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The Long Labrador Trail

by Dillon Wallace · English · Gutenberg #9857 · 455,893 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Long Labrador Trail

Author: Dillon Wallace


        
Release date: February 1, 2006 [eBook #9857]
                Most recently updated: December 27, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9857

Credits: Produced by Martin Schub


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONG LABRADOR TRAIL ***




Produced by Martin Schub










THE LONG LABRADOR TRAIL

by

DILLON WALLACE

Author of "The Lure of the Labrador Wild," etc.

Illustrated

MCMXVII






             TO THE
       MEMORY OF MY WIFE



  "A drear and desolate shore!
  Where no tree unfolds its leaves,
  And never the spring wind weaves
  Green grass for the hunter's tread;
  A land forsaken and dead,
  Where the ghostly icebergs go
  And come with the ebb and flow..."

  Whittier's "The Rock-tomb of Bradore."



PREFACE

In the summer of 1903 when Leonidas Hubbard, Jr., went to Labrador to
explore a section of the unknown interior it was my privilege to
accompany him as his companion and friend.  The world has heard of the
disastrous ending of our little expedition, and how Hubbard, fighting
bravely and heroically to the last, finally succumbed to starvation.

Before his death I gave him my promise that should I survive I would
write and publish the story of the journey.  In "The Lure of The
Labrador Wild" that pledge was kept to the best of my ability.

While Hubbard and I were struggling inland over those desolate wastes,
where life was always uncertain, we entered into a compact that in case
one of us fall the other would carry to completion the exploratory work
that he had planned and begun.  Providence willed that it should become
my duty to fulfil this compact, and the following pages are a record of
how it was done.

Not I, but Hubbard, planned the journey of which this book tells, and
from him I received the inspiration and with him the training and
experience that enabled me to succeed.  It was his spirit that led me
on over the wearisome trails, and through the rushing rapids, and to
him and to his memory belong the credit and the honor of success.

D. W. February, 1907.



CONTENTS

CHAPTER

     I  THE VOICE OF THE WILDERNESS
    II  ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE UNKNOWN
   III  THE LAST OF CIVILIZATION
    IV  ON THE OLD INDIAN TRAIL
     V  WE GO ASTRAY
    VI  LAKE NIPISHISH IS REACHED
   VII  SCOUTING FOR THE TRAIL
  VIII  SEAL LAKE AT LAST
    IX  WE LOSE THE TRAIL
     X  "WE SEE MICHIKAMAU"
    XI  THE PARTING AT MICHIKAMAU
   XII  OVER THE NORTHERN DIVIDE
  XIII  DISASTER IN THE RAPIDS
   XIV  TIDE WATER AND THE POST
    XV  OFF WITH THE ESKIMOS
   XVI  CAUGHT BY THE ARCTIC ICE
  XVII  TO WHALE RIVER AND FORT CHIMO
 XVIII  THE INDIANS OF THE NORTH
   XIX  THE ESKIMOS OF LABRADOR
    XX  THE SLEDGE JOURNEY BEGUN
   XXI  CROSSING THE BARRENS
  XXII  ON THE ATLANTIC ICE
 XXIII  BACK TO NORTHWEST RIVER
  XXIV  THE END OF THE LONG TRAIL
        APPENDIX



ILLUSTRATIONS

The Perils of the Rapids (in color, from a painting by Oliver Kemp)

Ice Encountered Off the Labrador Coast

"The Time For Action Had Come"

"Camp Was Moved to the First Small Lake"

"We Found a Long-disused Log Cache of the Indians"

Below Lake Nipishish

Through Ponds and Marshes Northward Toward Otter Lake

"We Shall Call the River Babewendigash"

"Pete, Standing by the Prostrate Caribou, Was Grinning From Ear to Ear"

"A Network of Lakes and the Country as Level as a Table"

Michikamau

"Writing Letters to the Home Folks"

"Our Lonely Perilous Journey Toward the Dismal Wastes ...Was Begun"

Abandoned Indian Camp On the Shore of Lake Michikamats

"One of the Wigwams Was a Large One and Oblong in Shape"

"At Last ...We Saw the Post"

"A Miserable Little Log Shack"

A Group of Eskimo Women

A Labrador Type

Eskimo Children

A Snow Igloo

The Silence of the North (in color, from a painting by Frederic C.
Stokes)

"Nachvak Post of the Hudson's Bay Company".

"The Hills Grew Higher and Higher"

"We Turned Into a Pass Leading to the Northward"

The Moravian Mission at Ramah

"Plodding Southward Over the Endless Snow"

"Nain, the Moravian Headquarters in Labrador"

"The Indians Were Here"

Geological Specimens

Maps.





CHAPTER I

THE VOICE OF THE WILDERNESS

"It's always the way, Wallace!  When a fellow starts on the long trail,
he's never willing to quit.  It'll be the same with you if you go with
me to Labrador.  When you come home, you'll hear the voice of the
wilderness calling you to return, and it will lure you back again."

It seems but yesterday that Hubbard uttered those prophetic words as he
and I lay before our blazing camp fire in the snow-covered Shawangunk
Mountains on that November night in the year 1901, and planned that
fateful trip into the unexplored Labrador wilderness which was to cost
my dear friend his life, and both of us indescribable sufferings and
hardships.  And how true a prophecy it was!  You who have smelled the
camp fire smoke; who have drunk in the pure forest air, laden with the
smell of the fir tree; who have dipped your paddle into untamed waters,
or climbed mountains, with the knowledge that none but the red man has
been there before you; or have, perchance, had to fight the wilds and
nature for your very existence; you of the wilderness brotherhood can
understand how the fever of exploration gets into one's blood and draws
one back again to the forests and the barrens in spite of resolutions
to "go no more."

It was more than this, however, that lured me back to Labrador.  There
was the vision of dear old Hubbard as I so often saw him during our
struggle through that rugged northland wilderness, wasted in form and
ragged in dress, but always hopeful and eager, his undying spirit and
indomitable will focused in his words to me, and I can still see him as
he looked when he said them:

"The work must be done, Wallace, and if one of us falls before it is
completed the other must finish it."

I went back to Labrador to do the work he had undertaken, but which he
was not permitted to accomplish.  His exhortation appealed to me as a
command from my leader--a call to duty.

Hubbard had planned to penetrate the Labrador peninsula from Groswater
Bay, following the old northern trail of the Mountaineer Indians from
Northwest River Post of the Hudson's Bay Company, situated on Groswater
Bay, one hundred and forty miles inland from the eastern coast, to Lake
Michikamau, thence through the lake and northward over the divide,
where he hoped to locate the headwaters of the George River.

It was his intention to pass down this river until he reached the
hunting camps of the Nenenot or Nascaupee Indians, there witness the
annual migration of the caribou to the eastern seacoast, which
tradition said took place about the middle or latter part of September,
and to be present at the "killing," when the Indians, it was reported,
secured their winter's supply of provisions by spearing the caribou
while the herds were swimming the river.  The caribou hunt over, he was
to have returned across country to the St. Lawrence or retrace his
steps to Northwest River Post, whichever might seem advisable.  Should
the season, however, be too far advanced to permit of a safe return, he
was to have proceeded down the river to its mouth, at Ungava Bay, and
return to civilization in winter with dogs.

The country through which we were to have traveled was to be mapped so
far as possible, and observations made of the geological formation and
of the flora, and as many specimens collected as possible.

This, then, Hubbard's plan, was the plan which I adopted and which I
set out to accomplish, when, in March, 1905, I finally decided to
return to Labrador.

It was advisable to reach Hamilton Inlet with the opening of navigation
and make an early start into the country, for every possible day of the
brief summer would be needed for our purpose.

It was, as I fully realized, no small undertaking.  Many hundreds of
miles of unknown country must be traversed, and over mountains and
through marshes for long distances our canoes and outfit would have to
be transported upon the backs of the men comprising my party, as pack
animals cannot be used in Labrador.

Through immense stretches of country there would be no sustenance for
them, and, in addition to this, the character of the country itself
forbids their use.

The personnel of the expedition required much thought.  I might with
one canoe and one or two professional Indian packers travel more
rapidly than with men unused to exploration work, but in that case
scientific research would have to be slighted.  I therefore decided to
sacrifice speed to thoroughness and to take with me men who, even
though they might not be physically able to carry the large packs of
the professional voyageur, would in other respects lend valuable
assistance to the work in hand.

My projected return to Labrador was no sooner announced than numerous
applications came to me from young men anxious to join the expedition.
After careful investigation, I finally selected as my companions George
M. Richards, of Columbia University, as geologist and to aid me in the
topographical work, Clifford H. Easton, who had been a student in the
School of Forestry at Biltmore, North Carolina (both residents of New
York), and Leigh Stanton, of Halifax, Nova Scotia, a veteran of the
Boer War, whom I had met at the lumber camps in Groswater Bay,
Labrador, in the winter of 1903-1904, when he was installing the
electric light plant in the large lumber mill there.

It was desirable to have at least one Indian in the party as woodsman,
hunter and general camp servant.  For this position my friend, Frank H.
Keefer, of Port Arthur, Ontario, recommended to me, and at my request
engaged, Peter Stevens, a full-blood Ojibway Indian, of Grand Marais,
Minnesota.  "Pete" arrived in New York under the wing of the railway
conductor during the last week in May.

In the meantime I had devoted myself to the selection and purchase of
our instruments and general outfit.  Everything must be purchased in
advance--from canoes to repair kit--as my former experience in Labrador
had taught me.  It may be of interest to mention the most important
items of outfit and the food supply with which we were provided: Two
canvas-covered canoes, one nineteen and one eighteen feet in length;
one seven by nine "A" tent, made of waterproof "balloon" silk; one
tarpaulin, seven by nine feet; folding tent stove and pipe; two
tracking lines; three small axes; cooking outfit, consisting of two
frying pans, one mixing pan and three aluminum kettles; an aluminum
plate, cup and spoon for each man; one .33 caliber high-power
Winchester rifle and two 44-40 Winchester carbines (only one of these
carbines was taken with us from New York, and this was intended as a
reserve gun in case the party should separate and return by different
routes.  The other was one used by Stanton when previously in Labrador,
and taken by him in addition to the regular outfit).  One double barrel
12-gauge shotgun; two ten-inch barrel single shot .22 caliber pistols
for partridges and small game; ammunition; tumplines; three fishing
rods and tackle, including trolling outfits; one three and one-half
inch gill net; repair kit, including necessary material for patching
canoes, clothing, etc.; matches, and a medicine kit.

The following instruments were also carried: Three minimum registering
thermometers; one aneroid barometer which was tested and set for me by
the United States Weather Bureau; one clinometer; one pocket transit;
three compasses; one pedometer; one taffrail log; one pair binoculars;
three No. 3A folding pocket Kodaks, sixty rolls of films, each roll
sealed in a tin can and waterproofed, and six "Vanguard" watches
mounted in dust-proof cases.

Each man was provided with a sheath knife and a waterproof match box,
and his personal kit, containing a pair of blankets and clothing, was
carried in a waterproof canvas bag.

I may say here in reference to these waterproof bags and the "balloon"
silk tent that they were of the same manufacture as those used on the
Hubbard expedition and for their purpose as nearly perfect as it is
possible to make them.  The tent weighed but nine pounds, was
windproof, and, like the bags, absolutely waterproof, and the material
strong and firm.

Our provision supply consisted of 298 pounds of pork; 300 pounds of
flour; 45 pounds of corn meal; 40 pounds of lentils; 28 pounds of rice;
25 pounds of erbswurst; 10 pounds of prunes; a few packages of dried
vegetables; some beef bouillon tablets; 6 pounds of baking powder; 16
pounds of tea; 6 pounds of coffee; 15 pounds of sugar; 14 pounds of
salt; a small amount of saccharin and crystallose, and 150 pounds of
pemmican.

Everything likely to be injured by water was packed in waterproof
canvas bags.

My friend Dr. Frederick A. Cook, of the Arctic Club, selected my
medical kit, and instructed me in the use of its simple remedies.  It
was also upon the recommendation of Dr. Cook and others of my Arctic
Club friends that I purchased the pemmican, which was designed as an
emergency ration, and it is worth noting that one pound of pemmican, as
our experience demonstrated, was equal to two or even three pounds of
any other food that we carried.  Its ingredients are ground dried beef,
tallow, sugar, raisins and currants.

We had planned to go north from St. Johns on the Labrador mail boat
_Virginia Lake_, which, as I had been informed by the Reid-Newfoundland
Company, was expected to sail from St. Johns on her first trip on or
about June tenth.  This made it necessary for us to leave New York on
the Red Cross Line steamer _Rosalind_ sailing from Brooklyn on May
thirtieth; and when, at eleven-thirty that Tuesday morning, the
_Rosalind_ cast loose from her wharf, we and our outfit were aboard,
and our journey of eleven long months was begun.

As I waved farewell to our friends ashore I recalled that other day two
years before, when Hubbard and I had stood on the _Silvia's_ deck, and
I said to myself:

"Well, this, too, is Hubbard's trip.  His spirit is with me.  It was
he, not I, who planned this Labrador work, and if I succeed it will be
because of him and his influence."

I was glad to be away.  With every throb of the engine my heart grew
lighter.  I was not thinking of the perils I was to face with my new
companions in that land where Hubbard and I had suffered so much.  The
young men with me were filled with enthusiasm at the prospect of
adventure in the silent and mysterious country for which they were
bound.



CHAPTER II

ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE UNKNOWN

"When shall we reach Rigolet, Captain?"

"Before daylight, I hopes, sir, if the fog holds off, but there's a
mist settling, and if it gets too thick, we may have to come to."

Crowded with an unusual cargo of humanity, fishermen going to their
summer work on "The Labrador" with their accompanying tackle and
household goods, meeting with many vexatious delays in discharging the
men and goods at the numerous ports of call, and impeded by fog and
wind, the mail boat _Virginia Lake_ had been much longer than is her
wont on her trip "down north."

It was now June twenty-first.  Six days before (June fifteenth), when
we boarded the ship at St. Johns we had been informed that the steamer
_Harlow_, with a cargo for the lumber mills at Kenemish, in Groswater
Bay, was to leave Halifax that very afternoon.  She could save us a
long and disagreeable trip in an open boat, ninety miles up Groswater
Bay, and I bad hoped that we might reach Rigolet in time to secure a
passage for myself and party from that point.  But the _Harlow_ had no
ports of call to make, and it was predicted that her passage from
Halifax to Rigolet would be made in four days.

I had no hope now of reaching Rigolet before her, or of finding her
there, and, resigned to my fate, I left the captain on the bridge and
went below to my stateroom to rest until daylight.  Some time in the
night I was aroused by some one saying:

"We're at Rigolet, sir, and there's a ship at anchor close by."

Whether I had been asleep or not, I was fully awake now, and found that
the captain had come to tell me of our arrival.  The fog had held off
and we had done much better than the captain's prediction. Hurrying
into my clothes, I went on deck, from which, through the slight haze
that hung over the water, I could discern the lights of a ship, and
beyond, dimly visible, the old familiar line of Post buildings showing
against the dark spruce-covered hills behind, where the great silent
forest begins.

All was quiet save for the thud, thud, thud of the oarlocks of a small
boat approaching our ship and the dismal howl of a solitary "husky" dog
somewhere ashore.  The captain had preceded me on deck, and in answer
to my inquiries as to her identity said he did not know whether the
stranger at anchor was the _Harlow_ or not, but he thought it was.

We had to wait but a moment, however, for the information.  The small
boat was already alongside, and John Groves, a Goose Bay trader and one
of my friends of two years before, clambered aboard and had me by the
hand.

"I'm glad to see you, sir; and how is you?"

Assuring him that I was quite well, I asked the name of the other ship.

"The _Harlow_, sir, an' she's goin' to Kenemish with daylight."

"Well, I must get aboard of her then, and try to get a passage up.  Is
your flat free, John, to take me aboard of her?"

"Yes, sir.  Step right in, sir.  But I thinks you'd better go ashore,
for the _Harlow's_ purser's ashore.  If you can't get passage on the
_Harlow_ my schooner's here doing nothin' while I goes to St. Johns for
goods, and I'll have my men run you up to Nor'west River."

I thanked him and lost no time in going ashore in his boat, where I
found Mr. James Fraser, the factor, and received a hearty welcome.  In
Mr. Fraser's office I found also the purser of the _Harlow_, and I
quickly arranged with him for a passage to Kenemish, which is ninety
miles up the inlet, and just across Groswater Bay (twelve miles) from
Northwest River Post.  The _Harlow_ was to sail at daylight and I at
once returned to the mail boat, called the boys and, with the help of
the _Virginia's_ crew and one of their small boats, we were
transferred, bag and baggage, to the _Harlow_.

Owing to customs complications the _Harlow_ was later than expected in
leaving Rigolet, and it was evening before she dropped anchor at
Kenemish.  I went ashore in the ship's boat and visited again the
lumber camp "cook house" where Dr. Hardy and I lay ill throng those
weary winter weeks, and where poor Hardy died.  Hardy was the young
lumber company doctor who treated my frozen feet in the winter of
1903-1904.  Here I met Fred Blake, a Northwest River trapper.  Fred had
his flat, and I engaged him to take a part of our luggage to Northwest
River.  Then I returned to the ship to send the boys ahead with the
canoes and some of our baggage, while I waited behind to follow with
Fred and the rest of the kit in his flat a half hour later.

Fred and I were hardly a mile from the ship when a heavy thunderstorm
broke upon us, and we were soon drenching wet--the baptism of our
expedition.  This rain was followed by a dense fog and early darkness.
On and on we rowed, and I was berating myself for permitting the men to
go on so far ahead of us with the canoes, for they did not know the way
and the fog had completely shut out the lights of the Post buildings,
which otherwise would have been visible across the bay for a
considerable distance.

Suddenly through the fog and darkness, from shoreward, came a "Hello!
Hello!"  We answered, and heading our boat toward the sound of
continued "Hellos," found the men, with the canoes unloaded and hauled
ashore, preparing to make a night camp.  I joined them and, launching
and reloading the canoes again, with Richards and Easton in one canoe
and Pete and I in the other, we followed Fred and Stanton, who preceded
us in the rowboat, keeping our canoes religiously within earshot of
Fred's thumping oarlocks.  Finally the fog lifted, and not far away we
caught a glimmer of lights at the French Post.  All was dark at the
Hudson Bay Post across the river when at last our canoes touched the
sandy beach and we sprang ashore.

What a flood of remembrances came to me as I stepped again upon the old
familiar ground!  How vividly I remembered that June day when Hubbard
and I had first set foot on this very ground and Mackenzie had greeted
us so cordially!  And also that other day in November when, ragged and
starved, I came here to tell of Hubbard, lying dead in the dark forest
beyond!  The same dogs that I had known then came running to meet us
now, the faithful fellows with which I began that sad funeral journey
homeward over the ice.  I called some of them by name "Kumalik,"
"Bo'sun," "Captain," "Tinker"--and they pushed their great heads
against my legs and, I believe, recognized me.

It was nearly two o'clock in the morning.  We went immediately to the
Post house and roused out Mr. Stuart Cotter, the agent (Mackenzie is no
longer there), and received from him a royal welcome.  He called his
Post servant and instructed him to bring in our things, and while we
changed our dripping clothes for dry ones, his housekeeper prepared a
light supper.  It was five o'clock in the morning when I retired.

In the previous autumn I had written Duncan McLean, one of the four men
who came to my rescue on the Susan River, that should I ever come to
Labrador again and be in need of a man I would like to engage him.
Cotter told me that Duncan had just come from his trapping path and was
at the Post kitchen, so when we had finished breakfast, at eight
o'clock that morning, I saw Duncan and, as he was quite willing to go
with us, I arranged with him to accompany us a short distance into the
country to help us pack over the first portage and to bring back
letters.

He expressed a wish to visit his father at Kenemish before starting
into the country, but promised to be back the next evening ready for
the start on Monday morning, the twenty-sixth, and I consented.  I knew
hard work was before us, and as I wished all hands to be well rested
and fresh at the outset, I felt that a couple of days' idleness would
do us no harm.

Some five hundred yards east of Mr. Cotter's house is an old, abandoned
mission chapel, and behind it an Indian burying ground.  The cleared
space of level ground between the house and chapel was, for a century
or more, the camping ground of the Mountaineer Indians who come to the
Post each spring to barter or sell their furs.  In the olden time there
were nearly a hundred families of them, whose hunting ground was that
section of country between Hamilton Inlet and the Upper George River.

