[Illustration]
The greatest glory of Canada is not its modern progress, but its
vast and ancient wilderness. If you weary of the sameness and
unprofitableness of every thing you know, go where I went last year, to
the upper waters of the Ottawa, where the beaver is the master architect
and the moose is king of the woods. See for yourself, as I saw, that
the Ottawa and the Gatineau, appearing to come from widely distant
regions, have their origin close together and are twins. Behold these
two children of the lakes, nourished from the same generous breast.
Trace their courses, and see that, though journeying far, in widely
different directions, they finally arrive at a common destination.
Nobody knows all about that head-water country around the sources of
the Ottawa. It is a prolific game region, where sportsmen rarely go,
for the simple reason that they can get all the hunting they want nearer
to the railroad. There are plenty of deer close to almost any Canadian
Pacific station west of Pembroke, and it is not much trouble to get a
chance at a moose in two days from Deux Rivières, Rockliffe, or Mattawa.
Not many hunting parties start from there either, and I suppose the
reason is that for thousands of miles to the west the woods, prairies,
and mountains lie close to the railroad and afford almost limitless
opportunities.
The territory enclosed by the Ottawa and the Gatineau has been, from
immemorial times, the home of the Algonquin Indians, and they still
remain there, in such primitive innocence that they receive no annuity
from the Dominion Government. In this they are unlike the Indians of
the United States or their brother tribes of Canada.
The map which accompanies this article is reproduced from the latest
Crown Land Office charts of the Upper Ottawa River. Hundreds of lakes,
some of them many miles in extent, are unmarked, because they have
never been surveyed. But a glance at the map will give some idea of
the flood which is poured out at the feet of Canada's stately capital.
As a canoeing country I believe the Ottawa valley to be unequalled
anywhere in the world. The dotted line on the map shows the course of a
lazy autumn trip which I took around the borders of the great interior
island, formed by the streams which fall from a common birthplace in
the Kakebonga region and reunite in front of the city of Ottawa.
The _coureurs du bois_ of the old _régime_ have passed away, but the
song of their beloved wilderness is as sweet to-day as when they found
it irresistible.
At Mattawa I procured the supplies which are necessary for a canoe
trip in the woods, and the branch railroad took me to the shore of Lake
Kippewa. Then a lumber company's steamer carried me to Hunter's Point,
the farthest settlement, eighty-five miles north of Mattawa. From there
it was all canoe and portage. Nowhere was there a carry more than a
mile long, and generally the distance was only a few hundred yards from
one lake to another, or around a rapid. The rivers form a continuous
waterway, but we made many short cuts. In five hundred miles of canoeing
there were, perhaps, twenty miles of carrying, all told.
Mr. Isaac Hunter, the postmaster at Hunter's Point, has his office in
the front room of his house or else in his coat-pocket. He has a large,
well-cleared farm, where his father lived before him, and he sells hay
to the lumbermen at fifty dollars a ton. Plenty of people in the United
States might well want to be in his place. Yet the farm he lives on has
no legal status. It has never been surveyed, and the Crown Land Office
has no official knowledge of it. So he pays no taxes and he never cast
a vote in his life.
When I got to Mr. Hunter's I was at the end of civilization. Beyond
his house there were no roads except the water-ways, and the journey I
wished to make through the wilderness was several hundred miles long.
But I felt as sure of the way as though I had been there before. There
are no maps which are of any use at all. Not one of them shows more than
half of the lakes which form the easy road we travelled.
I told Mr. Hunter where I wanted to go. He said: "Well, my
brother-in-law, Joe Decountie, knows the way to Ross Lake, about half
way to the Grand Lake Victoria. Mr. Christopherson, the Hudson's Bay
agent at Grand Lake, will be back here soon. If you want to go with Joe
and bring back a moose by Saturday, you'll find Mr. Christopherson here
then, and he can tell you how to go the rest of the way. You'll need
a canoe. They sell pretty high this year. You can have that one out by
the water for six dollars."
[Illustration: Valley of the Upper Ottawa.
The finest canoeing country in the world. Mr. Irland's route indicated
by the dotted line. There are watercourses even in the places where, on
the official map, the line seems to cross dry land.]
Joe was young and big. He lived across the bay from his brother-in-law.
He and the rest of the twenty or thirty other people around Hunter's
Point speak Algonquin and French and very fair English, and their names
show that those early adventurers from Europe, two hundred years ago
and later, had no violent race prejudices. The more I have seen of the
half-bloods of Canada, the more I have come to admire them. They are
of fearless stock, and have inherited many good traits from both races.
They regard with amusement and pity their half-brothers, the full-blood
Algonquins of the remote forest, but they understand the arts of
wood-lore which make life more than endurable there. They have French,
English, Scotch, and Scandinavian family names, and any one who thinks
they lead an uncomfortable life is very much mistaken.
[Illustration: Lower Chute of the Grand Calumet Fall.]
A good deal has been written lately about the hardships and dangers of
camp life. For years I have spent a considerable time each season in
the woods, sometimes depending for days on the resources of the country,
and I can truthfully say I never had one uncomfortable hour there.
"Where shall we go after a moose, Joe?" I asked.
Joe said: "Well, it's bes' to go where we sure to find 'em. Dese fellers
aroun' here don't like de place where I go, because it takes most all
day to get dere. But I never failed yet to see moose." So we threw our
luggage into the canoe, and departed, in a gentle rain-storm.
