CROSSING THE LAKE--ITS NATURAL HISTORY
All day long here, as on the Nyarling, I busied myself with compass
and sketch-book, making the field notes, sketches, and compass
surveys from which my various maps were compiled; and Preble let no
chance go by of noting the changing bird and plant life that told
us we quit the Canadian fauna at Stony Island and now were in the
Hudsonian zone.
This is the belt of dwindling trees, the last or northmost zone of
the forest, and the spruce trees showed everywhere that they were
living a life-long battle, growing and seeding, but dwarfed by
frost and hardships. But sweet are the uses of adversity, and the
stunted sprucelings were beautified, not uglified, by their troubles.
I never before realised that a whole country could be such a series
of charming little Japanese gardens, with tiny trees, tiny flowers,
tiny fruits, and gorgeous oriental rugs upon the earth and rocks
between.
I photographed one group of trees to illustrate their dainty elfish
dwarfishness, but realising that no one could guess the height
without a scale, I took a second of the same with a small Indian
sitting next it.
Weeso is a kind old soul; so far as I could see he took no part
in the various seditions, but he was not an inspiring guide. One
afternoon he did something that made a final wreck of my confidence.
A thunderstorm was rumbling in the far east. Black clouds began
travelling toward us; with a line of dark and troubled waters below,
the faint breeze changed around and became a squall. Weeso looked
scared and beckoned to Freesay, who came and took the helm. Nothing
happened.
We were now running along the north shore of Et-then, where are to
be seen the wonderful 1,200-foot cliffs described and figured by
Captain George Back in 1834. They are glorious ramparts, wonderful
in size and in colour, marvellous in their geological display.
Flying, and evidently nesting among the dizzy towers, were a few
Barn-swallows and Phoebe-birds.
This cliff is repeated on Oot-sing-gree-ay, the next island, but
there it is not on the water's edge. It gives a wonderful echo which
the Indians (not to mention myself) played with, in childish fashion.
On Sunday, 21 July, we made a new record, 6 meals and 20 miles.
On July 22 we made only 7 meals and 11 miles and camped in the
narrows Tal-thel-lay. These are a quarter of a mile wide and have
a strong current running westerly. This is the place which Back
says is a famous fishing ground and never freezes over, even in the
hardest winters. Here, as at all points, I noted the Indian names,
not only because they were appropriate, but in hopes of serving the
next traveller. I found an unexpected difficulty in writing them
down, viz.: no matter how I pronounced them, old Weeso and Freesay,
my informants, would say, "Yes, that is right." This, I learned,
was out of politeness; no matter how you mispronounce their words
it is good form to say, "That's it; now you have it exactly."
The Indians were anxious to put out a net overnight here, as they
could count on getting a few Whitefish; so we camped at 5.15. It is
difficult to convey to an outsider the charm of the word "whitefish."
Any northerner will tell you that it is the only fish that is
perfect human food, the only food that man or dog never wearies of,
the only lake food that conveys no disorder no matter how long or
freely it is used. It is so delicious and nourishing that there
is no fish in the world that can even come second to it. It is as
far superior in all food qualities to the finest Salmon or Trout as
a first-prize, gold-medalled, nut-fed thoroughbred Sussex bacon-hog
is to the roughest, toughest, boniest old razor-backed land-pike
that ever ranged the woods of Arkansas.
That night the net yielded 3 Whitefish and 3 Trout. The latter,
being 4 to 8 pounds each, would have been reckoned great prizes
in any other country, but now all attention was on the Whitefish.
They certainly were radiantly white, celestial in color; their
backs were a dull frosted silver, with here and there a small
electric lamp behind the scales to make its jewels sparkle. The
lamps alternated with opals increased on the side; the bellies were
of a blazing mother-of-pearl. It would be hard to imagine a less
imaginative name than "white" fish for such a shining, burning
opalescence. Indian names are usually descriptive, but their name
for this is simply "The Fish." All others are mere dilutes and cheap
imitations, but the Coregonus is at all times and par excellence
"The Fish."
Nevertheless, in looking at it I could not help feeling that this
is the fat swine, or the beef Durham of its kind. The head, gills,
fins, tail, vital organs and bones all were reduced to a minimum
and the meat parts enlarged and solidified, as though they were
the product of ages of careful breeding by man to produce a perfect
food fish, a breeding that has been crowned with the crown of
absolute success.
The Indians know, for the best of reasons, the just value of every
native food. When Rabbits abound they live on them but do not
prosper; they call it "starving on rabbits." When Caribou meat is
plenty they eat it, but crave flour. When Moose is at hand they
eat it, and are strong. When Jack-fish, Sucker, Conies, and Trout
are there, they take them as a variant; but on Whitefish, as on
Moose, they can live with out loathing, and be strong. The Indian
who has his scaffold hung with Whitefish when winter comes, is
accounted rich.
"And what," says the pessimist, "is the fly in all this precious
ointment?" Alasl It is not a game fish; it will not take bait,
spoon, or fly, and its finest properties vanish in a few hours
after capture.
The Whitefish served in the marble palaces of other lands is as
mere dish-water to champagne, when compared with the three times
purified and ten times intensified dazzling silver Coregonus as
it is landed on the bleak shores of those far-away icy lakes. So
I could not say 'No' to the Indian boys when they wanted to wait
here, the last point at which they could be sure of a catch.
That night (22d July) five canoes and two York boats of Indians
landed at the narrows. These were Dogribs of Chief Vital's band;
all told they numbered about thirty men, women, and children; with
them were twenty-odd dogs, which immediately began to make trouble.
