From this lake the country was level, and the women were quite able to manage the dog-sleighs, while the men scoured the country on either side of the track in search of caribou or ptarmigan. The birds were fairly plentiful, but of course at this season were all paired, and there was no chance of making a slaughter at a single shot, as one can do in the fall of the year when the birds are in big packs; this shooting at separate birds was a serious strain on our ammunition, but the ptarmigan helped us out till we fell in with the caribou. It was almost a certainty to find these birds in every bunch of pines, and they kept up such a constant crowing round the camp at night that they had a poor chance of escaping the hungry man"s gun. After the snow has melted the male bird gets pugnacious and runs up to meet the hunter, with his feathers puffed out, offering a fair mark for a stone; but before this happened we disdained ptarmigan, and would only kill the fattest-looking caribou. We eked out a precarious existence in this manner for a week, making short days" journeys, as the dogs could not travel fast or far. Pierre Lockhart deserted one morning when breakfast was particularly scanty, and taking his gun and blanket started back for Fond du Lac; we were depending on him for guide, but it was rather a relief when he went, as he was inclined to steal food, and had several disgusting habits that made his absence from the lodge rather acceptable than otherwise. Marlo"s brother-in-law disappeared about the same time, but we thought they had gone off together and did not trouble ourselves further about them.
On the last day of May, acting on Capot Blanc"s advice, we forked from our canoe-route, and took a more easterly course, to fall on the chain of lakes by which Anderson and Stewart had reached the Great Fish River.
We hoped to find caribou in this direction, and on the same day that we made this change in our course the indefatigable Saltatha, having made a much longer round than the rest of us, came into camp late at night with a load of caribou-meat on his back; he had seen snow-shoe tracks to the east, but falling in with the caribou had turned back to the camp without following the tracks.
Sunday, June 1st, brought a distinct change in the weather; a mild south-west wind was melting the snow rapidly, and several flocks of geese and ducks pa.s.sed to the north. A few geese were called up to the camp and killed from the doors of the lodges; the Indians imitate to perfection the cry of any bird, and at this time of year the geese are easy to call, as they are always in search of open water, and seem not a bit surprised to hear their friends calling to them from a group of deer-skin lodges. In the morning we sent two men to bring in the rest of Saltatha"s meat, with orders to investigate the tracks, and see if there was another encampment of Indians to the east, as none of the caribou hunters had intended to leave the Great Slave Lake till the thaw came.
Our peaceful Sunday was greatly disturbed by a royal row in one of the lodges, and we sent for Capot Blanc to ask him what the trouble was. The old fellow was glad enough to get into our lodge away from the clamour, and explained the cause of the disturbance in his even low-pitched voice, so pleasantly contrasted with the Yellow Knife Billingsgate that was being freely used outside. "It is the women," he said; "the wife of Syene has called the wife of Saltatha by a bad name, because she would not give her some meat; the wife of Saltatha has taken the wife of Syene by the hair and beaten her in the face with a snow-shoe till her nose bleeds very much; the men have tried to separate them, but that only makes things worse. It is always like this in our camps when we starve.
If the men are alone they are quiet; but when there are women there is no peace. Is it so also in your country?"
Late in the night the men who had gone to fetch the meat came back, hauling on the sleigh Marlo"s brother-in-law Jose, whom they had found lying in the snow, without fire, in a bunch of dwarf pines; the snow-shoe tracks were his, and but for the lucky chance of Saltatha"s killing the caribou in that direction he must have perished in a day or two, as he was too weak to travel. He had left us to hunt ptarmigan, and lost himself eight days ago, and, as we supposed he had deserted with Pierre, we had taken no trouble to look for him. He was one of the unlucky ones, believed to have seen "the Enemy" in his youth, and it certainly says little for his wits that he was unable to follow the tracks of such a large party. Jose had used up what little ammunition he started with on the first day, and since then had eaten nothing; he was without matches or touchwood to make fire, and as the weather had been cold he must have suffered greatly. We fed him up to the best of our ability, and he recovered rapidly when meat was abundant in the camp.
