After a stay of a few hours at the Fort, we started again in the
_Grahame_ on our voyage to the head of the rapids at Fort Smith, a
distance of perhaps a hundred miles, and almost immediately passed into
the main stream leaving the lake, and until the junction of the Peace
bearing the name of the Rocky River. During the high water in summer
part of the water of the Peace finds its way into the Athabasca Lake by
a passage known as the Quatres Fourches, but as the floods subside a
slight current sets in the opposite direction; the lake thus has another
outlet into the Peace, which eventually joins the Rocky River about
thirty miles below; the combined stream is then called the Slave River
till it debouches into the Great Slave Lake, on leaving which it becomes
the Mackenzie.
A distinct alteration in the appearance of the country is visible on
leaving Fort Chipeweyan. The red granite rock shows up and the pine
timber is smaller and more scattered, burnt in many places, and mixed
with a thick growth of willows and berry-producing bushes; the scenery
from the river is monotonous and without landmarks, although a wider
view can be obtained than in running down the Athabasca, where the big
pine-trees prevent all chance of seeing far in any direction. The
current is of no great velocity with the exception of two small rapids
formed by the contraction of the channel; both are navigable, although
at certain stages of water it is necessary to put out a rope to assist
the steamer in mounting the more formidable of the two. We had a very
merry passage down, Dr. Mackay and several of the officers of his
district accompanying us, and in good time on the second day we tied up
to the bank on the west side of the river, just at the head of the
rapids.
[Illustration: The Grahame Towing Freight-scows on Lake Athabasca]
I must take this opportunity of congratulating the Hudson's Bay Company
on the efficient manner in which their steamers are managed. Considering
the utter incapacity of the Indian and half-breed crews when they first
come on board, great praise is due to the captains and engineers for
their success in overcoming obstacles in navigation and carrying on the
Company's business in a country so remote from civilization. Everything
is done in a quiet and orderly way, and a very noticeable feature is the
total absence of the swearing and profanity so essential to the
well-being of a river-steamer in other parts of the American continent.
The next day the work of portaging began, as the whole cargo had to be
transported sixteen miles to the lower end of the rapids. In former days
the goods were taken down by water, necessitating many portages and
great delay; but within the last few years a road has been cut through
the woods on the west side of the river, and the portage is made with
Red-River carts drawn by oxen. Twenty carts are in use, starting loaded
and returning light, on alternate days. The road is fair in a dry
summer, but full of mud-holes in bad weather, and celebrated as the
worst place for mosquitos in all the North.
While this was going on we amused ourselves with duck-shooting on some
lakes and muskegs a few miles back from the landing, and our bag was
always a welcome addition to the table, as no other kind of fresh meat
was to be had. Big game is very scarce along the main route, and though
there are still a few moose and bear it is rarely that an animal is seen
close to the banks of the river. As soon as the cargo was all over we
went across to Fort Smith, standing just below the rapids, to await the
arrival of the Mackenzie River steamboat which was expected at any time.
Dr. Mackay took me down the old boat-route in a canoe, and I had a good
opportunity of seeing what labour and risk there must have been with
heavily-laden boats; we made some fifteen portages in all, which
occupied a long afternoon, with only a light canoe. A large colony of
pelicans have taken possession of some islands among the rapids, and
rear their young without fear of molestation.
Fort Smith, in spite of its fine situation on an open flat high above
the river, is the most disreputable establishment I came across in the
North, and the contrast was more striking as most of the forts are kept
rather smartly. Several half-breeds have settled close round, and a
large band of Indians, known as the Caribou-Eaters, whose hunting-ground
lies between the two big lakes, get their supplies from here. Within a
short distance is Salt River, which produces all the salt consumed in
the country, and saves the expense of importing this necessary article.
On August 13th, after several days' waiting, the steamer _Wrigley_
arrived, bringing up the Mackenzie River furs and several of the
officers from that district. Among her passengers was a French
half-breed, King Beaulieu, who afterwards became my guide to the Barren
Ground. He agreed to go in this capacity at a consultation held in Dr.
