OFF WITH THE ESKIMOS
The tide had left the bay drained, on the farther side and well toward
the bottom of which the Post stands, and between us and the buildings
was a lake of soft mud. There seemed no approach for the canoe, and
rather than sit idly until the incoming tide covered the mud again so
that we could paddle in, we carried our belongings high up the side of
the hill, safely out of reach of the water when it should rise, and
then started to pick our way around the face of the clifflike hill,
with the intention of skirting the bay and reaching the Post at once
from the upper side.
It was much like walking on the side of a wall, and to add to our
discomfiture night began to fall before we were half way around, for it
was slow work. Once I descended cautiously to the mud, thinking that I
might be able to walk across it, but a deep channel filled with running
water intercepted me, and I had to return to Easton, who had remained
above. We finally realized that we could not get around the hill
before dark and the footing was too uncertain to attempt to retrace our
steps to the canoe in the fading light, as a false move would have
hurled us down a hundred feet into the mud and rocks below. Fortunately
a niche in the hillside offered a safe resting place, and we drew
together here all the brush within reach, to be burned later as a
signal to the Post folk that some one was on the hill, hoping that when
the tide rose it would bring them in, a boat to rescue us from our
unpleasant position. When the brush was arranged for firing at an
opportune time we sat down in the thickening darkness to watch the
lights which were now flickering cozily in the windows of the Post
house.
"Well, this _is_ hard luck," said Easton. "There's good bread and
molasses almost within hailing distance and we've likely got to sit out
here on the rocks all night without wood enough to keep fire, and it's
going to rain pretty soon and we can't even get back to our pemmican
and tent."
"Don't give up yet, boy," I encouraged. "Maybe they'll see our fire
when we start it and take us off."
We filled our pipes and struck matches to light them. They were wax
taper matches and made a good blaze. "Wonder what it'll be like to eat
civilized grub again and sleep in a bed," said Easton meditatively, as
he puffed uncomfortably at his pipe.
While he was speaking the glow of a lantern appeared from the Post
house, which we could locate by its lamp-lit windows, and moved down
toward the place where we had seen the boats on the mud. The sight of
it made us hope that we had been noticed, and we jumped up and combined
our efforts in shouting until we were hoarse. Then we ignited the pile
of brush. It blazed up splendidly, shooting its flames high in the
air, sending its sparks far, and lighting weirdly the strange scene.
We stood before it that our forms might appear in relief against the
light reflected by the rocky background, waving our arms and renewing
our shouts. Once or twice I fancied I heard an answering hail from the
other side, like a far-off echo; but the wind was against us and I was
not sure. The lantern light was now in a boat moving out toward the
main river. Even though it were coming to us this was necessary, as
the tide could not be high enough yet to permit its coming directly
across to where we were. We watched its course anxiously. Finally it
seemed to be heading toward us, but we were not certain. Then it
disappeared altogether and there was nothing but blackness and silence
where it had been.
"Some one that's been waiting for the tide to turn and he's just going
down the river, where he likely lives," remarked Easton as we sat down
again and relit our pipes. "I began to taste bread and molasses when I
saw that light," he continued, after a few minutes' pause. "It's just
our luck. We're in for a night of it, all right."
We sat smoking silently, resigned to our fate, when all at once there
stepped out of the surrounding darkness into the radius of light cast
by our now dying fire, an old Eskimo with an unlighted lantern in his
hands, and a young fellow of fifteen or sixteen years of age.
"Oksutingyae," * said the Eskimo, and then proceeded to light his
lantern, paying no further attention to us. "How do you do?" said the
boy.
* [Dual form meaning "You two be strong," used by the Eskimos as a
greeting. The singular of the same is Oksunae, and the plural (more
than two) Oksusi]
The Eskimo could understand no English, but the boy, a grandson of Johm
Ford, the Post agent, told us that the Eskimo had seen us strike the
matches to light our pipes and reported the matter at once at the
house. There was not a match at the Post nor within a hundred miles of
it, so far as they knew, so Mr. Ford concluded that some strangers were
stranded on the hill--possibly Eskimos in distress--and he gave them a
lantern and started them over in a boat to investigate. Their lantern
had blown out on the way--that was when we missed the light.