CHAPTER XI
On the following day we made an easy day"s travel to the east, and most of us succeeded in killing caribou while the women drove the dogs. From this time, all through the summer till we again reached the Great Slave Lake late in August, we had no difficulty about provisions; although there was many a time when we could not say where we might find our next meal, something always turned up, and we were never a single day without eating during the whole journey. I really believe it is a mistake to try to carry enough food for a summer"s work in the Barren Ground, as the difficulty of transport is so great, and after the caribou are once found there is no danger of starvation.
We were now travelling with the bull caribou, which had just left the thick woods, and made easy marches from lake to lake in an north-east direction; the weather became cold again for the last time, and June 7th was like a bad winter"s day with a strong north wind and snowstorms.
Then the summer came suddenly, and on the 11th we were obliged to camp on a high gravel ridge to await _le grand degel_, which rendered travelling impossible, till the deep water had run off the ice.
Although we had been so far taking it very easily, a rest was of great service, as many of the party were suffering from acute snow-blindness caused by the everlasting glare of the sun on the treeless waste; there was no dark object to rest the eyes upon for a moment, and besides the actual pain the constant inflammation injured the sight and made rifle-shooting very uncertain. The Indians smeared their faces with blood and wood-ashes, and the white men were further protected with spectacles; but these efforts were only partially successful in keeping off the glare. I was lucky in getting off quite free myself, but should imagine that it must be a most painful affliction.
Along the foot of the sandy ridge, which closely resembled the one I had seen the autumn before at Lac de Gras, were many small lakes partially thawed, and here the snow geese, or white "wavies," were resting in thousands, waiting till the warm weather should have melted the snow from their feeding-ground along the sea-coast. We could have made enormous bags of them, as they were tame and disinclined to leave the open water; but we were sparing with our ammunition, as we might want it badly later on. Great numbers were killed, however, and their prime condition told of the good feeding-ground they had left far southward.
There were also plenty of large Canada geese, but the grey wavy, or laughing goose, the best of all for eating, is much scarcer. Of the more edible ducks the pintail seems to be the only one that comes so far beyond the Great Slave Lake, but long-tailed ducks and golden eyes were in great numbers along this sandy ridge. Of the loons, the red-throated variety was by far the most numerous, and the Pacific or Adam"s diver was fairly common, but the great northern diver, although plentiful on the Great Slave Lake, does not appear to visit the Barren Ground.
While we were waiting here, another band of Indians from Fond du Lac caught us up, and our camp a.s.sumed still larger proportions; but as we were fairly among the game it did not much matter. With the new arrivals were two blind men, Pierre and Antoine Fat, who preferred a wandering life to the support they would doubtless have been given at the fort.
Both were good fishermen, and would spend hours sitting on the ice at the edge of an open hole with the greatest patience, and later on made heavy catches of trout. Pierre would often walk with the hunters to get his share of the meat; Capot Blanc was usually his guide, but seldom did more than trail a stick after him and the blind man followed the sound; when a caribou was killed, Pierre was led up to it, and in spite of his blindness would do the butcher"s work cleanly and well.
