Just as we were starting on the tenth morning a light puff of west wind brought us the first sound of a distant roar that we knew must be caused by the shute, and a couple of hours" tracking brought us to a small Company"s trading-post, known as Little Red River, from a stream bearing that name which here joins the Peace River from the south. The establishment was deserted, although it was to be kept open during the winter; so we pa.s.sed on and soon came in sight of a low white wall of water extending across the whole width of the river. Dr. Mackay had told me to make the portage close under the fall on the south side, or we should have been at a loss to find the only place where it is possible to take the canoe out of the water. In a strong running current, with the spray falling over her bow, we put alongside a ledge of rock six feet above us, and two men, standing on a submerged ledge, not without difficulty pa.s.sed everything up to the others above; the distance to carry was very short, and we were soon afloat again above the fall. The shute is not more than eight feet in height, but is of course a complete barrier to navigation. I think the scene from the south bank is one of the most beautiful in the whole course of the loveliest of rivers. It was a bright afternoon when we made the portage, and the white broken water of the cascade showed in strong contrast to the broad blue stretches above and below; several rocky, pine-covered islands stand on the brink of the overfall, as if to give a chance to any unlucky traveller who may approach too near the danger; fully three-quarters of a mile away on the far side stands the gloomy forest of black pines, relieved by a glimpse of the open side-hills of the Caribou Mountains.
Another small portage was necessary a mile or two above; but from the spot where we camped that night we never had to lift canoe or skiff out of the water till we reached the foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains.
The next day we pa.s.sed a couple of Cree lodges, and finding moose-meat plentiful made the most of our opportunity, as a gale of wind sprang up right ahead and prevented travel.
It was not till sundown on the eleventh day from Chipeweyan that we completed our journey of two hundred and eighty miles, and put ash.o.r.e at the Company"s trading-post at Fort Vermillion. Here the appearance of the country suddenly changes; stretches of open prairie dotted with small poplars take the place of the pine-woods, and the sand-bars in the river begin to give way to gravel, and the banks rise higher and higher as one journeys up-stream. We reached Vermillion late in September, in the full glory of the autumn; the sharp morning frosts had coloured the poplar leaves with the brightest golden tints, and the blue haze of an Indian summer hung over prairie and wood. Away on the Great Slave Lake a half-breed had told me of the beauties of Vermillion as a farming country, and had explained that all the good things of the world grew there freely, so that I was prepared for the sight of wheat and barley fields, which had this year produced a more abundant harvest than usual; potatoes and other vegetables were growing luxuriously, cattle and horses were fattening on the rich prairie gra.s.s, and it seemed that there was little to be gained by leaving such a fertile spot in the face of the winter that would soon be upon us.
Vermillion is also an important fur-post, and probably to-day the best in the North for beaver and marten; but there are several free-traders on the Peace River, and the Company have to carry on their business with the extra difficulty of compet.i.tion, which always raises the price of fur. It is all very well to say that no Company should have the monopoly of trading over so vast a territory, but after all the Indians are little benefited by the appearance of the free-traders. The Hudson"s Bay Company have always treated the Indians fairly and leniently, taking the greatest care only to import articles absolutely necessary to the welfare of the natives. Guns, ammunition, blankets, capotes, dress-stuff for the women, and tea and tobacco, have always been the princ.i.p.al contents of the store; and these are sold at absurdly low prices, when the cost of the long and risky transport is considered. The Indians" love of gaudy colours was always indulged, but the goods were of the best material. Then came the free-trader with a stock of bright cheap clothing, a variety of dazzling tinsel, or perhaps a keg of mola.s.ses, which attracted the eye and palate of the wily hunter, so that he would give up his rich furs for the worthless trash, only to find himself short of all the necessaries for maintaining life in the woods when the snow began to fall again. No amount of experience enables him to resist the temptation; but the long enduring Hudson"s Bay Company always listens to his tale of woe and helps him out of his difficulties, accepting his promise, ever readily given and as readily broken, to hand in his fur in the following spring to the officer in charge of the post.
