TIDE WATER AND THE POST
When Easton came to his senses, he found himself warming by the fire.
It is wonderful how quickly a half-frozen man will revive. As soon as
we were thoroughly thawed out we stripped to our underclothing and hung
our things up to dry, permitting our underclothing to dry on us as we
stood near the blaze. We were little the worse for our dip, escaping
with slightly frosted fingers and toes. I discovered in my pockets a
half plug of black tobacco such as we use in the North, put it on the
end of a stick and dried it out, and then we had a smoke. We agreed
that we had never in our life before had so satisfactory a smoke as
that. The stimulant was needed and it put new life into us.
Easton was very pessimistic. He was generally inclined to look upon
the dark side of things anyway, and now he believed our fate was
sealed, especially if we could not find our paddles, and he began to
talk about returning to our cache and thence to the Indians. But I had
been in much worse predicaments than this, and paddles or no paddles,
determined to go on, for we could work our way down the river somehow
with poles and the bag of pemmican would keep us alive until we reached
the Post--unless the freeze-up caught us.
When we had dried ourselves we went to the canoe to make an inventory
of our remaining goods and chattels, and with a vague hope that a
paddle might be found on the shore. What, then, was our surprise and
our joy to find not only the paddles but our dunnage bags and my
instrument bag amongst the rocks, where an eddy below the rapid swirled
the water in. Thus our blankets and clothing were safe, we had fifty
pounds of pemmican, our tent and tent stove, and in the small bag that
I have mentioned as having remained in the canoe with the other things
was all our tea and five or six pounds of caribou tallow. Our
matches--and this was a great piece of good fortune--were uninjured,
and we had a good stock of them. The tent stove seemed useless without
the pipe, but we determined to cling to it, as our luggage now was
light. Our guns, axes, the balance of our provisions, including salt,
the tea kettle and all our other cooking utensils, were gone, and worst
of all, three hundred and fifty unexposed photographic films. Only
twenty or thirty unexposed films were saved, but fortunately, only one
roll of ten exposed films, which was in one of the cameras, was
injured, and none of the exposed films was lost. One camera was damaged
beyond use, as were also my aneroid barometer and binoculars. However,
we were fortunate to get off so easily as we did, and the accident
taught us the lesson to take no chances in rapids and to tie everything
fast at all times. Carelessness is pretty sure to demand its penalty,
and the wilderness is constantly springing surprises upon those who
submit themselves to its care.
A pretty dreary camp we pitched that evening near the place of our
mishap. Fortunately there was plenty of dead wood loose on the ground,
and we did very well for our camp fire without the axes. A pemmican
can with the end cut off about an inch from the top, with a piece of
copper wire that I found in my dunnage bag fashioned into a bale, made
a very serviceable tea pail, from which we drank in turn, as our cups
were lost. The top of the can answered for a frying pan in which to
melt our caribou tallow and pemmican when we wanted our ration hot, and
as a plate. Tent pegs were cut with our jackknives and the tent
stretched between two trees, which avoided the necessity of tent poles.
Thus, with our cooking and living outfit reduced to the simplest and
crudest form, and with a limited and unvaried diet of pemmican, tallow
and tea, we were on the whole able, so long as loose wood could be
found for our night camps, to keep comparatively comfortable and free
from any severe hardships.
We certainly had great reason to be thankful, and that night before we
rolled into our blankets I read aloud by the light of our camp fire
from my little Bible the one hundred and seventh Psalm, in thanksgiving.
The next morning before starting forward we paddled out to the rapid,
in the vain hope that we might be able to recover some of the lost
articles from the bottom of the river, but at the place where the spill
had occurred the water was too swift and deep for us to do anything,
and we were forced to abandon the attempt and reluctantly resume our
journey without the things.
That night we felt sorely the loss of the axes. Our camp was pitched
in a spot where no loose wood was to be found save very small sticks,
insufficient in quantity for an adequate fire in the open, for the
evening was cold. We could not pitch our tent wigwam fashion with an
opening at the top for the smoke to escape, as to do that several poles
were necessary, and we had no means of cutting them. However, with the
expectation that enough smoke would find its way out of the stovepipe
hole to permit us to remain inside, we built a small round Indian fire
in the center of the tent. We managed to endure the smoke and warm
ourselves while tea was making, but the experiment proved a failure and
was not to be resorted to again, for I feared it might result in an
attack of smoke-blindness. This is an affliction almost identical in
effect to snow-blindness. I had suffered from it in the first days of
my wandering alone in the Susan Valley in the winter of 1903, and knew
what it meant, and that an attack of it would preclude traveling while
it lasted, to say nothing of the pain that it would inflict.
