THE LAST OF CIVILIZATION
The time for action had come. Our canoes were loaded near the wharf,
we said good-by to Cotter and a group of native trapper friends, and as
we took our places in the canoes and dipped our paddles into the waters
that were to carry us northward the Post flag was run up on the
flagpole as a salute and farewell, and we were away. We soon rounded
the point, and Cotter and the trappers and the Post were lost to view.
Duncan was to follow later in the evening in his rowboat with some of
our outfit which we left in his charge.
Silently we paddled through the "little lake." The clouds hung somber
and dull with threatening rain, and a gentle breeze wafted to us now
and again a bit of fragrance from the spruce-covered hills above us.
Almost before I realized it we were at the rapid. Away to the westward
stretched Grand Lake, deep and dark and still, with the rugged outline
of Cape Corbeau in the distance.
Tom Blake and his family, one and all, came out to give us the
whole-souled, hospitable welcome of "The Labrador." Even Atikamish, the
little Indian dog that Mackenzie used to have, but which he had given
to Tom when he left Northwest River, was on hand to tell me in his dog
language that he remembered me and was delighted to see me back. Here
we would stay for the night--the last night for months that we were to
sleep in a habitation of civilized man.
The house was a very comfortable little log dwelling containing a small
kitchen, a larger living-room which also served as a sleeping-room, and
an attic which was the boys' bedroom. The house was comfortably
furnished, everything clean to perfection, and the atmosphere of love
and home that dwelt here was long remembered by us while we huddled in
many a dreary camp during the weeks that followed.
Duncan did not come that night, and it was not until ten o'clock the
next morning (June twenty-seventh) that he appeared. Then we made
ready for the start. Tom and his young son Henry announced their
intention of accompanying us a short distance up Grand Lake in their
small sailboat. Mrs. Blake gave us enough bread and buns, which she
had baked especially for us, to last two or three days, and she gave us
also a few fresh eggs, saying, "'Twill be a long time before you has
eggs again."
At half-past ten o'clock our canoes were afloat, farewell was said, and
we were beyond the last fringe of civilization.
The morning was depressing and the sky was overcast with low-hanging,
heavy clouds, but almost with our start, as if to give us courage for
our work and fire our blood, the leaden curtain was drawn aside and the
deep blue dome of heaven rose above us. The sun shone warm and bright,
and the smell of the fresh damp forest, the incense of the wilderness
gods, was carried to us by a puff of wind from the south which enabled
Duncan to hoist his sails. The rest of us bent to our paddles, and all
were eager to plunge into the unknown and solve the mystery of what lay
beyond the horizon.
Our nineteen-foot canoe was manned by Pete in the bow, Stanton in the
center and Easton in the stern, while I had the bow and Richards the
stern of the eighteen-foot canoe. We paddled along the north shore of
the lake, close to land. Stanton, with an eye for fresh meat, espied a
porcupine near the water's edge and stopped to kill it, thus gaining
the honor of having bagged the first game of the trip. At twelve
o'clock we halted for luncheon, in almost the same spot where Hubbard
and I had lunched when going up Grand Lake two years before. While
Pete cooked bacon and eggs and made tea, Stanton and Richards dressed
the porcupine for supper.
After luncheon we cut diagonally across the lake to the southern shore,
passed Cape Corbeau River and landed near the base of Cape Corbeau
bluff, that the elevation might be taken and geological specimens
secured. After making our observations we turned again toward the
northern shore, where more specimens were collected. Here Tom and
Henry Blake said goodby to us and turned homeward.
During the afternoon Stanton and I each killed a porcupine, making
three in all for the day--a good beginning in the matter of game.
At sunset we landed at Watty's Brook, a small stream flowing into Grand
Lake from the north, and some twenty miles above the rapid. Our
progress during the day had been slow, as the wind had died away and we
had, several times, to wait for Duncan to overtake us in his slower
rowboat.