Whenever the often-told story of a band of Indians caught by the horrors of starvation reaches the fort, the Company sends to the rescue, and every winter saves many a man from death, while the free-trader, having taken as much fur as he can out of the country during a short summer"s trip, is living at ease on the confines of civilization. The days are long gone by when a prime silver fox could be bought for a cotton pocket-handkerchief, but still the rumours brought from this little known Northern country attract the venturesome trader, usually to his own loss, and always to the upsetting of the Company"s wise system of dealing with the Indians.
Vermillion has a comparatively large population, outside the numerous _employes_ of the country. Both the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches have missions here, and several half-breeds have taken up an irregular method of stock-raising and small farming to help out the uncertain living afforded by fur-trapping. Mr. Lawrence, a practical hard-working farmer from Eastern Canada, has been successful with a farm three miles above the fort; but for many years to come there is not the slightest reason for that emigration of farmers to Peace River which wild enthusiasts clamour for. So much talk about this scheme has lately appeared in the Canadian newspapers, mostly, no doubt, as one of the political cries which find such favour with the statesmen of Ottawa, that I cannot allow this opportunity to pa.s.s without a word of warning to any intending settler. I made careful inquiries and observations along the whole length of Peace River, and I do not for a moment deny that in some parts of its course crops of wheat and barley may be raised in favourable seasons, as the well-managed farms of Mr. Lawrence, at Vermillion, and Mr. Brick, higher up at Smoky River, fully attest; but these farms, and all the spots in which grain ripens, are in close proximity to the bed of the river, and here the amount of arable land is limited. Climb the steep banks and take a glance over the millions of fertile acres which the philanthropic politician wishes to see cultivated; notice the frost on a summer"s morning, and make the attempt, as has often been made already, to raise a crop on this elevated plateau. In ten years" time this may be a cattle-country, although the hay-swamps are insufficient to ensure enough feed for the long winter; but let us have an end of this talk of sending poor settlers to starve in a land unable to supply food to the Indian, who is accustomed to a life of continual struggle with a relentless nature.
Mr. Wilson entertained me royally at the fort, but here again was the same trouble that I had found at Chipeweyan; no crew was procurable, and there was a journey of three hundred and fifty miles to Dunvegan before I had any chance of getting men. Jose and Dummy, who had both worked right well up to now, considered they were far enough away from their beloved Fort Smith; and Jose had an extra attraction in Dummy"s sister, who was waiting his return to make him happy for ever, but was not very reliable in case of a more prepossessing admirer coming to the fore.
Jose made a touching speech at parting: "G.o.d made the mountains, the lakes, and the big rivers," he said. "What is better than drifting down Peace River singing hymns? You are going up-stream to cross the big mountains back to your own country; I am going down-stream to marry Dummy"s sister; I shall think of you many times." Dummy smiled and nodded affectionately, and the pair shot out into the river with my canoe, leaving me on the bank with only Murdo for my crew and no means of conveyance.
Now if I could have got a small dug-out wooden canoe, and pottered away up-stream with Murdo, tracking in turns, we should have got on very well; but unfortunately there was nothing but a large and somewhat clumsy skiff available, and this we finally had to take. The evening before we were to start I received a visit from a man whom I shall allude to as John. Long before in merry England he had seen better times, and was evidently intended by nature for a sedentary life, or any other kind of life than the physical activity necessary to accomplish quickly and successfully a boating-trip up a swift-running river; in reality he was powerful enough, and but for his extraordinary laziness might have earned a good living anywhere. John told me he wished to leave Peace River and cross the mountains to Quesnelle, and would be glad to render me every a.s.sistance in his power if I would let him take advantage of this chance to get out of the country. In spite of the warnings of Mr. Wilson and everybody else who knew John"s character, I went on the theory that when one is shorthanded any kind of a man is better than no man, but was speedily disabused of this idea after leaving the fort. He turned sulky when he found that I would stand no shirking, and was painfully slow on the tracking-line, awkward in letting go or tying a knot, and, although he had been five years at boating, absolutely without knowledge of the duties of bowsman or steersman. In addition to this he was just as useless in camp, and conceived a violent hatred to Murdo, who fully reciprocated the feeling.
