Making a New Home--Carrière's Kitchen--The Navvies' _Salle-à-Manger_--A
Curious Milking Custom--Insect Plagues--Peterboro' Canoes--Fishing
Trips--Mail-day--Indian dread of drowning--The Indian Mail-carrier and
his Partner--Talking by Telegraph--Prairie Fires.
A detailed account of how we spent the next few weeks would be of little
interest, so I will only give it in outline. We slept in the house and
took our meals at the fort, Carrière doing the cooking under a low tent
close by, which, as a kitchen, was decidedly a curiosity. It occupied a
small space not ten feet square, in only five feet of which we could
stand upright, and contained cases of tinned fruits, vegetables, sauces,
and meats, barrels of flour and meal, caddies of tea and coffee, a small
sheet-iron cooking-stove, all the pots, pans, pasteboards, and all other
culinary necessaries. There was also a rickety table, at which the men,
often five and six at a time, had their meals, sitting on the nearest
case, bag, or barrel. It was so crowded that one wondered how Carrière
managed to get up such excellent dinners with such limited accommodation.
He also made delicious bread, baking it in a hole in the side of the
hill, heated by building a fire round it.
By degrees we moved into the house, as the carpenters moved out, taking
their bed of shavings with them; and we found daily amusement in the
novelty of our surroundings. The house stood on a slight elevation in the
valley above the lake, about a hundred and fifty feet off. To the west
was a perpendicular wall of rock, rising to a height of forty or fifty
feet, covered with tall pines, moss, and ferns. To the east lay a plot of
grass, divided by a deep narrow creek from half a dozen dirty tents
occupied by the navvies.
The largest of these had a fire burning before it, over which hung a
perpetual kettle of pea-soup. Hard by stood a long table of rough boards,
laid on rudely fashioned trestles; another board, narrower, and several
inches lower, serving as a seat. This table was set almost as often as
the pea-soup was stirred. Its appointments were simple, but satisfactory
to the guests. There were tin plates and cups, heavy knives and forks, a
pepper pot, a mug of mustard, another of salt, a bottle of pickles, and
one of sauce. When dinner was ready, the cook, a little fat man, with an
apron tied round his waist, a long red _toque_ on his head, and his
shirt-sleeves rolled above his elbows, put his hands to his mouth, and
gave a loud halloo. Then from every part of the works poured the men
belonging to his mess, going first to the creek to wash their hands. As
soon as they were seated, the little fellow filled their plates first
with soup and next with pork and beans, out of another steaming pot. Ten
minutes of rapid feeding satisfied their appetites, and they adjourned to
the fallen trees and scattered logs to enjoy their pipes at leisure.
Vigorously wiping down the table, the cook set it anew for the
"officers"--that is, the contractors, engineers, and their assistants;
the doctor, paymaster, and any one of similar status, who happened to be
_en route_ to another part of the line. Their dinner call was a
shrill whistle, and their bill of fare differed from the navvies' only in
the addition of pies made of dried apples, and an unlimited allowance of
pickles and sugar. Their dinner hour, too, was a "movable feast," as in
rainy weather they took it between the showers; the navvies did not mind
a wetting.
Behind Mr. C----'s house the ground rose more rapidly to the line of
railway, and at the north end of the west rock was a fish-pond, which
never had any fish in it, although a good deal of attention was paid to
stocking it. About four hundred feet to the east is another rock almost
as high as the one on the west, beyond which the lake narrows, and the
future railway crossing is projected. Of course it took much longer to
arrange and make up the necessary useful and ornamental "fixings," as the
Yankees call them, for our new house when we were thrown entirely upon
our own resources than it would have done in town, where stores and
assistants are always to be had; and the saying that "necessity is the
mother of invention," was repeatedly verified in our case. Time,
therefore, never hung heavily upon our hands, and everything about us
having the charm of novelty, gave zest to what to many people would have
been but a dull life.
The climate is delightful. A cool fresh breeze always blowing from the
lake, tempers the heat, and to a great extent keeps off those foes to
comfort in the bush--mosquitoes, black flies, sand flies, and deer flies,
or bull-dogs, as they call them there.
Manitoban mosquitoes are larger than those of any other part of Canada,
and nothing but smoke will drive them away. Many people who live on the
prairies, instead of going for their cattle at milking time, build a
smudge (a fire of chips mulched with wet hay or green twigs when well
started, to create smoke) near the milk house, and the cattle will come
to the fire to obtain relief from the mosquitoes. The black flies are
smaller, and the first intimation one has of their attack is a small
stream of blood trickling down one's neck from behind the ear. They bite
and die, but there are myriads to take their place. The black flies are
most troublesome during the day, the mosquitoes at night. Sand flies, as
their name implies, resemble a grain of sand, and their bites are like a
thousand red-hot needles piercing the skin at once, they are attracted by
a light, and no netting will keep them out. Last, but by no means least,
are the deer-flies, great big brutes, larger than the largest blue bottle
fly. They generally devote their attentions to cattle, and I have seen
the poor cows rushing madly down the clearing, the bells round their
necks jangling wildly, lashing their tails and tossing their heads, never
stopping until safe from their tormentors in the shelter of the dark
stable. The dogs, too, are often so covered with these wretched pests,
that nothing but dragging themselves through the thick underbrush will
set them free. Their bite is very venomous. One of the engineers showed
me the back of his hand where one had bitten him a few hours before; it
was blue and angry-looking, swollen to twice its usual size, and very
painful. Fortunately the deer-fly does not bite often.
We were able to explore the lake, as Mr. C---- had two Rice Lake or
Peterboro' canoes. These boats are built by a firm in Peterboro',
Ontario, and are steadier than birch-bark canoes, though not so light.
