TO WHALE RIVER AND FORT CHIMO
The feeling of relief that came to me when I heard the shout and saw
the men and dogs coming can be appreciated, and something of the
satisfaction I felt when I grasped the hands of the two Eskimos that
strode up on snowshoes can be understood.
The older of the two was an active little fellow who looked much like a
Japanese. He introduced himself as Emuk (Water). His companion, who,
we learned later, rejoiced in the name Amnatuhinuk (Only a Woman), was
quite a young fellow, big, fat and goodnatured.
Without any preliminaries Emuk pushed right into the shack and, from a
bag that he carried, produced some tough dough cakes which he gave us
to eat, and each a plug of tobacco to smoke. He was all activity and
command, working quickly himself and directing Amnatuhinuk. A candle
from his bag was lighted. Amnatuhinuk was sent for a kettle of water;
wood was piled into the stove, and the kettle put over to boil. The
stove proved too slow for Emuk and he built a fire outside where tea
could be made more quickly, and when it was ready he insisted upon our
drinking several cups of it to stimulate us. Then he brought forth a
pail containing strong-smelling beans cooked in rancid seal oil, which
he heated. This concoction he thought was good strong food and just
the thing for half-starved men, and he set it before us with the air of
one who has done something especially nice. We ate some of it but were
as temperate as Emuk with his urgings would permit us to be, for I knew
the penalty that food exacts after a long fast.
A comfortable bed of boughs and blankets was spread for us, and we were
made to lie down. Emuk, on more than one occasion, bad been in a
similar position to ours and others had come to his aid, and he wanted
to pay the debt he felt he owed to humanity.
He told us that Potokomik and the others, after suffering great
hardships, had reached his tupek near the Mukalik the day before, but I
could not understand his language well enough to draw from him any of
the details of their trip out.
At midnight Emuk made tea again and roused us up to partake of it and
eat more dough cakes and beans with seal oil. I feared the
consequences, but I could not refuse him, for he did not understand why
we should not want to eat a great deal. The result was that with
happiness and stomach ache I could not sleep, and before morning was
going out to vomit. Even at the danger of seeming not to appreciate
Emuk's hospitality, I was constrained to decline to eat any breakfast.
Emuk noticed a hole in the bottom of one of my seal-skin boots. He
promptly pulled off his own and made me put them on. He had another
though poorer pair for himself.
It was a delight to be moving again. We were on the trail before dawn,
Emuk with his snowshoes tramping the road ahead of the dogs and
Amnatuhinuk driving the team. The temperature must have been at least
ten degrees below zero. The weather was bitterly cold for men so
thinly clad as Easton and I were, and the snow was so deep that we
could not exercise by running, for we had no snowshoes, and while we
wallowed through the deep snow the dogs would have left us behind, so
we could do nothing but sit on the komatik (sledge) and shiver.
At noon we stopped at the foot of a hill before ascending it, and the
men threw up a wind-break of snow blocks, back of which they built a
fire and put over the teakettle. Easton and I had just squatted close
to the fire to warm our benumbed hands when the husky dogs put their
noses in the air and gave out the long weird howl of welcome or
defiance that announces the approach of other dogs, and almost
immediately a loaded team with two men came over the hill and down the
slope at a gallop toward us. It proved to be Job Edmunds, the
half-breed Hudson's Bay Company officer from Whale River, and his
Eskimo servant, coming to our aid.
Edmunds was greatly relieved to find us safe. He knew exactly what to
do. From his komatik box he produced a bottle of port wine and made us
each take a small dose of it which he poured into a tin cup. He put a
big, warm reindeer-skin koolutuk [the outer garment of deerskin worn by
the Eskimos] on each of us and pulled the hoods over our heads. He had
warm footwear--in fact, everything that was necessary for our comfort.
Then he cut two ample slices of wheat bread from a big loaf, and
toasted and buttered them for us. He was very kind and considerate.
Edmunds has saved many lives in his day. Every winter he is called
upon to go to the rescue of Eskimos who have been caught in the barrens
without food, as we were. He had saved Emuk from starvation on one or
two occasions.
After a half-hour's delay we were off again, I on the komatik with
Edmunds, and Easton with Emuk. We passed the snow house where Edmunds
and his man had spent the previous night. They would have come on in
the dark, but they knew Emuk was ahead and would reach us anyway.
Edmunds had a splendid team of dogs, wonderfully trained. The big,
wolfish creatures loved him and they feared him. He almost never had
to use the long walrus-hide whip. They obeyed him on the instant
without hesitation--"Ooisht," and they pulled in the harness as one;
"Aw," and they stopped. There was a power in his voice that governed
them like magic. The wind had packed the snow hard enough on the
barrens beyond the Tuktotuk--and the country there was all barren--to
bear up the komatik; the dogs were in prime condition and traveled at a
fast trot or a gallop, and we made good time. Once Emuk stopped to
take a white fox out of a trap. He killed it by pressing his knee on
its breast and stifling its heart beats.