The snow melted away rapidly; the hillsides were running with small streams, the ground showed up in ever increasing patches, and a thick mist, which the Indians say always appears at the time of the big thaw, hung over everything. On June 16th we found that most of the water had run off through the cracks in the ice, and resumed our journey, after solemnly burning some thirty pairs of used-up snow-shoes. At first walking without them seemed hard to me, as I had used them continually since the previous October, and we all found that our feet were made sore by walking on the rough ice; unfortunately the skins of the caribou that we killed were so riddled by grubs that they were unfit to dress for leather, and we were always short of moccasins. We still travelled along easily, as the river would not break up for a fortnight at the earliest, and our best plan was to move with the caribou, which seemed to be keeping up with the edge of the snow much in the same manner as ourselves. The portages between the lakes were often three or four miles in length, and, as the snow had gone, we were obliged to carry the heavy loads on our backs; firewood was getting scarce, and I came to the conclusion that our old canoe-route was by far the best way to reach the Barren Ground in summer or in winter. A few warm days made a great difference in the appearance of the country. Leaves began to sprout on the little willows, and the gra.s.s showed green on the hillsides; sober-hued flowers, growing close to the ground, came out in bloom, and a few b.u.t.terflies flapped in the hot sunshine, while we were still walking on eight feet of solid ice. Mosquitos appeared in myriads: in the daytime there was usually a breeze to blow them away, and the nights were too cold for them; but in the calm mornings and evenings they made the most of their chance to annoy us.
On June 25th we planted our lodges on a high ridge overlooking Lake Mackay. It has always been the fashion of the Yellow Knives to camp in an elevated position, in order to have command of the surrounding country in looking out for the caribou, or, in the olden times, for a band of hostile Indians. Right across the lake we could see the bay in which we had left our big canoe during our first attempt to find the musk-ox, and the hills forming the height of land between the Great Slave Lake and the Arctic Sea; on our right lay Lockhart"s River and the huge Aylmer Lake, which we were about to cross. Blind Pierre knew the whole picture as well as any of us; on my way back to camp at sundown I found him sitting on a boulder smoking, for we always rather favoured him in the matter of tobacco; his face was turned to the north-east, and he was evidently taking in all the details of the landscape, without the sense of sight. "_Tetchenula_, _Tetchen Yarsula_, _Tetchen Taote_ (no wood, not a little wood, no wood at all)," he said, as he waved his hands towards Aylmer Lake; then, with a sweep of his arm, he traced correctly the course of Lockhart"s River, with a rapid downward motion, to denote its abrupt termination in a series of rapids and waterfalls as it joins the Great Slave Lake. Poor old fellow, it must be hard for him not to see the country he loves so well; but he is happy, after his fashion, in the summer-time when the caribou are thick.
From this point we sent Moise with three Indians and our own dogs to bring up the big canoe from the south sh.o.r.e of Lake Mackay, where I had left her in the beginning of last October. Many little hunting-canoes had been picked up along the track from Fond du Lac, and now every sleigh carried a canoe athwartships; these proved useful enough in crossing the small lake in the course of Lockhart"s River, as on arriving at the far side we found open water between us and the land, and had to use the canoes to ferry our cargo to the sh.o.r.e, the dogs swimming with the empty sleighs in tow, while some enterprising spirits, who conceived the idea of floating ash.o.r.e on blocks of ice, came in for a ducking. The ice on Aylmer Lake was still solid, but extremely rough, causing great damage to our moccasins. We kept near the north sh.o.r.e, with sometimes a long traverse across a deep bay; at the head of every bay a stream ran into the lake, and the open water at its mouth was always a sure find for trout; forty or fifty large fish were often caught in a day with hook and line at these places, and, as we could always kill caribou, even the dogs were getting fat in this land of plenty. Soon we began to see sc.r.a.ps of musk-ox hair on the large boulders where these animals had been rubbing, and on the second day"s travel along Aylmer Lake David had an adventure with an old bull. David was by far the keenest hunter in the outfit, but up till now had not succeeded in killing anything bigger than a goose, and it was an exciting moment for him when he got within range of a musk-ox. He had heard strange stories about these animals when a small boy among his own countrymen at the mouth of the Mackenzie River, and it was not without a little trembling that he fired one of his scanty stock of bullets. The beast was wounded but would not die, and David, standing off at a safe distance, soon exhausted all his bullets; he then proceeded to load his gun with round stones, and finally with handfuls of gravel; his last charge of powder was used to fire the ramrod, but another half hour elapsed before the musk-ox expired. As this was the first one that had been killed on this trip, the proud hunter was made a good deal of when he came into camp with the best of the highly-flavoured meat.
