ON THE ATHABASCA RIVER
I am but mad north-northwest: when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk
from a handsaw.--_Hamlet_.
All the world is a deluge of rain when we leave Athabasca Landing, and
we wait at the hotel till the last minute, hoping the storm may abate
in order that we may reach our steamer without losing too much starch.
But the horn is making the asthmatic lamentations, meaning thereby that
everybody should be aboard, so we say good-bye to all at the hotel;
promise to be good; to take care of ourselves; and to come back soon.
I say "we" because it is journalistic etiquette to be impersonal, but
actually there is only myself, the other passengers having gone down to
the river over an hour ago.
It is a troublous jaunt which I make, for a streak of wind turns my
umbrella into a cornucopia; the fat drops of rain splash into my eyes;
I take the wrong turn, get mired and lose my rubber shoes. When the
river is reached, I find the descent to the steamer is buttered with
mud and so steep that sliding is the only method of locomotion possible.
A vastly tall man stands on the gangway at the foot of the hill; holds
out a pair of arms that must measure ten feet from tip to tip and says,
"Come on, lady." The lady comes, but with such impact that we nearly
go through to the opposite side of the steamer. Our final resting
place is on a banana crate, which, in all conscience, is yielding
enough, the fruit proving to be over-ripe. The passengers are
distinctly amused, but the freight master is in no gallant temper over
it and disapproves of the whole affair. I could tell you what he said
to the vastly tall man, but you would have to come very close to hear
me.
After supper, which consists of beef with stuffing, macaroni with
cheese, pork with beans, white fish, stewed tomatoes, escalloped corn,
boiled potatoes, walnut pickles, catsup, soda biscuits, pumpkin-pie,
apple-pie, currant buns, cocoanut cake, cheese, coffee, stewed figs,
tooth-picks and other things which I cannot remember, I crawl to the
deck to find out where Grouard is, and how we are to get there.
Although thither bound, my knowledge of its location is shamefully
vague. Here is what I learn. We sail north and west on the Athabasca
River till we come to Mirror Landing, at the confluence of the
Athabasca and Lesser Slave River, at which point we leave the steamer
and make a portage of fourteen miles to Soto Landing. This portage is
to avoid the government dams which have been built to make the Lesser
Slave River navigable. At Soto Landing we embark on the _Midnight
Sun_, another steamer of the Northern Navigation Company, and travel on
till we enter Lesser Slave Lake, down which we journey to its extreme
western end, where Grouard sits on a hill overlooking a bit of the lake
called Buffalo Bay. Without mishaps, we ought to reach Grouard in four
or five days, but no one will cut off our heads if we loiter a bit on
the way.
There are about thirty male passengers on board and seven women. This
half-hour I have been talking to a plausible prolix villain whom it
would be easy to like greatly. He is going to make three million
dollars from his oil-wells on the Mackenzie River. He says so himself.
He has been down north for several years and walks like one who has
been used to the spring of a snowshoe beneath his foot. His clothes
have the odour of the forest--that is to say of leaf mould, poplar
smoke and spruce resin. He went to England two years ago to persuade
Grandfather Bull to invest in oil and asphaltum, but was not as
successful as he could desire. "I figure," he says, "it will take
another century to convince Grandfather, and by that time the fourth
generation of America 'Coal-oil Johnnies' will have squandered the
dividends on actresses and aeroplanes. Pouf! these Americans have no
idea the world belongs to the Lord."
It was well I agreed with him so civilly, for he said, "If you wish to
invest in some oil-stocks, Madam--and no doubt you will after what I
have told you--I will see to it that you get in on the ground-floor and
no questions asked."
Now I did not like to inquire of him what is meant by the ground-floor,
lest he should think me the veriest ignoramus, but I am persuaded it
means something most excellent, for I have frequently heard promoters
mention it to people like me, who have not much money to buy with.
This man originally hailed from New Zealand, but he tells me that
country is no good; it is too far from Fort McMurray. At Fort McMurray
life is one round of pleasurable anticipation and all the day seems
morning. Who can tell at what moment a gusher may shoot into the
clouds and blot out the sun itself? Then it's gorged with gold we
should all be--those of us on the ground-floor--and are millionaires,
with hundreds of universities and public libraries to give away. What
would be the use of having oil and hiding it under bushels of rocks,
we'd like to know.
At this point the purser explains that the steep ascent to our right is
called Bald Hill. It can be seen from a long distance, and is one of
the features of the landscape from which, in the winter, the freighters
measure distances--a kind of millarium or central milestone. Surely
this is a country of vast horizons, both mentally and visually.
About every twelve miles we pass a stopping place where the winter
freighters and their teams are fed. These houses and stables are built
of logs and are sheltered by the forest. I prefer to say they have a
roof-tree, the words seeming to suggest a good deal more. In spite of
their splendid isolation, these stopping places do an excellent
business and, while warm and well-provisioned, are still somewhat in
the rough. The purser says this roughness is not worth regarding, for
while here is the country a fellow roughs it, in the city he "gets it
rough."
"And that reminds me, ladies, of my errand to you," he continues; "you
are probably aware there are only sixteen bunks on this boat and eight
mattresses. You, of course, will use your own blankets and pillows,
but I perceive you have not secured mattresses. It would be
wonderfully easy if you were to carry off one, or even two, from the
priests' state-rooms, for at this very minute the priests say prayers
on the lower deck."