It was nearly a year since I had had a paddle in my hand, but it was
only a short distance between portages. I know of no form of severe
muscular exertion which is so little irksome as paddling a canoe. Rowing
is galley-slavery in comparison. With the paddle there are not less than
three variations of position on each side, which bring new muscles into
play and relieve the weary ones; and a shift from one hand to the other
is a complete rest. So it was not long, during the succeeding month of
canoeing, before I came, at daylight, to look forward to a long day's
paddling with positive delight.
If any one wishes to know just where we went on that little side issue
of a moose hunt let him get a good map of the Kippewa region, and locate
the space between Lake Ostoboining and Hay Bay. It is a blank space on
a Crown Land Office map, but there are at least fifty small lakes in
it. It took six hours' canoeing and carrying, from Mr. Hunter's house,
till we came to the lake Joe had chosen.
That moose hunt was too easy. We got to the lake, put up the tent,
chopped some wood, and just at dusk, when Joe was baking biscuits in
the frying-pan, suddenly he set the pan down and made a rush for the
canoe. At the same moment I saw a big bull moose wading out of his
depth, from the opposite shore, into the deep water, about the length
of a city block from the tent. He did not see us at all, and went right
on, swimming leisurely across. The lake was narrow, and the moose did
not hurry. His broad yellow antlers were so heavy that he barely kept
his nose above the water. It was a great sight to see the ripple spread
in a diagonal behind him, while Joe urged the little canoe right up
close astern. What a pity it was too dark for the camera! When he was
forty rods from shore and we were close to him, Joe asked, loudly and
pleasantly, "Jack, where you goin' to-day?" Jack turned his big head,
and the expression in his ox-like eye was that of pained surprise. He
began to swim so hard that he half climbed out of the water.
[Illustration: On Lake Kippewa.]
"Let's head him off," said Joe. So we made a respectful circle around
the moose, and he ported his helm and turned back toward the place
whence he came.
"Drive him to the tent," I suggested; and we did the meanest thing I
ever saw done on a moose hunt. We kept between him and where he wanted
to go, and actually made him carry himself to shore close to the tent,
before I turned the express bullet loose. It was all done so quickly
that the biscuits did not burn.
"Now, we worked ourselves out of business, didn't we?" commented
Joe, by the fire-light, after we had completed certain anatomical
dismemberments, the result of which would have astonished the moose very
greatly if he could have seen himself hung up. "My pore leetle cousins
ain't got no fresh meat," continued Joe, relapsing from the severely
studied English with which he had previously addressed me. "It's 'bout
twelve mile straight so, to de house. How you t'ink if I bring my
cousins to-morrow to take out de moose?"
I thought that was a very good idea, so the next day Joe left me and
walked through the woods to Hunter's Point, to bring his relatives. In
the afternoon it rained, so Joe and his cousins did not appear, and I
had the blankets to myself that night.
The Hudson's Bay Company supply a tent which can be closed up tightly.
This is good in mosquito time, but in the fall there is nothing so fine
as a plain shed tent, open in front. The heat from the fire is reflected
down from the slanting roof, and you can keep warm and dry in the
coldest rain that ever fell, especially if you have a light fly spread
above the tent. I had brought along a tent of this pattern, and was as
comfortable as any king that night, though the nearest human being was
twelve miles or so away. The rain made the fire burn more brightly than
usual, by knocking the film of ashes from the logs.
The next morning I was awakened by my old friends, the moose-birds.
A pair of them were trying to carry off the moose meat, all at one
mouthful, and at the same time fighting away a third bird which sneaked
in between their trips to their place of storage. The moose-bird takes
life very seriously, and his sole business is stealing everything he
can stick his bill into. Unless he is very often disturbed he is without
fear, and will readily alight on a stick held in your hand, if you put
a piece of meat on the end of the stick. I have often photographed the
bird at a distance of three or four feet.
About two o'clock that afternoon Joe and his friends appeared on the
scene, with another canoe; and they carried the moose home in sections.
The next day was so warm and bright that we took the canoe and went
on a long observation tour. Joe made a big circuit, from lake to lake
and pond to pond. One of the geographical peculiarities of the country
is that you can go by water in any direction you choose, with short
portages. Between almost any two ridges you will find a lake or two.
[Illustration: Cow Moose in Thick Timber.]
In many places we saw where, earlier in the season, the moose had been
eating the water-lilies. The remnants of the roots, as thick as a man's
wrist, were floating on the surface by the score.
About four o'clock in the afternoon, when we were on the return to our
tent, and paddling along very quietly, we heard a stick break close by
the edge of the water. Looking sharply into the thick brush I caught
sight of a cow moose, with two calves, in the woods about twenty
feet back from the shore. We kept very quiet, hoping they would come
out where they could be photographed. But soon the cow's great ears
straightened out in our direction, the calves backed around behind their
mamma, and in an instant they had begun a noiseless flight.
[Illustration: Hudson's Bay Post at the Grand Lake Victoria.]
It was dusk by the time we reached our own lake, and there was a faint
moon. All through the day we had traversed about as fine a moose country
as one could find. Every lake had its well-defined path around the
shore, just along the edge of the bushes.
[Illustration: A Portage.]