On the evening of July 1st we made the encampment at the head of the most northerly bay of Aylmer Lake, named Sandy Bay by Back, from the conspicuous sand-ridges that here form the divide between the lake and the Great Fish River, a distance of three quarters of a mile. The ice was still firm in Aylmer Lake, but there was a little difficulty in getting ash.o.r.e through a narrow belt of open water, and the head-reaches of the river were clear. We were inspecting the stream, to see what chance there was of being able to run the canoe through the numerous rapids, when Noel, one of the Indians who had been with me on the winter hunt, came up with the news that he had spied a large band of musk-ox feeding a couple of miles down the river. The women were badly in need of their hides for making moccasins, as the caribou-skins were still in poor condition, so a hunt was arranged in a fashion that I had not seen before. Most of the guns crossed the river, and a spot was selected for the slaughter just where the stream broadened out into a small lake; at right angles to the river mounds of stone and moss were put up at a few yards" distance from each other, ornamented with coats, belts, and gun-covers, and behind the outside mound Capot Blanc took up his position. A steep hill ran parallel with the stream about two hundred yards away, and along this guns were posted at intervals, with the intention of heading the musk-ox towards the water. Noel and Marlo, supposed to be the two best runners, were to make a long round and start the band in our direction; I was stationed with three other guns among some broken rocks on the south side of the river, just opposite the barrier; and orders were given that no shot should be fired till the musk-ox took to the water.
It was a most interesting scene, and I would not willingly have changed places with any of the loyal Canadians who were at this time celebrating the anniversary of Dominion Day, with much rye whisky, a thousand miles to the southward. I had plenty of time to admire the surrounding landscape, and the sunset that lit up the snow-drifts on each side of the river; when suddenly over the opposite ridge appeared the horns of a band of caribou, and for a moment the leader was outlined against the sky as he paused to look at the strange preparations going on in the valley below. Behind me a ptarmigan, perched on a rock, crowed defiance; but there was no other sound, except the rush of water and the occasional grinding of an ice-pan dislodged from some small lake in the course of the stream. Fully an hour we sat among the rocks, and were beginning to think that the hunt had miscarried, when we heard a distant shouting far down the valley, and the next moment caught sight of a scurrying black ma.s.s crossing a spur of the hill close to the river"s bank. The men posted along the ridge took up the cry as the musk-ox pa.s.sed them, and joined in the chase; soon the animals came to the barrier, and pulled up short at the apparition, while, to increase their alarm, the h.o.a.ry head of Capot Blanc arose from behind a mound of rocks right in front of them. This was the critical moment, and they would certainly have taken to the water and been at the mercy of their pursuers but for an untimely shot that caused them to break, and I was not sorry to see that several of the band escaped. I had had a splendid view till now, as the musk-ox halted within twenty yards of me, but we were forced to lie low when the shooting began, as bullets were rattling freely among the rocks in which we were hiding. We did no shooting on our side of the river, except to finish off a couple that took to the water; seven were killed in all, six cows, and a calf about a month old; there were no bulls in the band, and from what I afterwards saw they seemed to keep separate from the cows during the summer. A solitary old bull is often met with at this time of year.
When the hunt was over, I inquired the meaning of the shouting that had been kept up so continually throughout the drive, and was informed that this was necessary to let the musk-ox know which way to run. At starting they had shouted, "Oh, musk-ox, there is a barrier planted for you down there, where the river joins the little lake; when you reach it take to the water, there are men with guns on both sides, and so we shall kill you all"; when the men are out of breath, they shout to the musk-ox to stop, and, after they have rested, to go on again. These animals are said to understand every word of the Yellow Knife language, though it seems strange that they do not make use of the information they receive to avoid danger instead of obeying orders. The partial failure of the hunt was attributed to the fact that Moise had called across the river to me in French, and the musk-ox had not been able to understand this strange language.