These people now, for the most part, hunt south of the inlet and trade
at the St. Lawrence Posts.  The chapel was erected about 1872, but ten
years ago the Jesuit missionary was withdrawn, and since then the
building has fallen into decay and ruin, and the crosses that marked
the graves in the old burying grounds have been broken down by the
heavy winter snows.  It was this withdrawal of the missionary that
turned the Indians to the southward, where priests are more easily
found.  The Mountaineer Indian, unlike the Nascaupee, is very
religious, and must, at least once a year, meet his father confessor.
The camping ground since the abandonment of the mission, has lain
lonely and deserted, save for three or four families who, occasionally
in the summer season, come back again to pitch their tents where their
forefathers camped and held their annual feasts in the old days.

Competition between the trading companies at this point has raised the
price of furs to such an extent that the few families of Indians that
trade at this Post are well-to-do and very independent.  There were two
tents of them here when we arrived--five men and several women and
children.  I found two of my old friends there--John and William
Ahsini.  They expressed pleasure in meeting me again, and a lively
interest in our trip.  With Mr. Cotter acting as interpreter, John made
for me a map of the old Indian trail from Grand Lake to Seal Lake, and
William a map to Lake Michikamau and over the height of land to the
George River, indicating the portages and principal intervening lakes
as they remembered them.

Seal Lake is a large lake expansion of the Nascaupee River, which
river, it should be explained, is the outlet of Lake Michikamau and
discharges its waters into Grand Lake and through Grand Lake into
Groswater Bay.  Lake Michikamau, next to Lake Mistasinni, is the
largest lake in the Labrador peninsula, and approximately from eighty
to ninety miles in length.  Neither John nor William had been to Lake
Michikamau by this route since they were young lads, but they told us
that the Indians, when traveling very light without their families,
used to make the journey in twenty-three days.

During my previous stay in Labrador one Indian told me it could be done
in ten days, while another said that Indians traveling very fast would
require about thirty days.  It is difficult to base calculations upon
information of this kind.  But I was sure that, with our comparatively
heavy outfit, and the fact that we would have to find the trail for
ourselves, we should require at least twice the time of the Indians,
who know every foot of the way as we know our familiar city streets at
home.

They expressed their belief that the old trail could be easily found,
and assured us that each portage, as we asked about it in detail, was a
"miam potagan" (good portage), but at the same time expressed their
doubts as to our ability to cross the country safely.

In fact, it has always been the Indians' boast, and I have heard it
many times, that no white man could go from Groswater Bay to Ungava
alive without Indians to help him through.  "Pete" was a Lake Superior
Indian and had never run a rapid in his life.  He was to spend the
night with Tom Blake and his family in their snug little log cabin, and
be ready for an early start up Grand Lake on the morrow.  It was Tom
that headed the little party sent by me up the Susan Valley to bring to
the Post Hubbard's body in March, 1904; and it was through his
perseverance, loyalty and hard work at the time that I finally
succeeded in recovering the body.  Tom's daughter, Lillie, was
Mackenzie's little housekeeper, who showed me so many kindnesses then.
The whole family, in fact, were very good to me during those trying
days, and I count them among my true and loyal friends.

We had supper with Cotter, who sang some Hudson's Bay songs, Richards
sang a jolly college song or two, Stanton a "classic," and then all who
could sing joined in "Auld Lang Syne."

My thoughts were of that other day, when Hubbard, so full of hope, had
begun this same journey-of the sunshine and fleecy clouds and beckoning
fir tops, and I wondered what was in store for us now.



CHAPTER III

THE LAST OF CIVILIZATION

The time for action had come.  Our canoes were loaded near the wharf,
we said good-by to Cotter and a group of native trapper friends, and as
we took our places in the canoes and dipped our paddles into the waters
that were to carry us northward the Post flag was run up on the
flagpole as a salute and farewell, and we were away.  We soon rounded
the point, and Cotter and the trappers and the Post were lost to view.
Duncan was to follow later in the evening in his rowboat with some of
our outfit which we left in his charge.

Silently we paddled through the "little lake." The clouds hung somber
and dull with threatening rain, and a gentle breeze wafted to us now
and again a bit of fragrance from the spruce-covered hills above us.
Almost before I realized it we were at the rapid.  Away to the westward
stretched Grand Lake, deep and dark and still, with the rugged outline
of Cape Corbeau in the distance.

Tom Blake and his family, one and all, came out to give us the
whole-souled, hospitable welcome of "The Labrador." Even Atikamish, the
little Indian dog that Mackenzie used to have, but which he had given
to Tom when he left Northwest River, was on hand to tell me in his dog
language that he remembered me and was delighted to see me back.  Here
we would stay for the night--the last night for months that we were to
sleep in a habitation of civilized man.

The house was a very comfortable little log dwelling containing a small
kitchen, a larger living-room which also served as a sleeping-room, and
an attic which was the boys' bedroom.  The house was comfortably
furnished, everything clean to perfection, and the atmosphere of love
and home that dwelt here was long remembered by us while we huddled in
many a dreary camp during the weeks that followed.

Duncan did not come that night, and it was not until ten o'clock the
next morning (June twenty-seventh) that he appeared.  Then we made
ready for the start.  Tom and his young son Henry announced their
intention of accompanying us a short distance up Grand Lake in their
small sailboat.  Mrs. Blake gave us enough bread and buns, which she
had baked especially for us, to last two or three days, and she gave us
also a few fresh eggs, saying, "'Twill be a long time before you has
eggs again."

At half-past ten o'clock our canoes were afloat, farewell was said, and
we were beyond the last fringe of civilization.

The morning was depressing and the sky was overcast with low-hanging,
heavy clouds, but almost with our start, as if to give us courage for
our work and fire our blood, the leaden curtain was drawn aside and the
deep blue dome of heaven rose above us.  The sun shone warm and bright,
and the smell of the fresh damp forest, the incense of the wilderness
gods, was carried to us by a puff of wind from the south which enabled
Duncan to hoist his sails.  The rest of us bent to our paddles, and all
were eager to plunge into the unknown and solve the mystery of what lay
beyond the horizon.

Our nineteen-foot canoe was manned by Pete in the bow, Stanton in the
center and Easton in the stern, while I had the bow and Richards the
stern of the eighteen-foot canoe.  We paddled along the north shore of
the lake, close to land.  Stanton, with an eye for fresh meat, espied a
porcupine near the water's edge and stopped to kill it, thus gaining
the honor of having bagged the first game of the trip.  At twelve
o'clock we halted for luncheon, in almost the same spot where Hubbard
and I had lunched when going up Grand Lake two years before.  While
Pete cooked bacon and eggs and made tea, Stanton and Richards dressed
the porcupine for supper.

After luncheon we cut diagonally across the lake to the southern shore,
passed Cape Corbeau River and landed near the base of Cape Corbeau
bluff, that the elevation might be taken and geological specimens
secured.  After making our observations we turned again toward the
northern shore, where more specimens were collected.  Here Tom and
Henry Blake said goodby to us and turned homeward.

During the afternoon Stanton and I each killed a porcupine, making
three in all for the day--a good beginning in the matter of game.

At sunset we landed at Watty's Brook, a small stream flowing into Grand
Lake from the north, and some twenty miles above the rapid.  Our
progress during the day had been slow, as the wind had died away and we
had, several times, to wait for Duncan to overtake us in his slower
rowboat.

While the rest of us "made camp" Duncan cut wood for a rousing fire, as
the evening was cool, and Pete put a porcupine to boil for supper. We
were a hungry crowd when we sat down to eat.  I had told the boys how
good porcupine was, how it resembled lamb and what a treat we were to
have.  But all porcupines are not alike, and this one was not within my
reckoning.  Tough!  He was certainly "the oldest inhabitant," and after
vain efforts to chew the leathery meat, we turned in disgust to bread
and coffee, and Easton, at least, lost faith forever in my judgment of
toothsome game, and formed a particular prejudice against porcupines
which he never overcame.  Pete assured us, however, that, "This
porcupine, he must boil long.  I boil him again to-night and boil him
again to-morrow morning.  Then he very good for breakfast.  Porcupine
fine.  Old one must be cooked long."

So Pete, after supper, put the porcupine on to cook some more,
promising that we should find it nice and tender for breakfast.

As I sat that night by the low-burning embers of our first camp fire I
forgot my new companions.  Through the gathering night mists I could
just discern the dim outlines of the opposite shore of Grand Lake.  It
was over there, just west of that high spectral bluff, that Hubbard and
I, on a wet July night, had pitched our first camp of the other trip.
In fancy I was back again in that camp and Hubbard was talking to me
and telling me of the "bully story" of the mystic land of wonders that
lay "behind the ranges" he would have to take back to the world.

"We're going to traverse a section no white man has ever seen," he
exclaimed, "and we'll add something to the world's knowledge of
geography at least, and that's worth while.  No matter how little a man
may add to the fund of human knowledge it's worth the doing, for it's
by little bits that we've learned to know so much of our old world.
There's some hard work before us, though, up there in those hills, and
some hardships to meet."

Ah, if we had only known!

Some one said it was time to "turn in," and I was brought suddenly to a
sense of the present, but a feeling of sadness possessed me when I took
my place in the crowded tent, and I lay awake long, thinking of those
other days.

Clear and crisp was the morning of June twenty-eighth.  The atmosphere
was bracing and delightful, the azure of the sky above us shaded to the
most delicate tints of blue at the horizon, and, here and there, bits
of clouds, like bunches of cotton, flecked the sky.  The sun broke
grandly over the rugged hills, and the lake, like molten silver, lay
before us.

A fringe of ice had formed during the night along the shore.  We broke
it and bathed our hands and faces in the cool water, then sat down in a
circle near our camp fire to renew our attack upon the porcupine, which
had been sending out a most delicious odor from the kettle where Pete
had it cooking.  But alas for our expectations!  Our teeth would make
no impression upon it, and Easton remarked that "the rubber trust ought
to hunt porcupines, for they are a lot tougher than rubber and just as
pliable."

"I don't know why," said Pete sadly.  "I boil him long time."

That day we continued our course along the northern shore of the lake
until we reached the deep bay which Hubbard and I had failed to enter
and explore on the other trip, and which failure had resulted so
tragically.  This bay is some five miles from the westerly end of Grand
Lake, and is really the mouth of the Nascaupee and Crooked Rivers which
flow into the upper end of it.  There was little or no wind and we had
to go slowly to permit Duncan, in his rowboat, to keep pace with us.
Darkness was not far off when we reached Duncan's tilt (a small log
hut), three miles up the Nascaupee River, where we stopped for the
night.

This is the tilt in which Allen Goudy and Duncan lived at the time they
came to my rescue in 1903, and where I spent three days getting
strength for my trip down Grand Lake to the Post.  It is Duncan's
supply base in the winter months when he hunts along the Nascaupee
River, one hundred and twenty miles inland to Seal Lake.  On this
hunting "path" Duncan has two hundred and fifty marten and forty fox
traps, and, in the spring, a few bear traps besides.

The country has been burned here.  Just below Duncan's tilt is a
spruce-covered island, but the mainland has a stunted new growth of
spruce, with a few white birch, covering the wreck of the primeval
forest that was flame swept thirty odd years ago.  Over some
considerable areas no new growth to speak of has appeared, and the
charred remains of the dead trees stand stark and gray, or lie about in
confusion upon the ground, giving the country a particularly dreary and
desolate appearance.

The morning of June twenty-ninth was overcast and threatened rain, but
toward evening the sky cleared.

Progress was slow, for the current in the river here was very strong,
and paddling or rowing against it was not easy.  We had to stop several
times and wait for Duncan to overtake us with his boat.  Once he halted
to look at a trap where he told us he had caught six black bears.  It
was nearly sunset when we reached the mouth of the Red River, nineteen
miles above Grand Lake, where it flows into the Nascaupee from the
west.  This is a wide, shallow stream whose red-brown waters were quite
in contrast to the clear waters of the Nascaupee.

Opposite the mouth of the Red River, and on the eastern shore of the
Nascaupee, is the point where the old Indian trail was said to begin,
and on a knoll some fifty feet above the river we saw the wigwam poles
of an old Indian camp, and a solitary grave with a rough fence around
it.  Here we landed and awaited Duncan, who had stopped at another of
his trapping tilts three or four hundred yards below.  When he joined
us a little later, in answer to my inquiry as to whether this was the
beginning of the old trail, he answered, "'Tis where they says the
Indians came out, and some of the Indians has told me so.  I supposes
it's the place, sir."

"But have you never hunted here yourself?" I asked.

"No, sir, I've never been in here at all.  I travels right past up the
Nascaupee.  All I knows about it, sir, is what they tells me.  I always
follows the Nascaupee, sir."

Above us rose a high, steep hill covered for two-thirds of the way from
its base with a thick growth of underbrush, but quite barren on top
save for a few bunches of spruce brush.

The old trail, unused for eight or ten years, headed toward the hill
and was quite easily traced for some fifty yards from the old camp.
Then it disappeared completely in a dense undergrowth of willows,
alders and spruce.

While Pete made preparation for our supper and Duncan unloaded his boat
and hauled it up preparatory to leaving it until his return from the
interior, the rest of us tried to follow the trail through the brush.
But beyond where the thick undergrowth began there was nothing at all
that, to us, resembled a trail.  Finally, I instructed Pete to go with
Richards and see what he could do while the rest of us made camp.  Pete
started ahead, forging his way through the thick growth. In ten minutes
I heard him shout from the hillside, "He here--I find him," and saw
Pete hurrying up the steep incline.

When Richards and Pete returned an hour later we had camp pitched and
supper cooking.  They reported the trail, as far as they had gone, very
rough and hard to find.  For some distance it would have to be cut out
with an ax, and nowhere was it bigger than a rabbit run. Duncan rather
favored going as far, as Seal Lake by the trail that he knew and which
followed the Nascaupee.  This trail he believed to be much easier than
the long unused Indian trail, which was undoubtedly in many places
entirely obscured and in any case extremely difficult to follow.  I
dismissed his suggestion, however, with little consideration.  My,
object was to trace the old Indian trail and explore as much of the
country as possible, and not to hide myself in an enclosed river
valley.  Therefore, I decided that next day we should scout ahead to
the first water to which the trail led and cut out the trail where
necessary.  The work I knew would be hard, but we were expecting to do
hard work.  We were not on a summer picnic.

A rabbit which Stanton had shot and a spruce grouse that fell before
Pete's pistol, together with what remained of our porcupine, hot
coffee, and Mrs. Blake's good bread, made a supper that we ate with
zest while we talked over the prospects of the trail.  Supper finished,
Pete carefully washed his dishes, then carefully washed his dishcloth,
which latter he hung upon a bough near the fire to dry. His cleanliness
about his cooking was a revelation to me.  I had never before seen a
camp man or guide so neat in this respect.

The real work of the trip was now to begin, the hard portaging, the
trail finding and trail making, and we were to break the seal of a land
that had, through the ages, held its secret from all the world,
excepting the red man.  This is what we were thinking of when we
gathered around our camp fire that evening, and filled and lighted our
pipes and puffed silently while we watched the newborn stars of evening
come into being one by one until the arch of heaven was aglow with the
splendor of a Labrador night.  And when we at length went to our bed of
spruce boughs it was to dream of strange scenes and new worlds that we
were to conquer.



CHAPTER IV

ON THE OLD INDIAN TRAIL

Next morning we scouted ahead and found that the trail led to a small
lake some five and a half miles beyond our camp.  For a mile or so the
brush was pretty thick and the trail was difficult to follow, but
beyond that it was comparatively well defined though exceedingly steep,
the hill rising to an elevation of one thousand and fifty feet above
the Nascaupee River in the first two miles.  We had fifteen hundred
pounds of outfit to carry upon our backs, and I realized that at first
we should have to trail slowly and make several loads of it, for, with
the exception of Pete, none of the men was in training.  The work was
totally different from anything to which they had been accustomed, and
as I did not wish to break their spirits or their ardor, I instructed
them to carry only such packs as they could walk under with perfect
ease until they should become hardened to the work.

The weather had been cool and bracing, but as if to add to our
difficulties the sun now boiled down, and the black flies--"the devil's
angels" some one called them, came in thousands to feast upon the
newcomers and make life miserable for us all.  Duncan was as badly
treated by them as any of us, although he belonged to the country, and
I overheard him swearing at a lively gait soon after the little beasts
began their attacks.

"Why, Duncan," said I, "I didn't know you swore."

"I does, sir, sometimes--when things makes me," he replied.

"But it doesn't help matters any to swear, does it?"

"No, sir, but" (swatting his face) "damn the flies--it's easin' to the
feelin's to swear sometimes."

On several occasions after this I heard Duncan "easin' his feelin's" in
long and astounding bursts of profane eloquence, but he did try to
moderate his language when I was within earshot.  Once I asked him:

"Where in the world did you learn to swear like that, Duncan?"

"At the lumber camps, sir," he replied.

In the year I had spent in Labrador I had never before heard a planter
or native of Groswater Bay swear.  But this explained it.  The
lumbermen from "civilization" were educating them.

At one o'clock on July first, half our outfit was portaged to the
summit of the hill and we ate our dinner there in the broiling sun, for
we were above the trees, which ended some distance below us.  It was
fearfully hot--a dead, suffocating heat--with not a breath of wind to
relieve the stifling atmosphere, and some one asked what the
temperature was.

"Eighty-seven in the shade, but no shade," Richards remarked as he
threw down his pack and consulted the thermometer where I had placed it
under a low bush.  "I'll swear it's a hundred and fifty in the sun."

During dinner Pete pointed to the river far below us, saying, "Look!
Indian canoe."  I could not make it out without my binoculars, but with
their aid discerned a canoe on the river, containing a solitary
paddler.  None of us, excepting Pete, could see the canoe without the
glasses, at which he was very proud and remarked: "No findin' glass
need me.  See far, me.  See long way off."

On other occasions, afterward, I had reason to marvel at Pete's
clearness of vision.

It was John Ahsini in the canoe, as we discovered later when he joined
us and helped Stanton up the hill with his last pack to our night camp
on the summit.  I invited John to eat supper with us and he accepted
the invitation.  He told us he was hunting "moshku" (bear) and was
camped at the mouth of the Red River.  He assured us that we would find
no more hills like this one we were on, and, pointing to the northward,
said, "Miam potagan" (good portage) and that we would find plenty
"atuk" (caribou), "moshku" and "mashumekush" (trout).  After supper I
gave John some "stemmo," and he disappeared down the trail to join his
wife in their wigwam below.

We were all of us completely exhausted that night.  Stanton was too
tired to eat, and lay down upon the bare rocks to sleep.  Pete
stretched our tent wigwam fashion on some old Indian tepee poles, and,
without troubling ourselves to break brush for a bed, we all soon
joined Stanton in a dreamless slumber upon his rocky couch.

The night, like the day, was very warm, and when I aroused Pete at
sunrise the next morning (July second) to get breakfast the mosquitoes
were about our heads in clouds.

A magnificent panorama lay before us.  Opposite, across the valley of
the Nascaupee, a great hill held its snow-tipped head high in the
heavens.  Some four miles farther up to the northwest, the river
itself, where it was choked with blocks of ice, made its appearance and
threaded its way down to the southeast until it was finally lost in the
spruce-covered valley.  Beyond, bits of Grand Lake, like silver
settings in the black surrounding forest, sparkled in the light of the
rising sun.  Away to the westward could be traced the rushing waters of
the Red River making their course down through the sandy ridges that
enclose its valley.  To the northward lay a great undulating
wilderness, the wilderness that we were to traverse.  It was Sunday
morning, and the holy stillness of the day engulfed our world.

When Pete had the fire going and the kettle singing I roused the boys
and told them we would make this, our first Sunday in the bush, an easy
one, and simply move our camp forward to a more hospitable and
sheltered spot by a little brook a mile up the trail, and then be ready
for the "tug of war" on Monday.

In accordance with this plan, after eating our breakfast we each
carried a light pack to our new camping ground, and there pitched our
tent by a tiny brook that trickled down through the rocks.  While
Stanton cooked dinner, Pete brought forward a second pack.  After we
had eaten, Richards suggested to Pete that they take the fish net ahead
and set it in the little lake which was still some two and a half miles
farther on the trail.  They had just returned when a terrific
thunderstorm broke upon us, and every moment we expected the tent to be
carried away by the gale that accompanied the downpour of rain.  It was
then that Richards remembered that he had left his blankets to dry upon
the tepee poles at the last camp.  The rain ceased about five o'clock,
and Duncan volunteered to return with Richards and help him recover his
blankets, which they found far from dry.