Here a portage was necessary around a half-mile canyon through which
the river, a rushing torrent, tumbled in the interval over a series of
small falls, and all the way the perpendicular walls of basaltic rock
that confined it rose on either side to a height of fifty to
seventy-five feet above the seething water. Just below this canyon
another river joined us from the east, increasing the volume of water
very materially. Our tumplines were gone, but with the tracking line
and pieces of deer skin we improvised new ones that answered our
purpose very well.
The hills, barren almost to their base, and growing in altitude with
every mile we traveled, were now closely hugging the river valley,
which was almost destitute of trees. Rapids were practically
continuous and always strewn with dangerous rocks that kept us
constantly on the alert and our nerves strung to the highest tension.
The general course of the river for several days was north, thirty
degrees east, but later assumed an almost due northerly course. It
made some wide sweeps as it worked its tortuous way through the ranges,
sometimes almost doubling on itself. At intervals small streams joined
it and it was constantly growing in width and depth. Once we came to a
place where it dropped over massive bed rock in a series of falls, some
of which were thirty or more feet in height. Few portages, however,
were necessary. We took our chances on everything that there was any
prospect of the canoe living through--rapids that under ordinary
circumstances we should never have trusted--for the grip of the cold
weather was tightening with each October day. The small lakes away
from the river, where the water was still, must even now have been
frozen, but the river current was so big and strong that it had as yet
warded off the frost shackles. When the real winter came, however, it
would be upon us in a night, and then even this mighty torrent must
submit to its power.
At one point the valley suddenly widened and the hills receded, and
here the river broke up into many small streams--no less than five--but
some four or five miles farther on these various channels came together
again, and then the growing hills closed in until they pinched the
river banks more closely than ever.
On the morning of October sixth we swung around a big bend in the
river, ran a short but precipitous rapid and suddenly came upon another
large river flowing in from the west. This stream came through a sandy
valley, and below the junction of the rivers the sand banks rose on the
east side a hundred feet or so above the water. The increase here in
the size of the stream was marked--it was wide and deep. A terrific
gale was blowing and caught us directly in our faces as we turned the
bend and lost the cover of the lee share above the curve, and paddling
ahead was impossible. The waves were so strong, in fact, that we
barely escaped swamping before we effected a landing.
We here found ourselves in an exceedingly unpleasant position. We were
only fitted with summer clothing, which was now insufficient
protection. There was not enough loose wood to make an open fire to
keep us warm for more than an hour or so, and we could not go on to
look for a better camping place. In a notch between the sand ridges we
found a small cluster of trees, between two of which our tent was
stretched, but it was mighty uncomfortable with no means of warming.
"If we only had our stovepipe now we'd be able to break enough small
stuff to keep the stove going," said Easton. With nothing else to do
we climbed a knoll to look at the river below, and there on the knoll
what should we find but several lengths of nearly worn-out but still
serviceable pipe that some Indian had abandoned. "It's like Robinson
Crusoe," said Easton. "Just as soon as we need something that we can't
get on very well without we find it. A special Providence is surely
caring for us." We appropriated that pipe, all right, and it did not
take us long to get a fire in the stove, which we had clung to, useless
as it had seemed to be.
A mass of ripe cranberries, so thick that we crushed them with every
step, grew on the hills, and we picked our pailful and stewed them,
using crystallose (a small phial of which I had in my dunnage bag) as
sweetening. A pound of pemmican a day with a bit of tallow is
sustaining, but not filling, and left us with a constant, gnawing
hunger. These berries were a godsend, and sour as they were we filled
up on them and for once gratified our appetites. We had a great
desire, too, for something sweet, and always pounced upon the stray
raisins in the pemmican. When either of us found one in his ration it
was divided between us. Our great longing was for bread and molasses,
just as it had been with Hubbard and me when we were short of food, and
we were constantly talking of the feasts we would have of these
delicacies when we reached the Post--wheat bread and common black
molasses.
The George River all the way down to this point had been in past years
a veritable slaughter house. There were great piles of caribou antlers
(the barren-ground caribou or reindeer), sometimes as many as two or
three hundred pairs in a single pile, where the Indians had speared the
animals in the river, and everywhere along the banks were scattered dry
bones. Abandoned camps, and some of them large ones and not very old,
were distributed at frequent intervals, though we saw no more of the
Indians themselves until we reached Ungava Bay.
Wolves were numerous. We saw their tracks in the sand and fresh signs
of them were common. They always abound where there are caribou, which
form their main living. Ptarmigans in the early morning clucked on the
river banks like chickens in a barnyard, and we saw some very large
flocks of them. Geese and black ducks, making their way to the
southward, were met with daily. But we had no arms or ammunition with
which to kill them. I saw some fox signs, but there were very few or
no rabbit signs, strange to say, until we were a full hundred miles
farther down the river.