Once, on being heartily cursed while he was tracking, John threatened to desert and go back to Vermillion, but when we ran the skiff ash.o.r.e and offered to help him build a raft and to give him a week"s rations, he hastily withdrew his proposition. I hoped to be able to leave him at some fort _en route_, but I found John was too well known, and no one would accept the horrible responsibility of keeping him for a winter on any terms. A man like this takes all the pleasure out of a journey when good temper is the almost invariable rule, and everybody takes his share of the tracking and wading, the paddling and poling, as part of the ordinary day"s work.
At this time of year, when the water is at its lowest, tracking is a comparatively easy matter, and taking half-hour spells at a sharp walk we made good day"s journeys, although we should have done much better with a canoe. It was a hard time for moccasins, but we could get them at every fort we pa.s.sed; sometimes we found an Indian encampment on the bank, and a small present of tea and tobacco to the women ensured neat patches over the gaping holes in the moose-skin soles.
The fourth day out from Vermillion we reached the mouth of Battle River coming in from the north, and found a small trading-post with a French half-breed in charge. He told us that the Indians had been killing a great many moose, and that he had already bought the dried meat of sixteen as a start towards his winter stock of provisions; black bear too were numerous on Battle River, and there were reports of grizzly having been seen. This would probably be one of the best points from which to enter the unknown country between Peace River and the Great Slave Lake.
I never remember to have seen in any part of Canada such a fine autumn as we enjoyed between Vermillion and the Rockies; there was hardly a day"s rain the whole time, and, although a sharp white frost usually made a cold camp, the days were bright and at times almost too hot for tracking. Often we saw the fresh tracks of moose and bear, but never happened to see an animal of any kind, and as we could afford no time for hunting did not fire a single shot at big game; geese and ducks we could have killed every day if there had been any necessity for doing so.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Junction of the Peace and Smoky Rivers]
Fifteen days of continuous travel from Vermillion took us to the junction of Smoky River, the princ.i.p.al tributary of the Peace, flowing towards the south-west not far from some of the head-waters of the Athabasca. This junction is rather an important point, as it is close to the end of the waggon-road to the Lesser Slave Lake, lying seventy-five miles to the south. Here the trading-goods brought overland are loaded on to scows and boats, to be sent down-stream to Vermillion and up-stream to Dunvegan, St. John"s, and Hudson"s Hope. A little above are Mr. Brick"s mission and the farm that I have already spoken of, besides a settlement of half-breeds, more hunters than farmers, well known as the laziest and most worthless gang on the whole length of Peace River.
Many efforts have been made to get these people to pay more attention to their potato-patches as the game is getting killed out, but all in vain; sometimes they will fence in a piece of ground and plant seed, but will take no further trouble with the crop, and generally use their fence-rails for firewood during the next winter. Luckily whitefish are very plentiful in the Lesser Slave Lake within two days" journey, or starvation would certainly play havoc at Smoky River.
I enjoyed a long talk with Mr. Brick in his pleasant home in the wilds, where we spent a night; he kindly furnished me with supplies that I was short of, and three days afterwards we arrived at Dunvegan, another celebrated fur-post, situated on the north bank of the river at the foot of a high bluff known as the Cap. Here again was abundant evidence of the fertility of the soil in the crops harvested by the Company and the missionaries. Across the river, twenty miles away, is the Company"s cattle-_ranche_, where the oxen used on the waggon-road are raised and a fair amount of beef is annually killed. Some thoroughbred stock has been imported and should prove successful, but of course there is no paying market for a large amount of cattle, although there are plenty of hungry people who would be glad of a chance to eat beef.
At Dunvegan, besides Mr. Round who was in charge of the fort, I met Mr.
Ewen Macdonald, the chief of Peace River District, with headquarters at Lesser Slave Lake. He had just finished his inspection of the upper river-posts, and had left Hudson"s Hope, the last establishment east of the mountains, a few days previously; he reported that the snow was already low down on the foot-hills, and advised me strongly to give up my attempt to cross the Rockies so late in the autumn. He told me, however, that a free-trader was expected in from the west side of the mountains, and if I was lucky enough to meet him I should probably be able to secure the service of some of his crew who would be returning to Quesnelle.