The sun had risen again when we got back to camp, and there we found the big canoe, not a bit damaged by her long rest under the snow or her adventurous journey on the dog-sleigh. The day was spent in getting in the meat and skins, and early the next morning we carried the canoe across the portage and launched her on the waters of the Great Fish River. The cargo was all sent overland to a lake some six miles down the stream; sleighs were abandoned, as there was now no snow to haul on, but the dogs" work was by no means over, the only difference being that they had to carry loads on their backs instead of dragging a sleigh; rough deer-skin pack-harness was made, and the loads secured in a manner worthy of a Mexican mule-packer. We came to grief with the canoe at the third rapid, and should have done much better to have made the portage to the lake, instead of trying to navigate the difficult stream. A long delay was necessary to effect repairs, and there were so many portages over ice-blocks along the edge of the lake, when we reached it, that the sun was high on the following morning before we camped. The same work continued for several days, the Indians toiling overland heavily loaded, and our own party struggling with the ice in a chain of lakes through which the river runs. On the edge of one of these lakes we stopped for dinner on the spot where Stewart and Anderson separated from their Indian guides before descending the river in 1856. The rough stone fireplaces, by which they had economised fuel, were still standing, and Capot Blanc, seated on one of them, gave us a long lecture on the events that had taken place during their expedition, as he had heard the story from his father. More than thirty years had elapsed since the last party of Whites camped by the side of the Great Fish River, and thirty years again before them Back the discoverer had pushed out into the unknown land. Why has all exploration in the Barren Ground ceased? No more is known of the country than was discovered by Franklin and Back sixty years ago in their short summer journeys, and the expeditions sent out in search of the former in the "Fifties. There are many thousands of square miles on which the foot of white man has never stepped. The Canadian Government has an efficient body of surveyors and geologists at its command, and it is curious that no attention is paid to one of the most interesting fields for exploration.
On July 6th, after slow and tiresome travelling, we reached the north end of a large sheet of water named by Back Musk-ox Lake, and finding enough willow-scrub for firewood, determined here to await the breaking up of the ice in the lake. Judging by the Indian"s account the season was fully three weeks later than usual, and, as I wished to be back at Fort Resolution in time to save the open water up Peace River before winter set in, there was a poor chance of our being able to penetrate far into the country of the Esquimaux. Musk-ox Lake runs pretty nearly due north and south, and is fifteen miles in length, averaging about two miles in width. Our camp was just at the point where the river runs out, and a short distance above is the best swimming-place for the caribou known to the Indians. In some years immense slaughters are made here, but on the present occasion the caribou did not cross in their usual numbers, so that our companions had no chance to put up the dried meat that we expected to get for our cruise down stream, and we could only kill enough for the present support of such a large encampment. Across the lake is a hill of insignificant height, known as the Musk-ox Mountain, a good landmark, and a favourite haunt for the animals from which it takes its name.
This is the northerly limit of the Yellow Knives" hunting-ground.
Northwards is the land of the dreaded Esquimaux, and many rumours were brought into the camp of a strange track seen on soft ground, of men standing far off on the sky-line, and a blue cloud of smoke arising far down the valley of the river. The Indians were convinced that their old enemies were continually close to them, despite the fact that it would be an impossibility for canoes to have yet ascended the stream on account of the ice. We afterwards discovered that there was a debatable ground, fully sixty miles in width, between Musk-ox Lake and the highest point that the Esquimaux reach.
There is here a very striking change in the appearance of the country.
The old red granite formation gives way almost entirely to ironstone, split up into slabs and piled into such peculiar shapes that one might imagine giants had been building castles over the rolling hills. Some of the slabs were turned on edge and formed perfect turrets towering many feet into the air, and in many places were heaps of shiny black sand, resembling coal-dust, piled up into conical mounds almost too steep to climb. Wherever vegetation had a chance to grow it was much more luxuriant than one could suppose possible in such a climate. The stunted willows, not two feet in height, were thickly clothed with bright green leaves; there was abundance of gra.s.s, and in many spots the pretty little Arctic flowers formed a bright carpet along the foot of a slowly melting snowdrift.