While the rest of us "made camp" Duncan cut wood for a rousing fire, as
the evening was cool, and Pete put a porcupine to boil for supper. We
were a hungry crowd when we sat down to eat. I had told the boys how
good porcupine was, how it resembled lamb and what a treat we were to
have. But all porcupines are not alike, and this one was not within my
reckoning. Tough! He was certainly "the oldest inhabitant," and after
vain efforts to chew the leathery meat, we turned in disgust to bread
and coffee, and Easton, at least, lost faith forever in my judgment of
toothsome game, and formed a particular prejudice against porcupines
which he never overcame. Pete assured us, however, that, "This
porcupine, he must boil long. I boil him again to-night and boil him
again to-morrow morning. Then he very good for breakfast. Porcupine
fine. Old one must be cooked long."
So Pete, after supper, put the porcupine on to cook some more,
promising that we should find it nice and tender for breakfast.
As I sat that night by the low-burning embers of our first camp fire I
forgot my new companions. Through the gathering night mists I could
just discern the dim outlines of the opposite shore of Grand Lake. It
was over there, just west of that high spectral bluff, that Hubbard and
I, on a wet July night, had pitched our first camp of the other trip.
In fancy I was back again in that camp and Hubbard was talking to me
and telling me of the "bully story" of the mystic land of wonders that
lay "behind the ranges" he would have to take back to the world.
"We're going to traverse a section no white man has ever seen," he
exclaimed, "and we'll add something to the world's knowledge of
geography at least, and that's worth while. No matter how little a man
may add to the fund of human knowledge it's worth the doing, for it's
by little bits that we've learned to know so much of our old world.
There's some hard work before us, though, up there in those hills, and
some hardships to meet."
Ah, if we had only known!
Some one said it was time to "turn in," and I was brought suddenly to a
sense of the present, but a feeling of sadness possessed me when I took
my place in the crowded tent, and I lay awake long, thinking of those
other days.
Clear and crisp was the morning of June twenty-eighth. The atmosphere
was bracing and delightful, the azure of the sky above us shaded to the
most delicate tints of blue at the horizon, and, here and there, bits
of clouds, like bunches of cotton, flecked the sky. The sun broke
grandly over the rugged hills, and the lake, like molten silver, lay
before us.
A fringe of ice had formed during the night along the shore. We broke
it and bathed our hands and faces in the cool water, then sat down in a
circle near our camp fire to renew our attack upon the porcupine, which
had been sending out a most delicious odor from the kettle where Pete
had it cooking. But alas for our expectations! Our teeth would make
no impression upon it, and Easton remarked that "the rubber trust ought
to hunt porcupines, for they are a lot tougher than rubber and just as
pliable."
"I don't know why," said Pete sadly. "I boil him long time."
That day we continued our course along the northern shore of the lake
until we reached the deep bay which Hubbard and I had failed to enter
and explore on the other trip, and which failure had resulted so
tragically. This bay is some five miles from the westerly end of Grand
Lake, and is really the mouth of the Nascaupee and Crooked Rivers which
flow into the upper end of it. There was little or no wind and we had
to go slowly to permit Duncan, in his rowboat, to keep pace with us.
Darkness was not far off when we reached Duncan's tilt (a small log
hut), three miles up the Nascaupee River, where we stopped for the
night.
This is the tilt in which Allen Goudy and Duncan lived at the time they
came to my rescue in 1903, and where I spent three days getting
strength for my trip down Grand Lake to the Post. It is Duncan's
supply base in the winter months when he hunts along the Nascaupee
River, one hundred and twenty miles inland to Seal Lake. On this
hunting "path" Duncan has two hundred and fifty marten and forty fox
traps, and, in the spring, a few bear traps besides.
The country has been burned here. Just below Duncan's tilt is a
spruce-covered island, but the mainland has a stunted new growth of
spruce, with a few white birch, covering the wreck of the primeval
forest that was flame swept thirty odd years ago. Over some
considerable areas no new growth to speak of has appeared, and the
charred remains of the dead trees stand stark and gray, or lie about in
confusion upon the ground, giving the country a particularly dreary and
desolate appearance.