Above Dunvegan the valley of the river contracts, the banks rise for several hundred feet in height, and the strength of the current increases. The hundred and twenty miles to St. John"s took us seven days and a half to travel, and in many places we had to keep two men on the line to stem the strong water; the tracking too was bad, as the banks had fallen in several spots, and John, who had been up and down the river three times before, proved a very poor pilot. The weather was colder, and a sheet of ice formed over the back waters and close to the bank out of the current.
At St. John"s we found Mr. Gunn busy with a band of Indians who were taking their winter supplies, and I had a chance of hearing their accounts of the wilderness to the north in the direction of the Liard River; they described it as a muskeg country abounding in game and fur, but a hard district to reach, as the streams are too rapid for canoes and the swamps too soft for horses to cross. They occasionally fall in with a small band of buffalo, but have never seen them in large numbers.
Sometimes by ascending Half-way River, a stream adjoining Peace River twenty-five miles above St. John"s, they meet the Indians from Fort Nelson on the south branch of the Liard.
We had now pa.s.sed out of the Cree-speaking belt and the language became that of the Beaver Indians, a far inferior language to Cree, resembling in sound and in many of the words some of the dialects of the Chipeweyan tongue. Mr. Gunn had learned to speak Beaver fluently, and was now going up to Hudson"s Hope to interpret; he was a great help to us both as pilot and on the line, and with two men always tracking we took little notice of the strong stream which we found throughout the fifty miles to the next fort.
Snow was falling heavily when we left St. John"s, and it looked as if the winter had set in, but next day the ground was bare again, and a west wind from across the mountains blew warm as a summer"s breeze. We camped for a night at the mouth of Half-way River, heading towards the north through a wide open bay which seems to invite exploration. A considerable quant.i.ty of gold dust has been taken out of some of the gravel-bars along this part of Peace River, and Half-way River is supposed to be a paradise for the miner and hunter, but I could not hear of any white man having ever penetrated far up this valley. On the afternoon of Sunday, October 26th, on rounding a bend in the river, we caught our first glimpse of the snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains that I had travelled so far to reach; but the sublime is often mixed with the ludicrous, and when John in his admiration of the scenery slipped off a narrow ledge of shale along which he was tracking and fell with an oath into the river, the snowy peaks were forgotten in the joy that always greets other people"s misfortunes in this sort of travelling.
A short distance below Hudson"s Hope we pa.s.sed a remarkable group of high basaltic islands, differing entirely from anything in the neighbourhood, and affording a strong contrast to the low gravelly islands so numerous in the course of this river. In the afternoon of the 27th we unloaded the skiff and hauled her up on the beach in front of the fort, to lie there till anybody might want to run her down-stream the following spring.
Hudson"s Hope is a small unpretentious establishment, standing on the south side of Peace River, a mile below the wild canon by which this great stream forces its way through the most easterly range of the Rocky Mountains. The Indians were all encamped in their moose-skin lodges on the flat close to the fort waiting for the trade to begin, and I was surprised to hear how few representatives of the once numerous tribe of Beavers are left. It is the same at St. John"s and Dunvegan, and the total Indian population of the upper Peace River cannot exceed three hundred, an immense falling off since Sir Alexander Mackenzie first crossed the mountains by this route. The biggest lodge was occupied by Baptiste Testerwich, a half-breed Iroquois, descended from the Iroquois crew left here many years ago by Sir George Simpson, formerly Governor of the Hudson"s Bay Company. Baptiste had a house at Moberley"s Lake twelve miles to the south, and is well known as the most successful and most enduring of moose-hunters. A remarkable point about the man is his hardiness and indifference to cold; in the dead of winter he wears no socks in his moccasins, which to any other man would mean a certainty of frozen feet, and the Indians say that his feet are so hot that the snow melts in his tracks in the coldest weather.
Once again arose the trouble about guides to take us to Macleod"s Lake.