Capot Blanc and myself made an expedition into the roughest part of this country, to the north-east of Musk-ox Lake, but we found travelling very hard, as we had to climb continually over broken ma.s.ses of ironstone.
This is another well-known haunt of "the Enemy," and Capot Blanc attributed to his malign influence the disaster that prevented our further exploration in this direction. We reached a stream of no great size, one of the tributaries of the Great Fish River, and attempted to wade across to the opposite bank, selecting the head of a small rapid for the purpose, as the water appeared to be shallower there. On reaching the centre of the current our legs were swept from under us, and we were immediately running the rapid at the imminent risk of breaking our heads against a rock. We both reached the still water at the foot of the rapid with nothing worse than a few bruises, and moreover held on to our guns, but of course our ammunition was spoilt, and we were obliged to make the best of our way back to camp. Capot Blanc afterwards told me that he thought the Enemy had made the water strong, to keep us from coming into his country, and it would be flying in the face of Providence to make another attempt. It would be interesting to know how far this ironstone formation extends; and, as the journey to Musk-ox Lake and back to the fort might easily be made by canoe during the summer, the trip would amply repay the geologist and botanist for their trouble.
Many other little expeditions we made in various directions, sometimes watching the birds, and sometimes in pursuit of caribou or musk-ox. One hunt in particular I remember, which took place appropriately enough on the top of Musk-ox Mountain. We had made out the moving black spots through the gla.s.ses from the lodge, and, as there was still a demand for hides from the women and meat was being used in great quant.i.ties, we paddled across the lake through a narrow channel in the ice. The sun went down while we were climbing the ascent, and a long wait was necessary, as the animals were feeding towards us on the flat top of the mountain and there was no cover to enable us to make a nearer approach.
The mosquitos buzzed merrily round us while we lay behind the rock and watched the grotesque motions of the calves as they played with each other, little suspecting that danger was so close. Presently the band moved within easy range and we opened fire with four guns. Seven were killed, and Mackinlay caught a calf that stayed by the body of its dead mother, a fluffy, long-haired little beast; I was sorry that we could not keep it alive, but it would have been impossible to carry it in a birch-bark canoe. Cruel work, this shooting in the summer-time, but it was necessary to keep the camp in meat even though mother and young had to be sacrificed. I had a long run after a cripple, and eventually killed it on the sh.o.r.e of a large lake in a valley eastward of the mountain. The sun was high when I found the rest of the hunters eating marrow-bones in front of a big fire, in a clump of well-grown willows close to the canoe, and we took a load of wood back to the camp, sending over the women for the meat and skins later in the day.
The weather during this time was variable in the extreme; two or three hot days would be followed by a snowstorm, and once we were visited by a hurricane that did much damage to lodge-poles, and caused us to shift camp hurriedly to the lee-side of a steep cliff hanging over the river.
July 10th was exceptionally hot in the morning, with the mosquitos at their worst; in the middle of the day there was a thunderstorm, and at five o"clock the ground was covered with snow. The ice now began to show signs of rotting, and the channel of open water round the weather edge of the lake grew rapidly broader.