At the head of our lake, about a mile from the tent, we stopped and
ran the canoe ashore. Joe grunted hoarsely, and splashed the water
with his paddle, and, sooner than it takes to tell this, we heard, not
two hundred yards away, the most impressive sound that ever comes to
a sportsman's ears, the ripping, tearing noise made by a bull moose,
hooking the trees right and left out of sheer joy and pride in his
strength. He tore down a few cords of saplings, judging by the racket,
and then came out, "oofing" at every step, circling around us. In the
gathering dusk we saw his great black shape for a moment as he crossed
the little stream in which the canoe was hidden. That was the time to
have fired, if I had wanted him very badly, but Joe, whose wealth of
luck had made him over-bold, whispered, "I bring him close," and emitted
a loud roar, very like the squeal of a horse, and the moose never
stopped to take one more look. He simply wheeled around behind the fir
thicket where he was concealed, and, with a few characteristic remarks
in his own language, expressive of disdain and opprobrium, made a hasty
departure for a distant section of the country. He acted as though he
recognized Joe's voice. "Well, we fright him good, anyway," said Joe.
There was only one other place on our whole subsequent trip where the
moose seemed to be so plentiful as right here, close to Lake Kippewa.
We had one moose, and had seen that there were plenty more. The Quebec
law allows only two in a season, to one man.
I wished to see more of the Kippewa country before going north; so
we went back to Mr. Hunter's the next morning, and there met Mr.
Christopherson, on his way back to the Grand Lake Victoria, and with him
an Indian named Jocko, one of the "Grand Lakers," as Joe called them.
Jocko was a thick-set, open-faced barbarian who smiled at the slightest
excuse, and who was so pleasant and bright that I am going hunting
with him some day if I can. Mr. Christopherson said there would be no
trouble in finding our way to the Grand Lake Victoria, as there was a
plain trail from Ross Lake, where Joe had been, to Trout Lake, and that
on this latter sheet of water were two or three families of Indians who
traded at the Grand Lake Victoria, any one of whom could be induced,
for a dollar a day, to show us the way.
Joe and I spent another week camping about Kippewa Lake, getting used
to each other's paddling, before we started on our northern journey.
It was at this stage of the proceedings that Joe modestly suggested
that he had a little nephew, Billy Paulson, thirteen years old, who
could do a good deal around camp, and that he would like to take him
with us. So Billy went and was happy. He was a versatile little boy.
He could read, which Joe could not do, and he spoke English without
much accent. I shall not soon forget my amazement when he began, soon
after our introduction, to whistle, in good tune, Sousa's "Washington
Post" march. How it had reached that far corner of the earth I do not
know, and neither did he; but he had it, and with "Her Golden Hair was
Hanging down Her Back," as an occasional interlude, he made distant
lakes melodious during the succeeding days.
[Illustration: The Old Dam at Barrière Lake.]
The next day we took another side trip, to the east end of Lake Kippewa.
Joe had been telling of a wonderful trout lake, away up the mountain,
and we went to see it. There we found one of Billy's relatives, Johnnie
Puryea, and two squaws, catching a winter's supply of trout. They had
been there about a week, and had more than three hundred beautiful
fish hung up on a frame over a slow, smoky fire. While we partook of
Johnnie's trout, such a violent thunder-shower came up, with heavy
wind, that we stayed late. It was almost as dark as it could be when we
started back over the mile portage to the big lake. There was no good
trail, only a few trees being "spotted," and the side of the mountain
was furrowed with countless ravines, at the bottom of some one of which
lay our canoe. We could not see the trail at all, but kept going down
hill, and feeling of every tree we came to for the axe-spots. I suppose
we were about two hours making that mile, and I vividly appreciated
the force of the expression "feeling one's way." When we finally found
the canoe, and the moon came out from under the clouds, the smooth lake
seemed, after the storm, to be an old friend.
[Illustration: Heavy Swells.]
The next morning we paddled along the shores of the deep indenting bays
for miles, looking for moose tracks. At one place a whole family, big
and little, had left fresh hoof-prints in the mud, and Joe followed them
to see where they went, while Billy and I trolled, and caught as many
walleyed pike and pickerel as we pleased.
All along the shores of the lake, at conspicuous points, the
bush-rangers, or fire police, had posted printed warnings against
leaving fires in the woods. It is a misdemeanor there to leave
a smouldering fire. He who starts a blaze must see that it is
extinguished.
[Illustration: "Jocko"—a Typical Algonquin.]
Joe showed us a place where he and a companion were watching for moose
last year. "De moose come out. I shoot. De ca'tridge bu'st, and mos'
blind me. I listen for my chum to shoot, but he no shoot. I look 'round,
and my chum run away. So we no get dat moose."
There are many men who do not seem to be able to face a moose, but the
animal cannot do anything to a man with a heavy rifle, who uses it.
My note-book is full of Joe's moose stories. Here is one that shows how
common the animals are at Kippewa. "Las' year anoder lad and me, we took
a big head out to de station to sell. A man offer us five dollar for it.
At las' we sell it for six. De trouble was, 'noder feller sell a moose,
de head, skin, meat, and all, de week before, for five dollar. I swore
I never help take out no more heads twenty-five mile for t'ree dollar
my share, and me kill de moose, too!"
The shores of Lake Kippewa are high hard-wood ridges, and one can see
a long way through the trees, as there is not much undergrowth. It is
an ideal place to hunt. As late as October 14th it was rather warm for
a night fire in front of the tent.
Every red and golden leaf as it fell at our feet bore to us the same
message. The Indian summer was upon us, and it was time to be going
northward. So we gathered our simple belongings together, and started
on our swing around the wilderness circle, to find where the two rivers
run from the same lake, to behold the mountain home of the twins.