Big cakes of ice were piled in high barricades along the rivers where
we crossed them, and at these places we had to let the komatik down
with care on one side and help the dogs haul it up with much labor on
the other; and on the level, through the rough ice hummocks or amongst
the rocks, the drivers were kept busy steering to prevent collisions
with the obstructions, while the dogs rushed madly ahead, and we, on
the komatik, clung on for dear life and watched our legs that they
might not get crushed. Once or twice we turned over, but the drivers
never lost their hold of the komatik or control of the dogs.
It was dark when we reached Emuk's skin tupek and were welcomed by a
group of Eskimos, men, women and children. Iksialook was of the
number, and he was so worn and haggard that I scarcely recognized him.
He had seen hardship since our parting. The people were very dirty and
very hospitable. They took us into the tupek at once, which was
extremely filthy and made insufferably hot by a sheet-iron tent stove.
The women wore sealskin trousers and in the long hoods of their
_adikeys_, or upper garments, carried babies whose bright little
dusky-hued faces peeped timidly out at us over the mothers' shoulders.
A ptarmigan was boiled and divided between Easton and me, and with that
and bread and butter from Edmunds's box and hot tea we made a splendid
supper. After a smoke all around, for the women smoke as well as the
men, polar bear and reindeer skins were spread upon spruce boughs,
blankets were given us for covering, and we lay down. Eleven of us
crowded into the tupek and slept there that night. How all the Eskimos
found room I do not know. I was crowded so tightly between one of the
fat women on one side and Easton on the other that I could not turn
over; but I slept as I had seldom ever slept before.
The next forenoon we crossed the Mukalik River and soon after reached
Whale River, big and broad, with blocks of ice surging up and down upon
the bosom of the restless tide. The Post is about ten miles from its
mouth. We turned northward along its east bank and, in a little while,
came to some scattered spruce woods, which Edmunds told me were just
below his home. Then at a creek, above which stood the miniature log
cabin and small log storehouse comprising the Post buildings, I got off
and climbed up through rough ice barricades.
Never in my life have I had such a welcome as I received here. Mrs.
Edmunds came out to meet me. She told me that they had been watching
for us at the Post all the morning and how glad they were that we were
safe, and that we had come to see them, and that we must stay a good
long time and rest. For two-score years they had lived in that
desolate place and never before had a traveler come to visit them. In
all that time the only white people they had ever met were the three or
four connected with the Post at Fort Chimo, for the ship never calls at
Whale River on her rounds. Edmunds brings the provisions over from
Fort Chimo in a little schooner. There are five in the family--Edmunds
and his wife, their daughter (a young woman of twenty) and her husband,
Sam Ford (a son of John Ford at George River), and Mary's baby.
A good wash and clean clothing followed by a sumptuous dinner of
venison put us on our feet again. I suffered little as a result of the
fasting period, but Easton had three or four days of pretty severe
colic. This is the usual result of feast after famine, and was to be
expected.
And now I learned the details of Potokomik's journey out. When the
three Eskimos left us in the shack they started at once in search of
Emuk's tupek. The storm that raged for two days swept pitilessly
across their path, but they never halted, pushing through the deepening
snow in single file, taking turns at going ahead and breaking the way,
until night, and then they stopped. They had no ax and could have no
fire, so they built themselves a snow igloo as best they could without
the proper implements and it protected them against the drifting snow
and piercing wind while they slept. On the second day they shot, with
their rifles, seven ptarmigans. These they plucked and ate raw. They
saw no more game, and finally became so weak and exhausted they could
carry their rifles no farther and left them on the trail. Each night
they built a snow house. With increasing weakness their progress was
very slow; still they kept going, staggering on and on through the
snow. It was only their lifelong habit of facing great odds and
enduring great hardships that kept them up. Men less inured to cold
and privation would surely have succumbed. They were making their
final fight when at last they stumbled into Emuk's tupek. Kumuk sat
down and cried like a child. It was two weeks before any of them was
able to do any physical work. They looked like shadows of their former
selves when I saw them at Whale River.
It was after dark Sunday night when my letter to Edmunds reached the
Post. Earlier in the evening Edmunds and his man had crossed the
river, which is here over half a mile in width, and pitched their camp
on the opposite shore, preparatory to starting up the river the next
morning on a deer hunt, herds having been reported to the northward by
Eskimos. Mrs. Edmunds read the letter, and she and Mary were at once
all excitement. They lighted a lantern and signaled to the camp on the
other side and fired guns until they had a reply. Then, for fear that
Edmunds might not understand the urgency of his immediate returns they
kept firing at intervals all night, stopping only to pack the komatik
box with the clothing and food that Edmunds was to bring to us.