We had many talks with the Indians about the chances of our being able to get together a crew; but they had no enthusiasm about the voyage, and wanted nothing better than to keep us hanging about the head of the river, providing them with ammunition. Saltatha was the only one of the band who volunteered to go, and he insisted on having another Indian with him, as he was not used to the ways of white men, and would feel safer if he had one of his own tribe with him in case of accidents; but he hoped we should not go farther than the big lake (Beechey Lake) which he had heard us talking about, for it was getting late in the year, and when the ice is long in melting winter comes again soon. At last it was arranged that Saltatha and Noel were to come in our canoe, while Marlo and Carquoss accompanied us with a small hunting-canoe, to carry a little ammunition in case we lost our cargo by capsizing in a rapid; we should then have a chance of making a living, and be able to cross the tributary stream if we had to return on foot. On our part we agreed to turn back from Beechey Lake, reserving the privilege of taking the little canoe overland from there to Bathurst Inlet. As caribou were scarce, the rest of the Indians were to work their way back towards the Great Slave Lake, except Capot Blanc, who was to stay on the divide at Aylmer Lake, if he could kill enough meat to keep his family, and there await our return.
The evening before we started, Syene, who was a Medicine Man, sent a message to our lodge that he was going to foretell the result of our expedition down the river, so we went over to hear what was in store for us. His lodge was full of Indians, but they made room for us, and we sat down on a blanket on the side of the fire farthest from the door. Syene held a drum made of tightly-stretched deer-skin parchment, which he punched continually with a caribou"s thigh-bone, keeping up a melancholy chant, and singing a sentence or two every few minutes. "It is not that I can see anything myself," he said, "but it is an unborn child that is speaking to me." Mrs. Syene, who was sitting close to the Medicine Man, clasped her hands and groaned, as if in great pain, by way of giving a.s.sent to this statement. "The child sees the canoe of the big masters running down the strong water of a rapid; below the rapid is a long point, and seven lodges of the Esquimaux are planted on the point. There is blood on the snow-drift; it is the blood of a white man. One man is walking on the bank of a river; he walks like a starving man, and the child knows not if he is white or Indian. Now all is dark, and the child has ceased speaking."
Not a very cheerful prophecy, and it was hard to make out how far the Indians believed in the Medicine Man; but our crew were rather downhearted about it, although, as is usual all the world over, the people who were not going the journey themselves took a philosophical view of the whole affair.
CHAPTER XII
On Thursday, July 17th, at two o"clock in the afternoon, we struck camp and started on a four-mile portage to the next lake down stream, as the river-bed was too full of large boulders to navigate the strong current with safety. It was hard work carrying the cargo and canoe through the mosquito-stricken ironstone country, and we did not camp till midnight.
Here another bad omen was observed. Mackinlay and I had gone ahead, after carrying over a load, to try and kill something for supper; we found a musk-ox, but made rather a clumsy mess of killing it, and the animal was badly heated before we finished it off. The meat was consequently discoloured, and Saltatha declared this to be an unfailing sign of some great misfortune at hand. The women had made us a few pair of moccasins each, but not nearly enough for the tracking-work that we should have to do when we turned up stream; and our stock of provisions, instead of the bales of dried meat that we had expected to enable us to travel without waste of time in hunting, consisted of ten dried deers"-ribs, so full of maggots, from having been imperfectly cured, that we threw them away on the second day out. Our flour and pemmican had of course been finished long ago, and we drank the last kettleful of tea before leaving Musk-ox Lake, but as the Labrador tea grows all over this country in profusion, this did not much matter; tobacco too was nearly at an end.