Mackay's presence, swearing eternal fidelity and promising to do
everything in his power to ensure the success of the expedition. Nobody
could give him a very good character, but as he was known as a pushing
fellow and first-rate traveller, besides having made a successful
musk-ox hunt in the previous year, I concluded that my best chance lay
in going with him. Certainly, with all his faults, I must say that he
was thoroughly expert in all the arts of travel with canoes or
dog-sleighs, quick in emergencies, and far more courageous than most of
the half-breeds of the Great Slave Lake. When I was alone with him I
found him easy enough to manage; but his three sons, who accompanied us,
are the biggest scoundrels I ever had to travel with, and as they seem
to demoralize the old man when they are together, the united family is a
bad combination.
Two more days were passed in loading the _Wrigley_, and in discussion
among the officers from the two districts, who only meet on this
occasion, and have to make the most of the short stay to go over the
news of the last year and prospects for the next. Mr. Camsell, who is in
charge of Mackenzie River district, was on board, and, although I never
actually went within his dominions, was exceedingly kind in giving me
supplies from his own outfit, and in doing everything he could do to
help me during the year that I spent in the neighbourhood of the Great
Slave Lake.
The _Wrigley_, having the rough crossing of the lake to make, is a very
different style of boat to the stern-wheelers above, which do all their
work in smooth water. She is a screw-boat, drawing seven feet when
loaded; and it gives an idea of the great size of the Mackenzie when I
mention that a vessel with this draught of water has a clear run of
thirteen hundred miles from Fort Smith to Peel's River, a tributary
joining the main stream from the west a short distance above its mouth.
She has never, I believe, steamed into the Arctic Sea, partly on account
of the channel being unknown, and partly owing to the shortness of the
season, which necessitates her being constantly at work to supply the
forts before the closing of navigation.
After leaving Fort Smith and passing the mouth of Salt River the Slave
River widens considerably, and, with a slight current running between
low banks and numerous islands, follows a more circuitous course than in
its upper reaches. The steamer's course covers a distance of one hundred
and eighty miles to the Great Slave Lake, but, in travelling with canoes
or dogs, a number of portages are made to cut off bends of the river,
and about one-third of the distance is saved.
The granite formation is quickly lost sight of from the water. The sandy
banks are covered with a dense growth of willows backed by the pine
forest; a gloomy uninviting stretch of country, to which the tall dead
trees charred by former fires give a peculiar air of desolation. The
soft nature of the sand, and the fact that much of the bank has fallen
in through the action of the ice breaking up in the spring, render
tracking difficult on this part of the river; the fallen timber leaning
over it at all angles, and making it impossible to pass the line. The
sluggish nature of the current, however, compensates for this, as its
strength can always be overcome by oars or paddles in the bad places.
Early on the second day we steamed through the low delta lands at the
mouth of the river, and, passing cautiously among the sandy battures
lying far off shore, arrived in heavy rain and strong westerly wind at
Fort Resolution, situated about ten miles to the westward of the river's
mouth. Mr. Mackinlay, who is in charge of the fort, was away; but, as
the steamer was delayed for a couple of days by the storm that was
blowing, Mr. Camsell gave me very valuable assistance in making
preparation for my voyage.
The resources of the fort were at the lowest; no supplies had yet
arrived from outside, and the people were entirely dependent on their
nets for food: as is usually the case at this time of year, fish were
scarce and hard times prevalent. A boat had been fitted out to be sent
to the east end of the lake to trade for meat with the Indians hunting
there; but after waiting a long time for the steamer, to obtain the
ammunition necessary for trading, she was blown ashore and broken up on
the night of our arrival. I had intended to take a passage by this boat;
but as a party of men had to be sent to Fort Smith to bring down another
one, and I was anxious to get among the game with as little delay as
possible, I determined to make the journey as well as I could with
canoes.