This camp, where we found the stovepipe, we soon discovered was nearly
at the head of Indian House Lake, so called by a Hudson's Bay Company
factor-John McLean-because of the numbers of Indians that he found
living on its shores. McLean, about seventy years earlier, had
ascended the river in the interests of his company, for the purpose of
establishing interior posts. The most inland Post that he erected was
at the lower end of this lake, which is fifty-five miles in length. He
also built a Post on a large lake which he describes in his published
journal as lying to the west of Indian House Lake. The exact location
of this latter lake is not now known, but I am inclined to think it is
one which the Indians say is the source of Whale River, a stream of
considerable size emptying into Ungava Bay one hundred and twenty miles
to the westward of the mouth of the George River. These two rivers are
doubtless much nearer together, however, farther inland, where Whale
River has its rise. The difficulty experienced by McLean in getting
supplies to these two Posts rendered them unprofitable, and after
experimenting with them for three years they were abandoned. The
agents in charge were each spring on the verge of starvation before the
opening of the waters brought fish and food or they were relieved by
the brigades from Ungava. They had to depend almost wholly upon their
hunters for provisions. It was not attempted in those days to carry in
flour, pork and other food stuffs now considered by the traders
necessaries. And almost the only goods handled by them in the Indian
trade were axes, knives, guns, ammunition and beads.
Indian House Lake now, as then, is a general rendezvous for the Indians
during the summer months, when they congregate there to fish and to
hunt reindeer. In the autumn they scatter to the better trapping
grounds, where fur bearing animals are found in greater abundance. We
were too late in the season to meet these Indians, though we saw many
of their camping places.
A snowstorm began on October seventh, but the wind had so far abated
that we were able to resume our journey. It was a bleak and dismal
day. Save for now and then a small grove of spruce trees in some
sheltered nook, and these at long intervals, the country was destitute
and barren of growth. Below our camp, upon entering the lake, there
was a wide, flat stretch of sand wash from the river, and below this
from the lake shore on either side, great barren, grim hills rose in
solemn majesty, across whose rocky face the wind swept the snow in
fitful gusts and squalls. Off on a mountain side a wolf disturbed the
white silence with his dismal cry, and farther on a big black fellow
came to the water's edge, and with the snow blowing wildly about him
held his head in the air and howled a challenge at us as we passed
close by. Perhaps he yearned for companionship and welcomed the sight
of living things. For my part, grim and uncanny as he looked, I was
glad to see him. He was something to vary the monotony of the great
solemn silence of our world.
The storm increased, and early in the day the snow began to fall so
heavily that we could not see our way, and forced us to turn into a bay
where we found a small cluster of trees amongst big bowlders, and
pitched our tent in their shelter. The snow had drifted in and filled
the space between the rocks, and on this we piled armfuls of scraggy
boughs and made a fairly level and wholly comfortable bed; but it was a
long, tedious job digging with our hands and feet into the snow for
bits of wood for our stove. The conditions were growing harder and
harder with every day, and our experience here was a common one with us
for the most of the remainder of the way down the river from this point.
The day we reached the lower end of the lake I summed up briefly its
characteristics in my field book as follows:
"Indian House Lake has a varying width of from a quarter mile to three
miles. It is apparently not deep. Both shores are followed by ridges
of the most barren, rocky hills imaginable, some of them rising to a
height of eight to nine hundred feet and sloping down sharply to the
shores, which are strewn with large loose bowlders or are precipitous
bed rock. An occasional sand knoll occurs, and upon nearly every one
of these is an abandoned Indian camp. The timber growth--none at all
or very scanty spruce and tamarack. Length of lake (approximated)
fifty-five miles."
I had hoped to locate the site of McLean's old Post buildings, more
than three score years ago destroyed by the Indians, doubtless for
firewood, but the snow had bidden what few traces of them time had not
destroyed, and they were passed unnoticed. The storm which raged all
the time we were here made progress slow, and it was not until the
morning of the tenth that we reached the end of the lake, where the
river, vastly increased in volume, poured out through a rapid.
Below Indian House Lake there were only a few short stretches of slack
water to relieve the pretty continuous rapids. The river wound in and
out, in and out, rushing on its tumultuous way amongst ever higher
mountains. There was no time to examine the rapids before we shot
them. We had to take our chances, and as we swung around every curve
we half expected to find before us a cataract that would hurl us to
destruction. The banks were often sheer from the water's edge, and
made landing difficult or even impossible. In one place for a distance
of many miles the river had worn its way through the mountains, leaving
high, perpendicular walls of solid rock on either side, forming a sort
of canyon. In other places high bowlders, piled by some giant force,
formed fifty-foot high walls, which we had to scale each night to make
our camp. In the morning some peak in the blue distance would be noted
as a landmark. In a couple of hours we would rush past it and mark
another one, which, too, would soon be left behind.