Mosquitoes, it seemed to me, were never so numerous or vicious as after
this thunderstorm.  We had head nets that were a protection from them
generally, but when we removed the nets to eat, the attacks of the
insects were simply insufferable, so we had our supper in the tent.
After our meal was finished and Pete had washed the dishes, I read
aloud a chapter from the Bible--a Sunday custom that was maintained
throughout the trip--and Stanton sang some hymns.  Then we prevailed
upon him to entertain us with other songs.  He had an excellent tenor
voice and a repertoire ranging from "The Holy City" to "My Brother
Bob," and these and some of the old Scotch ballads, which he sang well,
were favorites that he was often afterward called upon to render as we
gathered around our evening camp fire, smoking our pipes and drinking
in the tonic fragrance of the great solemn forest around us after a day
of hard portaging.  These impromptu concerts, story telling, and
reading aloud from two or three "vest pocket" classics that I carried,
furnished our entertainment when we were not too tired to be amused.

The rain cleared the atmosphere, and Monday was cool and delightful,
and, with the exception of two or three showers, a perfect day.  Camp
was moved and our entire outfit portaged to the first small lake.  Our
net, which Pete and Richards had set the day before, yielded us
nothing, but with my rod I caught enough trout for a sumptuous supper.

The following morning (July fourth) Pete and I, who arose at half-past
four, had just finished preparing breakfast of fried pork, flapjacks
and coffee, and I had gone to the tent to call the others, when Pete
came rushing after me in great excitement, exclaiming, "Caribou! Rifle
quick!" He grabbed one of the 44's and rushed away and soon we heard
bang-bang-bang seven times from up the lake shore.  It was not long
before Pete returned with a very humble bearing and crestfallen
countenance, and without a word leaned the rifle against a tree and
resumed his culinary operations.

"Well, Pete," said I, "how many caribou did you kill?"

"No caribou.  Miss him," he replied.

"But I heard seven shots.  How did you miss so many times?" I asked.

"Miss him," answered Pete.  "I see caribou over there, close to water,
run fast, try get lee side so he don't smell me.  Water in way.  Go
very careful, make no noise, but he smell me.  He hold his head up like
this.  He sniff, then he start.  He go through trees very quick. See
him, me, just little when he runs through trees.  Shoot seven times.
Hit him once, not much.  He runs off.  No good follow.  Not hurt much,
maybe goes very far."

"You had caribou fever, Pete," suggested Richards.

"Yes," said Easton, "caribou fever, sure thing."

"I don't believe you'd have hit him if he hadn't winded you," Stanton
remarked.  "The trouble with you, Pete, is you can't shoot."

"No caribou fever, me," rejoined Pete, with righteous indignation at
such a suggestion.  "Kill plenty moose, kill red deer; never have moose
fever, never have deer fever." Then turning to me he asked, "You want
caribou, Mr. Wallace?"

"Yes," I answered, "I wish we could get some fresh meat, but we can
wait a few days.  We have enough to eat, and I don't want to take time
to hunt now."

"Plenty signs.  I get caribou any day you want him.  Tell me when you
want him, I kill him," Pete answered me, ignoring the criticisms of the
others as to his marksmanship and hunting prowess.  All that day and
all the next the men let no opportunity pass to guy Pete about his lost
caribou, and on the whole he took the banter very good-naturedly, but
once confided to me that "if those boys get up early, maybe they see
caribou too and try how much they can do."

After breakfast Pete and I paddled to the other end of the little lake
to pick up the trail while the others broke camp.  In a little while he
located it, a well-defined path, and we walked across it half a mile to
another and considerably larger lake in which was a small, round,
moundlike, spruce-covered island so characteristic of the Labrador
lakes.

On our way back to the first lake Pete called my attention to a fresh
caribou track in the hard earth.  It was scarcely distinguishable, and
I had to look very closely to make it out.  Then he showed me other
signs that I could make nothing of at all--a freshly turned pebble or
broken twig.  These, he said, were fresh deer signs.  A caribou had
passed toward the larger lake that very morning.

"If you want him, I get him," said Pete.  I could see he felt rather
deeply his failure of the morning and that he was anxious to redeem
himself.  I wanted to give him the opportunity to do so, especially as
the young men, unused to deprivations, were beginning to crave fresh
meat as a relief from the salt pork.  At the same time, however, I felt
that the fish we were pretty certain to get from this time on would do
very well for the present, and I did not care to take time to hunt
until we were a little deeper into the country.  Therefore I told him,
"No, we will wait a day or two."

Pete, as I soon discovered, had an insatiable passion for hunting, and
could never let anything in the way of game pass him without qualms of
regret.  Sometimes, where a caribou trail ran off plain and clear in
the moss, it was hard to keep from running after it.  Nothing ever
escaped his ear or eye.  He had the trained senses and instincts of the
Indian hunter.  When I first saw him in New York he looked so youthful
and evidently had so little confidence in himself, answering my
question as to whether he could do this or that with an aggravating "I
don't know," that I felt a keen sense of disappointment in him. But
with every stage of our journey he had developed, and now was in his
element.  He was quite a different individual from the green Indian
youth whom I had first seen walking timidly beside the railway
conductor at the Grand Central Station in New York.

The portage between the lakes was an easy one and, as I have said, well
defined, and we reached the farther shore of the second lake early in
the afternoon.  Here we found an old Indian camping ground covering
several acres.  It had evidently been at one time a general rendezvous
of the Indians hunting in this section, as was indicated by the large
number of wigwams that had been pitched here.  That was a long while
ago, however, for the old poles were so decayed that they fell into
pieces when we attempted to pick them up.

There was no sign of a trail leading from the old camp ground, and I
sent Pete and Richards to circle the bush and endeavor to locate one
that I knew was somewhere about, while I fished and Stanton and Duncan
prepared an early supper.  A little later the two men returned,
unsuccessful in their quest.  They had seen two or three trails, any of
which might be our trail.  Of course but one of them _could_ be the
right one.

This report was both perplexing and annoying, for I did not wish to
follow for several days a wrong route and then discover the error when
much valuable time had been lost.

I therefore decided that we must be sure of our position before
proceeding, and early the following morning dispatched Richards and
Pete on a scouting expedition to a high hill some distance to the
northeast that they might, from that view-point, note the general
contour of the land and the location of any visible chain of lakes
leading to the northwest through which the Indian trail might pass, and
then endeavor to pick up the trail from one of these lakes, noting old
camping grounds and other signs.  As a precaution, in case they were
detained over night each carried some tea and some erbswurst, a rifle,
a cup at his belt and a compass.  When Pete took the rifle he held it
up meaningly and said, "Fresh meat to-night.  Caribou," and I could see
that he was planning to make a hunt of it.

When they were gone, I took Easton with me and climbed another hill
nearer camp, that I might get a panoramic view of the valley in which
we were camped.  From this vantage ground I could see, stretching off
to the northward, a chain of three or four small lakes which, I
concluded, though there was other water visible, undoubtedly marked our
course.  Far to the northwest was a group of rugged, barren,
snow-capped mountains which were, perhaps, the "white hills," behind
which the Indians had told us lay Seal Lake.  At our feet, sparkling in
the sunlight, spread the lake upon whose shores our tent, a little
white dot amongst the green trees, was pitched.  A bit of smoke curled
up from our camp fire, where I knew Stanton and Duncan were baking
"squaw bread."

We returned to camp to await the arrival and report of Richards and
Pete, and occupied the afternoon in catching trout which, though more
plentiful than in the first lake, were very small.

Toward evening, when a stiff breeze blew in from the lake and cleared
the black flies and mosquitoes away.  Easton took a canoe out,
stripped, and sprang into the water, while I undressed on shore and was
in the midst of a most refreshing bath when, suddenly, the wind died
away and our tormentors came upon us in clouds.  It was a scramble to
get into our clothes again, but before I succeeded in hiding my
nakedness from them, I was pretty severely wounded.

It was scarcely six o'clock when Richards and Pete walked into camp and
proudly threw down some venison.  Pete had kept his promise.  On the
lookout at every step for game, he had espied an old stag, and,
together, he and Richards had stalked it, and it had received bullets
from both their rifles.  I shall not say to which hunter belonged the
honor of killing the game.  They were both very proud of it.

But best of all, they had found, to a certainty, the trail leading to
one of the chain of little lakes which Easton and I had seen, and these
lakes, they reported, took a course directly toward a larger lake,
which they had glimpsed.  I decided that this must be the lake of which
the Indians at Northwest River had told us--Lake Nipishish (Little
Water).  This was very gratifying intelligence, as Nipishish was said
to be nearly half way to Seal Lake, from where we had begun our portage
on the Nascaupee.

What a supper we had that night of fresh venison, and new "squaw
bread," hot from the pan!

In the morning we portaged our outfit two miles, and removed our camp
to the second one of the series of lakes which Easton and I had seen
from the hill, and the fourth lake after leaving the Nascaupee River.
The morning was fearfully hot, and we floundered through marshes with
heavy packs, bathed in perspiration, and fairly breathing flies and
mosquitoes.  Not a breath of air stirred, and the humidity and heat
were awful.  Stanton and Duncan remained to pitch the tent and bring up
some of our stuff that had been left at the second lake, while
Richards, Easton, Pete and I trudged three miles over the hills for the
caribou meat which had been cached at the place where the animal was
killed, Richards and Pete having brought with them only enough for two
or three meals.

The country here was rough and broken, with many great bowlders
scattered over the hilltops.  When we reached the cache we were
ravenously hungry, and built a fire and had a very satisfying luncheon
of broiled venison steak and tea.  We bad barely finished our meal when
heavy black clouds overcast the sky, and the wind and rain broke upon
us in the fury of a hurricane.  With the coming of the storm the
temperature dropped fully forty degrees in half as many minutes, and in
our dripping wet garments we were soon chilled and miserable.  We
hastened to cut the venison up and put it into packs, and with each a
load of it, started homeward.  On the way I stopped with Pete to climb
a peak that I might have a view of the surrounding country and see the
large lake to the northward which he and Richards had reported the
evening before.  The atmosphere was sufficiently clear by this time for
me to see it, and I was satisfied that it was undoubtedly Lake
Nipishish, as no other large lake had been mentioned by the Indians.

We hastened down the mountain and made our way through rain-soaked
bushes and trees that showered us with their load of water at every
step, and when at last we reached camp and I threw down my pack, I was
too weary to change my wet garments for dry ones, and was glad to lie
down, drenched as I was, to sleep until supper was ready.

None of our venison must be wasted.  All that we could not use within
the next day or two must be "jerked," that is, dried, to keep it from
spoiling.  To accomplish this we erected poles, like the poles of a
wigwam, and suspended the meat from them, cut in thin strips, and in
the center, between the poles, made a small, smoky fire to keep the
greenbottle flies away, that they might not "blow" the venison, as well
as to aid nature in the drying process.

All day on July seventh the rain poured down, a cold, northwest wind
blew, and no progress was made in drying our meat.  There was nothing
to do but wait in the tent for the storm to clear.

When Pete went out to cook dinner I told him to make a little corn meal
porridge and let it go at that, but what a surprise he had for us when,
a little later, dripping wet and hands full of kettles, he pushed his
way into the tent!  A steaming venison potpie, broiled venison steaks,
hot fried bread dough, stewed prunes for dessert and a kettle of hot
tea!  All experienced campers in the north woods are familiar with the
fried bread dough.  It is dough mixed as you would mix it for squaw
bread, but not quite so stiff, pulled out to the size of your frying
pan, very thin, and fried in swimming pork grease.  In taste it
resembles doughnuts.  Hubbard used to call it "French toast." Our young
men had never eaten it before, and Richards, taking one of the cakes,
asked Pete:

"What do you call this?"

"I don't know," answered Pete.

"Well," said Richards, with a mouthful of it, "I call it darn good."

"That's what we call him then," retorted Pete, "darn good."

And so the cakes were christened "darn goods," and always afterward we
referred to them by that name.

The forest fire which I have mentioned as having swept this country to
the shores of Grand Lake some thirty-odd years ago, had been
particularly destructive in this portion of the valley where we were
now encamped.  The stark dead spruce trees, naked skeletons of the old
forest, stood all about, and that evening, when I stepped outside for a
look at the sky and weather, I was impressed with the dreariness of the
scene.  The wind blew in gusts, driving the rain in sheets over the
face of the hills and through the spectral trees, finally dashing it in
bucketfuls against our tent.

The next forenoon, however, the sky cleared, and in the afternoon
Richards and I went ahead in one of the canoes to hunt the trail.  We
followed the north shore of the lake to its end, then portaged twenty
yards across a narrow neck into another lake, and keeping near the
north shore of this lake also, continued until we came upon a creek of
considerable size running out of it and taking a southeasterly course.
Where the creek left the lake there was an old Indian fishing camp. It
was out of the question that our trail should follow the valley of this
creek, for it led directly away from our goal.  We, therefore, returned
and explored a portion of the north shore of the lake, which was very
bare, bowlder strewn, and devoid of vegetation for the most part--even
moss.

Once we came upon a snow bank in a hollow, and cooled ourselves by
eating some of the snow.  Our observations made it quite certain that
the trail left the northern side of the second lake through a
bowlder-strewn pass over the hills, though there were no visible signs
of it, and we climbed one of the hills in the hope of seeing lakes
beyond. There were none in sight.  It was too late to continue our
search that day and we reluctantly returned to camp.  Our failure was
rather discouraging because it meant a further loss of time, and I had
hoped that our route, until we reached Nipishish at least, would lie
straight and well defined before us.

Sunday was comfortably cool, with a good stiff breeze to drive away the
flies.  I dispatched Richards, with Pete and Easton to accompany him,
to follow up our work of the evening before, and look into the pass
through the hills, while I remained behind with Stanton and Duncan and
kept the fire going under our venison.

I Had expected that Duncan, with his lifelong experience as a native
trapper and hunter in the Labrador interior, would be of great
assistance to us in locating the trail; but to my disappointment I
discovered soon after our start that he was far from good even in
following a trail when it was found, though he never got lost and could
always find his way back, in a straight line, to any given point.

The boys returned toward evening and reported that beyond the hills,
through the pass, lay a good-sized lake, and that some signs of a trail
were found leading to it.  This was what I had hoped for.

Our meat was now sufficiently dried to pack, and, anxious to be on the
move again, I directed that on the morrow we should break camp and
cross the hills to the lakes beyond.



CHAPTER V

WE GO ASTRAY

At half-past four on Monday morning I called the men, and while Pete
was preparing breakfast the rest of us broke camp and made ready for a
prompt start.  All were anxious to see behind the range of
bowlder-covered hills and to reach Lake Nipishish, which we felt could
not now be far away.  As soon as our meal was finished the larger canoe
was loaded and started on ahead, while Richards, Duncan and I remained
behind to load and follow in the other.

With the rising sun the day had become excessively warm, and there was
not a breath of wind to cool the stifling atmosphere.  The trail was
ill-defined and rough, winding through bare glacial bowlders that were
thick-strewn on the ridges; and the difficulty of following it,
together with the heat, made the work seem doubly hard, as we trudged
with heavy packs to the shores of a little lake which nestled in a
notch between the bills a mile and a half away.  Once a fox ran before
us and took refuge in its den under a large rock, but save the always
present cloud of black flies, no other sign of life was visible on the
treeless hills.  Finally at midday, after three wearisome journeys back
and forth, bathed in perspiration and dripping fly dope and pork
grease, which we had rubbed on our faces pretty freely as a protection
from the winged pests, we deposited our last load upon the shores of
the lake, and thankfully stopped to rest and cook our dinner.

We were still eating when we heard the first rumblings of distant
thunder and felt the first breath of wind from a bank of black clouds
in the western sky, and had scarcely started forward again when the
heavens opened upon us with a deluge.

The brunt of the storm soon passed, but a steady rain continued as we
paddled through the lake and portaged across a short neck of land into
a larger lake, down which we paddled to a small round island near its
lower end.  Here, drenched to the bone and thoroughly tired, we made
camp, and in the shelter of the tent ate a savory stew composed of
duck, grouse, venison and fat pork that Pete served in the most
appetizing camp style.

I was astounded by the amount of squaw bread and "darn goods" that the
young men of my party made away with, and began to fear not only for
the flour supply, but also for the health of the men.  One day when I
saw one of my party eat three thick loaves of squaw bread in addition
to a fair quantity of meat, I felt that it was time to limit the flour
part of the ration.  I expressed my fears to Pete, and advised that he
bake less bread, and make the men eat more of the other food.

"Bread very good for Indian.  Not good when white an eat so much. Good
way fix him.  Use not so much baking powder, me.  Make him heavy,"
suggested Pete.

"No, Pete, use enough baking powder to make the bread good, and I'll
speak to the men.  Then if they don't eat less bread of their own
accord, we'll have to limit them to a ration."

I decided to try this plan, and that evening in our camp on the island
I told them that a ration of bread would soon have to be resorted to.
They looked very solemn about it, for the bare possibility of a limited
ration, something that they had never had to submit to, appeared like a
hardship to them.

On Tuesday morning when we awoke the rain was still falling steadily.
During the forenoon the storm abated somewhat and we broke camp and
transferred our goods to the mainland, where the trail left the lake
near a good-sized brook.  Our portage led us over small bills and
through marshes a mile and a half to another lake.  While Pete remained
at our new camp to prepare supper and Easton stayed with him, the rest
of us brought forward the last load.  Richards and I with a canoe and
packs attempted to run down the brook, which emptied into the lake near
our camp; but we soon found the stream too rocky, and were forced to
cut our way through a dense growth of willows and carry the canoe and
packs to camp on our backs.

The rain had ceased early in the afternoon, and the evening was
delightfully cool, so that the warmth of a big camp fire was most
grateful and comforting.  Our day's march had carried us into a
well-wooded country, and the spectral dry sticks of the old burnt
forest were behind us.  The clouds hung low and threatening, and in the
twilight beyond the glow of our leaping fire made the still waters of
the lake, with its encircling wilderness of fir trees, seem very dark
and somber.  The genial warmth of the fire was so in contrast to the
chilly darkness of the tent that we sat long around it and talked of
our travels and prospects and the lake and the wilderness before us
that no white man had ever before seen, while the brook near by
tumbling over its rocky bed roared a constant complaint at our
intrusion into this land of solitude.

The following morning was cool and fine, but showers developed during
the day.  Our venison, improderly dried, was molding, and much of it we
found, upon unpacking, to be maggoty.  After breakfast I instructed the
others to cut out the wormy parts as far as possible and hang the good
meat over the fire for further drying, while with Easton I explored a
portion of the lake shore in search of the trail leading out.  We
returned for a late dinner, and then while Easton, Richards and I
caught trout, I dispatched Pete and Stanton to continue the search
beyond the point where Easton and I had left off.  It was near evening
when they came back with the information that they had found the trail,
very difficult to follow, leading to a river, some two miles and a half
beyond our camp.  This was undoubtedly the Crooked River, which empties
into Grand Lake close to the Nascaupee, and which the Indians had told
us had its rise in Lake Nipishish.

The evening was very warm, and mosquitoes were so thick in the tent
that we almost breathed them.  Stanton, after much turning and
fidgeting, finally took his blanket out of doors, where he said it was
cooler and he could sleep with his head covered to protect him; but in
an hour he was back, and with his blanket wet with dew took his usual
place beside me.

Below the point where the trail enters the Crooked River it is said by
the Indians to be exceedingly rough and entirely impassable.  We
portaged into it the next morning, paddled a short distance up the
stream, which is here some two hundred yards in width and rather
shallow, then poled through a short rapid and tracked through two
others, wading almost to our waists in some places.  We now came to a
widening of the river where it spread out into a small lake.  Near the
upper end of this expansion was an island upon which we found a
long-disused log cache of the Indians.  A little distance above the
island what appeared to be two rivers flowed into the expansion.
Richards, Duncan and I explored up the right-hand branch until we
struck a rapid.  Upon our return to the point where the two streams
came together we found that the other canoe, against my positive
instructions not to proceed at uncertain points until I had decided
upon the proper route to take, had gone up the branch on the left,
tracked through a rapid and disappeared.

There were no signs of Indians on either of these branches so far as we
could discover, and I was well satisfied that somewhere on the north
bank of the expansion, probably not far from the island and old cache
which we had passed, was the trail.  But evening was coming on and rain
was threatening, so there was nothing to do but follow the other canoe,
which had gone blindly ahead, until we should overtake it, as it
contained all the cooking utensils and our tent.  This failure of the
men to obey instructions took us a considerable distance out of our way
and cost us several days' time, as we discovered later.

We tracked through some rapids and finally overhauled the others at a
place where the river branched again.  It was after seven o'clock, a
drizzling rain was falling, and here we pitched camp on the east side
of the river just opposite the junction of the two branches.