There is joy in the mere fact of following unmapped water-ways. No
matter if you mistake your course, you can, at least, come back by the
same way you go. The river will run just as it has run during all the
centuries while you were neglecting it, and the lake will stay where
it has waited for you these countless years. The land-marks will not
fade away. Few, indeed, have been the kings of earth who ever felt as
jaunty and independent as the one white man and two half-breeds who left
Hunter's Point for the far Upper Ottawa, on the 16th of October, last
year. No matter what happened to other people, we were secure; and the
farther away we got, the better pleased we were.
Half a day of steady paddling through the Birch Lakes took us past
shores where the standing pine has never been disturbed by the
lumbermen. There are in these vast forests thousands of miles of country
which have never yet been decimated.
[Illustration: Against the Current.]
The farther end of Big Birch Lake was the best we could do the first
day, and we camped at the foot of a portage as well cleared as a country
road, which has been in use by the Indians for a hundred years, and
probably much longer. Joe here rebelled against any elaborate tenting
arrangements for travellers. He cut three long poles, stuck them in the
ground slanting, and threw the tent over them. In truth this did just
as well, when the wind did not blow, as anything else.
A half-mile climb the next morning brought us to the top of a long hill;
and right at the very top, where a hundred dollars' worth of blasting
would let it run down into Birch Lake, stretched away Lake Sissaginega,
or "Island Lake," appropriately named, for there are about five hundred
islands in it.
[Illustration: Beaver-house.]
Joe produced a couple of short oars from the bottom of the canoe, and
nailed a pair of rude rowlocks onto the gunwales. He explained that on
the long, wind-swept lakes which we should have to traverse, a pair
of oars were superior to two paddles against a head wind. It was a
wonderful thing, but during hundreds of miles of lake travel after that
we never once had a serious delay from weather. Nearly every morning
the wind rose briskly with the sun, blew during the middle of the day,
and moderated toward evening; so we pursued the ancient Indian custom
of starting very early in the morning, before the wind came up; took a
good rest in the middle of the day, and continued as late as we could in
the evening. But not once on all our prosperous journey were we really
wind-bound, though this is one of the most common of occurrences on
these lakes, where the wind often piles the swells up so high that not
even a birch-bark can weather them.
The height of the wave which this marvellous little evolution of the
ages can stand is not conceivable till you have witnessed it. Running
with a heavy, fair wind, the swells rise behind you and seem about
to engulf you. But in some way the canoe rises with the wave, and the
boiling, foaming mass rushes harmlessly by, while you sit on the dry,
clean bottom, and your pride increases with each successive triumph.
A very long lake next north of Sissaginega is Cacaskanan, not shown
at all on the maps. On this lake, about eleven o'clock the second day
out, while Joe was rowing, and merely casting an occasional perfunctory
glance over his left shoulder, he suddenly hissed, "See de moose!" We
were at least a mile from shore, and though I have seldom met any one,
civilized or savage, who could beat me at seeing game, I took off my hat
to Joe from then on. Sure enough, over Joe's left shoulder he had seen a
cow moose in the edge of the timber on shore. A projecting point allowed
us to get pretty close to the animal. The wind was partly off shore, and
all the time we were approaching we could see her watching the shore,
starting at every sound made by the wind among the dead tree-trunks,
but paying no attention to the water side at all. This enabled us,
considering the difficulty of navigating among fallen tree-trunks, to
make one of the most remarkable photographs I have ever taken. We got to
the very shore, and crept within thirty-five feet of that moose. I made
my exposure of the negative before she saw us at all. This photograph
will give a better idea than could ever be conveyed in words, of the
tremendous difficulty of still-hunting the moose in thick, dry timber,
where the crackling of a twig will spoil the best-made stalk.
That photograph was more satisfactory to me than the shooting of fifty
moose would have been. The moose does not show to the best advantage in
the picture, but that was her fault, and not ours. At the click of the
shutter she went to find the rest of her folks.
Late that afternoon we came to a place where Lake Cacaskanan narrows to
about one hundred yards wide, and here there were many moose tracks.
Just beyond, we met a family of the Indians who had killed two moose
that very day, and had more than a hundred musquash freshly skinned.
Billy was wonderfully impressed by the dirty, unkempt appearance of
the little children, whose shocks of matted hair he unconsciously
Kiplingized by referring to them afterward as "haystacks." The Indian
who was the head of this family, on being told by Joe where we were
going, said that we would walk on the ice before we got back. I fear he
was a sluggard, who saw lions or bears in the path of every enterprise.
He was burning logs twenty feet long, to save the trouble of cutting
them in two, and so he had fire enough for four tents, instead of one.
[Illustration: The Moose-bird.]
Monday morning, October 18th, we had breakfast by starlight. Venus and
Jupiter were two particularly bright morning stars. Billy looked long
at the waning planets and remarked, in an awe-struck tone, "My, but they
must be high up!"
[Illustration: A Beaver Dam.]
That day we reached Ross Lake, where there is a lumberman's supply
depot for operations over on the main Ottawa, in the direction of
Lake Expanse. We had no occasion to stop there, and all the afternoon
followed the directions we had received from Mr. Christopherson,
pursuing the Hudson's Bay Company trail through some small beaver ponds,
till we reached Trout Lake, a beautiful sheet of water about fifteen
miles long, where we expected to find an Indian to guide us to the Grand
Lake Victoria.