John had been there before, but I had already seen too much of his piloting to trust myself in his hands, and was quite sure that he would lose his way if there was the least possibility of doing so. The free-trader from across the mountains had not yet arrived, and as it was getting late in the year there was a chance of his being frozen in before he reached Hudson"s Hope. Besides the Peace River route there is the Pine River Pa.s.s, farther to the southward, heading almost directly to Macleod"s Lake. A party of surveyors once came through this pa.s.s several years ago, and the Indians use it habitually in the summer; but none of the Beavers would volunteer to guide us through at this time of the year, as a heavy snowfall might be expected immediately.
I decided to wait a few days for the trader, and we had a very festive time at Hudson"s Hope; a ball was given every night, and the moose-dance, rabbit-dance, and duck-dance were kept up till the small hours. A ball is not an expensive entertainment at an out-of-the-way trading-post; no invitations are necessary, but a sc.r.a.pe of the fiddle at the door of the master"s house fills the ball-room in a few minutes.
If the master is in a liberal state of mind, a cup of tea is provided for his guests, but in any case the river is close, and if anyone is thirsty there is plenty of water. On the third night the ceremonies were interrupted by the sound of a gunshot on the opposite bank, and an Indian came across with the news that the trader had arrived at the west end of the canon with two small scows, and that some of his crew were going back to Quesnelle.
Baptiste lent me a horse on the following day, and I rode over to interview the new arrivals. A fair trail, twelve miles in length on the north side of the river, leads to the navigable water above the canon, while the stream runs a circuitous course of probably thirty miles. I could get little information as to the nature of this canon; even the Indians seem to avoid it, and, though accounts of it have been written, n.o.body appears to have thoroughly explored this exceptionally rough piece of country. I went down a few miles from the west end, but found the bluffs so steep that I could seldom get a view of the water, and could form no idea of the character of the rapids and waterfalls. There is some quiet place in the middle of the canon where the Indians cross on the ice, but beyond this they could tell me little about it.
Right in the centre of the gap by which the trail crosses stands the Bull"s Head, a solitary mountain well known to travellers coming from the west, as it can be seen many miles away, and in full view to the south is a huge flat-topped mountain, covered with perpetual snow and fit to rank with any of the giants of the main range. The trail reaches a considerable elevation above the river level, and from the summit the upper waters of the Peace are seen winding away to the west, through a broad valley flanked by hills of ever increasing height, as far as the eye can reach. Close to the river the slopes are open or thinly timbered with pine and poplar, but the big mountains are clothed nearly to their summits with the dense, almost impa.s.sable, forest growth which is such a common feature in the scenery as the Pacific Coast is approached.
At the far end of the portage, on the bank of the river, stand a rough shanty and trading-store. Here I made the acquaintance of Twelvefoot Davis, who acquired this name, not from any peculiarity of stature, but from a small though valuable mining claim of which he had been the lucky possessor in the early days of British Columbia. A typical man of his cla.s.s is Davis, and his story is that of many a man who has spent his life just in advance of civilization. Born in the Eastern States of America, a "Forty-niner in California, and a pioneer of the Caribou Diggings discovered far up the Fraser River in "Sixty-one, he had eventually taken to fur-trading, which has ever such an attraction for the wandering spirit of the miner. Here among the mountains and rivers where formerly he sought the yellow dust he carries on his roaming life.
There is a strong kinship between the two enterprises; the same uncertainty exists, and in each case the mythical stake is always just ahead. No failure ever damps the ardour of miner or fur-trader, or puts a stop to his pleasant dreams of monster nuggets and silver foxes.
Davis was making all possible haste in packing his cargo across the portage with horses; an Indian and a half-breed were going back to Quesnelle, and would gladly enter my service as guides. A small stock of goods was to be left at the west end of the portage, and Thomas Barrow, the only white man who had come down with Davis, was to remain in charge of the trading-post during the winter.