On the west fork and directly across from our camp was a rough rapid,
and while supper was cooking I paddled over with Richards to try for
fish.  We made our casts, and I quickly landed a twenty-inch ouananiche
and Richards hooked a big trout that, after much play, was brought
ashore.  It measured twenty-two and a half inches from tip to tip and
eleven and a half inches around the shoulders.  I had landed a couple
more large trout, when Richards enthusiastically announced that he had
a big fellow hooked.  He played the fish for half an hour before he
brought it to the edge of the rock, so completely exhausted that it
could scarcely move a fin.  We had no landing net and he attempted to
lift it out by the line, when snap went the hook and the fish was free!
I made a dash, caught it in my hands and triumphantly brought it
ashore.  It proved to be an ouananiche that measured twenty-seven and
one-half inches in length by eleven and one-quarter inches in girth.

In our excitement we had forgotten all about supper and did not even
know that it was raining; but we now saw Pete on the further shore
gesticulating wildly and pointing at his open mouth, in pantomime
suggestion that the meal was waiting.

"Well, that _is_ fishing!" remarked Richards.  "I never landed a fish
as big as that before."

"Yes," I answered; "we're getting near the headwaters of the river now,
where the big fish are always found."

"I never expected any such sport as that.  It's worth the hard work
just for this hour's fishing."

"You'll get plenty more of it before we're through the country.  There
are some big fellows under that rapid.  The Indians told us we should
find salmon in this section too, but we're ahead of the salmon, I
think.  They're hardly due for a month yet."

"Let's show the fellows the trout, first.  They're big enough to make
'em open their eyes.  Then we'll spring the ouananiche on 'cm and
they'll faint.  It'll, be enough to make Easton want to come and try a
cast too."

So when we pushed through the dripping bushes to the tent we presented
only the few big trout, which did indeed create a sensation.  Then
Richards brought forward his ouananiche, and it produced the desired
effect.  After supper Pete and Easton must try their hand at the fish,
and they succeeded in catching five trout averaging, we estimated, from
two to three pounds each.  Richards, however, still held the record as
to big fish, both trout and ouananiche, and the others vowed they would
take it from him if they had to fish nights to do it.

_En route_ up the river, in the afternoon, Pete had shot a muskrat, and
I asked him that night what he was going to do with it.

"I don't know," he answered.  "Muskrat no good now."

"Well, never kill any animal while you are with me that you cannot use,
except beasts of prey."

This was one of the rules that I had laid down at the beginning: that
no member of the party should kill for the sake of killing any living
thing.  I could not be angry with Pete, however, for he was always so
goodnatured.  No matter how sharply I might reprove him, in five
minutes he would be doing something for my comfort, or singing some
Indian song as he went lightheartedly about his work.  I understood how
hard it was for him to down the Indian instinct to kill, and that the
muskrat bad been shot thoughtlessly without considering for a moment
whether it were needed or not.  The flesh of the muskrat at this season
of the year is very strong in flavor and unpalatable, and besides, with
the grouse that were occasionally killed, the fish that we were
catching, and the dried venison still on hand, we could not well use
it.  No fur is, of course, in season at this time of year, and so there
was no excuse for killing muskrats for the pelts.

In the vicinity of this camp we saw some of the largest spruce timber
that we came upon in the whole journey across Labrador.  Some of these
trees were fully twenty-two inches in diameter at the butt and perhaps
fifty to sixty feet in height.  These large trees were very scattered,
however, and too few to be of commercial value.  For the most part the
trees that we met with were six to eight, and, occasionally, ten inches
through, scrubby and knotted.  In Labrador trees worth the cutting are
always located near streams in sheltered valleys.

That evening before we retired the drizzle turned to a downpour, and we
were glad to leave our unprotected camp fire for the unwarmed shelter
of our tent.  While I lay within and listened to the storm, I wrote in
my diary: "As I lie here, the rain pours upon the tent over my head and
drips--drips--drips through small holes in the silk; the wind sweeps
through the spruce trees outside and a breath of the fragrance of the
great damp forest comes to me.  I hear the roar of the rapid across the
river as the waters pour down over the rocks in their course to the
sea.  I wonder if some of those very waters do not wash the shores of
New York.  How far away the city seems, and how glad I shall be to
return home when my work here is finished!

"This is a feeling that comes to one often in the wilderness.  Perhaps
it is a touch of homesickness--a hunger for the sympathy and
companionship of our friends."

The days that followed were days of weary waiting and inactivity.  A
cold northeast storm was blowing and the rain fell heavily and
incessantly day and night.  Trail hunting was impracticable while the
storm lasted, but the halt offered an opportunity that was taken
advantage of to repair our outfit; also there was much needed mending
to be done, as some of our clothing was badly torn.

Everything we had in the way of wearing apparel was wet, and we set up
our tent stove for the first time, that we might dry our things under
cover.  This stove proved a great comfort to us, and all agreed that it
was an inspiration that led me to bring it.  It was not an inspiration,
however, but my experience on the trip with Hubbard that taught the
necessity of a stove for just such occasions as this, and for the
colder weather later.

Some of us went to the rapid to fish, but it was too cold for either
fly or bait, and we soon gave it up.  I slipped off a rock in the lower
swirl of the rapid, and went into the river over head and ears. Pete,
who was with me, gave audible expression to his amusement at my
discomfiture as I crawled out of the water like a half drowned rat; but
I could see no occasion for his hilarity and I told him so.

This experience dampened my enthusiasm as a fisherman for that day. The
net was set, however, which later yielded us some trout.  A fish
planked on a dry spruce log hewn flat on one side, made a delicious
dinner, and a savory kettle of fish chowder made of trout and dried
onions gave us an equally good supper.

On July fifteenth sleet was mingled with the rain in the early morning,
and it was so cold that Duncan used his mittens when doing outdoor
work.  Easton was not feeling well, and I looked upon our delay as not
altogether lost time, as it gave him an opportunity to get into shape
again.

A pocket copy of "Hiawatha," from which Stanton read aloud, furnished
us with entertainment.  Pete was very much interested in the reading,
and I found he was quite familiar with the legends of his Indian hero,
and he told us some stories of Hiawatha that I had never heard.
"Hiawatha," said Pete, "he the same as Christ.  He do anything he want
to."  Pete produced his harmonica and proved himself a very good
performer.

July sixteenth was Sunday, and I decided that rain or shine we must
break camp on Monday and move forwards for the inactivity was becoming
unendurable.

A little fishing was done, and Pete landed a twenty-two and
three-quarter inch trout, thus wresting the big-trout record from
Richards. Pete was proud and boasted a great deal of this feat, which
he claimed proved his greater skill as a fisherman, but which the
others attributed to luck.

We were enabled to do some scouting in the afternoon, which resulted in
the discovery that our camp was on an island.  Nowhere could we find
any Indian signs, and we were therefore quite evidently off the trail.



CHAPTER VI

LAKE NIPISHISH IS REACHED

As already stated, the Indians at Northwest River Post had informed us
that the Crooked River had its rise in Lake Nipishish, and I therefore
decided to follow the stream from the point where we were now encamped
to the lake, or until we should come upon the trail again, as I felt
sure we should do farther up, rather than retrace our steps to the
abandoned cache on the island in the expansion below, and probably
consume considerable time in locating the old portage route from that
point.

Accordingly, on Monday morning we began our work against the almost
continuous rapids, which we discovered as we proceeded were
characteristic of the river.  A heavy growth of willows lined the
banks, forcing us into the icy water, where the swift current made it
very difficult to keep our footing upon the slippery bowlders of the
river bed.  Tracking lines were attached to the bows of the canoes and
we floundered forward.

The morning was cloudy and cool and resembled a day in late October,
but before noon the sun graciously made his appearance and gave us new
spirit for our work.  When we stopped for dinner I sent Pete and Easton
to look ahead, and Pete brought back the intelligence that a half-mile
portage would cut off a considerable bend in the river and take us into
still water.  It was necessary to clear a portion of the way with the
ax. This done, the portage was made, and then we found to our
disappointment that the still water was less than a quarter mile in
length, when rapids occurred again.

As I deemed it wise to get an idea of the lay of the land before
proceeding farther, I took Pete with me and went ahead to scout the
route.  Less than a mile away we found two small lakes, and climbing a
ridge two miles farther on, we had a view of the river, which, so far
as we could see, continued to be very rough, taking a turn to the
westward above where our canoes were stationed, and then swinging again
to the northeast in the direction of Nipishish, which was plainly
visible.  The Indians, instead of taking the longer route that we were
following, undoubtedly crossed from the old cache to a point in the
river some distance above where it took its westward swing, and thus,
in one comparatively easy portage, saved themselves several miles of
rough traveling.  It was too late for us now, however, to take
advantage of this.

Pete and I hurried back to the others.  The afternoon was well
advanced, but sufficient daylight remained to permit us to proceed a
little way up the river, and portage to the shores of one of the lakes,
where camp was made just at dusk.

Field mice in this section were exceedingly troublesome.  They would
run over us at night, sample our food, and gnawed a hole as large as a
man's hand in the side of the tent.  Porcupines, too, were something of
a nuisance.  One night one of them ate a piece out of my tumpline,
which was partially under my head, while I slept.

The next morning we passed through the lakes to the river above, and
for three days, in spite of an almost continuous rain and wind storm,
worked our way up stream, "tracking" the canoes through a succession of
rapids or portaging around them, with scarcely any opportunity to
paddle.

On the afternoon of the third day, with the wind dashing the rain in
sheets into our faces, we halted on a rough piece of ground just above
the river bank and pitched our tent.

When camp was made Pete took me to a rise of ground a little distance
away, and pointing to the northward exclaimed: "Look, Lake Nipishish! I
know we reach him to-day."

And sure enough, there lay Lake Nipishish close at hand!  I was more
thankful than I can say to see the water stretching far away to the
northward, for I felt that now the hardest and roughest part of our
journey to the height of land was completed.

"That's great, Pete," said I. "We'll have more water after this and
fewer and easier portages, and we can travel faster."

"Maybe better, I don't know," remarked Pete, rather skeptically.
"Always hard find trail out big lakes.  May leave plenty places.  Take
more time hunt trail maybe now.  Indian maps no good.  Maybe easier
when we find him."

Pete was right, and I did not know the difficulties still to be met
with before we should reach Michikamau.

Duncan was of comparatively little help to us now, and as I knew that
he was more than anxious to return to Groswater Bay, I decided to
dispense with his further services and send him back with letters to be
mailed home.  When I returned to the tent I said to him:

"Duncan, I suppose you would like to go home now, and I will let you
turn back from here and take some letters out.  Does that suit you?"

"Yes, sir, that suits me fine," replied be promptly, and in a tone that
left no doubt of the fact that he was glad to go.

"Well, this is Thursday.  I'll write my letters tomorrow, and you may
go on Saturday."

"All right, sir."

The letters were all written and ready for Duncan on Friday night, and
he packed sufficient provisions into a waterproof bag I gave him to
carry him out, and prepared for an early start in the morning.  But the
rain that had been falling for several days still poured down on
Saturday, and he decided to postpone his departure another day in the
hope of better weather on Sunday.  He needed the time anyway to mend
his sealskin boots before starting back, for he had pretty nearly worn
them out on the sharp rocks on the portages.  The rest of us were well
provided with oil-tanned moccasins (sometimes called larigans or
shoe-packs), which I have found are the best footwear for a journey
like ours.  Pete's khaki trousers were badly torn; and Richards and
Easton, who wore Mackinaw trousers, were in rags.  This cloth had not
withstood the hard usage of Labrador travel a week, and both men, when
they bad a spare hour, occupied it in sewing on canvas patches, until
now there was almost as much canvas patch as Mackinaw cloth in these
garments.  Richards, however, carried an extra pair of moleskin
trousers, and I wore moleskin.  This latter material is the best
obtainable, so far as my experience goes, for rough traveling in the
bush, and my trousers stood the trip with but one small patch until
winter came.

Sunday morning was still stormy, but before noon the rain ceased, and
Duncan announced his intention of starting homeward at once.  We raised
our flags and exchanged our farewells and Godspeeds with him. Then he
left us, and as he disappeared down the trail a strange sense of
loneliness came upon us, for it seemed to us that his going broke the
last link that connected us with the outside world.  Duncan was always
so cheerful, with his quaint humor, and so ready to do his work to the
very best of his ability, that we missed him very much, and often spoke
of him in the days that followed.

We had made the best of our enforced idleness in this camp to repack
and condense and dry our outfit as much as possible.  The venison, at
the first imperfectly cured, had been so continuously soaked that the
most of what remained of it was badly spoiled and we could not use it,
and with regret we threw it away.  The erbswurst was also damp, and
this we put into small canvas bags, which were then placed near the
stove to dry.

A rising barometer augured good weather for Monday morning.  A light
wind scattered the clouds that had for so many days entombed the world
in storm and gloom, and the sun broke out gloriously, setting the
moisture-laden trees aglinting as though hung with a million pearls and
warming the damp fir trees until the air was laden with the forest
perfume.  It was as though a pall had been lifted from the world.  How
our hearts swelled with the new enthusiasm of the returned sunshine! It
was always so.  It seemed as if the long-continued storms bound up our
hearts and crushed the buoyancy from them; but the returning sunshine
melted the bonds at once and gave us new ambition.  A robin sang gayly
from a near-by tree--a messenger from the kindlier Southland come to
cheer us--and the "whisky jacks," who had not shown themselves for
several days, appeared again with their shrill cries, venturing
impudently into the very door of our tent to claim scraps of refuse.

I was for moving forward that very afternoon, but some of our things
were still wet, and I deemed it better judgment to let them have the
day in which to dry and to delay our start until Monday morning.

After supper, in accordance with the Sunday custom established by
Hubbard when I was with him, I read aloud a selection from the
Testament--the last chapter of Revelation--and then went out of the
tent to take the usual nine o'clock weather observation.  Between the
horizon and a fringe of black clouds that hung low in the north the
reflected sun set the heavens afire, and through the dark fir trees the
lake stretched red as a lake of blood.  I called the others to see it
and Easton joined me.  We climbed a low hill close at hand to view the
scene, and while we looked the red faded into orange, and the lake was
transformed into a mirror, which reflected the surrounding trees like
an inverted forest.  In the direction from which we had come we could
see the high blue hills beyond the Nascaupee, very dim in the far
distance.  Below us the Crooked River lost itself as it wound its
tortuous way through the wooded valley that we had traversed. Somewhere
down there Duncan was bivouacked, and we wondered if his fire was
burning at one of our old camping places.

Darkness soon came and we returned to the tent to find the others
rolled in their blankets, and we joined them at once that we might have
a good night's rest preparatory to an early morning advance.

Before seven o'clock on Monday morning (July twenty-fourth) we had made
our portage to the water that we had supposed to be an arm of Lake
Nipishish, but which proved instead to be an expansion of the river
into which the lake poured its waters through a short rapid. This rapid
necessitated another short portage before we were actually afloat upon
the bosom of Nipishish itself.  There was not a cloud to mar the azure
of the sky, hardly a breath of wind to make a ripple on the surface of
the lake, and the morning was just cool enough to be delightful.

It was the kind of day and kind of wilderness that makes one want to go
on and on.  I felt again the thrill in my blood of that magic something
that had held possession of Hubbard and me and lured us into the heart
of this unknown land two years before, and as I looked hungrily away
toward the hills to the northward, I found myself repeating again one
of those selections from Kipling that I had learned from him:

  "Something hidden.  Go and find it.  Go and look behind the Ranges--
   Something lost behind the Ranges.  Lost and waiting for you. Go!"



CHAPTER VII

SCOUTING FOR THE TRAIL

Lake Nipishish is approximately twenty miles in length, and at its
broadest part ten or twelve miles in width.  It extends in an almost
due easterly direction from the place where we launched our canoes near
its outlet.  The shores are rocky and rise gradually into low,
well-wooded hills, by which the lake is surrounded.  Five miles from
the outlet a rocky point juts out into the water, and above the point
an arm of the lake reaches into the hills to the northward to a
distance of six miles, almost at right angles to the main lake.  In the
arm there are several small, rocky islands which sustain a scrubby
growth of black spruce and fir balsam.

Hitherto the Indian maps had been of little assistance to us.  No
estimate of distance could be made from them, and the lakes through
which we had passed (not all of them shown on the map) were represented
by small circles with nothing to indicate at what point on their shores
the trail was to be found.  Lake Nipishish, however, was drawn on a
larger scale and with more detail, and we readily located the trail
leading out of the arm which I have mentioned.

After a day's work through several small lakes or ponds, with short
intervening portages, and a trail on the whole well defined and easily
followed, we came one afternoon to a good-sized lake of irregular shape
which Pete promptly named Washkagama (Crooked Lake).

A stream flowed into Washkagama near the place where we went ashore,
and it seemed to me probable that our route might be along this stream,
which it was likely drained lakes farther up; but a search in the
vicinity failed to uncover any signs of the trail, and the irregular
shape of the lake suggested several other likely places for it. We
were, therefore, forced to go into camp, disappointing as it was, until
we should know our position to a certainty.

The next day was showery, but we began in the morning a determined hunt
for the trail.  Stanton remained in camp to make needed repairs to the
outfit; Easton went with Pete to the northward, while Richards and I in
one of the canoes paddled to the eastern side of the lake arm, upon
which we were encamped, to climb a barren hill from which we hoped to
get a good view of the country, and upon reaching the summit we were
not disappointed.  A wide panorama was spread before us.  To the north
lay a great rolling country covered with a limitless forest of firs,
with here and there a bit of sparkling water.  A mile from our camp a
creek, now and again losing itself in the green woods, rushed down to
join Washkagama, anxious to gain the repose of the lake.  To the
northeast the rugged white hills, that we were hoping to reach soon,
loomed up grand and majestic, with patches of snow, like white sheets,
spread over their sides and tops.  From Nipishish to Washkagama we had
passed through a burned and rocky country where no new growth save
scant underbrush and a few scattering spruce, balsam and tamarack trees
had taken the place of the old destroyed forest. The dead, naked tree
trunks which, gaunt and weather-beaten, still stood upright or lay in
promiscuous confusion on the ground, gave this part of the country from
our hilltop view an appearance of solitary desolation that we had not
noticed when we were traveling through it. But this unregenerated
district ended at Washkagama; and below it Nipishish, with its
green-topped hills, seemed almost homelike.

The creek that I have mentioned as flowing into the lake a mile from
our camp seemed to me worthy to be explored for the trail, and I
determined to go there at once upon our return to camp, while Richards
desired to climb a rock-topped hill which held its head above the
timber line three or four miles to the northwest, that he might make
topographical and geological observations there.

We returned to camp, and Richards, with a package of erbswurst in his
pocket to cook for dinner and my rifle on his shoulder, started
immediately into the bush, and was but just gone when Pete and Easton
appeared with the report that two miles above us lay a large lake, and
that they had found the trail leading from it to the creek I had seen
from the hill.  The lake lay among the hills to the northward, and the
bits of water I had seen were portions of it.  I was anxious to break
camp and start forward, but this could not be done until Richards'
return.  Easton, Pete and I paddled up to the creek's mouth, therefore,
and spent the day fishing, and landed eighty-seven trout, ranging from
a quarter pound to four pounds in weight.  The largest ones Stanton
split and hung over the fire to dry for future use, while the others
were applied to immediate need.

When Richards came into camp in the evening he brought with him an
excellent map of the country that he had seen from the hill and
reported having counted ten lakes, including the large one that Easton
and Pete had visited.  He also had found the trail and followed it back.

The next morning some tracking and wading up the creek was necessary
before we found ourselves upon the trail with packs on our backs, and
before twelve o'clock we arrived with all our outfit at the lake, which
we shall call Minisinaqua.  It was an exceedingly beautiful sheet of
water, the main body, perhaps, ten or twelve miles in length, but
narrow, and with many arms and indentations and containing numerous
round green islands.  The shores and surrounding country were well
wooded with spruce, fir, balsam, larch, and an occasional small white
birch.

I took my place in the larger canoe with Pete and Easton and left
Stanton to follow with Richards.  Pete's eyes, as always, were scanning
with keen scrutiny every inch of shore.  Suddenly he straightened up,
peered closely at an island, and in a stage whisper exclaimed "Caribou!
Caribou!  Don't make noise!  Paddle, quick!"

We saw them then--two old stags and a fawn--on an island, but they had
seen us, too, or winded us more likely, and, rushing across the island,
took to the water on the opposite side, making for the mainland.  We
bent to our paddles with all our might, hoping to get within shooting
distance of them, but they had too much lead.  We all tried some shots
when we saw we could not get closer, but the deer were five hundred
yards away, and from extra exertion with our paddles, we were unable to
hold steady, and missed.