When one is in Texas the topic of conversation is, "How are the
cattle?" in the Klondike, "How is your claim panning out?" and in
New York, "How are you getting on with your novel?" On Great Slave
Lake you say, "Where are the Caribou?" The Indians could not tell;
they had seen none for weeks, but there was still much ice in the
east end of the lake which kept them from investigating. They had
plenty of dried Caribou meat but were out of tea and tobacco. I had
come prepared for this sort of situation, and soon we had a fine
stock of dried venison.
These were the Indians whose abandoned dogs made so much trouble
for us in the days that followed.
At 4 P. M. of 23d of July we were stopped by a long narrow floe of
broken ice. Without consulting me the crew made for the shore.
It seemed they were full of fears: "What if they should get caught
in that floe, and drift around for days? What if a wind should
arise (it had been glassy calm for a week)? What if they could',
not get back?" etc., etc.
Preble and I climbed a hill for a view. The floe was but half a
mile wide, very loose, with frequent lanes.
"Preble, is there any reason why we should not push through this
floe using poles to move the cakes?"
"None whatever."
On descending, however, I found the boys preparing to camp for "a
couple of days," while the ice melted or drifted away somewhere.
So I said, "You get right into this boat now and push off; we can
easily work our way through." They made no reply, simply looked
sulkier than ever, and proceeded to start a fire for meal No. 5.
"Weeso," I said, "get into your place and tell your men to follow."
The old man looked worried and did nothing, He wanted to do right,
but he was in awe of his crew.
Then did I remember how John MacDonald settled the rebellion on
the river.
"Get in there," I said to Preble and Billy. "Come on, Weeso." We
four jumped into the boat and proceeded to push off with all the
supplies.
Authorities differ as to the time it took for the crew to make up
their minds. Two seconds and eleven seconds are perhaps the extremes
of estimate. They came jumping aboard as fast as they could.
We attacked the floe, each with a lodge-pole; that is, Billy and
Preble did in the bow, while Freesay and I did at the rear; and
in thirty-five minutes we had pushed through and were sailing the
open sea.
The next day we had the same scene repeated with less intensity,
in this case because Freesay sided with me. What would I not give
to have had a crew of white men. A couple of stout Norwegian sailors
would have done far better than this whole outfit of reds.
When we stopped for supper No. 1 a tiny thimbleful of down on two
pink matches ran past, and at once the mother, a Peetweet, came
running in distress to save her young. The brave Beaulieu fearlessly
seized a big stick and ran to kill the little one. I shouted out,
"Stop that," in tones that implied that I owned the heaven, the
earth, the sea, and all that in them is, but could not have saved
the downling had it not leaped into the water and dived out of
sight. It came up two feet away and swam to a rock of safety, where
it bobbed its latter end toward its adversaries and the open sea
in turn.
I never before knew that they could dive.
About eight o'clock we began to look for a good place to camp and
make meal No. 6. But the islands where usually we found refuge
from the dogs were without wood, and the shores were too rugged
and steep or had no dry timber, so we kept going on. After trying
one or two places the Indians said it was only a mile to Indian
Mountain River (Der-sheth Tessy), where was a camp of their friends.
I was always glad of a reason for pushing on, so away we went. My
crew seized their rifles and fired to let their village know we were
coming. The camp came quickly into view, and volley after volley
was fired and returned.
These Indians are extremely poor and the shots cost 5 and 6 cents
each. So this demonstration totalled up about $2.00.
As we drew near the village of lodges the populace lined up on shore,
and then our boys whispered, "Some white men." What a peculiar
thrill it gave me! I had seen nothing but Indians along the route
so far and expected nothing else. But here were some of my own
people, folk with whom I could talk. They proved to be my American
friend from Smith Landing, he whose hand I had lanced, and his
companion, a young Englishman, who was here with him prospecting
for gold and copper. "I'm all right now," he said, and, held up
the hand with my mark on it, and our greeting was that of white
men meeting among strangers in a far foreign land.
As soon as we were ashore a number of Indians came to offer meat
for tobacco. They seemed a lot of tobacco-maniacs. "Tzel-twee" at
any price they must have. Food they could do without for a long
time, but life without smoke was intolerable; and they offered their
whole dried product of two Caribou, concentrated, nourishing food
enough to last a family many days, in exchange for half a pound of
nasty stinking, poisonous tobacco.
Two weeks hence, they say, these hills will be alive with Caribou;
alas! for them, it proved a wholly erroneous forecast.
Y.'s guide is Sousi King Beaulieu (for pedigree, see Warburton
Pike); he knows all this country well and gave us much information
about the route. He says that this year the Caribou cows went north
as usual, but the bulls did not. The season was so late they did
not think it worth while; they are abundant yet at Artillery Lake.
He recognised me as the medicine man, and took an early opportunity
of telling me what a pain he had. Just where, he was not sure,
but it was hard to bear; he would like some sort of a pain-killer.
Evidently he craved a general exhilarator. Next morning we got
away at 7 A. M. after the usual painful scene about getting up in
the middle of the night, which was absurd, as there was no night.
Next afternoon we passed the Great White Fall at the mouth of Hoar
Frost River; the Indians call it Dezza Kya. If this is the Beverly
Falls of Back, his illustrator was without information; the published
picture bears not the slightest resemblance to it.
At three in the afternoon of July 27th, the twelfth day after we
had set out on the "three or four day run" from Resolution, this
exasperating and seemingly interminable voyage really did end, and
we thankfully beached our York boat at the famous lobstick that
marks the landing of Pike's Portage.