We found the summer camp all right, where the Indians had a
potato-patch, which they had not dug, so Joe said they had not left for
the winter; but not a smoke or sign of life could we find. We explored
the lake, finding abundant moose signs and trolled for salmon trout,
which at this time were up near the surface. One we caught was the
largest I ever saw. We had no means of determining its weight, but when
placed in the centre of the canoe, crosswise, on the bottom, its nose
protruded over one gunwale and its tail above the other.
On the morning of our third day on the lake we heard a dog bark, and
found the Indians encamped on a secluded island. The wretches had
seen us the first day, but, fearing we were game wardens or other
evil-disposed persons, had kept out of our way. Joe said the Indians
up there had a reputation for hiding from passers-by. After we had met
them and given evidence of good intentions, they were sociable enough.
While we were inviting the Indians to pass judgment on the contents of
a certain jug, an extremely large domestic cat belonging to them ate
much of the moose meat in our canoe. Nearly every Indian camp in these
woods has at least one cat, to keep the moose-birds and wood-mice in
subjugation, and the cats, being hard to get, are highly prized.
[Illustration: On Lake Kakebonga.]
We soon made a bargain with Kakwanee, a young Indian just married and
needing money, to show us the way to the Hudson's Bay post on the Grand
Lake Victoria. Without knowing it, all the time we had been on Trout
Lake we were quite near a crew of lumbermen who were building a dam at
the outlet, to raise the water for a reserve supply, to be used, when
needed, to drive logs down the Ottawa, the water running out through
Lake Expanse. The intention was to raise the water six feet; and as
there are at least seventy-five square miles of water in Trout Lake,
it will be seen that a large reservoir would be produced by closing the
outlet, perhaps fifty feet wide. The Indians were doing a good deal of
laughing among themselves, as they said there was a marsh on the other
side of the lake, where, unless another very long dam was built, the
water would run off in the direction of Lake Kippewa as soon as it was
raised a foot or so; and the lumbermen did not know this.
In the evening while we were camped, waiting for Kakwanee to bid
farewell to his bride, Billy heard a trout splash the water. He at
once got some birch-bark and placed it in the cleft of a split stick,
warming it by the fire to make it curl up, and then lighting it on the
edge. In this way he made a torch which burned brightly for a long time.
Getting into the canoe he pushed silently out, standing up. Letting the
light shine into the clear water, he soon located the big trout, which
lay quietly on the bottom in the full blaze of light. Then he made the
motions of spearing, though he had no spear; and there was no doubt,
from the realism of the pantomime, that Billy, child as he was, well
knew a very unsportsmanlike way to kill fish. It was a beautiful sight
to see Billy stand up in a very tottlish birch-bark canoe, as confident
as a bare-back rider on a circus horse.
[Illustration: The "Mountain Chute," Gatineau River.]
Joe had done some work as a "shanty-man," and the sight of the crew who
were building the dam made him reminiscent. "One time," said he, "I do
de chainin' for a gang; dat is, fasten de logs wid de chain, and bind
em fas'. My chum, he was French, and he drive de sled. He was goin' for
git marry so soon it was time for de camp to break up, an' he was sing
an' smile to hisself de whole time. De ver' las' day, de las' load, he
say, 'Now, Joe, dis load be de las' I ever drive fore I go home to my
Julie.' So he start de sled, an' de sled hit a dead birch. When I come
'long behine him, dere he was dead. A limb break off de birch when de
sled strike it. It was all rotten, an' de piece of de limb not so big
as your arm. But de limb was freeze, an' it hit him on de head, an' he
never move. He go home to Julie, sure, but not de way he expec'."
"My," said Billy, solemnly, "it must be awful for a man's peoples when
he go 'way from home feelin' good, and laugh and sing, and, the next
thing his peoples know, he come home dead!"
The next morning Kakwanee appeared and we resumed our interrupted
journey, running all day through two lakes, neither of which has ever
appeared on any map of Quebec. It seems wonderful that after white
men have used watercourses for canoe routes for a century or two, and
when lumbermen have investigated the country, there are stretches of
many miles together which are not indicated on official maps except by
white spots. But this is true of over half a million square miles of
British-American territory. The two lakes we traversed are called by
Indian names which mean "Crosswise Lake" and "Old Man Lake." Out of the
latter runs a river which falls into the Grand Lake Victoria. This lake
is really an expansion of the Ottawa. In many places its shores are
covered with medium-sized pines, and in others bare rocks are the only
things to be seen. The greatest enemy to these forests is fire, and in
all parts of the country are vast tracts which have been so devastated.
It was a long day's paddle from the lower end of the Grand Lake Victoria
to the old Hudson's Bay agency near its northern extremity. Here Mr.
Christopherson received us with great hospitality. He said I was the
fourth white man who had visited the post that year. The Indians who
came there to get their annual supplies, material and spiritual, had
long since left their little summer cabins for winter hunting-grounds.
Though the sun shone warm and bright, it might turn cold any night now,
and so Mr. Christopherson sent Jocko to show us the portages as far as
an Indian village, twenty-seven miles up the river. There we could get
a guide to see us through to the place where the water runs the other
way. Jocko, himself, wanted to go away hunting, so he only accompanied
us as far as the Indian settlement.
[Illustration: A "Chute" on the Gatineau.]