CHAPTER XV
On November 5th I camped at the head of the canon with my crew, Murdo, John, Charlie, a half-breed from Quesnelle, and Pat, a full-blooded Siccanee from Fraser Lake ready to make a start up-stream the following morning with a long narrow canoe dug out of a cotton-wood log. But in the night the weather changed; snow fell heavily, a severe frost set in, and ice was forming rapidly along the banks. Baptiste, the Iroquois, who had come across the portage to see us off, had brought me a dozen pair of the best moose-skin moccasins from his daughters, who were beyond compare the _belles_ of Hudson"s Hope. Baptiste had spent many years of his life in this part of the country, and I was quite ready to listen to his opinion on the chances of getting through to Macleod"s Lake. He would not hear of our starting with a canoe under the changed conditions of weather: it was the winter; the ice would catch us in less than three days, and we should be lucky if we could get back on foot through the deep snow. His advice was to wait a fortnight till the river set fast, and occupy ourselves in making hand-sleighs, while he would make us five pairs of snow-shoes, and then we might walk the two hundred miles to Macleod"s Lake in comfort. Accordingly I gave orders for the lodge, which we still had with us, to be pitched in a clump of poplars a short distance above Barrow"s house, and we busied ourselves with cutting birch and bending sleighs in readiness for our trip.
The cold snap continued for several days, but very little ice was running, although the eddies and backwaters were frozen up; then the weather grew milder again, and I could see that we had missed our chance. It was past the middle of November, and the river, by all accounts, is usually frozen solid at this time of year; it seemed too risky to start out so late to try and make a pa.s.sage with open water.
Meantime we were taking things easily when, as it turned out, we should have been travelling; there was not much to shoot beyond wood-grouse and rabbits, but with these we could keep the pot going, and time went pleasantly enough in short expeditions into the surrounding hills.
And now a warm Chinook wind came sweeping across from the Pacific, and licked up the snow from the ground, while the ice broke away from the banks and drifted down in little floes to be ground to pieces in the canon. I could bear the inactivity no longer, and, with a recklessness that I had plenty of opportunity to repent later on, gave orders on November 25th for the canoe to be got ready on the morrow to start up-stream and take the chances of being caught by the ice in the main range of the Rocky Mountains. I consulted Charlie and Pat about the route, and they both said they could make no mistake in finding the way to the Hudson"s Bay Fort on Macleod"s Lake, as they had just come down the river, and Charlie had made the journey the year before; if we could succeed in getting to the junction of the Findlay and Parsnip, just beyond the big mountains, before the ice caught us, there could be no difficulty in reaching the fort on foot in about four days" travel.
At the risk of being verbose and boring any reader who has struggled thus far through the record of my wanderings in the North, I must now enter somewhat fully into the details of travel, and describe minutely the events that happened during the next month, in order to answer once for all the numerous questions that I have been asked as to what took place on that terrible winter journey in the Rocky Mountains. When I reached civilization again, and found that part of the story had leaked out, I received plenty of gratuitous advice as to what I should have done and where I should have gone, from people who had never themselves been in a like predicament, and had no further knowledge of hardship than perhaps having had to pay a long price for a second-rate dinner. I discovered that the easiest method of satisfying them was to let them tell the tale of my adventures in their own way, and a.s.sent readily to their convincing proofs that if they had been there all would have gone well. I admit freely that it was a stupid act to leave a supply-post so late in the year, unprovided as we were with the necessary outfit for winter travelling; but think I was justified in trusting to the local knowledge of my native guides to bring our party in safety to Macleod"s Lake after we were forced to abandon the canoe.
Walter Macdonald, a son of Mr. Ewen Macdonald of Lesser Slave Lake, and Tom Barrow both gave me every a.s.sistance in their power to provision my crew for what is usually an eight or nine days" journey. Meat was not to be had, and there was little chance of finding big game along the course of the river, but a hundred pounds of flour, a few pounds of beans and rice, and a small sack of potatoes, besides plenty of tea and tobacco, would surely last us this short journey, and, even if we found it impossible to travel quickly, a few days of short rations could easily be endured.