The morning of June twenty-ninth was overcast and threatened rain, but
toward evening the sky cleared.
Progress was slow, for the current in the river here was very strong,
and paddling or rowing against it was not easy. We had to stop several
times and wait for Duncan to overtake us with his boat. Once he halted
to look at a trap where he told us he had caught six black bears. It
was nearly sunset when we reached the mouth of the Red River, nineteen
miles above Grand Lake, where it flows into the Nascaupee from the
west. This is a wide, shallow stream whose red-brown waters were quite
in contrast to the clear waters of the Nascaupee.
Opposite the mouth of the Red River, and on the eastern shore of the
Nascaupee, is the point where the old Indian trail was said to begin,
and on a knoll some fifty feet above the river we saw the wigwam poles
of an old Indian camp, and a solitary grave with a rough fence around
it. Here we landed and awaited Duncan, who had stopped at another of
his trapping tilts three or four hundred yards below. When he joined
us a little later, in answer to my inquiry as to whether this was the
beginning of the old trail, he answered, "'Tis where they says the
Indians came out, and some of the Indians has told me so. I supposes
it's the place, sir."
"But have you never hunted here yourself?" I asked.
"No, sir, I've never been in here at all. I travels right past up the
Nascaupee. All I knows about it, sir, is what they tells me. I always
follows the Nascaupee, sir."
Above us rose a high, steep hill covered for two-thirds of the way from
its base with a thick growth of underbrush, but quite barren on top
save for a few bunches of spruce brush.
The old trail, unused for eight or ten years, headed toward the hill
and was quite easily traced for some fifty yards from the old camp.
Then it disappeared completely in a dense undergrowth of willows,
alders and spruce.
While Pete made preparation for our supper and Duncan unloaded his boat
and hauled it up preparatory to leaving it until his return from the
interior, the rest of us tried to follow the trail through the brush.
But beyond where the thick undergrowth began there was nothing at all
that, to us, resembled a trail. Finally, I instructed Pete to go with
Richards and see what he could do while the rest of us made camp. Pete
started ahead, forging his way through the thick growth. In ten minutes
I heard him shout from the hillside, "He here--I find him," and saw
Pete hurrying up the steep incline.
When Richards and Pete returned an hour later we had camp pitched and
supper cooking. They reported the trail, as far as they had gone, very
rough and hard to find. For some distance it would have to be cut out
with an ax, and nowhere was it bigger than a rabbit run. Duncan rather
favored going as far, as Seal Lake by the trail that he knew and which
followed the Nascaupee. This trail he believed to be much easier than
the long unused Indian trail, which was undoubtedly in many places
entirely obscured and in any case extremely difficult to follow. I
dismissed his suggestion, however, with little consideration. My,
object was to trace the old Indian trail and explore as much of the
country as possible, and not to hide myself in an enclosed river
valley. Therefore, I decided that next day we should scout ahead to
the first water to which the trail led and cut out the trail where
necessary. The work I knew would be hard, but we were expecting to do
hard work. We were not on a summer picnic.
A rabbit which Stanton had shot and a spruce grouse that fell before
Pete's pistol, together with what remained of our porcupine, hot
coffee, and Mrs. Blake's good bread, made a supper that we ate with
zest while we talked over the prospects of the trail. Supper finished,
Pete carefully washed his dishes, then carefully washed his dishcloth,
which latter he hung upon a bough near the fire to dry. His cleanliness
about his cooking was a revelation to me. I had never before seen a
camp man or guide so neat in this respect.
The real work of the trip was now to begin, the hard portaging, the
trail finding and trail making, and we were to break the seal of a land
that had, through the ages, held its secret from all the world,
excepting the red man. This is what we were thinking of when we
gathered around our camp fire that evening, and filled and lighted our
pipes and puffed silently while we watched the newborn stars of evening
come into being one by one until the arch of heaven was aglow with the
splendor of a Labrador night. And when we at length went to our bed of
spruce boughs it was to dream of strange scenes and new worlds that we
were to conquer.