Our canoes were turned into an arm of the lake leading to the
northward.  Amongst some islands we came upon a flock of five
geese--two old ones and three young ones.  The old ones had just passed
through the molting season, and their new wing feathers were not long
enough to bear them, and the young ones, though nearly full grown, had
not yet learned to fly.  Pete brought the mother goose and two of her
children down with the shotgun, but father gander and the other
youngster escaped, flapping away on the surface of the lake at a
remarkable speed, and they were allowed to go with their lives without
a chase.

We stumbled upon the trail leading from Lake Minisinaqua, almost
immediately upon landing.  Its course was in a northerly direction
through the valley of a small river that emptied into the lake.  This
valley was inclosed by low hills, and the country, like that between
Washkagama and Lake Minisinaqua, was well covered with the same
varieties of small trees that were found there.  For a mile and
three-quarters, the stream along which the trail ran was too swift for
canoeing, but it then expanded into miniature lakes or ponds which were
connected by short rapids.  Each of us portaged a load to the first
pond, where the canoes were to be launched, and I directed Pete and
Stanton to remain here, pluck the geese, and prepare two of them for an
evening dinner, while Richards, Easton and I brought forward a second
load and pitched camp.

This was Easton's twenty-second birthday and it occurred to me that it
would be a pleasant variation to give a birthday dinner in his honor
and to have a sort of feast to relieve the monotony of our daily life,
and give the men something to think about and revive their spirits; for
"bucking the trail" day after day with no change but the gradual change
of scenery does grow monotonous to most men, and the ardor of the best
of them, especially men unaccustomed to roughing it, will become damped
in time unless some variety, no matter how slight, can be brought into
their lives.  A good dinner always has this effect, for after men are
immersed in a wilderness for several weeks, good things to eat take the
first place in their thoughts and, to judge from their conversation,
the attainment of these is their chief aim in life.

My instructions to Pete included the baking of an extra ration of bread
to be served hot with the roast geese, and I asked Stanton to try his
hand at concocting some kind of a pudding out of the few prunes that
still remained, to be served with sugar as sauce, and accompanied by
black coffee.  Our coffee supply was small and it was used only on
Sundays now, or at times when we desired an especial treat.

We were pretty tired when we returned with our second packs and dropped
them on a low, bare knoll some fifty yards above the fire where Pete
and Stanton were carrying on their culinary operations, but a whiff of
roasting goose came to us like a tonic, and it did not take us long to
get camp pitched.

"Um-m-m," said Easton, stopping in his work of driving tent pegs to
sniff the air now bearing to us appetizing odors of goose and coffee,
"that smells like home."

"You bet it does," assented Richards.  "I haven't been filled up for a
week, but I'm going to be to-night."

At length dinner was ready, and we fell to with such good purpose that
the two birds, a generous portion of hot bread, innumerable cups of
black coffee, and finally, a most excellent pudding that Stanton had
made out of bread dough and prunes and boiled in a canvas specimen bag
disappeared.

How we enjoyed it!  "No hotel ever served such a banquet," one of the
boys remarked as we filled our pipes and lighted them with brands from
the fire.  Then with that blissful feeling that nothing but a good
dinner can give, we lay at full length on the deep white moss,
peacefully puffing smoke at the stars as they blinked sleepily one by
one out of the blue of the great arch above us until the whole
firmament was glittering with a mass of sparkling heaven gems.  The
soft perfume of the forest pervaded the atmosphere; the aurora borealis
appeared in the northern sky, and its waves of changing light swept the
heavens; the vast silence of the wilderness possessed the world and,
wrapped in his own thoughts, no man spoke to break the spell.  Finally
Pete began a snatch of Indian song:

  "Puhgedewawa enenewug
   Nuhbuggesug kamiwauw."

Then he drew from his pocket a harmonica, and for half an hour played
soft music that harmonized well with the night and the surroundings;
when he ceased, all but Richards and I went to their blankets.  We two
remained by the dying embers of our fire for another hour to enjoy the
perfect night, and then, before we turned to our beds, made an
observation for compass variation, which calculations the following
morning showed to be thirty-seven degrees west of the true north.

Paddling through the ponds, polling and tracking through the rapids or
portaging around them up the little river on which we were encamped the
night before, brought us to Otter Lake, which was considerably larger
than Lake Minisinaqua, but not so large as Nipishish.  The main body
was not over a mile and a half in width, but it had a number of bays
and closely connected tributary lakes.  Its eastern end, which we did
not explore, penetrated low spruce and balsam-covered hills.  To the
north and northeast were rugged, rock-tipped hills, rising to an
elevation of some seven hundred feet above the lake.  The country at
their base was covered with a green forest of small fir, spruce and
birch, and near the water, in marshy places, as is the case nearly
everywhere in Labrador, tamarack, but the hills themselves had been
fire swept, and were gray with weather-worn, dead trees.  On the
summits, and for two hundred feet below, bare basaltic rock indicated
that at this elevation they had never sustained any growth, save a few
straggling bushes.  On some of these hills there still remained patches
of snow of the previous winter.

We paddled eastward along the northern shore of the lake.  Once we saw
a caribou swimming far ahead of us, but he discovered our approach and
took to the timber before we were within shooting distance of him.  A
flock of sawbill ducks avoided us.  No sign of Indians was seen, and
four miles up the lake we stopped upon a narrow, sandy point that
jutted out into the water for a distance of a quarter mile, to pitch
camp and scout for the trail.  All along the point and leading back
into the bush, were fresh caribou tracks, where the animals came out to
get the benefit of the lake breezes and avoid the flies, which torment
them terribly.  Natives in the North have told me of caribou having
been worried to death by the insects, and it is not improbable. The
"bulldogs" or "stouts," as they are sometimes called, which are as big
as bumblebees, are very vicious, and follow the poor caribou in swarms.
The next morning a caribou wandered down to within a hundred and fifty
yards of camp, and Pete and Stanton both fired at it, but missed, and
it got away unscathed.

After breakfast, with Pete and Easton, I climbed one of the higher
hills for a view of the surrounding country.  Near the foot of the
hill, and in the depth of the spruce woods, we passed a lone Indian
grave, which we judged from its size to be that of a child.  It was
inclosed by a rough fence, which had withstood the pressure of the
heavy snows of many winters and a broken cross lay on it. From the
summit of the hill we could see a string of lakes extending in a
general northwesterly direction until they were lost in other hills
above, and also numerous lakes to the south, southwest, east and
northeast.  We could count from one point nearly fifty of these lakes,
large and small.  To the north and northwest the country was rougher
and more diversified, and the hills much higher than any we had as yet
passed through.

Down by our camp it had been excessively warm, but here on the hilltop
a cold wind was blowing that made us shiver.  We found a few scattered
dry sticks, and built a fire under the lee of a high bowlder, where we
cooked for luncheon some pea-meal porridge with water that Pete, with
foresight, had brought with him from a brook that we passed half way
down the hillside.  We then continued our scouting tour several miles
inland, climbing two other high hills, from one of which an excellent
view was had of the string of lakes penetrating the northwestern hills.
Everywhere so far as our vision extended the valleys were comparatively
well wooded, but the treeless, rock-bound hills rose grimly above the
timber line.

When we returned to camp we were still unsettled as to where the trail
left the lake, but there was one promising bay that had not been
explored, and Richards and Easton volunteered to take a canoe and
search this bay.  They were supplied with tarpaulin, blankets, an ax
and one day's rations, and started immediately.

I felt some anxiety as to our slow progress.  August was almost upon us
and we had not yet reached Seal Lake.  Here, as at other places, we had
experienced much delay in finding the trail, and we did not know what
difficulties in that direction lay before us.  I had planned to reach
the George River by early September, and the question as to whether we
could do it or not was giving me much concern.

Pete and Stanton had been in bed and asleep for an hour, but I was
still awake, turning over in my mind the situation, and planning
to-morrow's campaign, when at ten o'clock I heard the soft dip of
paddles, and a few moments later Richards and Easton appeared out of
the night mist that hung over the lake, with the good news that they
had found the trail leading northward from the bay.



CHAPTER VIII

SEAL LAKE AT LAST

A thick, impenetrable mist, such as is seldom seen in the interior of
Labrador, hung over the water and the land when we struck camp and
began our advance.  For two days we traveled through numerous small
lakes, making several short portages, before we came to a lake which we
found to be the headwaters of a river flowing to the northwest. This
lake was two miles long, and we camped at its lower end, where the
river left it.  Portage Lake we shall call it, and the river that
flowed out of it Babewendigash.

The portage into the lake crossed a sand desert, upon which not a drop
of water was seen, and instead of the usual rocks there were uncovered
sand and gravel knolls and valleys, where grew only occasional bunches
of very stunted brush; the surface of the sand was otherwise quite bare
and sustained not even the customary moss and lichens.  The heat of the
sun reflected from the sand was powerful.  The day was one of the most
trying ones of the trip, and the men, with faces and hands swollen and
bleeding from the attacks of not only the small black flies, which were
particularly bad, but also the swarms of "bulldogs," complained
bitterly of the hardships.  When we halted to eat our luncheon one of
the men remarked, "Duncan said once that if there are no flies there,
hell can't be as bad as this, and he's pretty near right."

The river left the lake in a rapid, and while Pete was making his fire,
Richards, Easton and I went down to catch our supper, and in half an
hour had secured forty-five good-sized trout--sufficient for supper
that night and breakfast and dinner the next day.

Since leaving Otter Lake, caribou signs had been plentiful, fresh
trails running in every direction.  Pete was anxious to halt a day to
hunt, but I decreed otherwise, to his great disappointment.

The scenery at this point was particularly fine, with a rugged, wild
beauty that could hardly be surpassed.  Below us the great, bald snow
hills loomed very close at hand, with patches of snow glinting against
the black rocks of the hills, as the last rays of the setting sun
kissed them good-night.  Nearer by was the more hospitable wooded
valley and the shining river, and above us the lake, placid and
beautiful, and beyond it the line of low sand hills of the miniature
desert we had crossed.  One of the snow hills to the northwest had two
knobs resembling a camel's back, and was a prominent landmark.  We
christened it "The Camel's Hump."

Heretofore the streams had been taking a generally southerly direction,
but this river flowed to the northwest, which was most encouraging, for
running in that direction it could have but one outlet-the Nascaupee
River.

A portage in the morning, then a short run on the river, then another
portage, around a shallow rapid, and we were afloat again on one of the
prettiest little rivers I have ever seen.  The current was strong
enough to hurry us along.  Down we shot past the great white hills,
which towered in majestic grandeur high above our heads, in some places
rising almost perpendicularly from the water, with immense heaps of
debris which the frost had detached from their sides lying at their
base.  The river was about fifty yards wide, and in its windings in and
out among the hills almost doubled upon itself sometimes.  The scenery
was fascinating.  One or two small lake expansions were passed, but
generally there was a steady current and a good depth of water.  "This
is glorious!" some one exclaimed, as we shot onward, and we all
appreciated the relief from the constant portaging that had been the
feature of our journey since leaving the Nascaupee River.

The first camp on this river was pitched upon the site of an old Indian
camp, above a shallow rapid.  The many wigwam poles, in varying states
of decay, together with paddles, old snowshoes, broken sled runners,
and other articles of Indian traveling paraphernalia, indicated that it
had been a regular stopping place of the Indians, both in winter and in
summer, in the days when they had made their pilgrimages to Northwest
River Post.  Near this point we found some beaver cuttings, the first
that we had seen since leaving the Crooked River.

Babewendigash soon carried us into a large lake expansion, and six
hours were consumed paddling about the lake before the outlet was
discovered.  At first we thought it possible we were in Seal Lake, but
I soon decided that it was not large enough, and its shape did not
agree with the description of Seal Lake that Donald Blake and Duncan
McLean had given me.

During the morning I dropped a troll and landed the first namaycush of
the trip--a seven-pound fish.  The Labrador lakes generally have a
great depth of water, and it is in the deeper water that the very large
namaycush, which grow to an immense size, are to be caught.  Our outfit
did not contain the heavy sinkers and larger trolling spoons necessary
in trolling for these, and we therefore had to content ourselves with
the smaller fish caught in the shallower parts of the lakes.  We had
two more portages before we shot the first rapid of the trip, and then
camped on the shores of a small expansion just above a wide, shallow
rapid where the river swung around a ridge of sand hills.  This ridge
was about two hundred feet in elevation, and followed the river for
some distance below.  In the morning we climbed it, and walked along
its top for a mile or so, to view the rapid, and suddenly, to the
westward, beheld Seal Lake.  It was a great moment, and we took off our
hats and cheered.  The first part of our fight up the long trail was
almost ended.

The upper part of the rapid was too shallow to risk a full load in the
canoes, so we carried a part of our outfit over the ridge to a point
where the river narrowed and deepened, then ran the rapid and picked up
our stuff below.  Not far from here we passed a hill whose head took
the form of a sphinx and we noted it as a remarkable landmark. Stopping
but once to climb a mountain for specimens, at twelve o'clock we landed
on a sandy beach where Babewendigash River emptied its waters into Seal
Lake.  We could hardly believe our good fortune, and while Pete cooked
dinner I climbed a hill to satisfy myself that it was really Seal Lake.
There was no doubt of it.  It had been very minutely described and
sketched for me by Donald and Duncan.  We had halted at what they
called on their maps "The Narrows," where the lake narrowed down to a
mere strait, and that portion of it below the canoes was hidden from my
view.  It stretched out far to the northwest, with some distance up a
long arm reaching to the west.  A point which I recognized from
Duncan's description as the place where the winter tilt used by him and
Donald was situated extended for some distance out into the water.  The
entire length of Seal Lake is about forty miles, but only about thirty
miles of it could be seen from the elevation upon which I stood.  Its
shores are generally well wooded with a growth of young spruce.  High
hills surround it.

We visited the tilt as we passed the point and, in accordance with an
arrangement made with Duncan, added to our stores about twenty-five
pounds of flour that he had left there during the previous winter. Five
miles above the point where Babewendigash River empties into Seal Lake
we entered the Nascaupee, up which we paddled two miles to the first
short rapid.  This we tracked, and then made camp on an island where
the river lay placid and the wind blew cool and refreshing.

Long we sat about our camp fire watching the glories of the northern
sunset, and the new moon drop behind the spruce-clad hills, and the
aurora in all its magnificence light our silent world with its wondrous
fire.  Finally the others left me to go to their blankets.

When I was alone I pushed in the ends of the burning logs and sat down
to watch the blaze as it took on new life.  Gradually, as I gazed into
its depths, fantasy brought before my eyes the picture of another camp
fire.  Hubbard was sitting by it.  It was one of those nights in the
hated Susan Valley.  We had been toiling up the trail for days, and
were ill and almost disheartened; but our camp fire and the relaxation
from the day's work were giving us the renewed hope and cheer that they
always brought, and rekindled the fire of our half-lost enthusiasm.
"Seal Lake can't be far off now," Hubbard was saying. "We're sure to
reach it in a day or two.  Then it'll be easy work to Michikamau, and
we 'll soon be with the Indians after that, and forget all about this
hard work.  We'll be glad of it all when we get home, for we're going
to have a bully trip." How much lighter my pack felt the next day, when
I recalled his words of encouragement!  How we looked and looked for
Seal Lake, but never found it.  It lay hidden among those hills that
were away to the northward of us, with its waters as placid and
beautiful as they were to-day when we passed through it.  I had never
seen Michikamau.  Was I destined to see it now?

The fire burned low.  Only a few glowing coals remained, and as they
blackened my picture dissolved.  The aurora, like a hundred
searchlights, was whipping across the sky.  The forest with its hidden
mysteries lay dark beneath.  A deep, impenetrable silence brooded over
all.  The vast, indescribable loneliness of the wilderness possessed my
soul.  I tried to shake off the feeling of desolation as I went to my
bed of boughs.

To-morrow a new stage of our journey would begin.  It was ho for
Michikamau!



CHAPTER IX

WE LOSE THE TRAIL

Saturday morning, August fifth, broke with a radiance and a glory
seldom equaled even in that land of glorious sunrises and sunsets.  A
flame of red and orange in the east ushered in the rising sun, not a
cloud marred the azure of the heavens, the moss was white with frost,
and the crisp, clear atmosphere sweet with the scent of the new day.
Labrador was in her most amiable mood, displaying to the best advantage
her peculiar charms and beauties.

While we ate a hurried breakfast of corn-meal mush, boiled fat pork and
tea, and broke camp, Michikamau was the subject of our conversation,
for now it was ho for the big lake!  A rapid advance was expected upon
the river, and the trail above, where it left the Nascaupee to avoid
the rapids which the Indians had told us about, would probably be found
without trouble.  So this new stage of our journey was begun with
something of the enthusiasm that we had felt the day we left Tom
Blake's cabin and started up Grand Lake.

We had gone but a mile when Pete drew his paddle from the water and
pointed with it at a narrow, sandy beach ahead, above which rose a
steep bank.  Almost at the same instant I saw the object of his
interests--a buck caribou asleep on the sand.  The wind was blowing
toward the river, and maintaining absolute silence, we landed below a
bend that hid us from the caribou.  Fresh meat was in sight and we must
have it, for we were hungry now for venison.  To cover the retreat of
the animal should it take alarm, Pete was to go on the top of the bank
above it, Easton to take a stand opposite it and I a little below it.
We crawled to our positions with the greatest care; but the caribou was
alert.  The shore breeze carried to it the scent of danger, and almost
before we knew, that we were discovered it was on its feet and away.
For a fraction of a second I had one glimpse of the animal through the
brush.  Pete did not see it when it started, but heard it running up
the shore, and away be started in that direction, running and leaping
recklessly over the fallen tree trunks. Presently the caribou turned
from the river and showed itself on the burned plateau above, two
hundred yards from Pete.  The Indian halted for a moment and
fired--then fired again.  I hastened up and came upon Pete standing by
the prostrate caribou and grinning from ear to ear.

The carcass was quickly skinned and the meat stripped from the bones
and carried to the canoe.  Here on the shore we made a fire, broiled
some thick luscious steaks, roasted some marrow bones and made tea. All
the bones except the marrow bones of the legs were abandoned as an
unnecessary weight.  Pete broke a hole through one of the shoulder
blades and stuck it on a limb of a tree above the reach of animals.
That, you know, insures further good luck in hunting.  It is a sort of
offering to the Manitou.  We took the skin with us.  "Maybe we need him
for something," said Pete.  "Clean and smoke him nice, me; maybe mend
clothes with him."

The larger pieces of our venison were to be roasted when we halted in
the evening.  We could not dally now, and I chose this method of
preserving the meat, rather than "jerk" it (that is, dry it in the open
air over a smoky fire), which would have necessitated a halt of three
or four days.

Within three hours after we had first seen the caribou we were on our
way again.  The river up which we were passing was from two to four
hundred yards in width, and with the exception of an occasional rock,
had a gravelly bottom, and the banks were generally low and gravelly. A
little distance back ridges of low hills paralleled the stream, and on
the south side behind the lower ridge was a higher one of rough hills;
but none of them with an elevation above the valley of more than three
hundred feet.  The country had been burned on both sides of the river
and there was little new growth to hide the dead trees.

Twenty-five miles above Seal Lake we encountered a rapid which
necessitated a mile and a half portage around it.  Where we landed to
make the portage I noticed along the edge of the sandy beach a black
band about two feet in width.  I thought at first that the water had
discolored the sand, but upon a closer examination discovered that it
was nothing more nor less than myriads of our black fly pests that had
lost their lives in the water and been washed ashore.

We had much rain and progress was slow and difficult in the face of a
strong wind and current.  Seven or eight miles above the rapid around
which we had portaged we passed into a large expansion of the river
which the Indians at Northwest River Post had told us to look for, and
which they called Wuchusknipi (Big Muskrat) Lake.

High gravelly banks, rising in terraces sometimes fully fifty feet
above the water's edge, had now become the feature of the stream.  The
current increased in strength, and only for short distances above
Wuchusknipi, where the river occasionally broadened, were we able to
paddle.  The tracking lines were brought into service, one man hauling
each canoe, while the others, wading in the water, or walking on the
bank with poles where the stream was too deep to wade, kept the canoes
straight in the current and clear of the shore.  Once when it became
necessary to cross a wide place in the river a squall struck us, and
Richards and Stanton in the smaller canoe were nearly swamped.  The
strong head wind precluded paddling, even when the current would
otherwise have permitted it.

Finally the sky cleared and the wind ceased to blow; but with the calm
came a cause for disquietude.  A light smoke had settled in the valley
and the air held the odor of it, suggesting a forest fire somewhere
above.  This would mean retreat, if not disaster, for when these fires
once start rivers and lakes prove small obstacles in their path.  From
a view-point on the hills no dense smoke could be discovered, only the
light haze that we had seen and smelled in the valley, and we therefore
decided that the gale that had blown for several days from the
northwest may have carried it for a long distance, even from the
district far west of Michikamau, and that at any rate there was no
cause for immediate alarm.