With the lantern to guide us we descended the slippery rocks to their
boat and in ten minutes landed on the mud flat opposite, where we were
met by Ford and a group of curious Eskimos. We were immediately
conducted to the agent's residence, where Mrs. Ford received us in the
hospitable manner of the North, and in a little while spread before us
a delicious supper of fresh trout, white bread such as we had not seen
since leaving Tom Blake's, mossberry jam and tea. It was an event in
our life to sit down again to a table covered with white linen and eat
real bread. We ate until we were ashamed of ourselves, but not until
we were satisfied (for we had emerged from the bush with unholy
appetites) and barely stopped eating in time to save our reputations
from utter ruin. And now our hosts told us--and it shows how really
generous and open-hearted they were to say nothing about it until we
were through eating--that the _Pelican_, the Hudson's Bay Company's
steamer, had not arrived on her annual visit, that it was so late in
the season all hope of her coming had some time since been
relinquished, and the Post provisions were reduced to forty pounds of
flour, a bit of sugar, a barrel or so of corn meal, some salt pork and
salt beef, and small quantities of other food stuffs, and there were a
great many dependents with hungry mouths to feed. Molasses, butter and
other things were entirely gone. The storehouses were empty.
This condition of affairs made it incumbent upon me, I believed, in
spite of a cordial invitation from Ford to stay and share with them
what they had, to move on at once and endeavor to reach Fort Chimo
ahead of the ice. Fort Chimo is the chief establishment of the fur
trading companies on Ungava Bay, and is the farthest off and most
isolated station in northern Labrador. This journey would be too
hazardous to undertake in the month of October in a canoe--the rough,
open sea of Ungava Bay demanded a larger craft--and although Ford told
me it was foolhardy to attempt it so late in the season with any craft
at all, I requested him to do his utmost the following day to engage
for us Eskimos and a small boat and we would make the attempt to get
there. It has been my experience that frontier traders are wont to
overestimate the dangers in trips of this kind, and I was inclined to
the belief that this was the case with Ford. In due time I learned my
mistake.
Ford had no tobacco but the soggy black chewing plug dispensed to
Eskimos, and we shared with him our remaining plugs and for two hours
sat in the cozy Post house kitchen smoking and chatting. Over a year
had passed since his last communication with the outside world, for no
vessel other than the _Pelican_ when she makes her annual call with
supplies ever comes here, and we therefore had some things of interest
to tell him.
Our host I soon discovered to be a man of intelligence. He was
sixty-six years of age, a native of the east coast of Labrador, with a
tinge of Eskimo blood in his veins, and as familiar with the Eskimo
language as with English. For twenty years, he informed me, with the
exception of one or two brief intervals, he had been buried at George
River Post, and was longing for the time when he could leave it and
enjoy the comforts of civilization.
After our chat we were shown to our room, where the almost forgotten
luxuries of feather beds and pillows, and the great, warm, fluffy
woolen blankets of the Hudson's Bay Company--such blankets as are found
nowhere else in the world--awaited us. To undress and crawl between
them and lie there, warm and snug and dry, while we listened to the
rain, which had begun beating furiously against the window and on the
roof, and the wind howling around the house, seemed to me at first the
pinnacle of comfort; but this sense of luxury soon passed off and I
found myself longing for the tent and spruce-bough couch on the ground,
where there was more air to breathe and a greater freedom. I could not
sleep. The bed was too warm and the four walls of the room seemed
pressing in on me. After four months in the open it takes some time
for one to accustom one's self to a bed again.
The next day at high tide, with the aid of a boat and two Eskimos, we
recovered our things from the rocks where we had cached them.
There were no Eskimos at the Post competent or willing to attempt the
open-boat journey to Fort Chimo. Those that were here all agreed that
the ice would come before we could get through and that it was too
dangerous an undertaking. Therefore, galling as the delay was to me,
there was nothing for us to do but settle down and wait for the time to
come when we could go with dog teams overland.
On Thursday afternoon, three days after our arrival at the Post, we saw
the Eskimos running toward the wharf and shouting as though something
of unusual importance were taking place and, upon joining the crowd,
found them greeting three strange Eskimos who had just arrived in a
boat. The real cause of the excitement we soon learned was the arrival
of the _Pelican_. The strange Eskimos were the pilots that brought her
from Fort Chimo. All was confusion and rejoicing at once. Ford manned
a boat and invited us to join him in a visit to the ship, which lay at
anchor four miles below, and we were soon off.
When we boarded the Pelican, which, by the way, is an old British
cruiser, we were received by Mr. Peter McKenzie, from Montreal, who has
superintendence of eastern posts, and Captain Lovegrow, who commanded
the vessel. They told us that they had called at Rigolet on their way
north and there heard of the arrival of Richards, Pete and Stanton at
Northwest River. This relieved my mind as to their safety.