This procuring of guides through an unknown country, on the instalment
plan, was very fascinating to me, and it illustrated a characteristic
of the northern forest Indian which is universal. The red man of the
prairies was a nomad, but the son of the woods does not make very long
pilgrimages, or know much about the world beyond his own hunting-ground.
Before he is old enough to remember any thing he makes his first journey
to the trading-post where his ancestors have for generations been
regular customers and perpetual debtors. He does not remember how or
when he learned the way. On his own stream and its tributaries he is
an infallible guide, for he learned all the landmarks before he could
pronounce their names. But every forest traveller has found the Indians
in one locality reluctant to go far from home. When Alexander Mackenzie
felt his way, by stream and portage, to the great river which bears his
name, and thence down to the Frozen Ocean, he found that the Indians
on one reach of the river always believed that below their own country
there were impassable rapids and insurmountable rocks, ferocious beasts
and hidden perils. If you will journey toward the head of the Ottawa,
in the fall of this year, you will find precisely the same state of
aboriginal mind. The Indians around the Grand Lake Victoria are within
a few miles of the sources of rivers flowing toward the four quarters of
the American continent. Ten days' steady canoeing in any direction would
take them to Hudson's Bay or Lake Huron or Lake Ontario or Montreal. But
they never travel for the sake of seeing the country, or get far from
home.
It was on the last day Jocko was with us, October 26th, that I made the
photograph of him which is one of the illustrations of this article.
He was in his shirt-sleeves and wore an old straw hat. While we were
eating our lunch at noon, the black flies were a little attentive and
it was uncomfortably warm. That was the climate of the far Upper Ottawa
in the last days of October. There was not yet a suggestion of snow.
For all the atmospheric indications told us, we might have been in the
Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.
The Ottawa above Grand Lake House comes down out of the rocky hills, and
is full of rapids. In many smooth places the current is very swift, and
it was worth coming a long way to see Joe and Jocko paddle up places
where Billy and I could not go. Fighting inch by inch against a rapid
current is one of the most trying tests of endurance I know. It is
unlike anything else in the world. You pull and pull, and realize that
an instant's relaxation will cost you all you have gained. If the water
only would stop for an instant! But it is so easy for the current to
rush on and on. How futile are human energy and perseverance against a
power which has never for one second faltered in uncounted years!
Jocko told Joe—he could not say it in English—that he enjoyed travelling
with us more than he did with the Hudson's Bay Company people, because
they travelled for dear life, making fifty or sixty miles a day, and
nearly paralyzed his arms. When he had gone from Hunter's Point to Grand
Lake House a few weeks before, he and Mr. Christopherson had made the
trip in less than three days, but his arms were numb all the next night.
He liked to find a white man who travelled "like an Indian," and said if
I would come up this fall he would show me some moose and deer hunting
around the head of the Coulonge and Dumoine, the like of which white
men did not often see.
We reached the camp of the old chief, Jocko's objective point, just at
purple twilight, when the smoke was rising straight toward the sky, and
we witnessed one of the most peaceful and beautiful bits of wilderness
comfort I have ever beheld. It seemed more like approaching a white
man's farm than an Indian camp.
There were two or three log-houses, a few acres of cleared land, and two
or three horses and cows. A tame horned owl scolded us from the roof of
a barn. The Indian girls were singing and calling to each other across
the wide river. A score of children and grandchildren of the fat old
chief turned out to welcome us, and we slept in one of the log-barns,
on the hay. Jocko sat up and visited with his Indian girl friends, and
I heard them laughing and chatting until long after midnight.
As I lay looking out at the shining surface of the Ottawa, from my
cosey nest in the sweet, wild hay, it was bewildering to remember that
so much of Canada lay south of us. Only a rifle-shot away, at the end
of a forest path, were the bubbling springs which form the sources of
the Coulonge, that pine-embowered stream which, for two hundred miles,
straight away to the south, traverses the centre of the great interior
island whose borders we were encircling. I thought of the long reaches
of moonlit river, where the timid deer were drinking, and the moose, in
all the ardor of their courtship, roared hoarse contempt for impertinent
rivals. And this was only one of the streams whose sources we were
circumnavigating: the Maganasipi, the Bear, the swamp-fed Black, the
Dumoine, the Tomasine, the Desert—all these rivers and a thousand lakes,
gathered all at last in the generous arms of the twin rivers, and borne
away to join the grand chorus, the voice of many waters.
In the morning there was a pow-wow, as the result of which a son and
grandson of the chief agreed to see us out to the Gatineau, the boy
going along to help his father if a freeze-up should make it necessary
to carry their canoe back over the ice. For many miles through devious
channels and short cuts, we ran past natural meadows where the unsown
grass had grown high and dried up for the lack of something to feed
upon it—ancient beaver meadows, from which all trace of the original
forest had long ago disappeared. Joe and the Indian discussed the
beaver question earnestly. It appears that the most interesting issue
in Algonquin politics is what to do about the beavers. There are plenty
of them all through the back country, and the Indians regard them as
their personal property. They only kill a certain proportion of the
little animals, and carefully preserve the supply. The beaver's habit of
building for himself and family a comfortable and conspicuous residence
enables the hunters to take a pretty accurate census of the population,
and to tell just where the animals are to be found. On our way we
turned aside and photographed a beaver-dam and a house. The natural
history books generally picture these constructions as quite symmetrical
affairs, but all I have ever seen have been rough piles of sticks and
mud, and the photographs show typical beaver construction.