The ridges with an increasing altitude were crowding in upon us more
closely.  Once when we stopped to portage around a low fall we climbed
some of the hills that were near at hand that we might obtain a better
knowledge of the topography of the country than could be had from the
confined river valley.  Away to the northwest we found the country to
be much more rugged than the district we had recently passed through.
Observations showed us that the highest of the hills we were on had an
elevation of six hundred feet above the river.  We had but a single day
of fine weather and then a fog came so thick that we could not see the
opposite banks of the Nascaupee, and after it a cold rain set in which
made our work in the icy current doubly hard.  One morning I slipped on
a bowlder in the river and strained my side, and for me the remainder
of the day was very trying.  That evening we reached a little group of
three or four islands, where the Nascaupee was wide and shallow, but
just above the islands it narrowed down again and a low fall occurred.
Not far from the fall a small river tumbled down over the rocks a sheer
thirty feet, and emptied into the Nascaupee. Since leaving Seal Lake we
had passed two rivers flowing in from the north, and this was the
second one coming from the south, marking the point on the Indian map
where we were to look for the portage trail leading to the northward.
Therefore a halt was made and camp was pitched.

During the night the weather cleared, and Pete, Richards and Easton
were dispatched in the morning to scout the country to the northward in
search of the trail and signs of Indians.  The ligaments of my side
were very stiff and sore from the strain they received the previous
day, and I remained in camp with Stanton to write up my records, take
an inventory of our food supply, and consider plans for the future.

It was August twelfth.  How far we had still to go before reaching
Michikamau was uncertain, but, in view of our experiences below Seal
Lake and the difficulties met with in finding and following the old
Indian trail there, our progress would now, for a time at least, if we
traveled the portage route, be slower than on the river where we had
done fairly well.  True, our outfit was much lighter than it had been
in the beginning, and we were in better shape for packing and were able
to carry heavier loads.  Still we must make two trips over every
portage, and that meant, for every five miles of advance, fifteen miles
of walking and ten of those miles with packs on our backs.  Had we not
better, therefore, abandon the further attempt to locate the trail and,
instead, follow the river which was beyond doubt the quicker and the
easier route?  My inclinations rebelled against this course.  One of
the objects of the expedition, for it was one of the things that
Hubbard had planned to do, was to locate the old trail, if possible.
To abandon the search for it now, and to follow the easier route,
seemed to me a surrender.

On the other hand, should we not find game or fish and have delays
scouting for the trail, it would be necessary to go on short rations
before reaching Michikamau, for enough food must be held back to take
us out of the country in safety.

In my present consideration of the situation it seemed to me highly
improbable that we could reach George River Post in season to connect
with the Hudson's Bay Company's steamer _Pelican_, which touches there
to land supplies about the middle of September, and that is the only
steamer that ever visits that Post.  Not to connect with the _Pelican_
would, therefore, mean imprisonment in the north for an entire year, or
a return around the coast by dog train in winter.  The former of these
alternatives was out of the question; the latter would be impossible
with an encumbrance of four men, for dog teams and drivers in the early
winter are usually all away to the hunting grounds and hard to engage.
I therefore concluded that but one course was open to me.  Three of the
men must be sent back and with a single companion I would push on to
Ungava.  This, then, was the line of action I decided upon.

Toward evening gathering clouds augured an early renewal of the storm,
and Stanton and I had just put up the stove in the tent in anticipation
of it when Pete and Easton, the latter thoroughly fagged out, came into
camp.

"Well, Pete," I asked, "what luck?"

"Find trail all right," he answered.  "Can't follow him easy.  Long
carry.  First lake far, maybe eleven, twelve mile.  Little ponds not
much good for canoe.  Trail old.  Not used long time.  All time go up
hill."

"Where's Richards?" I inquired, noticing his absence.

"Left us about four miles back to take a short cut to the river and
follow it down to camp," said Easton.  "He thought you might want to
know how it looked above, and perhaps keep on that way instead of
tackling the portage, for the trail's going to be mighty hard.  It
looks as though the river would be better."

We waited until near dark for Richards, but he did not come.  Then we
ate our supper without him.

The rain grew into a downpour and darkness came, but no Richards, and
at length I became alarmed for his safety.  I pushed back the tent
flaps and peered out into the pitchy darkness and pouring rain.

"He'll never get in to-night," I remarked.  "No," said some one, "and
he'll have a hard time of it out there in the rain." There was nothing
to do but wait.  Pete rummaged in his bag and produced a candle (we had
a dozen in our outfit), sharpened one end of a stick, split the other
end for two or three inches down, forced open the split end and set the
candle in it and stuck the sharpened end in the ground, all the while
working in the dark.  Then he lit the candle.

I do not know how long we had been sitting by the candle light and
putting forth all sorts of conjectures about Richards and his
uncomfortable position in the bush without cover and the probable
reasons for his failure to return, when the tent front opened and in he
came, as wet as though he had been in the river.

"Well, Richards," I asked, when he was comfortably settled at his meal,
"what do you think of the river?"

"The river!" he paused between mouthfuls to exclaim, "that's the only
thing within twenty miles that I didn't see.  I've been looking for it
for four hours, but it kept changing its location and I never found it
till I struck camp just now."

"Now, boys," said I, when all the pipes were going, "I've something to
say to you.  Up to this time we've had no real hardships to meet. We've
had hard work, and it's been most trying at times, but there's been no
hardship to endure that might not be met with upon any journey in the
bush.  If we go on we _shall_ have hardships, and perhaps, some pretty
severe ones.  There'll soon be sleet and snow in the air, and cold days
and shivery nights, and the portages will be long and hard. On the
whole, there's been plenty to eat--not what we would have had at home,
perhaps, but good, wholesome grub--and we're all in better condition
and stronger than when we started, but flour and pork are getting low,
lentils and corn meal are nearly gone, and short rations, with hungry
days, are soon to come if we don't strike game, and you know how
uncertain that is.  I cannot say what is before us, and I'm not going
to drag you fellows into trouble.  I'm going to ask for one volunteer
to go on with me to Ungava with the small canoe, and let the rest
return from here with the other canoe and what grub they need to take
them out.  Who wants to go home?"

It came to them like a shock.  Outside, the wind howled through the
trees and dashed the rain spitefully against the tent.  The water
dripped through on us, and the candle flickered and sputtered and
almost went out.  In the weird light I could see the faces of the men
work with emotion.  For a moment no one spoke.  Finally Richards, in a
tone of reproach that made me feel sorry for the very suggestion,
asked: "Do you think there's a quitter here?"

The loyalty and grit of the men touched my heart.  Not one of them
would think of leaving me.  Nothing but a positive order would have
turned them back, and I decided to postpone our parting until we
reached Michikaumau at least, if it could be postponed so long
consistently with safety.

The next day was Sunday, and it was spent in rest and in preparation
for our advance up the trail.  The weather was damp and cheerless, with
rain falling intermittently throughout the day.

To cover a possible retreat a cache was made near our camp of thirty
pounds of pemmican in tin cans and forty-five pounds of flour and some
tea in a waterproof bag.  A hole was dug in the ground and the
provisions were deposited in it, then covered with stones as a
pro-tection from animals.

By Monday morning the storm had gained new strength, and steadily and
pitilessly the rain fell, accompanied by a cold, northwest wind.

What narrowly escaped being a serious accident occurred when we halted
that day for dinner.  Easton was cutting firewood, when suddenly he
dropped the ax he was using with the exclamation "That fixes me!" He
had given himself what looked at first like an ugly cut near the shin
bone.  Fortunately, however, upon examination, it proved to be only a
flesh wound and not sufficiently severe to interfere with his
traveling.  Stanton dressed the cut.  Our adhesive plaster we found had
become useless by exposure and electrician's tape was substituted for
it to draw the flesh together.

On the evening of the second day after leaving the Nascaupee, our tent
was pitched upon the site of an extensive but ancient Indian camp
beside a mile-long lake, four hundred and fifty feet above the river.
Five ponds had been passed _en route_, but all of them so small it was
scarcely worth while floating the canoe in any of them.

In these two days we had covered but eleven miles, but during the whole
time the wind had driven the rain in sweeping gusts into our faces and
made it impossible for a man, single-handed, to portage a canoe.  Thus,
with two men to carry each canoe we had been compelled to make three
loads of our outfit, and this meant fifty-five miles actual walking,
and thirty-three miles of this distance with packs on our backs.  The
weather conditions had made the work more than hard--it was
heartrending--as we toiled over naked hills, across marshes and
moraines, or through dripping brush and timber land.

A beautiful afternoon, two days later, found us paddling down the first
lake worthy of mention since leaving the Nascaupee River.  The azure
sky overhead shaded to a pearly blue at the horizon, with a fleecy
cloud or two floating lazily across its face.  The atmosphere was
perfect in its purity, and only the sound of screeching gulls and the
dip of our paddles disturbed the quiet of the wilderness.  Lake
Bibiquasin, as we shall call it, was five miles in length and nestled
between ridges of low, moss-covered hills.  It lay in a southeasterly
and northwesterly direction, and rested upon the summit of a subsidiary
divide that we had been gradually ascending.  A creek ran out of its
northwesterly end, flowing in that direction.

Until now we had found the trail with little difficulty, but here we
were baffled.  A search in the afternoon failed to uncover it, and we
were forced to halt, perplexed again as to our course.  Camp was
pitched in a grove of spruces at the lower end of the lake.  Not far
from us was an old hunting camp which Pete said was "most hundred years
old," and he was not far wrong in his estimate, for the frames upon
which the Indians had stretched skins and the tepee poles crumbled to
pieces when we touched them.

Strange to say, not a fish of any description had been seen for several
days and not one could be induced to rise to fly or bait, and our net
was always empty now.  Game, too, was scarce.  There were no fresh
caribou tracks this side of the Nascaupee River, and but one duck and
one spruce partridge had been killed.  The last bit of our venison was
eaten the day before.  It was pretty badly spoiled and turning a little
green in color, but Pete washed it well several times and we all
avoided the lee side of the kettle while it was cooking. It was
pronounced "not so bad."

Another day was lost on Lake Bibiquasin in an ineffectual hunt for the
trail.  I scouted alone all day and in my wanderings came upon the
first ptarmigans of the trip and shot one of them with my rifle.  The
others flew away.  They wore their mottled summer coat, as it was still
too early for them to don their pure white dress of winter.

During my scouting trip I also discovered the first ripe bake-apple
berries we had seen.  This is a salmon-colored berry resembling in size
and shape the raspberry, and grows on a low plant like the strawberry.

On Saturday morning, August nineteenth, the temperature was four
degrees below the freezing point, and the ground was stiff with frost.
In a further search on the north side of the lake opposite our camp we
found an old blaze and a trail leading from it along a ridge and
through marshes to a small lake.  This was the only trail that we could
find anywhere, so we decided to follow it, though it did not bear all
the earmarks of the portage trail we had been tracing--it was decidedly
more ancient.  We started our work with a will.  It was a hard portage
and we sometimes sank knee deep into the marsh and got mired
frequently, but finally reached the lake.

Indian signs now completely disappeared.  Down the lake, where a creek
flowed out, was a bare hill, and Pete and I climbed it.  From its
summit we could easily locate the creek taking a turn to the north and
then to the northeast and, finally, flowing into one of a series of
lakes extending in an easterly and westerly direction.  The land was
comparatively flat to the eastward and the lakes no doubt fed a river
flowing out of that end, probably one of those that we had noted as
joining the Nascaupee on its north side.  To the north of these lakes
were high, rugged ridges.  It was possible there was an opening in the
hills to the westward, where they seemed lower; we could not tell from
where we were, but we determined to portage along the creek into the
lakes with that hope.

Again the smoke of a forest fire hung in the valleys and over the
hills, and the air was heavy with the smell of it, which revived the
former uneasiness, but by the next day every trace of it had
disappeared.

Another day found us afloat upon the first of the lakes.  Several short
carries across necks of land took us from this lake into the one which
Pete and I had seen extending back to the ridges to the westward, and
which we shall call Lake Desolation.

On the northern shore of Lake Desolation we stopped to climb a
mountain.  A decided change in the features of the country had taken
place since leaving Lake Bibiquasin, and the low moss-covered hills had
given place to rough mountains of bare rock.  To the northward from
where we stood nothing but higher mountains of similar formation met
our view--a great, rolling vista of bare, desolate rocks.  To the
westward the country was not, perhaps, so rough, though there, too, in
the far distance could be discerned the tops of rugged hills breaking
the line of the horizon.  Through a valley in that direction was
distinguishable, with a considerable interval between them, a string of
small lakes or ponds.  This valley led up from the western end of Lake
Desolation, and there was no other possible place for the trail to
leave the lake.  The valley was the only opening.

Our mountain climbing had consumed a good part of an afternoon, and it
was evening when finally we reached the western end of the lake and
pitched our camp near a creek flowing in.  As we paddled we tried our
trolls, but were not rewarded with a single strike.  When camp was made
the net was stretched across the creek's mouth and we tried our rods in
the stream for trout, but our efforts were useless.  No fish were
caught.

The prospect for game had not improved, in fact was growing steadily
worse.  We were now in a country that had been desolated by a forest
fire within four or five years.  The moss under foot had not renewed
itself and where any of it remained at all, it was charred and black.
The trees were dead and the land harbored almost no life.  It seemed to
me that even the fish had been scalded out of the water and the streams
had never restocked themselves.

A thorough search was made for Indian signs, but there were absolutely
none.  There was nothing to show that any human being had ever been
here before us.  Back on Lake Bibiquasin we had lost the trail and now
on Lake Desolation we were far and hopelessly astray, with only the
compass to guide us.

After supper the men sat around the camp fire, smoking and talking of
their friends at home, while I walked alone by the lake shore.  It was
a wild scene that lay before me--the aurora, with its waves of changing
color flashing weirdly as they swept and lighted the sky, the dead
trees everywhere like skeletons gray and gaunt, the blazing camp fire
in the foreground, with the figures lying about it and the little white
tent in the background.  Somewhere hidden in the depths of that vast
and silent wilderness to the westward lay Michikamau.

There was no mark on the face of the earth to direct us on our road. We
must blaze a new trail up that valley and over those ridges that looked
so dark and forbidding in the uncertain light of the aurora. We must
find Michikamau.



CHAPTER X

"WE SEE MICHIKAMAU"

"It's no use, Pete.  You may as well go back to your blankets."

It was the morning of the second day after reaching the lake which we
named Desolation.  We had portaged through a valley and over a low
ridge to the shores of a pond, out of which a small stream ran to the
southeast.  The country was devastated by fire and to the last degree
inhospitable.  Not a green shrub over two feet in height was to be
seen, the trees were dead and blackened; not even the customary moss
covered the naked earth, and loose bowlders were scattered everywhere
about.

There was no fixed trail now to look for or to guide us, but by keeping
a general westerly course, we knew that we must, sooner or later, reach
Michikamau.  Rough, irregular ridges blocked our path and it was
necessary to look ahead that we might not become tangled up amongst
them.  One hill, higher than the others, a solitary bailiff that
guarded the wilderness beyond, was to have been climbed this morning,
but when Pete and I at daybreak came out of the tent we were met by
driving rain and dashes of sleet that cut our faces, and a mist hung
over the earth so thick we could not even see across the tiny lake at
our feet.  I looked longingly into the storm and mist in the direction
in which I knew the big hill lay, and realized the hopelessness and
foolhardiness of attempting to reach it.

"It's no use, Pete," I continued, "to try to scout in this storm.  You
could see nothing from the hill if you reached it, and the chances are,
with every landmark hidden, you couldn't find the tent again.  I don't
want to lose you yet.  Go back and sleep."

Later in the morning to my great relief the weather cleared, and
Richards and Pete were at once dispatched to scout.  We who remained
"at home," as we called our camp, found plenty of work to keep us
occupied.  The bushes had ravaged our clothing to such an extent that
some of us were pretty ragged, and every halt was taken advantage of to
make much needed repairs.

It was nearly dark when Richards and Pete came back.  They had reached
the high hill and from its summit saw, some distance to the westward,
long stretches of water reaching far away to the hills in that
direction.  A portage of several miles in which some small lakes
occurred would take us, they said, into a large lake.  Beyond this they
could not see.

Pete brought back with him a hatful of ripe currants which he stewed
and which proved a very welcome addition to our supper of corn-meal
mush.

The report of water ahead made us happy.  It was now August
twenty-third.  If we could reach Michikamau by September first that
should give me ample time, I believed, to reach the George River before
the caribou migration would take place.

The following morning we started forward with a will, and with many
little lakes to cross and short portages between them, we made fairly
good progress, and each lake took us one step higher on the plateau.

The character of the country was changing, too.  The naked land and
rocks and dead trees gave way to a forest of green spruce, and the
ground was again covered with a thick carpet of white caribou moss.

We were catching no fish, however, although our efforts to lure them to
the hook or entangle them in the net were never relinquished.  Pork was
a luxury, and no baker ever produced anything half so dainty and
delicious as our squaw bread.  A strict distribution of rations was
maintained, and when the pork was fried, Pete, with a spoon, dished out
the grease into the five plates in equal shares.  Into this the quarter
loaf ration of bread was broken and the mixture eaten to the last
morsel.  Sometimes the men drank the warm pork grease clear. Finally it
became so precious that they licked their plates after scraping them
with their spoons, and the longing eyes that were cast at the frying
pan made me fear that some time a raid would be made on that.

One day, an owl was shot and went into the pot to keep company with a
couple of partridges.  Pete demurred.  "Owl eat mice," said he.  "Not
good man eat him.

"You can count me out on owl, too," Richards volunteered.

"Oh! they're all right," I assured them.  "The Labrador people always
eat them and you'll find them very nice."

"Not me.  Owl eat mice," Pete insisted.

"Well," I suggested, "possibly we'll be eating mice, too, before we get
home, and it's a good way to begin by eating owl--for then the mice
won't seem so bad when we have to eat them."

Stanton took charge of the kettle and dished out the rations that night.

"Partridge is good enough for me," said Richards, fearing that Stanton
might forget his prejudice against owl.

"Me, too," echoed Pete.

"I'll take owl," said I.

Easton said nothing.

After we had eaten, Stanton asked: "How'd you like the partridge,
Richards?"

"It was fine," said he.  "Guess it was a piece of a young one you gave
me, for it wasn't as tough as they usually are."

"Maybe it was young, but that partridge was _owl_."  "I'll be darned!"
exclaimed Richards.  His face was a study for a moment, then he
laughed.  "If that was owl they're all right and I'm a convert.  I'll
eat all I can get after this."

After leaving Lake Desolation the owls had begun to come to us, and
Richards was one of the best owl hunters of the party.  At first one or
two a day were killed, but now whenever we halted an owl would fly into
a tree and twitter, and, with a very wise appearance, proceed to look
us over as though he wanted to find out what we were up to anyway, for
these owls were very inquisitive fellows.  He immediately became a
candidate for our pot, and as many as six were shot in one day.  The
men called them the "manna of the Labrador wilderness." Pete's
disinclination to eat them was quickly forgotten, for hunger is a
wonderful killer of prejudices, and he was as keen for them now as any
of us.

An occasional partridge was killed and now and again a black duck or
two helped out our short ration, but the owls were our mainstay.  We
did not have enough to satisfy the appetites of five hungry men,
however; still we did fairly well.

The days were growing perceptibly shorter with each sunset, and the
nights were getting chilly.  On the night of August twenty-fifth, the
thermometer registered a minimum temperature of twenty-five degrees
above zero, and on the twenty-sixth of August, forty-eight degrees was
the maximum at midday.

During the forenoon of that day we reached the largest of the lakes
that the scouting party had seen three days before, and further
scouting was now necessary.  At the western end of the lake, about two
miles from where we entered, a hill offered itself as a point from
which to view the country beyond, and here we camped.

We were now out of the burned district and the scant growth of timber
was apparently the original growth, though none of the trees was more
than eight inches or so in diameter.  In connection with this it might
be of interest to note here the fact that the timber line ended at an
elevation of two hundred and seventy-five feet above the lake.  The
hill was four hundred feet high and there was not a vestige of
vegetation on its summit.  The top of the hill was strewn with
bowlders, large and small, lying loose upon the clean, storm-scoured
bed rock, just as the glaciers had left them.