The rapids continued the characteristic of the river and were terrific.
Often it would seem that no canoe could ride the high, white waves, or
that we could not avoid the swirl of mighty cross-current eddies, which
would have swallowed up our canoe like a chip had we got into them.
There were rapids whose roar could be distinctly heard for five or six
miles. These we approached with the greatest care, and portaged around
the worst places. The water was so clear that often we found ourselves
dodging rocks, which, when we passed them, were ten or twelve feet
below the surface. It was here that a peculiar optical illusion
occurred. The water appeared to be running down an incline of about
twenty degrees. At the place where this was noticed, however, the
current was not exceptionally swift. We were in a section now where the
Indians never go, owing to the character of the river--a section that
is wholly untraveled and unhunted.
After leaving Indian House Lake, as we descended from the plateau, the
weather grew milder. There were chilly winds and bleak rains, but the
snow, though remaining on the mountains, disappeared gradually from the
valley, and this was a blessing to us, for it enabled us to make camp
with a little less labor, and the bits of wood were left uncovered, to
be gathered with more ease. Every hour of light we needed, for with
each dawn and twilight the days were becoming noticeably shorter. The
sun now rose in the southeast, crossed a small segment of the sky, and
almost before we were aware of it set in the southwest.
The wilderness gripped us closer and closer as the days went by.
Remembrances of the outside world were becoming like dreamland
fancies--something hazy, indefinite and unreal. We could hardly bring
ourselves to believe that we had really met the Indians. It seemed to
us that all our lives we had been going on and on through rushing
water, or with packs over rocky portages, and the Post we were aiming
to reach appeared no nearer to us than it did the day we left Northwest
River--long, long ago. We seldom spoke. Sometimes in a whole day not
a dozen words would be exchanged. If we did talk at all it was at
night over soothing pipes, after the bit of pemmican we allowed
ourselves was disposed of, and was usually of something to
eat--planning feasts of darn goods, bread and molasses when we should
reach a place where these luxuries were to be had. It was much like
the way children plan what wonderful things they will do, and what
unbounded good things they will indulge in, when they attain that high
pinnacle of their ambition--"grown-ups."
After our upset in the rapid Easton eschewed water entirely, except for
drinking purposes. He had had enough of it, he said. I did bathe my
hands and face occasionally, particularly in the morning, to rouse me
from the torpor of the always heavy sleep of night. What savages men
will revert into when they are buried for a long period in the
wilderness and shake off the trammels and customs of the
conventionalism of civilization! It does not take long to make an
Indian out of a white man so far as habits and customs of living go.
Our routine of daily life was always the same. Long before daylight I
would arise, kindle a fire, put over it our tea water, and then get
Easton out of his blankets. At daylight we would start. At midday we
had tea, and at twilight made the best camp we could.
The hills were assuming a different aspect--less conical in form and
not so high. The bowlders on the river banks were superseded by
massive bed-rock granite. The coves and hollows were better wooded and
there were some stretches of slack water. On October fifteenth we
portaged around a series of low falls, below which was a small lake
expansion with a river flowing into it from the east. Here we found
the first evidence of human life that we had seen in a long while--a
wide portage trail that had been cut through now burned and dead trees
on the eastern side of the river. It was fully six feet in width and
had been used for the passage of larger boats than canoes. The moss
was still unrenewed where the tramp of many moccasins had worn it off.
This was the trail made by John McLean's brigades nearly three-quarters
of a century before, for in their journeys to Indian House Lake they
had used rowboats and not canoes for the transportation of supplies.
The day we passed over this portage was a most miserable one. We were
soaked from morning till night with mingled snow and rain, and numb
with the cold, but when we made our night camp, below the junction of
the rivers, one or two ax cuttings were found, and I knew that now our
troubles were nearly at an end and we were not far from men. The next
afternoon (Monday, October sixteenth) we stopped two or three miles
below a rapid to boil our kettle, and before our tea was made the canoe
was high and dry on the rocks. We had reached tide water at last! How
we hurried through that luncheon, and with what light hearts we
launched the canoe again, and how we peered into every bay for the Post
buildings that we knew were now close at hand can be imagined. These
bays were being left wide stretches of mud and rocks by the receding
water, which has a tide fall here of nearly forty feet. At last, as we
rounded a rocky point, we saw the Post. The group of little white
buildings nestling deep in a cove, a feathery curl of smoke rising
peacefully from the agent's house, an Eskimo _tupek_ (tent), boats
standing high on the mud flat below, and the howl of a husky dog in the
distance, formed a picture of comfort that I shall long remember.