"And believe me," he concludes in a highly chivalrous manner, "you two
ladies have an unquestionable right to the mattresses, so that I shall
consider your act to be one of perfect propriety."
Thus encouraged by the pursuer I proceeded with my room-mate to seize
our "unquestionable rights," but, approaching the priests' door, my
heart failed me, and our undertaking seemed a plain and undeniable
demonstration of wickedness like the robbing of a child's bank. They
are such quiet, well-deserving men, these eight black-smocked Brothers
who are going North to the jubilee of the great Bishop Grouard, the
like of whom there never was. Also, they are very polite, and the one
who is an astronomer and comes from Italy, picked out the tenderest cut
of beef for me at supper.
"Pray don't be silly," snorted my room-mate, "the rules of their Order
say distinctly they shall deny themselves and not sleep softly.
Besides, when men take terrible vows that they will never get married,
it is a woman's stoutest duty to steal their mattress whenever the
opportunity serves."
She also told me with rapid brevity some names which Clement of
Alexandria, a Father of the Church, applied to women in the early days
of the Christian era. She had read about them in a history......
In the falling of the night, at the mauve hour, our ship having been
made fast, we go ashore and talk with the Indians who are camped here
in a wigwam. One of the passengers, who has lived among the Crees for
many years, tells me I express myself with redundancy in that the
literal meaning of wigwam is camping-ground. She says the Indians have
many grotesque folk tales, which are told by the men. Each story has a
moral which they desire their wives to consider from an educative
standpoint. Once there was a man whose _utim_ (that is to say his dog)
used to turn into an _iskwao_, or woman, when it became dark. She had
yellow hair and her arms were white and soft like the breast feathers
of a young bird. This happened long ago, before the Indians were
baptized and when people were not so pious as they are now. Any man
can do the same thing to this day if he happens to know the magic
formula.
There is also a tale about a woman of the woods whom we, in our
scientific conceit, call the echo. Once when her man was away for many
moons on the great _sepe_, or river, the woman took another husband, so
that when her man came back she flouted him and slapped his face. That
night the moon changed her into a voice, and now she calls for her
husband to come and love her, but he only mocks at her.
This habit of the husbands in telling tales with palpable deductions
attached would seem to be common to other races than the Indians, for
the Romans, likewise, had a story about the echo. It appears that
Jupiter confided to Madam Echo the history of his amours, and when she
told his secrets among her friends she was deprived of speech and could
only repeat the questions which were asked of her. The Cree story is
the better one. It has a fine human motive which the other lacks, and
also it drops, a much-needed tribute on the worn altar of domesticity.
When a fire is lighted with birch bark and tamarack knots, we sit
beside it and are more merry than you could believe.
The sweetheart of Jacques dances for us to the well-cadenced rhythm of
a Tea Song. I cannot spell her Indian name, but it means "Fat of the
Flowers," by which term they express our word "nectar." The cree is a
droll language.
"Ha! He! ne matatow,
Ha! He! ne saghehow."
she chants and rechants as the fitful flames make sharp high-lights on
her dark skin, causing her to appear as the flying figure of a bronze
Daphne, and, in truth, the boughs of the trees lend likeness to my
fancy, for as she dances into them, they seem to absorb her, even as
the laurel absorbed the Grecian nymph of old time.
Translated literally, the words of the Tea Song read thus--
"Ha! He! I love him,
Ha! He! I miss him."
This is a supremely cunning song, in that it utters in six words (if we
exclude the interjections) the summary of all the love songs which have
ever been written--"I love him: I miss him." I am glad it was framed
in the unsophisticated North.
And Fat of the Flowers sings another song which is addressed to her
lover. She is lonely for him, our interpreter explains, but drinks her
tears in silence. Sometimes his presence comes to her in the hour of
twilight, and she kneels to it as the poplar kneels to the wind. When
he returns to the camp fire she will give to him a blanket made out of
the claw skins of the lynx, and a white and scarlet belt from the young
quills of the porcupine.
I can see that her honeyed words are agreeable to Jacques and give him
fullness of pleasure, for there is a tell-tale joy in his face that
refuses to be hid.
Jacques, who is a riverman, was educated at a mission school on the
Mackenzie, and he tells me that Fat of the Flowers is nearly as
"magneloquent" and clever as a man. He is almost sure there is a
little white bird that sings in her heart.
After a time, our dusky friends steal away one by one to their rest, or
two by two. The ship lolls lazily on the bank and there is no sound
save the whimper of the fire and the deep breathing of some over-tired
sleeper, but once a sleeper laughed aloud.
I step carefully between the recumbent forms on the deck lest I hurt
them or disturb their quietude. I am sorry now that I stole the
mattresses. Surely I am a bitter sinner and unlovely of heart.
In the morning, when I told the Brothers how I had privily taken the
mattresses because I disapproved of their vows concerning marriage, and
because of the unseemly remarks Clement of Alexandria had applied to
women in the early days of the Christian era, they laughed again and
again with much hilarity. Indeed, one of the Brothers said he
applauded my moderation and marvelled that I was good enough to leave
their blankets and pillows. Another gave it as his opinion that
Clement's pleasantry was a shabby-minded one and needlessly sarcastic,
the result of an ill-governed disposition. But this Brother, like the
others, took full care to evade the question I had raised as to
celibacy....
What Clement of Alexandria said was that women, like Egyptian temples,
were beautiful without, but when you entered and withdrew the veil,
there was nothing behind it but a cat or a crocodile.