We spent a very pleasant hour over a cigar, and heard the happenings in
the outside world since our departure from it, the most important of
which was the close of the Russian-Japanese war. We also learned that
the cause of delay in the ship's coming was an accident on the rocks
near Cartwright, making it necessary for them to run to St. Johns for
repairs; and also that only the fact of the distressful condition of
the Post, unprovisioned as they knew it must be, had induced them to
take the hazard of running in and chancing imprisonment for the winter
in the ice.
Mr. McKenzie extended me a most cordial invitation to return with them
to Rigolet, but the Eskimo pilots had brought news of large herds of
reindeer that the Indians had reported as heading eastward toward the
Koksoak, the river on which Fort Chimo is situated, and I determined to
make an effort to see these deer. This determination was coupled with
a desire to travel across the northern peninsula and around the coast
in winter and learn more of the people and their life than could be
observed at the Post; and I therefore declined Mr. McKenzie's
invitation.
Captain James Blanford, from St. Johns, was on board, acting as ship's
pilot for the east coast, and he kindly offered to carry out for me
such letters and telegrams as I might desire to send and personally
attend to their transmission. I gladly availed myself of this offer,
as it gave us an opportunity to relieve the anxiety of our friends at
home as to our safety. Captain Blanford had been with the auxiliary
supply ship of the Peary Arctic expedition during the summer and told
us of having left Commander Peary at eighty degrees north latitude in
August. The expedition, he told us, would probably winter as high as
eighty-three degrees north, and he was highly enthusiastic over the
good prospects of Peary's success in at least reaching "Farthest North."
The Eskimo pilots of the _Pelican_ were more venturesome than their
friends at George River. They had a small boat belonging to the
Hudson's Bay Company, and in it were going to attempt to reach Fort
Chimo. Against his advice I had Ford arrange with them to permit
Easton and me to accompany them. It was a most fortunate circumstance,
I thought, that this opportunity was opened to us.
Accordingly the letters for Captain Blanford were written, sufficient
provisions, consisting of corn meal, flour, hard-tack, pork, and tea to
last Easton and me ten days, were packed, and our luggage was taken on
board the _Pelican_ on Saturday afternoon, where we were to spend the
night as Mr. McKenzie's and Captain Lovegrow's guests.
Mr. McKenzie, before going to Montreal, had lived nearly a quarter of a
century as Factor at Fort Chimo, and, thoroughly familiar with the
conditions of the country and the season, joined Ford in advising us
strongly against our undertaking, owing to the unusual hazard attached
to it, and the probability of getting caught in the ice and wrecked.
But we were used to hardship, and believed that if the Eskimos were
willing to attempt the journey we could get through with them some way,
and I saw no reason why I should change my plans.
Low-hanging clouds, flying snowflakes and a rising northeast wind
threatened a heavy storm on Sunday morning, October twenty-second, when
the _Pelican_ weighed anchor at ten o'clock, with us on board and the
small boat, the _Explorer_, that was to carry us westward in tow, and
steamed down the George River, at whose mouth, twenty miles below, we
were to leave her, to meet new and unexpected dangers and hardships.
At the Post the river is a mile and a half in width. About eight miles
farther down its banks close in and "the Narrows" occur, and then it
widens again. There is very little growth of any kind below the
Narrows. The rocks are polished smooth and bare as they rise from the
water's edge, and it is as desolate and barren a land as one's
imagination could picture, but withal possesses a rugged grand beauty
in its grim austerity that is impressive.
About three or four miles above the open bay the _Pelican's_ engines
ceased to throb and the _Explorer_ was hauled alongside. Everything
but the provisions for the Eskimo crew was already aboard. We said a
hurried adieu and, watching our chances as the boat rose and fell on
the swell, dropped one by one into the little craft. A bag of ship's
biscuit, the provisions of our Eskimos, was thrown after us. Most of
them went into the sea and were lost, and we needed them sadly later. I
thought we should swamp as each sea hit us before we could get away,
and when we were finally off the boat was half full of water.
The Eskimos hoisted a sail and turned to the west bank of the river,
for it was too rough outside to risk ourselves there in the little
_Explorer_. The pulse of the big ship began to beat and slowly she
steamed out into the open and left us to the mercies of the unfeeling
rocks of Ungava.