Neither of the women slept. With the thought of men starving out in
the snow they could not rest. The floating ice in the river and the
swift tide made it impossible for a boat to cross in the darkness, but
with daylight Edmunds returned, harnessed his dogs, and was off to meet
us as has been described.
We had left George River on October twenty-second, and it was the
eighth of November when we reached Whale River, and in this interval
the caribou herds that the Indians had reported west of the Koksoak had
passed to the east of Whale River and turned to the northward. Fifty
miles inland the Indian and Eskimo hunters had met them. The killing
was over and they told us hundreds of the animals lay dead in the snow
above. So many had been butchered that all the dogs and men in Ungava
would be well supplied with meat during the winter, and numbers of the
carcasses would feed the packs of timber wolves that infested the
country or rot in the next summer's sun. Sam Ford had gone inland but
was too late for the big hunt and only killed four or five deer. The
wolves were so thick, he told us, that he could not sleep at night in
his camp with the noise of their howling. One Eskimo brought in two
wolf skins that were so large when they were stretched a man could
almost have crawled into either of them. I saw wolf tracks myself
within a quarter mile of the Post, for the animals were so bold they
ventured almost to the door.
Edmunds is a famous hunter. During the previous winter, besides
attending to his post duties, he killed nearly half a hundred caribou
to supply his Post and Fort Chimo with man and dog food, and in the
same season his traps yielded him two hundred fox pelts--mostly white
ones--his personal catch. This was not an unusual year's work for him.
Mary inherits her father's hunting instincts. In the morning she would
put her baby in the hood of her adikey, shoulder her gun, don her
snowshoes, and go to "tend" her traps. One day she did not take her
gun, and when she had made her rounds of the traps and started homeward
discovered that she was being followed by a big gray timber wolf. When
she stopped, the wolf stopped; when she went on, it followed, stealing
gradually closer and closer to her, almost imperceptibly, but still
gaining upon her. She wanted to run, but she realized that if she did
the wolf would know at once that she was afraid and would attack and
kill her and her baby; so without hastening her pace, and only looking
back now and again to note the wolf's gain, she reached the door of the
house and entered with the animal not ten paces away. Now she always
carries a gun and feels no fear, for she can shoot.
I took advantage of the delay at Whale River to partially outfit for
the winter. Edmunds and his family rendered us valuable assistance and
advice, securing for us, from the Eskimos, sealskin boots, and from the
Indians who came to the Post while we were there, deer skins for
trousers, koolutuks and sleeping bags, Mrs. Edmunds and Mary themselves
making our moccasins, mittens and duffel socks.
The Eskimos were all away at their hunting grounds and it was not
possible to secure a dog team to carry us on to Fort Chimo. Therefore,
when Edmunds announced one day that he must send Sam Ford and the
Eskimo servant over with the Post team for a load of provisions, I
availed myself of the opportunity to accompany them, and on the
twenty-eighth of November we said good-by to the friends who had been
so kind to us and again faced toward the westward.
The morning was clear, crisp and bracing; the temperature was twenty
degrees below zero. We ascended the river some seven or eight miles
before we found a safe crossing, as the tide had kept the ice broken in
the center of the channel below, and piled it like hills along the
banks.
I noted that the Whale River valley was much better wooded than any
country we had seen for a long time--since we had left the head waters
of the George River, in fact--and the Indians say it is so to its
source. The trees are small black spruce and larch, but a fairly thick
growth. This "bush," however, is evidently quite restricted in width,
for after crossing the river we were almost immediately out of it, and
the same interminable, barren, rocky, treeless country that we had seen
to the eastward extended westward to the Koksoak.
That night was spent in a snow igloo. The next day we crossed the
False River, a wide stream at its mouth, but a little way up not over
two hundred yards wide. At twelve o'clock a halt was made at an Eskimo
tupek for dinner.
The people were, as these northern people always are, most hospitable,
giving us the best they had--fresh venison and tea. After but an
hour's delay we were away again, and at three o'clock, with the dogs on
a gallop, rounded the hill above Fort Chimo and pulled into the Post,
the farthest limit of white man's habitation in all Labrador.
We were welcomed by Mr. Duncan Mathewson, the Chief Trader, who has
charge of the Ungava District for the Hudson's Bay Company, and Dr.
Alexander Milne, Assistant Commissioner of the Company, from Winnipeg,
who had arrived on the _Pelican_ and was on a tour of inspection of the
Labrador Coast Posts.
The Chief Trader's residence is a small building, and Mr. Mathewson was
unable to entertain us in the house, but he gave orders at once to have
a commodious room in one of the dozen or so other buildings of the Post
fitted up for us with beds, stove and such simple furnishings as were
necessary to establish us in housekeeping and make us comfortable
during our stay with him. Here we were to remain until the Indian and
Eskimo hunters came for their Christmas and New Year's trading, at
which time, I was advised, I should probably be able to engage Eskimo
drivers and dogs to carry us eastward to the Atlantic coast.