It was late in the afternoon of Wednesday, November 26th, when I started the canoe off, and the sun was down before I had settled up accounts and said good-bye to the friends whom I did not expect to meet again for many a long day. The moon was full, and I had no difficulty in finding my way six miles through the woods to an old miner"s cabin at which we had arranged to camp for the night. At the first streak of dawn we were off again, travelling our best with two and sometimes three men on the line; the current was strong, but the tracking on the gravel-bars perfect. That night there was a heavy snowstorm, while the ground froze hard and caused many a nasty fall on the slippery stones during the next two days. On Sat.u.r.day morning cakes of soft ice began to run, but we found that most of them were brought down by a large tributary coming from the north, and above its mouth the river was comparatively clear of ice. The same afternoon we reached the entrance to the main range of mountains, and under the first peak of the chain tracked up a strong rush of water with a heavy sea at its foot, commonly known as the Polpar Rapid, a curious corruption of _la Rapide qui ne parle pas_, so named by the old _voyageurs_ from the absence of the roar of waters which usually gives ample warning of the proximity of a rapid. Part of the cargo we portaged to keep it dry, and above the strong water lay a quiet stretch of river, winding away in the gloomy black chasm between the huge mountains, which in many places takes the form of a sheer bluff hanging over the stream.
We camped just above the Polpar, and another night"s snow made the tracking worse than ever; often it was necessary to put the line aboard and take to the paddles, to struggle round some steep point upon which a coating of frozen snow made it impossible to stand. Ice was running in large pans and steering was difficult, but we got on fairly well, and were far in the heart of the mountains when we camped on Sunday night under one of the steepest and most forbidding peaks that I ever remember to have seen in any part of the Rockies.
Monday was really cold, and our difficulties increased; the tow-line was sheeted with ice and three times its ordinary weight, while the channel was in many places almost blocked; poles and paddles had to be handled with numbed fingers, and our moccasins from constant wading turned into heavy lumps of ice; but we pushed on, and at nightfall had pa.s.sed the mountains and emerged into a more inviting country. It was evident, however, that canoe-work was nearly over for the year, but we determined to make one more attempt, as the junction of the Findlay and Parsnip was not far ahead, and there was just a chance that the ice was coming from the Findlay and we might find the Parsnip, up which our course lay, clear enough for navigation. On Tuesday we made the most dangerous day"s travel that I ever experienced in a canoe; the river was far too full of ice to handle even a "dug-out" with safety, and we had to make many crossings in the swift current among the running floes. I made it a point that everybody should keep on the same side of the river to a.s.sure our all being together in case of accident, and we had several narrow escapes from being nipped. At dinner-time we came in sight of the broken water of the Findlay Rapid, and found the big eddy on the south side of the river completely blocked with ice. We went through the risky manoeuvre of skirting the edge of the eddy with the floes whirling round us in the strong running water, and, finding a solid spot, hauled the canoe over the ice to the sh.o.r.e, making a half-mile portage to the foot of the rapid. A very close shave of capsizing filled the canoe with water; but the second attempt at tracking through the swift current and blocks of ice was more successful, and, as the short day was drawing to its close, we were paddling under a high bluff which prevented our using the tracking-line. Here darkness caught us, and our position was perilous in the extreme; the current was so strong that our best pace was required to stem it at all, and many times we had to drift back to avoid collision with the ice that was grinding past us. A couple of hours" hard work brought us to the first spot at which we could effect a landing, but it was no easy matter to carry the cargo up the frozen bank; we secured the canoe as well as we could, and found ourselves on a small flat covered with willows and abundance of firewood. Towards midnight the grinding of the ice became less noticeable and before daylight ceased entirely; the river above us had set fast and further water-travel was impossible. When morning broke we saw the Findlay branch completely jambed with ice stretching away to the north-west, and the Parsnip bending sharply to the south presented a similar appearance.
A glance at our position is not out of place, and a good map might have saved us from the serious trouble we afterwards experienced.