They are much used in all parts of Canada, although the Indians prefer
the birch-bark. We went out almost every evening, named all the bays,
points, and islands, caught lots of excellent pike with a trolling line,
which relieved the monotony of bacon and ham for breakfast, or went to
the net spread at the mouth of a little river or creek emptying into Lake
Deception, and brought home great jack-fish weighing from two to six
pounds. From a little stream to the north-west of the house we had
delicious brook trout, and occasionally large lake trout from some of the
other lakes, presented by the fishermen in their neighbourhood. I weighed
one which was over nineteen pounds. Sometimes we took short walks up the
line, and through wood-paths made by the men on their way to work. We
picked blueberries whenever our hands were not employed in driving off
the flies.
But our chief excitement during the week was the arrival of the mail. Our
first thought every Thursday morning was, "This is mail-day," and Joe's
white canoe was eagerly watched for--often in vain, as storms on the Lake
of the Woods, when the canoes could not venture out, delayed its coming
until Friday.
Strange as it seems, very few Indians can swim, probably from their fear
that they shall drown while learning. They believe that, if drowned,
their spirits wander for ever in a vain search for the happy
hunting-grounds, and no Indian will marry the daughter of one who has met
his death in that way, lest the curse should descend to him. Yet they have
such faith in their canoes and their own skill in their management of
them, that they will go out fearlessly in storms that a white man would
never face.
On mail-day our field-glasses were in constant requisition, and whoever
was lucky enough to announce the appearance of Joe felt the hero of the
hour. There were other canoes as white as Joe's, so after several
disappointments I studied the trimming on his hat, and never made a
mistake afterwards. Joe was such an important person that I must describe
him. He was a short, slight, though broad-shouldered Indian, wearing a
grey flannel shirt, striped cloth trousers, alpaca coat, prunella boots,
and black felt hat, with several folds of pink and white net twisted
round it. He always had a broad grin on his face, and a hearty "Bon jour,
nitchee," for every one. The dress of his companion or partner differed
from Joe's only in the absence of boots and hat, and wearing the hair
braided in two long tails, instead of being cut short.
How we appreciated our letters no one who has not been in the woods, with
a mail only once a week, can understand. I remember one day after our
mail had arrived, a lad coming in from the shanty to ask if there was
anything for him. His sad face, as he turned away on being told that our
mail-carrier was no longer allowed to bring mails for the contractors'
men, haunted me for days. Poor home-sick boy! he had not heard from his
people for months. I often thought of him afterwards, when, the
contractor having made arrangements for a mail-carrier independent of
the Government, I saw the huge bag brought in every week, and watched the
eager crowd of faces waiting for its contents to be distributed.
We had another source of entertainment in the telegraphic communication
between Winnipeg and all the houses on the line, one of the staff in the
office good-naturedly keeping us posted in current events. Talking to
others along the wire always had a strange significance to me, like
having an invisible guest talking to us, who could only hear what we
chose to repeat. When anything amusing was said, one involuntarily
listened for the invisible laughter. This telegraphic conversation was a
nuisance in one way, for often in the middle of dinner Mr. C---- would
exclaim, "There's D---- calling!" and away he would go, and probably not
come back till dinner was cold, the cook cross, and the confusion
general.
We were not without visitors, for the doctor, contractors, and engineers
were coming and going continually. About the middle of July, 1878, the
contractors' head-quarters at Darlington Bay being finished, and more
work going on at that end of the line, his officials moved there, and we
were left with only a gang of forty men in a shanty near. Our fat cook
also went to Bear Lake, about a mile west of the house, which by that
time had received the name of Inver Lodge.
One day towards the end of August a rumour reached us that the woods were
on fire on the other side of the west hill, and that the flames were
travelling towards us. I put on my hat and went up to see if the report
were true, and found flames curling along over the moss and underbrush
near a sand embankment where two or three men were working. The fire did
not look very formidable to me, and on asking the men if there was any
danger of its reaching the house, one put down his barrow, and while he
slowly wetted the palms of his hands, and rubbed them together, said, "Na
fear, me leddie; a barrowfu' o' sand noo an' then wul keep it fra'
gangin' any further." So I went back reassured. But as night came on, the
blaze increased so much that it became alarming. Mr. C---- and the men
were away at Kuwatin, some fifteen miles from us, and could not be back
before daylight. A kindly old Irishman, Michael Cahill, who for a drink
of butter-milk came in the evenings to work in the garden, offered his
services to sit up and watch the fire.
"Not that he thought there was a ha'porth of danger, but, Lord bless
them! the misthress and the childre 'ud be frightened." Poor old man! he
had a true Irish heart, with an air of better days long vanished, and a
deep loyalty to "thim of the ould stock;" and his boasts of grandeur and
valiant deeds were mingled with childlike credulity.
The fire was at its height about midnight, and had reached a large tree
in a line with our house, when the wind from the lake caught and drove it
back. The underbrush soon burnt out, but the trees were like pillars of
flame, crackling and roaring in the silent night, till they fell with a
crash to the ground. Half roused by the noise, old Cahill would mutter
something about keeping watch until the master came home. The old fellow
had wrapped himself in his great-coat, and was sitting on a chair in the
yard sound asleep. Fearing that he might catch cold, I woke him. But he
treated the insinuation that he had slept a wink with such indignant
contempt that I had to leave him to take his chance. The fire burnt
itself out before daylight, and we felt as if we had made more fuss than
was necessary, when Mr. C---- and the men arrived after four hours' hard
paddling. About Ingolf the fires raged so fiercely that the engineers
there moved all their valuable instruments and papers into the canoes,
and left the shanty to its fate; a change in the wind, however, saved it,
driving the flames back when the walls were scorching.