A few years ago a sportsman's club in Quebec induced the legislature
to pass a law entirely prohibiting the killing of beaver until the year
1900. Two hundred years ago, when the Iroquois made raids on the Ottawa
country, and prevented the annual catch of beaver skins from coming
down to Montreal and Quebec, hard times fell upon Canada. Precisely the
same condition has confronted the Indians and the Hudson's Bay Company
recently. It is almost as bad a situation as it would be in Illinois
if the farmers were forbidden by law to kill hogs. The Hudson's Bay
Company's agents at Grand Lake Victoria and the Barriere lake have not
dared to buy the skins. The Indians have had no other reliable way to
pay for their supplies. Ruin for the traders and starvation for the
Indians would inevitably follow the continued enforcement of the law.
Some relief has been afforded by the fact that the post at Abittibi
ships all its furs by way of Hudson's Bay, so they cannot be seized
by the Quebec authorities; and thousands of skins, worth $10 apiece,
were diverted to that market last year. The Indians have been very
much disturbed over the matter, for they find the law of necessity more
urgent than a statute whose logic they cannot understand. "Some families
up here starve to death last winter," interpreted Joe, after listening
for awhile to Jonas, our new guide. "I t'ink I no starve, w'en de beaver
build his house close by my water-hole."
Our newly acquired pilot had no idea of losing any business
opportunities. His canoe was ahead of the one in which Joe, Billy,
and I travelled, and he had his muzzle-loading, cylinder-bore double
shot-gun, a handy little weapon, lying in front of him, both hammers at
full cock, hour after hour as he paddled, the muzzle pointing squarely
at the back of his boy in the bow. It was trying to unaccustomed nerves,
but the boy seemed to be used to the idea of sudden death. Jonas had a
curious habit of holding a bullet in his mouth, ready to drop it in an
instant down the gun-barrel, on top of the shot. The utility of keeping
his decks cleared for action appeared when, toward evening, he cleverly
snapped up a reckless mink which darted along the bank, where the stream
was narrow and crooked. The report startled a caribou, which crashed
out of the alders, not fifty feet away. Jonas spat his bullet down the
left barrel and fired again, neatly missing both his boy's head and
the reindeer. Joe derided Jonas in choice Algonquin, and said to me,
confidentially, "I t'ink we better go in front in de mornin'." All the
same, the Indian's idea of a gun which will do for partridges one minute
and moose the next is a sound one, in a country where one's breakfast
flies or runs away.
At noon the next day, we reached the head of that branch of the Ottawa
rising in the Barriere lake. Long ago forgotten Gatineau timber-cutters
built a dam, to divert this water to the Jean de Terre, but now the
dam has fallen into disuse, and the stream seeks its ancient bed.
Just beyond the dam is the Hudson's Bay post, a branch of the one on
the Grand Lake Victoria. Mr. Edwards, the agent, was delighted to see
strangers, especially when I produced a letter which Mr. Christopherson
had sent by me, enclosing his three months' salary. Mrs. Edwards soon
discovered that our Billy was her nephew, and that much-related young
person was at once honored with a seat at the family dinner-table with
the twelve little Edwardses, fraternizing with them in the three-ply
language which is the natural speech of these mixed races. Mr. Edwards
told me he had that season refused hundreds of beaver-skins from
Indians, every one of whom was on his books for a year's supplies, and
now he did not quite see what the post was going to do, with beavers
demonetized.
Jonas, our most recent guide, did not wish to linger, being haunted
by the fear of coming frost which the warm air belied. So that same
afternoon we hastened on, regretfully declining Mr. Edwards's invitation
to go on a caribou hunt. These reindeer abound in the Barrière lake
country.
We camped perhaps fifteen miles from the post that night, and the next
morning, soon after starting up the lake, came to a narrow place where
the water, instead of coming toward us as it had been doing all the time
for days, formed a little rapid, running the same way we were going.
The day before we had seen the water pouring into the Ottawa through
the lumbermen's worn-out dam, and here, twenty-four hours afterward,
continuing up the same lake, we found the current was with us instead
of against us, down instead of up, and we were drifting out toward the
Gatineau, in the other direction. If we had not known about the two
outlets to the lake we should have thought the water was bewitched.
All that day we ran through Lake Kakebonga, which the Hudson's Bay
people consider the most bewildering sheet of water in the Gatineau
Valley. There are dozens of deep bays, which look about alike, and if
you start into the wrong one, you get wholly astray. Once during the day
it became a little foggy, and Jonas at once went ashore and waited for
the veil to lift, as he said no one could find his way there in thick
weather. These large lakes are all long and narrow, and very crooked.
Like Kippewa and Victoria, Lake Kakebonga is nowhere wide, but its
shore-line is very long, and the canoe route often cuts across a portage
to save miles of travelling.
East of Lake Kakebonga there is a very rough bit of country which we
crossed by what are locally known as the Sixteen Portages, or "the
Sixteen," where we clambered into and out of the canoe on an average
about once in half a mile. At last we came to a long, wide path over
a level plain. "I know dis portage so well I know my own house," said
Joe. "I was up here from de Gatineau fourteen year ago." And there our
forest friends turned back, and left Joe and Billy and me to make our
way by the smooth current of the Jean de Terre out to the Gatineau. I
suppose we ran twenty miles after three o'clock that afternoon. Then,
when it was so dark we could see no longer, we camped on a dry sand-bar,
cooked our supper by a little fire, turned the canoe on edge, spread our
blankets, threw the tent over all, and were lost in dreamless oblivion.