It was now that I made the acquaintance of King Beaulieu's sons,
François, José, and Paul, each of them married and father of such a big
family that it makes one tremble for the future of the Great Slave Lake
country when the next generation has grown up. The original Beaulieu
seems to have been a French half-breed brought in by the Hudson's Bay
Company among the early _voyageurs_ from Red River. He settled at Salt
River, where buffalo were numerous at the time, and by an indefinite
number of wives raised a large family which is threatening gradually to
inundate the North. King's father appears to have been a fighting man,
and great stories of his bravery and prowess are told by his sons and
grandsons; but his name only appears in the Company's records in
connection with various deeds of violence not much to his credit.
All King's family were hanging about the fort in a state of
semi-starvation, and I was glad when we eventually started well on in
the afternoon of August 19th, with the hope of reaching first some good
fishing-ground to supply them with food for immediate want, and
afterwards the country of the caribou in the woods to the north of the
lake, while beyond that again was the prospect of finding the musk-ox
far out in the Barren Ground.
In character a Beaulieu is a mixture of a very simple child and a German
Jew; all the lack of reason of the one combined with the greed of the
other, and a sort of low cunning more like that of an animal than a
human being. He is not a nice man to travel with, as he always keeps a
longing eye on his master's possessions, even though he is fully as
well-equipped himself, and is untrustworthy if you leave anything in his
charge. To your face he is fairspoken and humble enough, and to hear
him talk you would think he had a certain amount of regard for you; but
out of sight the promises are forgotten, and he is devising some scheme
to annoy you and get something out of you. The only way to treat him is
as you would treat a dog; if you are kind to him he takes it as a sign
that you are afraid of him, and acts accordingly. With the exception of
King there is no fear of violence; but his passion is at times so
uncontrollable that he is capable of anything. It is needless to relate
all the bother I had with these people, and I shall content myself with
saying that the whole time I was with them the camp was the scene of one
continuous wrangle; sometimes they would quarrel with me and sometimes
among themselves, but we never did anything without having a row.
As far as Fort Resolution the travelling had been almost as easy,
although there were many delays, as in civilization; but directly you
branch from the Company's main route you are thrown entirely on your own
resources, and, owing to the impossibility of carrying enough provision
for a prolonged journey in the Barren Ground, the rifle and net are the
only means of obtaining food. This is a point to be well considered
before undertaking a trip to the country of the musk-ox, as, however
well you may be supplied at starting, you are sure to experience some
hard times before your object is accomplished.
My only provisions consisted of a couple of sacks of flour and about
fifty pounds of bacon, and I might as well have started with none at
all. My companions had all the improvidence of the Indian nature, and
hated the idea of keeping anything for hard times. There was such a
constant begging, not without a certain excuse from hunger, to be
allowed to eat flour and bacon, that I was really rather glad when it
was all gone, which was actually the case before we left the Great Slave
Lake. We had a good supply of tea and tobacco, though it proved after
all insufficient, plenty of ammunition for the three Winchester rifles,
and powder, shot, and ball for the muzzle-loading weapons of the party;
we had also nets and a few hooks and lines, matches, needles, and awls
to be used in the manufacture of moccasins and the deer-skin clothes so
essential for winter travel; knives of various shapes and sizes,
scrapers for dressing skins, and a small stock of the duffel imported by
the Company for lining mittens and wrapping up the feet during the
intense cold that we were sure to experience during the trip.
Our fleet numbered three large birch-bark canoes, crowded with men,
women, and children, amounting in all to over twenty souls, or, to be
more practical, mouths. Besides these there were fifteen gaunt and
hungry dogs, which had been spending their short summer's rest in
starving as a preparation for the hard work and harder blows which were
in store for them in the coming winter.
I was of course the only white man in the party, and whatever
conversation I held with the three or four half-breeds that I could
understand was carried on in the French patois of the North. Among
themselves they used the Montaignais dialect of the Chipeweyan language,
which is spoken with variations to the northward of the Cree-speaking
belt, till its place is taken by the Slavi and Locheaux language of the
Mackenzie River; in a couple of months I had picked up enough
Montaignais to be able to mix it with French and make myself fairly well
understood.