What a view we had!  To the northwest, to the west, and to the
southwest, for fifty miles in any direction was a network of lakes, and
the country was as level as a table.  The men called it "the plain of a
thousand lakes," and this describes it well.  To the far west a line of
blue hills extending to the northwest and southeast cut off our view
beyond.  They were low, with but one high, conical peak standing out as
a landmark.  Another ridge at right angles to this one ran to the
eastward, bounding the lakes on that side.  I examined them carefully
through my binoculars and discovered a long line of water, like a
silver thread, following the ridge running eastward, and decided that
this must be the Nascaupee River, though later I was convinced that I
was mistaken and that the river lay to the southward of the ridge.  To
the cast and north of our hill was an expanse of rolling, desolate
wilderness.  Carefully I examined with my glass the great plain of
lakes, hoping that I might discover the smoke of a wigwam fire or some
other sign of life, but none was to be seen.  It was as still and dead
as the day it was created.  It was a solemn, awe-inspiring scene,
impressive beyond description, and one that I shall not soon forget.

We outlined as carefully as possible the course that we should follow
through the maze of lakes, with the round peak as our objective point,
for just south of it there seemed to be an opening through the ridge:
beyond which we hoped lay Michikamau.

The next day we portaged through a marsh and into the lake country and
made some progress, portaging from lake to lake across swampy and
marshy necks.  It was Sunday, but we did not realize it until our day's
work was finished and we were snug in camp in the evening.

Monday's dawn brought with it a day of superb loveliness.  The sky was
cloudless, the earth was white with hoarfrost, the atmosphere was crisp
and cool, and we took deep breaths of it that sent the blood tingling
through our veins.  It was a day that makes one love life.

Through small lakes and short portages we worked until afternoon and
then--hurrah! we were on big water again.  Thirty or forty miles in
length the lake stretched off to the westward to carry us on our way.
It was choked in places with many fir-topped islands, and the channels
in and out amongst these islands were innumerable, so Pete called it
Lake Kasheshebogamog, which in his language means "Lake of Many
Channels."

As we paddled I dropped a troll and before we stopped for the night
landed a seven-pound namaycush, and another large one broke a troll.
The "Land of God's Curse" was behind us.  We were with the fish again,
and caribou and wolf tracks were seen.

The next day found us on our way early.  A fine wind sent us spinning
before it and at the same time kept us busy with a rough sea that was
running on the wide, open lake when we were away from the shelter of
the islands.  At one o'clock we boiled the kettle at the foot of a low
sand ridge, and upon climbing the ridge we found it covered with a mass
of ripe blueberries.  We ate our fill and picked some to carry with us.

At three o'clock we were brought up sharply at the end of the water
with no visible outlet.  The nature of the lake and the lateness of the
season made it impracticable to turn back and look in other channels
for the connection with western waters.  Former experience had taught
me that we might paddle around for a week before we found it, for these
were big waters.  Five miles ahead was the high, round peak that we
were aiming for, and I had every confidence that from its top
Michikamau could be seen and a way to reach the big lake.  I decided
that it must be climbed the next morning, and selected Pete and Easton
for the work.  A fall the day before had given me a stiff knee, and it
was a bitter disappointment that I could not go myself, for I was
nervously anxious for a first view of Michikamau.  However, I realized
that it was unwise to attempt the journey, and I must stay behind.

That night Stanton made two roly-polies of the blueberries we picked in
the afternoon, boiling them in specimen bags, and we used the last of
our sugar for sauce.  This, with coffee, followed a good supper of
boiled partridge and owl.  It was like the old days when I was with
Hubbard.  We were making good progress, our hopes ran high, and we must
feast.  Pete's laughs, and songs and jokes added to our merriment.
Rain came, but we did not mind that.  We sat by a big, blazing fire and
ate and enjoyed ourselves in spite of it.  Then we went to the tent to
smoke and every one pronounced it the best night in weeks.

On Wednesday rain poured down at the usual rising time and the men were
delayed in starting, for we were in a place where scouting in thick
weather was dangerous.  It was the morning of the famous eclipse, but
we had forgotten the fact.  The rain had fallen away to a drizzle and
we were eating a late breakfast when the darkness came. It did not last
long, and then the rain stopped, though the sky was still overcast.
Shortly after breakfast Pete and Easton left us.  I gave Pete a new
corncob pipe as he was leaving.  When he put it in his pocket he said,
"I smoke him when I see Michikaman, when I climb hill, if Michikamau
there.  Sit down, me, look at big water, feel good then. Smoke pipe,
me, and call hill Corncob Hill."

"All right," said I, laughing at Pete's fancy.  "I hope the hill will
have a name to-day."

It was really a day of anxiety for me, for if Michikamau were not
visible from the mountain top with the wide view of country that it
must offer, then we were too far away from the lake to hope to reach it.

A mile from camp, Richards discovered a good-sized river flowing in
from the northwest and set the net in it. Then he and Stanton paddled
up the river a mile and a half to another lake, but did not explore it
farther.

With what impatience I awaited the return of Pete and Easton can be
imagined, and when, near dusk, I saw them coming I almost dreaded to
hear their report, for what if they had not seen Michikamau?

But they had seen Michikamau.  When Pete was within talking distance of
me, he shouted exultantly, "We see him!  We see him!  We see
Michikamau!"



CHAPTER XI

THE PARTING AT MICHIKAMAU

Pete and Easton had taken their course through small, shallow, rocky
lakes until they neared the base of the round hill.  Here the canoe was
left, and up the steep side of the hill they climbed.  "When we most
up," Pete told me afterward, "I stop and look at Easton.  My heart beat
fast.  I most afraid to look.  Maybe Michikamau not there. Maybe I see
only hills.  Then I feel bad.  Make me feel bad come back and tell you
Michikamau not there.  I see you look sorry when I tell you that.  Then
I think if Michikamau there you feel very good.  I must know quick.  I
run.  I run fast.  Hill very steep.  I do not care.  I must know soon
as I can, and I run.  I shut my eyes just once, afraid to look.  Then I
open them and look.  Very close I see when I open my eyes much water.
Big water.  So big I see no land when I look one way; just water.  Very
wide too, that water.  I know I see Michikamau.  My heart beat easy and
I feel very glad.  I almost cry. I remember corncob pipe you give me,
and what I tell you.  I take pipe out my pocket.  I fill him, and light
him.  Then I sit on rock and smoke.  All the time I look at Michikamau.
I feel good and I say, 'This we call Corncob Hill.'"

And so we were all made glad and the conical peak had a name.

Pete told me that we should have to cut the ridge to the south of
Corncob Hill, taking a rather wide detour to reach the place.  A chain
of lakes would help us, but some long portages were necessary and it
would require several days' hard work.  This we did not mind now.  We
were only anxious to dip our paddles into the waters of the big lake.
At last Michikamau, which I had so longed to see through two summers of
hardship in the Labrador wilds, was near, and I could hope to be
rewarded with a look at it within the week.

But with the joy of it there was also a sadness, for I must part from
three of my loyal companions.  The condition of our commissariat and
the cold weather that was beginning to be felt made it imperative that
the men be sent back from the big lake.

The possibility of this contingency had been foreseen by me before
leaving New York, and I had mentioned it at that time.  Easton had
asked me then, if the situation would permit of it, to consider him as
a candidate to go through with me to Ungava.  When the matter had been
suggested at the last camp on the Nascaupee River he had again
earnestly solicited me to choose him as my companion, and upon several
subsequent occasions had mentioned it.  Richards was the logical man
for me to choose, for he had had experience in rapids, and could also
render me valuable assistance in the scientific work that the others
were not fitted for.  He was exceedingly anxious to continue the
journey, but his university duties demanded his presence in New York in
the winter, and I had promised his people that he should return home in
the autumn.  This made it out of the question to keep him with me, and
it was a great disappointment to both of us.  That I might feel better
assured of the safety of the returning men, I decided to send Pete back
with them to act as their guide.  Stanton, too, wished to go on, but
Easton had spoken first, so I decided to give him the opportunity to go
with me to Ungava, as my sole companion.

That night, after the others had gone to bed, we two sat late by the
camp fire and talked the matter over.  "It's a dangerous undertaking,
Easton," I said, "and I want you to understand thoroughly what you're
going into.  Before we reach the George River Post we shall have over
four hundred miles of territory to traverse.  We may have trouble in
locating the George River, and when we do find it there will be heavy
rapids to face, and its whole course will be filled with perils.  If
any accident happens to either of us we shall be in a bad fix.  For
that reason it's always particularly dangerous for less than three men
to travel in a country like this.  Then there's the winter trip with
dogs.  Every year natives are caught in storms, and some of them
perish.  We shall be exposed to the perils and hardships of one of the
longest dog trips ever made in a single season, and we shall be
traveling the whole winter.  I want you to understand this."

"I do understand it," he answered, "and I'm ready for it. I want to go
on."

And so it was finally settled.

It was not easy for me to tell the men that the time had come when we
must part, for I realized how hard it would be for them to turn back.
The next morning after breakfast, I asked them to remain by the fire
and light their pipes.  Then I told them.  Richards' eyes filled with
tears.  Stanton at first said he would not turn back without me, but
finally agreed with me that it was best he should.  Pete urged me to
let him go on.  Later he stole quietly into the tent, where I was alone
writing, and without a word sat opposite me, looking very woebegone.
After awhile he spoke: "To-day I feel very sad.  I forget to smoke.  My
pipe go out and I do not light it.  I think all time of you.  Very
lonely, me.  Very bad to leave you."

Here he nearly broke down, and for a little while he could not speak.
When he could control himself he continued:

"Seems like I take four men in bush, lose two.  Very bad, that.  Don't
know how I see your sisters.  I go home well.  They ask me, 'Where my
brother?'  I don't know.  I say nothing.  Maybe you die in rapids.
Maybe you starve.  I don't know.  I say nothing.  Your sisters cry."
Then his tone changed from brokenhearted dejection to one of eager
pleading:

"Wish you let me go with you.  Short grub, maybe.  I hunt.  Much
danger; don't care, me.  Don't care what danger.  Don't care if grub
short.  Maybe you don't find portage.  Maybe not find river.  That bad.
I find him.  I take you through.  I bring you back safe to your
sisters.  Then I speak to them and they say I do right."

It was hard to withstand Pete's pleadings, but my duty was plain, and I
said:

"No, Pete.  I'd like to take you through, but I've got to send you back
to see the others safely out.  Tell my sisters I'm safe.  Tell
everybody we're safe.  I'm sure we'll get through all right.  We'll do
our best, and trust to God for the rest, so don't worry.  We'll be all
right."

"I never think you do this," said he.  "I don't think you leave me this
way." After a pause he continued, "If grub short, come back. Don't wait
too long.  If you find Indian, then you all right.  He help you.  You
short grub, don't find Indian, that bad.  Don't wait till grub all
gone.  Come back."

Pete did not sing that day, and he did not smoke.  He was very sad and
quiet.

We spent the day in assorting and dividing the outfit, the men making a
cache of everything that they would not need until their return, that
we might not be impeded in our progress to Michikamau.  They would get
their things on their way back.  Eight days, Pete said, would see them
from this point to the cache we had made on the Nascaupee, and only
eight days' rations would they accept for the journey.  They were more
than liberal.  Richards insisted that I take a new Pontiac shirt that
he had reserved for the cold weather, and Pete gave me a new pair of
larigans.  They deprived themselves that we might be comfortable.
Easton and I were to have the tent, the others would use the tarpaulin
for a wigwam shelter; each party would have two axes, and the other
things were divided as best we could. Richards presented us with a
package that we were not to open until the sixteenth of September--his
birthday.  It was a special treat of some kind.

Some whitefish, suckers and one big pike were taken out of the net,
which was also left for them to pick up upon their return.  A school of
large pike had torn great holes in it, but it was still useful.

We were a sorrowful group that gathered around the fire that night. The
evening was raw.  A cold north wind soughed wearily through the fir
tops.  Black patches of clouds cast a gloom over everything, and there
was a vast indefiniteness to the dark spruce forest around us. I took a
flashlight picture of the men around the fire.  Then we sat awhile and
talked, and finally went to our blankets in the chilly tent.

September came with a leaden sky and cold wind, but the clouds were
soon dispelled, and the sun came bright and warm.  Our progress was
good, though we had several portages to make.  On September second, at
noon, we left the larger canoe for the men to get on their way back,
and continued with the eighteen-foot canoe, which, with its load of
outfit and five men, was very deep in the water, but no wind blew and
the water was calm.

Here the character of the lakes changed.  The waters were deep and
black, the shores were steep and rocky, and some labradorite was seen.
One small, curious island, evidently of iron, though we did not stop to
examine it, took the form of a great head sticking above the water,
with the tops of the shoulders visible.

Sunday, September third, was a memorable day, a day that I shall never
forget while I live.  The morning came with all the glories of a
northern sunrise, and the weather was perfect.  After two short
portages and two small lakes were crossed, Pete said, "Now we make last
portage and we reach Michikamau." It was not a long portage--a half
mile, perhaps.  We passed through a thick-grown defile, Pete ahead, and
I close behind him.  Presently we broke through the bush and there
before us was the lake.  We threw down our packs by the water's edge.
_We had reached Michikamau._  I stood uncovered as I looked over the
broad, far-reaching waters of the great lake.  I cannot describe my
emotions.  I was living over again that beautiful September day two
years before when Hubbard had told me with so much joy that he had seen
the big lake--that Michikamau lay just beyond the ridge.  Now I was on
its very shores--the shores of the lake that we had so longed to reach.
How well I remembered those weary wind-bound days, and the awful weeks
that followed.  It was like the recollection of a horrid dream--his
dear, wan face, our kiss and embrace, my going forth into the storm and
the eternity of horrors that was crowded into days.  Pete, I think,
understood, for he had heard the story.  He stood for a moment in
silence, then he fashioned his hat brim into a cup, and dipping some
water handed it to me.  "You reach Michikamau at last.  Drink
Michikamau water before others come."  I drank reverently from the hat.
Then the others joined us and we all stood for a little with bowed
uncovered beads, on the shore.

Our camp was pitched on an elevated, rocky point a few hundred yards
farther up--the last camp that we were to have together, and the
forty-sixth since leaving Northwest River.  We had made over half a
hundred portages, and traveled about three hundred and twenty-five
miles.

The afternoon was occupied in writing letters and telegrams to the home
folks, for Richards to take out with him; after which we divided the
food.  Easton and I were to take with us seventy-eight pounds of
pemmican, twelve pounds of pea meal, seven pounds of pork, some beef
extract, eight pounds of flour, one cup of corn meal, a small quantity
of desiccated vegetables, one pound of coffee, two pounds of tea, some
salt and crystallose.  Richards gave us nearly all of his tobacco, and
Pete kept but two plugs for himself.

Toward evening we gathered about our fire, and talked of our parting
and of the time when we should meet again.  Every remaining moment we
had of each other's company was precious to us now.

The day had been glorious and the night was one of rare beauty.  We
built a big fire of logs, and by its light I read aloud, in accordance
with our custom on Sunday nights, a chapter from the Bible.  After this
we talked for a while, then sat silent, gazing into the glowing embers
of our fire.  Finally Pete began singing softly, "Home, Sweet Home" in
Indian, and followed it with an old Ojibway song, "I'm Going Far Away,
My Heart Is Sore."  Then he sang an Indian hymn, "Pray For Me While I
Am Gone."  When his hymn was finished he said, very reverently, "I
going pray for you fellus every day when I say my prayers.  I can't
pray much without my book, but I do my best.  I pray the best I can for
you every day."  Pete's devotion was sincere, and I thanked him.
Stanton sang a solo, and then all joined in "Auld Lang Syne."  After
this Pete played softly on the harmonica, while we watched the moon
drop behind the horizon in the west.  The fire burned out and its
embers blackened.  Then we went to our bed of fragrant spruce boughs,
to prepare for the day of our parting.

The morning of September fourth was clear and beautiful and perfect,
but in spite of the sunshine and fragrance that filled the air our
hearts were heavy when we gathered at our fire to eat the last meal
that we should perhaps ever have together.

When we were through, I read from my Bible the fourteenth of John--the
chapter that I had read to Hubbard that stormy October morning when we
said good-by forever.

The time of our parting had come.  I do not think I had fully realized
before how close my bronzed, ragged boys had grown to me in our months
of constant companionship.  A lump came in my throat, and the tears
came to the eyes of Richards and Pete, as we grasped each other's hands.

Then we left them.  Easton and I dipped our paddles into the water, and
our lonely, perilous journey toward the dismal wastes beyond the
northern divide was begun.  Once I turned to see the three men, with
packs on their backs, ascending the knoll back of the place where our
camp had been.  When I looked again they were gone.



CHAPTER XII

OVER THE NORTHERN DIVIDE

Michikamau is approximately between eighty and ninety miles in length,
including the unexplored southeast bay, and from eight to twenty-five
miles in width.  It is surrounded by rugged hills, which reach an
elevation of about five hundred feet above the lake.  They are
generally wooded for perhaps two hundred feet from the base, with black
spruce, larch, and an occasional small grove of white birch. Above the
timber line their tops are uncovered save by white lichens or stunted
shrubs.  The western side of the lake is studded with low islands, but
its main body is unobstructed.  The water is exceedingly clear, and is
said by the Indians to have a great depth.  The shores are rocky,
sometimes formed of massive bed rock in which is found the beautifully
colored labradorite; sometimes strewn with loose bowlders. Our entrance
had been made in a bay several miles north of the point where the
Nascaupee River, its outlet, leaves the lake and we kept to the east
side as we paddled north.

No artist's imaginative brush ever pictured such gorgeous sunsets and
sunrises as Nature painted for us here on the Great Lake of the
Indians.  Every night the sun went down in a blaze of glory and left
behind it all the colors of the spectrum.  The dark hills across the
lake in the west were silhouetted against a sky of brilliant red which
shaded off into banks of orange and amber that reached the azure at the
zenith.  The waters of the lake took the reflection of the red at the
horizon and became a flood of restless blood.  The sky colorings during
these few days were the finest that I ever saw in Labrador, not only in
the evening but in the morning also.

Michikamau has a bad name amongst the Indians for heavy seas,
particularly in the autumn months when the northwest gales sometimes
blow for weeks at a time without cessation, and the Indians say that
they are often held on its shores for long periods by high running seas
that no canoe could weather.  These were the same winds that held
Hubbard and me prisoners for nearly two weeks on the smaller Windbound
Lake in 1903, bringing us to the verge of starvation before we were
permitted to begin our race for life down the trail toward Northwest
River.  Fate was kinder now, and but one day's rough water interfered
with progress.

Early on the third day after parting from the other men, we found
ourselves at the end of Michikamau where a shallow river, in which
large bowlders were thickly scattered, flowed into it from the north.
This was the stream draining Lake Michikamats, the next important point
in our journey.  Michikamau, it might be explained, means, in the
Indian tongue, big water--so big you cannot see the land beyond;
Michikamats means a smaller body of water beyond which land may be
seen.  So somebody has paradoxically defined it "a little big lake."

Barring a single expansion of somewhat more than a mile in length the
Michakamats River, which runs through a flat, marshy and uninteresting
country, was too shallow to float our canoes, and we were compelled to
portage almost its entire length.

In the wide marshes between these two lakes we met the first evidences
of the great caribou migration.  The ground was tramped like a
barnyard, in wide roads, by vast herds of deer, all going to the
eastward.  There must have been thousands of them in the bands.  Most
of the hoof marks were not above a day or two old and had all been made
since the last rain had fallen, as was evidenced by freshly turned
earth and newly tramped vegetation.  We saw none of the animals,
however, and there were no hills near from which we might hope to sight
the herds.

Evidences of life were increasing and game was becoming abundant as we
approached the height of land.  Some geese and ptarmigans were killed
and a good many of both kinds of birds were seen, as well as some
ducks.  We began to live in plenty now and the twittering owls were
permitted to go unmolested.

Lake Michikamats is irregular in shape, about twenty miles long, and,
exclusive of its arms, from two to six miles wide.  The surrounding
country is flat and marshy, with some low, barren hills on the westward
side of the lake.  The timber growth in the vicinity is sparse and
scrubby, consisting of spruce and tamarack.  The latter had now taken
on its autumnal dress of yellow, and, interspersing the dark green of
the spruce, gave an exceedingly beautiful effect to the landscape.

Where we entered Michikamats, at its outlet, the lake is very shallow
and filled with bowlders that stand high above the water.  A quarter of
a mile above this point the water deepens, and farther up seems to have
a considerable depth, though we did not sound it.  The western shore of
the upper half is lined with low islands scantily covered with spruce
and tamarack.

