well to camp.
"We've got good water here," he argued, quite justly, "and we can push
on to-morrow just as well as to-night."
We balanced our packs against a prostrate tree-trunk. Billy contributed
his indirect share to the argument.
"I lak' to have the job mak' heem this countree all over," he sighed.
"I mak' heem more level."
"All right," I agreed; "you fellows sit here and rest a minute, and
I'll take a whirl a little ways ahead."
I slipped my tump-line and started on light. After carrying a heavy
pack so long, I seemed to tread on air. The thicket, before so
formidable, amounted to nothing at all. Perhaps the consciousness that
the day's work was in reality over lent a little factitious energy to
my tired legs. At any rate, the projected two hundred feet of my
investigations stretched to a good quarter-mile. At the end of that
space I debouched on a widening of the ravine. The hardwood ran off
into cedars. I pushed through the stiff rods and yielding fans of the
latter, and all at once found myself leaning out over the waters of the
lake.
It was almost an exact oval, and lay in a cup of hills. Three wooded
islands, swimming like ducks in the placid evening waters, added a
touch of diversity. A huge white rock balanced the composition to the
left, and a single white sea-gull, like a snowflake against pines,
brooded on its top.
I looked abroad to where the perfect reflection of the hills confused
the shore line. I looked down through five feet of crystal water to
where pebbles shimmered in refraction. I noted the low rocks jutting
from the wood's shelter whereon one might stand to cast a fly. Then I
turned and yelled and yelled and yelled again at the forest.
Billy came through the brush, crashing in his haste. He looked long and
comprehendingly. Without further speech, we turned back to where Dick
was guarding the packs.
That youth we found profoundly indifferent.
"Kawágama," we cried, "a quarter-mile ahead."
He turned on us a lack-lustre eye.
"You going to camp here?" he inquired dully.
"Course not! We'll go on and camp at the lake."
"All right," he replied.
We resumed our packs, a little stiffly and reluctantly, for we had
tasted of woods-travel without them. At the lake we rested.
"Going to camp here?" inquired Dick.
We looked about, but noted that the ground under the cedars was
hummocky, and that the hardwood grew on a slope. Besides, we wanted to
camp as near the shore as possible. Probably a trifle further along
there would be a point of high land and delightful little
paper-birches.
"No," we answered cheerfully, "this isn't much good. Suppose we push
along a ways and find something better."
"All right," Dick replied.
We walked perhaps a half-mile more to the westward before we discovered
what we wanted, stopping from time to time to discuss the merits of
this or that place. Billy and I were feeling pretty good. After such a
week Kawágama was a tonic. Finally we agreed.
"This'll do," said we.
"Thank God!" said Dick unexpectedly, and dropped his pack to the ground
with a thud, and sat on it.
I looked at him closely. Then I undid my own pack. "Billy," said I,
"start in on grub. Never mind the tent just now."
"A' right," grinned Billy. He had been making his own observations.
"Dick," said I, "let's go down and sit on the rock over the water. We
might fish a little."
"All right," Dick replied.
He stumbled dully after me to the shore.
"Dick," I continued, "you're a kid, and you have high principles, and
your mother wouldn't like it, but I'm going to prescribe for you, and
I'm going to insist on your following the prescription. This flask does
not contain fly-dope--that's in the other flask--it contains whisky. I
have had it in my pack since we started, and it has not been opened. I
don't believe in whisky in the woods; not because I am temperance, but
because a man can't travel on it. But here is where you break your
heaven-born principles. Drink."
Dick hesitated, then he drank. By the time grub was ready his vitality
had come to normal, and so he was able to digest his food and get some
good out of it; otherwise he could not have done so. Thus he furnished
an admirable example of the only real use for whisky in woods-travel.
Also it was the nearest Dick ever came to being completely played out.
That evening was delightful. We sat on the rock and watched the long
North Country twilight steal up like a gray cloud from the east. Two
loons called to each other, now in the shrill maniac laughter, now with
the long, mournful cry. It needed just that one touch to finish the
picture. We were looking, had we but known it, on a lake no white man
had ever visited before. Clement alone had seen Kawágama, so in our
ignorance we attained much the same mental attitude. For I may as well
let you into the secret; this was not the fabled lake after all. We
found that out later from Tawabinisáy. But it was beautiful enough, and
wild enough, and strange enough in its splendid wilderness isolation to
fill the heart of the explorer with a great content.
Having thus, as we thought, attained the primary object of our
explorations, we determined on trying now for the second--that is, the
investigation of the upper reaches of the River. Trout we had not
accomplished at this lake, but the existence of fish of some sort was
attested by the presence of the two loons and the gull, so we laid our
non-success to fisherman's luck. After two false starts we managed to
strike into a good country near enough our direction. The travel was
much the same as before. The second day, however, we came to a
surveyor's base-line cut through the woods. Then we followed that as a
matter of convenience. The base-line, cut the fall before, was the only
evidence of man we saw in the high country. It meant nothing in itself,
but was intended as a starting-point for the township surveys, whenever
the country should become civilized enough to warrant them. That
condition of affairs might not occur for years to come. Therefore the
line was cut out clear for a width of twenty feet.
We continued along it as along a trail until we discovered our last
lake--a body of water possessing many radiating arms. This was the
nearest we came to the real Kawágama. If we had skirted the lake,
mounted the ridge, followed a creek-bed, mounted another ridge, and
descended a slope, we should have made our discovery. Later we did just
that, under the guidance of Tawabinisáy himself. Floating in the birch
canoe we carried with us we looked back at the very spot on which we
stood this morning.