"De wolf was howl pretty good las' night, wasn't he?" commented
Joe, as he waked Billy and me in the smoky dawn. "I tink I hear em
close by onetime." And in the sand, about one hundred feet from our
resting-place, were plenty of tracks, where the deer-killing brutes had
prowled around while we slept; perfectly harmless creatures, but unable
to resist the temptation to come near the fat and juicy Billy.
Of all northern wilderness streams, the most interesting I have ever
seen is the Gatineau, into which we were soon carried by the current of
the Jean de Terre. The descent which the devious Ottawa makes in seven
hundred miles or so, is accomplished by the Gatineau in its straight
course of less than two hundred, and there are few places where you
cannot hear the roar of the next rapid. In the spring every bend is a
maelstrom. On the banks and overhanging cedars we could see the marks
made by the spring freshets, fifteen feet above the fall level of the
water. And even then, as we approached a rapid, it was necessary to know
on which side the portage was, because generally the opposite bank was
a vertical wall, and once in the sweep of the current, there could be
no return.
"You see dat rapid?" said Joe, after an early camp on the portage, as
we went down to look at the boiling cauldron below, "I tink I always
remember him. One time I work in a shanty back on dat leetle stream we
pass dis afternoon. De shanty was mos' ready to break up, and good many
de men was go down on de drive. Dere was only one foreman for all de
gangs, 'cause so many men been laid off. Dat mornin' de foreman tell dis
man 'I want you for do dis,' an' dose men 'I want you for do dat,' sen'
dis man here and dat man dere, an' he pick six men an' he say 'I want
you for take de batteau—dat's de big row-boat—'wid forty-five chains, to
de gang for fix de boom in de pond down below,' and he say 'Dat rapid
dere, don' none you dam fools try for run him. I tell you dat batteau
ain't like de canoe, an' de chains won't help you swim; so I want you
for portage de whole t'ing.' So de men take de batteau, and de foreman
say, 'You, Joe, you an' your chum an' Big Jule, you take de big canoe,
an' you go down for help on de boom.'
"So we start an' follow de batteau, an' of course you can't see ver'
far in de river, he is so crooked. I was in de bow, an' I see dem men
in de batteau, 'bout two acres ahead, 'fore we get to de bend. Well, we
come to de head dis portage and we see nobody dere. I take out my pack
an' put de tump-line on my head, an' my chum say 'Dem fellers make de
portage pretty quick.' I go down wid my pack, and start up de portage
once more, for bring de canoe, me an' Big Jule. W'en I get to de head
of de portage, my chum, he come run up all out of breat', an' he say 'I
see a hat an' a oar in de water down by de foot de rapid!'
"Den I know w'at's de matter. Me an' Big Jule we have de canoe on our
heads for carry it down de portage, but we don't say one word. We jus'
turn de canoe down and I jump in de bow, an' my chum in the middle, an'
Big Jule for steer, an' we run de rapid. We t'ink maybe somebody hang on
de rock; but fore we know it we strike jus' where dey strike, on a side
jam w'ere de logs pile up. I jump out, an' my chum he jump out, an' we
catch de canoe an' let her swing, an we holler to Jule to jump, an he
jump jus' in time I tell you, for the canoe go under de jam an' smash,
cr-r-ack all to piece. I never so near de en' of my life till I die,
sure. Well, we go back an' tell de foreman, and he sen' some men for
shut down de dam, up in de lac, an' we look for dem feller four days. We
look way down below, but we no fine 'em, an' de mornin' de fift' day,
I was stan' up in de bow, an' I see black spot come up an' bob up an
down in de eddy right down dere, an' in fifteen minute we have dem six
feller out on dis san' bar. Dey was all in a bunch. It was hot, and dey
look awful.
[Illustration: On Lake Kippewa.]
"Well, sir, after dat you not hear one word in de shanty at night.
De mens come in, an' dey jus' sit an' say not one word, an' good many
de young lads git fright, an' leave de drive an go home. O, I t'ink I
remember dis rapid pretty sure."
Joe's boyhood experience of the Gatineau stood us in good stead all
the way down. He remembered perfectly all the rapids, knew which could
be run and which could not. "W'en you see de swells run black over de
rock, don't you be fright' dat you strike," said he, "but if de water
be white, den you look out." And he showed how, along the edge of the
rough water, there is often a liquid path, not more than the width of
the canoe, which may be followed with perfect safety.
Another half-day's run brought us to a lumber shanty, with its tell-tale
smoke.
"Quay!" shouted the cook, which is good Algonquin for "Hello!" And then
I realized that weeks of constant out-of-door existence had transformed
me into a good enough imitation of an Indian to deceive a lumberman.
"Don't I know you?" asked Joe of the cook, not deigning to reply in the
Algonquin tongue. And then the white man on shore and the half-red man
in the stern of the canoe recognized each other as camp-mates on some
by-gone excursion down the river in escort of a few thousand logs.
"What shanty you from?" asked the cook, turning to me inquiringly.
"Didn't I see you with Gilmour's boss last year?"
Explanations followed, and the canoe which had come all the way around
from Mattawa secured the undivided attention of the lumber crew when
they came to supper that evening.
The next day brought us down to the Desert village, where we left my
beloved canoe on the bank, and took a stage coach.
As we carried the luggage to the village hotel, at three o'clock on
the afternoon of October 30th, the first flakes of snow began to float
softly down, and the splendid Canadian summer was at an end.