During two days that we spent here in a thorough exploration of the
lake, our camp was pitched on an island at the bottom of a bay that,
half way up the lake, ran six miles to the northward.  This was
selected as the most likely place for the portage trail to leave the
lake, as the island had apparently, for a long period, been the regular
rendezvous of Indians, not only in summer, but also in winter. Tepee
poles of all ages, ranging from those that were old and decayed to
freshly cut ones, were numerous.  They were much longer and thicker
than those used by the Indians south of Michikamau.  Here, also, was a
well-built log cache, a permanent structure, which was, no doubt,
regularly used by hunting parties.  Some new snowshoe frames were
hanging on the trees to season before being netted with babiche.  On
the lake shore were some other camping places that had been used within
a few months, and at one of them a newly made "sweat hole," where the
medicine man had treated the sick.  These sweat holes are much in favor
with the Labrador Indians, both Mountaineers and Nascaupees.  They are
about two feet in depth and large enough in circumference for a man to
sit in the center, surrounded by a circle of good-sized bowlders.
Small saplings are bent to form a dome-shaped frame for the top.  The
invalid is placed in the center of this circle of bowlders, which have
previously been made very hot, water is poured on them to produce
steam, and a blanket thrown over the sapling frame to confine the
steam.  The Indians have great faith in this treatment as a cure for
almost every malady.

On the mainland opposite the island upon which we were encamped was a
barren hill which we climbed, and which commanded a view of a large
expanse of country.  On the top was a small cairn and several places
where fires had been made--no doubt Indian signal fires.  The fuel for
them must have been carried from the valley below, for not a stick or
bush grew on the hill itself.  "Signal Hill," as we called it, is the
highest elevation for many miles around and a noticeable landmark.

To the northward, at our feet, were two small lakes, and just beyond,
trending somewhat to the northwest, was a long lake reaching up through
the valley until it was lost in the low hills and sparse growth of
trees beyond.  Great bowlders were strewn indiscriminately everywhere,
and the whole country was most barren and desolate.  To the south of
Michikamats was the stretch of flat swamp land which extended to
Michikaman.  Petscapiskau, a prominent and rugged peak on the west
shore of Michikamau near its upper end, stood out against the distant
horizon, a lone sentinel of the wilderness.

The head waters of the George River must now be located.  There was
nothing to guide me in the search, and the Indians at Northwest River
had warned us that we were liable at this point to be led astray by an
entanglement of lakes, but I felt certain that any water flowing
northward that we might come to, in this longitude, would either be the
river itself or a tributary of it, and that some such stream would
certainly be found as soon as the divide was crossed.

With this object in view we kept a course nearly due north, passing
through four good-sized lakes, until, one afternoon, at the end of a
short portage, we reached a narrow, shallow lake lying in an easterly
and westerly direction, whose water was very clear and of a
bottle-green color, in marked contrast to that of the preceding lakes,
which had been of a darker shade.

This peculiarity of the water led me to look carefully for a current
when our canoe was launched, and I believed I noticed one.  Then I
fancied I heard a rapid to the westward.  Easton said there was no
current and he could not hear a rapid, and to satisfy myself, we
paddled toward the sound.  We had not gone far when the current became
quite perceptible, and just above could be seen the waters of a brook
that fed the lake, pouring down through the rocks.  We were on the
George River at last!  Our feelings can be imagined when the full
realization of our good fortune came to us, and we turned our canoe to
float down on the current of the little stream that was to grow into a
mighty river as it carried us on its turbulent bosom toward Ungava Bay.

The course of the stream here was almost due east.  The surrounding
country continued low and swampy.  Tamarack was the chief timber and
much of it was straight and fine, with some trees fully twelve inches
in diameter at the butt, and fifty feet in height.

A rocky, shallow place in the river that we had to portage brought us
into an expansion of considerable size, and here we pitched our first
camp on the George River.  This was an event that Hubbard had planned
and pictured through the weary weeks of hardship on the Susan Valley
trail and the long portages across the ranges in his expedition of 1903.

"When we reach the George River, we'll meet the Indians and all will be
well," he used to say, and how anxiously we looked forward for that
day, which never came.

At the time when he made the suggestion to turn back from Windbound
Lake I at first opposed it on the ground that we could probably reach
the George River, where game would be found and the Indians would be
met with, in much less time than it would take to make the retreat to
Northwest River.  Finally I agreed that it was best to return.  On the
twenty-first of September the retreat was begun and Hubbard died on the
eighteenth of October.  Now, two years later, I realized that from
Windbound Lake we could have reached Michikamau in five or six days at
the very outside, and less than two weeks, allowing for delays through
bad weather and our weakened condition, would have brought us to the
George River, where, at that time of the year, ducks and ptarmigans are
always plentiful.  All these things I pondered as I sat by this camp
fire, and I asked myself, "Why is it that when Fate closes our eyes she
does not lead us aright?"  Of course it is all conjecture, but I feel
assured that if Hubbard and I had gone on then instead of turning back,
Hubbard would still be with us.

Below the expansion on which our first camp on the river was pitched
the stream trickled through the thickly strewn rocks in a wide bed,
where it took a sharp turn to the northward and emptied into another
expansion several miles in length, with probably a stream joining it
from the northeast, though we were unable to investigate this, as high
winds prevailed which made canoeing difficult, and we had to content
ourselves with keeping a direct course.

It seemed as though with the crossing of the northern divide winter had
come.  On the night we reached the George River the temperature fell to
ten degrees below the freezing point, and the following day it never
rose above thirty-five degrees, and a high wind and snow squalls
prevailed that held traveling in check.  On the morning of the
fifteenth we started forward in the teeth of a gale and the snow so
thick we could not see the shore a storm that would be termed a
"blizzard" in New York--and after two hours' hard work were forced to
make a landing upon a sandy point with only a mile and a quarter to our
credit.

Here we found the first real butchering camp of the Indians--a camp of
the previous spring.  Piles of caribou bones that had been cracked to
extract the marrow, many pairs of antlers, the bare poles of large
lodges and extensive arrangements, such as racks and cross poles for
dressing and curing deerskins.  In a cache we found two muzzle-loading
guns, cooking utensils, steel traps, and other camping and hunting
paraphernalia.

On the portage around the last shallow rapid was a winter camp, where
among other things was a _komatik_ (dog sledge), showing that some of
these Indians at least on the northern barrens used dogs for winter
traveling.  In the south of Labrador this would be quite out of the
question, as there the bush is so thick that it does not permit the
snow to drift and harden sufficiently to bear dogs, and the use of the
komatik is therefore necessarily confined to the coast or near it. The
Indian women there are very timid of the "husky" dogs, and the animals
are not permitted near their camps.

The sixteenth of September--the day we passed through this large
expansion--was Richards' birthday.  When we bade good-by to the other
men it was agreed that both parties should celebrate the day, wherever
they might be, with the best dinner that could be provided from our
respective stores.  The meal was to be served at exactly seven o'clock
in the evening, that we might feel on this one occasion that we were
all sitting down to eat together, and fancy ourselves reunited.  In the
morning we opened the package that Richards gave us, and found in it a
piece of fat pork and a quart of flour, intended for a feast of our
favorite "darn goods."  With self-sacrificing generosity he had taken
these from the scanty rations they had allowed themselves for their
return that we might have a pleasant surprise.  With the now plentiful
game this made it possible to prepare what seemed to us a very
elaborate menu for the wild wastes of interior Labrador.  First, there
was bouillon, made from beef capsules; then an entr'ee of fried
ptarmigan and duck giblets; a roast of savory black duck, with spinach
(the last of our desiccated vegetables); and for dessert French toast
_'a la Labrador_ (alias darn goods), followed by black coffee.  When it
was finished we spent the evening by the camp fire, smoking and talking
of the three men retreating down our old trail, and trying to calculate
at which one of the camping places they were bivouacked. Every night
since our parting this had been our chief diversion, and I must confess
that with each day that took us farther away from them an increased
loneliness impressed itself upon us.  Solemn and vast was the great
silence of the trackless wilderness as more and more we came to realize
our utter isolation from all the rest of the world and all mankind.

The marsh and swamp land gradually gave way to hills, which increased
in size and ruggedness as we proceeded.  We had found the river at its
very beginning, and for a short way portages, as has been suggested,
had to be made around shallow places, but after a little, as other
streams augmented the volume of water, this became unnecessary, and as
the river grew in size it became a succession of rapids, and most of
them unpleasant ones, that kept us dodging rocks all the while.

Mr. A. P. Low, of the Canadian Geological Survey, in other parts of the
Labrador interior found black ducks very scarce.  This was not our
experience.  From the day we entered the George River until we were
well down the stream they were plentiful, and we shot what we needed
without turning our canoe out of its course to hunt them.  This is
apparently a breeding ground for them.

Several otter rubs were noted, and we saw some of the animals, but did
not disturb them.  In places where the river broadened out and the
current was slack every rock that stuck above the water held its
muskrat house, and large numbers of the rats were seen.

After the snow we had one or two fine, bright days, but they were
becoming few now, and the frosty winds and leaden skies, the
forerunners of winter, were growing more and more frequent.  When the
bright days did come they were exceptional ones.  I find noted in my
diary one morning: "This is a morning for the gods--a morning that
could scarcely be had anywhere in the world but in Labrador--a
cloudless sky, no breath of wind, the sun rising to light the heavy
hoarfrost and make it glint and sparkle till every tree and bush and
rock seems made of shimmering silver."

One afternoon as we were passing through an expansion and I was
scanning, as was my custom, every bit of shore in the hope of
discovering a wigwam smoke, I saw, running down the side of a hill on
an island a quarter of a mile away, a string of Indians waving wildly
at us and signaling us to come ashore.  After twelve weeks, in which
not a human being aside from our own party had been seen, we had
reached the dwellers of the wilderness, and with what pleasure and
alacrity we accepted the invitation to join them can be imagined.



CHAPTER XIII

DISASTER IN THE RAPIDS

It was a hunting party--four men and a half-grown boy--with two canoes
and armed with rifles.  The Indians gave us the hearty welcome of the
wilderness and received us like old friends.  First, the chief, whose
name was Toma, shook our hand, then the others, laughing and all
talking at once in their musical Indian tongue.  It was a welcome that
said: "You are our brothers.  You have come far to see us, and we are
glad to have you with us."

After the first greetings were over they asked for _stemmo,_ and I gave
them each a plug of tobacco, for that is what stemmo means.  They had
no pipes with them, so I let them have two of mine, and it did my heart
good to see the look of supreme satisfaction that crept into each dusky
face as its possessor inhaled in long, deep pulls the smoke of the
strong tobacco.  It was like the food that comes to a half-starved man.
After they had had their smoke, passing the pipes from mouth to mouth,
I brought forth our kettle.  In a jiffy they had a fire, and I made tea
for them, which they drank so scalding hot it must have burned their
throats.  They told us they had had neither tea nor tobacco for a long
while, and were very hungry for both.  These are the stimulants of the
Labrador Indians, and they will make great sacrifices to secure them.

All the time that this was taking place we were jabbering, each in his
own tongue, neither we nor they understanding much that the other said.
I did make out from them that we were the first white men that had ever
visited them in their hunting grounds and that they were glad to see us.

Accepting an invitation to visit their lodges and escorted by a canoe
on either side of ours, we finally turned down stream and, three miles
below, came to the main camp of the Indians, which was situated, as
most of their hunting camps are, on a slight eminence that commanded a
view of the river for several miles in either direction, that watch
might be constantly kept for bands of caribou.

We were discovered long before we arrived at the lodges, and were met
by the whole population--men, women, children, dogs, and all.  Our
reception was tumultuous and cordial.  It was a picturesque group. The
swarthy-faced men, lean, sinewy and well built, with their long,
straight black hair reaching to their shoulders, most of them hatless
and all wearing a red bandanna handkerchief banded across the forehead,
moccasined feet and vari-colored leggings; the women quaint and odd;
the eager-faced children; little hunting dogs, and big wolf-like
huskies.

All hands turned to and helped us carry our belongings to the camp,
pitch our tent and get firewood for our stove.  Then the men squatted
around until eleven of them were with us in our little seven by nine
tent, while all the others crowded as near to the entrance as they
could.  I treated everybody to hot tea.  The men helped themselves
first, then passed their cups on to the women and children.  The used
tea leaves from the kettle were carefully preserved by them to do
service again.  The eagerness with which the men and women drank the
tea and smoked the tobacco aroused my sympathies, and I distributed
amongst them all of these that I could well spare from our store.  In
appreciation of my gifts they brought us a considerable quantity of
fresh and jerked venison and smoked fat; and Toma, as a special mark of
favor presented me with a deer's tongue which had been cured by some
distinctive process unlike anything I had ever eaten before, and it was
delicious indeed, together with a bladder of refined fat so clear that
it was almost transparent.

The encampment consisted of two deerskin wigwams.  One was a large one
and oblong in shape, the other of good size but round.  The smaller
wigwam was heated by a single fire in the center, the larger one by
three fires distributed at intervals down its length.  Chief Toma
occupied, with his family, the smaller lodge, while the others made
their home in the larger one.

This was a band of Mountaineer Indians who trade at Davis Inlet Post of
the Hudson's Bay Company, on the east coast, visiting the Post once or
twice a year to exchange their furs for such necessaries as ammunition,
clothing, tobacco and tea.  Unlike their brothers on the southern
slope, they have not accustomed themselves to the use of flour, sugar
and others of the simplest luxuries of civilization, and their food is
almost wholly flesh, fish and berries.  They live in the crude,
primordial fashion of their forefathers.  To aid them in their hunt
they have adopted the breech-loading rifle and muzzle-loading shotgun,
but the bow and arrow has still its place with them and they were
depending wholly upon this crude weapon for hunting partridges and
other small game now, as they had no shotgun ammunition.  The boys were
constantly practicing with it while at play and were very expert in its
use.

These Indians are of medium height, well built, sinewy and strong,
alert and quick of movement.  The women are generally squatty and fat,
and the greater a woman's avoirdupois the more beautiful is she
considered.

All the Mountaineer Indians of Labrador are nominally Roman Catholics.
Those in the south are quite devoted to their priest, and make an
effort to meet him at least once a year and pay their tithes, but here
in the north this is not the case.  In fact some of these people had
seen their priest but once in their life and some of the younger ones
had never seen him at all.  Therefore they are still living under the
influence of the ancient superstitions of their race, though the women
are all provided with crucifixes and wear them on their breasts as
ornaments.

They are perfectly honest.  Indians, until they become contaminated by
contact with whites, always are honest.  It is the white man that
teaches them to steal, either by actually pilfering from the ignorant
savage, or by taking undue advantage of him in trade.  Human nature is
the same everywhere, and the Indian will, when he finds he is being
taken advantage of and robbed, naturally resent it and try to "get
even."  Our things were left wholly unguarded, and were the object of a
great deal of curiosity and admiration, not only our guns and
instruments, but nearly everything we had, and were handled and
inspected by our hosts, but not the slightest thing was filched.  No
Labrador Indian north of the Grand River will ever disturb a cache
unless driven to it by the direst necessity, and even then will leave
something in payment for what he takes.

We told them of the evidences we had seen of the caribou migration
having taken place between Michikamau and Michikamats, and they were
mightily interested.  They had missed it but were, nevertheless,
meeting small bands of caribou and making a good killing, as the
quantities of meat hanging everywhere to dry for winter use bore
evidence.  The previous winter, they told us, was a hard one with them.
Reindeer and ptarmigan disappeared, and before spring they were on the
verge of starvation.

Our visit was made the occasion of a holiday and they devoted
themselves wholly to our entertainment, and I believe were genuinely
sorry when, on the afternoon after our arrival, I announced my decision
to break camp and proceed.  They helped us get ready, drew a rough
sketch of the river so far as they knew it, and warned us to look out
for numerous rapids and some high falls around which there was a
portage trail.  Farther on, they said, the river was joined by another,
and then it became a "big, big river," and for two days' journey was
good.  Beyond that it was reported to be very bad.  They had never
traveled it, because they heard it was so bad, and they could not tell
us, from their own knowledge, what it was like, but repeated the
warning, "Shepoo matchi, shepoo matchi" (River bad), and told us to
look out.

When we were ready to go, as a particular mark of good feeling, they
brought us parting gifts of smoked deer's fat and were manifestly in
earnest in their urgent invitations to us to come again.  The whole
encampment assembled at the shore to see us off and, as our canoes
pushed out into the stream, the men pitched small stones after us as a
good luck omen.  If the stones hit you good luck is assured.  You will
have a good hunt and no harm will come to you.  None of the stones
happened to hit us.  We could see the group waving at us until we
rounded the point of land upon which the lodges stood; then the men all
appeared on the other side of the point, where they had run to watch us
until we disappeared around a bend in the river below, as we passed on
to push our way deeper and deeper into the land of silence and mystery.

The following morning brought us into a lake expansion some twelve
miles long and two miles or so in width, with a great many bays and
arms which were extremely confusing to us in our search for the place
where the river left it.  The lower end was blocked with islands, and
innumerable rocky bars, partially submerged, extended far out into the
water.  A strong southwest wind sent heavy rollers down the lake. Low,
barren hills skirted the shores.

Early in the afternoon we turned into a bay where I left Easton with
the canoe while I climbed one of the barren knolls.  I had scarcely
reached the summit when I heard a rifle shot, and then, after a pause,
three more in quick succession.  There were four cartridges in my
rifle.  I ran down to the canoe where I found Easton in wild
excitement, waving the gun and calling for cartridges, and half-way
across the bay saw the heads of two caribou swimming toward the
opposite shore.  I loaded the magazine and sat down to wait for the
animals to land.

When the first deer got his footing and showed his body above the water
three hundred and fifty yards away, I took him behind the shoulder.  He
dropped where he stood.  The other animal stopped to look at his
comrade, and a single bullet, also behind his shoulder, brought him
down within ten feet of where he had stood when he was hit.  I mention
this to show the high efficiency of the .33 Winchester.  At a
comparatively long range two bullets had killed two caribou on the spot
without the necessity of a chase after wounded animals, and one bullet
had passed from behind the shoulder, the length of the neck, into the
head and glancing downward had broken the jaw.

I desired to make a cache here that we might have something to fall
back upon in case our retreat should become necessary, and four days
were employed in fixing up the meat and preparing the cache, and this
gave us also sufficient time, in spite of continuous heavy wind and
rain, to thoroughly explore the lake and its bays.  An ample supply of
the fresh venison was reserved to carry with us.

We now had on hand, exclusive of the pemmican and other rations still
remaining, and the meat cached, eight weeks' provisions, with plenty of
ducks and ptarmigans everywhere, and there seemed to be no further
danger from lack of food.

One day, while we were here, five caribou tarried for several minutes
within two hundred yards of us and then sauntered off without taking
alarm, and later the same day another was seen at closer range; but we
did not need them and permitted them to go unmolested.

From a hill near this bay, where we killed the deer, on the eastern
side of the lake, we discovered a trail leading off toward a string of
lakes to the eastward.  This is undoubtedly the portage trail which the
Indians follow in their journeys to the Post at Davis Inlet.  Toma had
told me we might see it here, and that, not far in, on one of these
lakes was another Indian camp.

An inordinate craving for fat takes possession of every one after a
little while in the bush.  We had felt it, and now, with plenty,
overindulged, with the result that we were attacked with illness, and
for a day or two I was almost too sick to move.

The morning we left Atuknipi, or Reindeer Lake, as we shall call the
expansion, a blinding snowstorm was raging, with a strong head wind.
Several rapids were run though it was extremely dangerous work, for at
times we could scarcely see a dozen yards ahead.  At midday the snow
ceased, but the wind increased in velocity until finally we found it
quite out of the question to paddle against it, and were forced to
pitch camp on the shores of a small expansion and under the lee of a
hill.  For two days the gale blew unceasingly and held us prisoners in
our camp.  The waves broke on the rocky shores, sending the spray fifty
feet in the air and, freezing on the surrounding bowlders, covered them
with a glaze of ice.  I cannot say what the temperature was, for on the
day of our arrival here my last thermometer was broken; but with half a
foot of snow on the ground, the freezing spray and the bitter cold
wind, we were warned that winter was reaching out her hand toward
Labrador and would soon hold us in her merciless grasp.  This made me
chafe under our imprisonment, for I began to fear that we should not
reach the Post before the final freeze-up came, and further travel by
canoe would be out of the question.  On the morning of September
twenty-ninth, the wind, though still blowing half a gale in our faces,
had so much abated that we were able to launch our canoe and continue
our journey.

It was very cold.  The spray froze as it struck our clothing, the canoe
was weighted with ice and our paddles became heavy with it.  We ran one
or two short rapids in safety and then started into another that ended
with a narrow strip of white water with a small expansion below.  We
had just struck the white water, going at a good speed in what seemed
like a clear course, when the canoe, at its middle, hit a submerged
rock.  Before there was time to clear ourselves the little craft swung
in the current, and the next moment I found myself in th

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