But we turned sharp to the left, and so missed our chance. However, we
were in a happy frame of mind, for we imagined we had really made the
desired discovery.
Nothing of moment happened until we reached the valley of the River.
Then we found we were treed. We had been travelling all the time among
hills and valleys, to be sure, but on a high elevation. Even the bottom
lands, in which lay the lakes, were several hundred feet above
Superior. Now we emerged from the forest to find ourselves on bold
mountains at least seven or eight hundred feet above the main valley.
And in the main valley we could make out the River.
It was rather dizzy work. Three or four times we ventured over the
rounded crest of the hill, only to return after forty or fifty feet
because the slope had become too abrupt. This grew to be monotonous and
aggravating. It looked as though we might have to parallel the River's
course, like scouts watching an army, on the top of the hill. Finally a
little ravine gave us hope. We scrambled down it; ended in a very steep
slant, and finished at a sheer tangle of cedar-roots. The latter we
attempted. Billy went on ahead. I let the packs down to him by means of
a tump-line. He balanced them on roof; until I had climbed below him.
And so on. It was exactly like letting a bucket down a well. If one of
the packs had slipped off the cedar-roots, it would have dropped like a
plummet to the valley, and landed on Heaven knows what. The same might
be said of ourselves. We did this because we were angry all through.
Then we came to the end of the cedar-roots. Right and left offered
nothing; below was a sheer, bare drop. Absolutely nothing remained but
to climb back, heavy packs and all, to the top of the mountain. False
hopes had wasted a good half day and innumerable foot-pounds. Billy and
I saw red. We bowed our heads and snaked those packs to the top of the
mountain at a gait that ordinarily would have tired us out in fifty
feet. Dick did not attempt to keep up. When we reached the top we sat
down to wait for him. After a while he appeared, climbing leisurely. He
gazed on us from behind the mask of his Indian imperturbability. Then
he grinned. That did us good, for we all three laughed aloud, and
buckled down to business in a better frame of mind.
That day we discovered a most beautiful waterfall. A stream about
twenty feet in width, and with a good volume of water, dropped some
three hundred feet or more into the River. It was across the valley
from us, so we had a good view of its beauties. Our estimates of its
height were carefully made on the basis of some standing pine that grew
near its foot.
And then we entered a steep little ravine, and descended it with
misgivings to a cañon, and walked easily down the cañon to a slope that
took us by barely sensible gradations to a wooded plain. At six o'clock
we stood on the banks of the River, and the hills were behind us.
Of our down-stream travel there is little really to be said. We
established a number of facts--that the River dashes most scenically
from rapid to rapid, so that the stagnant pool theory is henceforth
untenable; that the hills get higher and wilder the farther you
penetrate to the interior, and their cliffs and rock-precipices bolder
and more naked; that there are trout in the upper reaches, but not so
large as in the lower pools; and, above all, that travel is not a joy
for ever.
For we could not ford the River above the Falls--it is too deep and
swift. As a consequence, we had often to climb, often to break through
the narrowest thicket strips, and once to feel our way cautiously along
a sunken ledge under a sheer rock cliff. That was Billy's idea. We came
to the sheer rock cliff after a pretty hard scramble, and we were most
loth to do the necessary climbing. Billy suggested that we might be
able to wade. As the pool below the cliff was black water and of
indeterminate depth, we scouted the idea. Billy, however, poked around
with a stick, and, as I have said, discovered a little ledge about a
foot and a half wide and about two feet and a half below the surface.
This was spectacular, but we did it. A slip meant a swim and the loss
of the pack. We did not happen to slip. Shortly after, we came to the
Big Falls, and so after further painful experiment descended joyfully
into known country.
The freshet had gone down, the weather had warmed, the sun shone, we
caught trout for lunch below the Big Falls; everything was lovely. By
three o'clock, after thrice wading the stream, we regained our
canoe--now at least forty feet from the water. We paddled across. Deuce
followed easily, where a week before he had been sucked down and nearly
drowned. We opened the cache and changed our very travel-stained
garments. We cooked ourselves a luxurious meal. We built a
friendship-fire. And at last we stretched our tired bodies full length
on balsam a foot thick, and gazed drowsily at the canvas-blurred moon
before sinking to a dreamless sleep.
XV.
ON WOODS INDIANS.
Far in the North dwell a people practically unknown to any but the
fur-trader and the explorer. Our information as to Mokis, Sioux,
Cheyennes Nez Percés, and indirectly many others, through the pages of
Cooper, Parkman, and allied writers, is varied enough, so that our
ideas of Indians are pretty well established. If we are romantic, we
hark back to the past and invent fairy-tales with ourselves anent the
Noble Red Man who has Passed Away. If we are severely practical, we
take notice of filth, vice, plug-hats, tin cans, and laziness. In fact,
we might divide all Indian concepts into two classes, following these
mental and imaginative bents. Then we should have quite simply and
satisfactorily the Cooper Indian and the Comic Paper Indian. It must be
confessed that the latter is often approximated by reality--and
everybody knows it. That the former is by no means a myth--at least in
many qualities--the average reader might be pardoned for doubting.
Some time ago I desired to increase my knowledge of the Woods Indians
by whatever others had accomplished. Accordingly I wrote to the
Ethnological Department at Washington asking what had been done in
regard to the Ojibways and Wood Crees north of Lake Superior. The
answer was "nothing."