Four deerskin lodges made our encampment. I lived with King, as his camp
was always the quietest; in the other lodges there was a continual
screaming of children, or yelping of hungry dogs as they felt the cruel
blow of axe or paddle, which was the sure result of approaching the
savoury-smelling kettle too close. We camped the first night in the
delta of the Slave, or, as it is more usually called, the Big River. I
distributed a little ammunition, and we killed enough ducks to provide
the whole party with a night's provision. The next day a gale of wind
was blowing from the lake, and, after following winding muddy channels
all the morning, we were obliged to camp again on a point of willows
beyond which we should have been exposed to the full violence of the
storm, and our overloaded canoes would have had no chance of living in
the heavy sea. Here we remained two days, still within twenty miles of
the fort. Wild-fowl were numerous, but the great autumn migration had
not yet set in, and all the birds that we found had been bred in the
muskegs that surrounded us on all sides; they were mostly mallard,
widgeon, teal, shoveller, and pintail, the latter being particularly
plentiful. Musk-rats swam in all the little creeks and lakes, and, as
they are esteemed as an article of food, and their skins are of a
trifling value, we killed a great many.
[Illustration: Patching a Birch-bark on the Slave River]
On the third day we paddled along the shore of the lake against a strong
head-wind, passing the Isle de Pierre, one of the best fisheries in the
neighbourhood, and camped at the Point of Rocks, the first spot on the
south side of the lake where the red granite again shows up, and the end
of the muskeg country that extends far on each side of the Big River.
Here we caught enough whitefish with the nets to enable even the dogs to
have a small feed, and, as we killed forty ducks while waiting for the
wind to moderate, everybody was satisfied. In the afternoon we put out
in a calm to paddle across the open traverse to the first of a group of
islands about fifteen miles to the north. This traverse is the terror of
the lake for canoes, both in summer on account of the heavy sea which
gets up suddenly, and in winter when the drifting snow in stormy weather
obscures everything and makes it a difficult matter to keep the course
over the ice. On this occasion we got over just in time, and, camping on
the nearest island of the group, were delayed for two days by strong
north-west winds accompanied by showers of driving rain.
These islands, marked on the map as Simpson's Group, extend for a
hundred miles in a north-easterly direction to Fond du Lac, and, if ever
explored, will be found to be in immense numbers, varying in size, but
all of the same red-granite formation, covered with a scanty growth of
pine, birch, and willows. Many of them rise to a considerable height,
with the ridges generally running south-west and north-east. A few moose
still inhabit the larger islands; but the big herds of caribou from the
Barren Ground that used formerly to come here in their wanderings seem
to have deserted them of late years. An occasional small pond gives
harbourage for a few wild-fowl, while wood-grouse, and in winter
ptarmigan, are plentiful. The bare outlying rocks between the islands
are the breeding-ground of gulls and terns: divers and a few cormorants
give additional life to the lake in summer; but at the first sign of
cold weather the water-birds all leave for a more temperate land, and a
deathlike silence settles over the frozen channels during the eight
months of winter.
The island on which we were encamped, being the most westerly of the
group, was exposed to the full force of the gale. The heavy fresh-water
seas broke with great violence on the weather shore and on the numerous
rocks, some above water and others submerged, that make the navigation
of this part of the lake dangerous for anything larger than a canoe. It
was no easy matter to get out our nets, even to leeward of the island,
and the supply of fish was very scanty; dissatisfaction was prevalent in
the camp, and heavy inroads were made on the flour and bacon that would
have proved so useful later on. When the weather moderated we started
against a strong head-wind, and a hard day's paddling brought us to a
spot known as the Inconnu Fishery, situated on an island halfway to Fond
du Lac. The Inconnu, or Unknown Fish, is, I believe, entirely restricted
to the Mackenzie River country, and its southernmost limits seem to be
the rapids at Fort Smith; it was thus named by the early _voyageurs_ of
the Company, who were unable to classify it, and even to this day there
is a great variety of opinion as to what family it is a member of: a
long thin fish, not unlike a misshapen salmon, running up to fifteen
pounds in weight, with flabby and unpalatable flesh, it is held in very
low estimation in comparison with whitefish or trout, and is only
appreciated in hard times. At this particular island it will take a bait
readily, but I never heard of its doing so in any other part of the
lake, although large numbers are caught in the nets. There is some
peculiarity in the water which may account for this, as, even in the
dead of winter, there is generally an open hole in the ice; and, in
passing the Inconnu Fishery, one must keep right ashore to avoid the
treacherous spot. Here we were wind-bound again, and indeed for several
days made very little head-way against the northerly gales that seem
almost incessant at this time of year. We had a pleasant spot to camp in
every night, but not always enough to eat, and it was the first of
September before we sighted the high land on the north side of the lake.