Far away in the mountains of British Columbia, in a country little known to the white man and at no great distance from the Pacific Ocean, the Findlay River has its source, while the Parsnip rises close under the Rocky Mountains on their west side, and, skirting the foot-hills, joins the Findlay at the spot where we now encamped. Below the junction the stream, already of considerable size and known as the Peace River, pours through the black rent in the backbone of the North American continent many thousands of feet below the summits of the mountains, and takes its course towards the Arctic Ocean at the mouth of the great Mackenzie. The most extraordinary feature in this reversion of the laws of Nature is the extreme tranquillity of the stream in pa.s.sing through the main range, for with the exception of the Findlay and Polpar Rapid, one at either end of the pa.s.s, there is no difficulty in navigating a canoe. In pa.s.sing the eastern range above Hudson"s Hope the canon is rough to the last degree, and one would expect to find the same thing among the higher mountains. A third branch, the Omineca, once a celebrated mining-camp, joins the Findlay, but is a much smaller stream. To reach Fort Macleod we had to follow the Parsnip and turn up a tributary branch known as Macleod"s River, draining Macleod"s Lake into the Parsnip.
I had another long conversation with Charlie and Pat as to the best plan of action, and pointed out to them that if there was the least doubt about finding the lake we might still get back to Hudson"s Hope, as by the aid of a few portages over ice-jambs one can travel down-stream in company with the floes long after it has become impossible to force a pa.s.sage against them, and when we reached the east end of the pa.s.s it would be easy to walk through the level country. But both the guides laughed at the idea of their getting lost, and again reminded me of the fact that only a few weeks before they had come from Macleod. If we could cross the Parsnip, they said, we had only to follow the west bank till we came to the Little River, and then half a day would take us to the fort; in four days from now, or five at the latest, we should reach the end of our journey. The morning of December 4th was spent in making a scaffold on which to store my rather bulky cargo, which of course had to be left with the intention of returning from Fort Macleod with a dog-sleigh. After dinner we started on foot, every man carrying his blanket and a small load of provisions, kettles, and necessaries of various kinds. I decided to take no gun, as I only had a dozen shot-cartridges left, and a gun is always an impediment in walking through the woods, although there is a good old saying in the North that men should not part with their guns till the women throw away their babies.
One thing that I thought might cause some trouble was the fact of our having no snow-shoes, and the snow would soon be deep enough to require them. We took all our beans and rice, but left about thirty pounds of flour in a sack on the scaffold, thinking it needlessly heavy to carry, and that it was better to run short for a day or two than overload ourselves and prevent rapid travelling.
The ice was piled up high on the banks, and we began badly by climbing over a steep hill covered with such heavy timber that the pace was slow, and it was night when we came out on the bank of the Parsnip not more than four miles from our last camp. The next day we did rather better, but, getting among burnt timber and deep snow, had many heavy falls. In the evening we found a jamb in the river, and, making rather a risky crossing with the chance of our ice-bridge breaking up at any moment, camped on the Macleod side, thinking that we were now surely safe enough, and the worst thing that could happen might be a little starvation before we reached the fort. Then came two days of fair travelling, sometimes on the ice and sometimes in the woods, but the latter were so thick that it was hard to get through them at all.
I have never seen a river freeze in the remarkable manner that the Parsnip set fast this summer. The first jamb had probably taken place at the junction of the Findlay; the water had backed up till it stood at a higher level than the summer floods, and the gravel beach was deeply submerged. There was no appearance of sh.o.r.e-ice, as the constant rise and fall in the water prevented a gradual freezing; jambs would form and break up again, and huge blocks of ice were forced on each other in every conceivable position. Often too the ice was flooded, and it was already cold enough to freeze wet feet; the backwaters were full, and the ice on them usually under water or hanging from the banks without support; the sh.o.r.es were fringed with a tangled ma.s.s of willows, heavily laden with snow and their roots often standing in water, while behind, rising to the summit of rough broken hills, was the dense pine-growth of the great sub-Arctic forest.
John caused a good deal of delay by not keeping up, and I did not like to leave him far behind, as he was clumsy on the ice, and there were many treacherous spots where black running water showed in strong contrast to the snow, and the gurgle of a swift current suggested an unpleasant ending to the unlucky man who should break through. Everybody carried an axe or a stick to sound the ice, and, excepting near the banks where the water had fallen away from the ice, there were no mishaps. Further delay was caused by our frequently having to light a fire to dry moccasins and keep our feet from freezing.