This was the first really fine day we had had since leaving the fort,
and, taking advantage of it, we left the shelter of the islands, made a
bold crossing of the wide stretch of open water, and camped among the
scattering pines on the northern mainland. Exactly opposite to us was
the narrow entrance to Christie's Bay of the maps, extending some
hundred miles to the east and south-east, offering another tempting
field for exploration. On the west side of the entrance is a remarkable
many-coloured bluff, composed of the soft rock used by the Indians for
the manufacture of their stone pipes, which are still in common use.
The range of hills along the north shore, which we now had to coast,
average perhaps five hundred feet in height, occasionally reaching a
much higher elevation, but without any conspicuous peaks; the land
begins to rise at once from the lake, in many places taking the form of
a steep cliff. The vegetation is the same as that on the south side of
the lake, but more stunted, the pine trees especially showing the
increased rigour of the climate; small birch trees are still numerous,
and the growth of the hardy willows is almost as strong as at Fort
Resolution. Fruit-bearing plants are common. The small muskegs between
the ridges of rock are full of a much-prized yellow berry, while
blueberry bushes flourish in the dry spots, and a few raspberries are
still to be seen; but strawberries, which used to be plentiful on the
south shore and among the islands, have disappeared. I noticed here the
low trailing plant bearing a woolly red berry, known as Cannicannick by
the Indians to the west of the Rocky Mountains, and used by them as
tobacco; the Slave Lake Indians sometimes smoke it, but prefer the inner
bark of the red willow; the Hudson's Bay negrohead tobacco is in my
opinion much improved, as well as economized, by a mixture with either
of these substances. Countless streams, the outlet of lakes on the
elevated tableland to the north, foam down the deep gulches in the
hillside, and confused masses of fallen timber and rocks give evidence
of the frequent land-slides that take place during the spring thaws.
Again the north wind howled dismally down the lake, and several more
days were occupied in reaching Fond du Lac. The enforced delay had a
depressing effect upon the whole party, as fish were scarce, and
paddling against continual head-winds is always hard work. At last, on
September 5th, passing through a narrow arm of the lake with a
perceptible current formed by the prevailing winds, we came in sight of
Fond du Lac. A single house at the head of a snug little bay is all that
is left standing, but the ruins of others, and a number of rough graves,
show that at one time it was a more populous place. It was formerly an
outpost of Fort Resolution, used as a depot for collecting meat, and
presided over in a haphazard manner by King Beaulieu, who is still
rather sore about the abandonment of the post and his own discharge from
the Company's service. The weather now became worse than ever, snow and
hail taking the place of rain and throwing the first white mantle on the
hill-tops. It was evident that such a large party, crippled as we were
with women and children, would never be able to reach the caribou, in
the event of these animals being far back from the Great Slave Lake. We
had met no Indians, and so had no means of hearing the news of the
caribou, which forms the one topic of interest among the Dog-Rib and
Yellow Knife tribes who hunt in this part of the country. Luckily trout
and whitefish were fairly abundant, some of the former reaching such an
enormous size that I am afraid to hazard a guess at their weight, though
I afterwards saw one at the fort that turned the scale at fifty-eight
pounds.
[Illustration: King Beaulieu]