The lake was still full of floating ice, but we had no trouble in pa.s.sing the canoe into the river at the north end, and found the stream considerably increased in volume by a couple of large tributaries that come in from the opposite sides of the lake. After dropping down two or three miles with a sluggish current, we heard the roar of a rapid, and put ash.o.r.e on an island in mid-stream as soon as we sighted broken water. It was lucky we did so, as there was a heavy overfall impossible to run, and we were obliged to portage the whole length of the island and then shoot the tail of the rapid. Here we put ash.o.r.e to patch the canoe, which was leaking badly, and pulled out big trout as quickly as we could throw in the spoon-bait; we found this could be done at the foot of all the rapids, so one need not take much thought about provisions in this part of the stream. After another small rapid, which was run with a full load, the river, heading straight to the north, pa.s.ses through a small lake and emerges as a broad ca.n.a.l-like waterway with very slight current, flowing through the roughest part of the ironstone country that we had yet seen; the banks were steep too, and we could put the canoe alongside a natural wharf in any spot for a distance of five or six miles. In pa.s.sing down these reaches we saw and killed musk-ox, but the caribou seemed to shirk the labour of crossing the confused ma.s.ses of rocks, and none of these animals were seen till we reached a less rugged district. Again the channel widened out into a lake, two miles in length, with an ugly rapid at the north end; this we negotiated with the precaution of leaving guns and ammunition ash.o.r.e, and directly afterwards Saltatha caused some excitement by saying he had caught a glimpse of a man walking on a neighbouring ridge; we put ash.o.r.e, but could find no tracks, and came to the conclusion that it was Saltatha"s imagination. A long day"s travel was made successfully, and by ten o"clock we were clear of the ironstone and slipping quietly along through a pleasant sandy country. We camped at the foot of a high sand-b.u.t.te covered with flowers and moss, and found a bunch of willows on the bank of the river. There were indications that some one had camped on the same spot many years ago; small sticks had been chopped with an axe, and bones of caribou were lying in heaps on the ground. The Yellow Knives at once said it was an old Esquimaux camp, and it was evident that they had little inclination to go any farther down stream; more probably the chopping was done by a band of Dog-Ribs, whose hunting-grounds lie to the west, or possibly by the members of Stewart"s and Anderson"s expeditions. On mounting the b.u.t.te we saw that the country northward presented a much more fertile appearance than anything we had seen on the south side of the watershed. There was a luxurious growth of gra.s.s over the sandy ridges, and during the two months of summer one could imagine oneself back on the prairies of Alberta; the willows here too grew to a better size, and, as far as we descended the river, we had little trouble about fuel; in the winter, of course, the willows would be all drifted over with snow, and it would then be no easy matter to make a fire. This stream heads in the woodless country; consequently there is no drift-timber, and not a single pine-tree is to be seen along its course.
We had a pleasant camp enough that night, but rebellion was rife and burst into flame on the following morning when we ordered the men to take their places in the canoes. This is the hopeless part of having to rely on natives for travelling in the Barren Ground; they have no courage outside their own country. If we had had a good crew of half-breeds from Red River or the upper country of British Columbia we might even now, notwithstanding the lateness of the season, have pushed far out towards the northern sea-coast, and possibly have made the acquaintance of some of the scattered bands of Esquimaux who live there in happy ignorance of any more comfortable form of life. But we were practically in the hands of the Yellow Knives, for although I would myself have taken the risk of steering, none of the men who were willing to go knew how to st.i.tch up a broken canoe, and it would have been madness to push on without this knowledge. Moise, our half-breed interpreter and steersman, who was an engaged servant of the Hudson"s Bay Company and bound by his contract to obey Mackinlay"s orders in everything, showed the Indian side of his nature by joining the mutineers and refusing to take his position in the stern of the canoe.
For two hours we argued the matter on the bank of the river, and at one time I thought we should certainly have come to blows. Marlo and Carquoss were the ringleaders, but Saltatha was inclined to stand by us, although afraid of giving offence to the other Indians. The result of the dispute was that the worst two deserted, taking with them the little canoe, while Noel and Saltatha, tempted by many promises of great reward when we reached the fort, agreed to come with us, and Moise sulkily went back to his duty. After we had thus got rid of the element of discord things went on better; but the loss of the little canoe, besides doing away with our chance of crossing overland to Bathurst Inlet, increased the risk of losing all our possessions by one disaster. A pretty poetical thing is a birch-bark canoe, as it leaps down a sparkling river among its native birch woods, but too frail a craft for a long journey in the rockbound country beyond the line where timber grows. No chance here to strip the bark from a birch-tree and put a new side in a canoe that has struck a rock in the foaming rapid, or if needs be to build a new canoe altogether; three square feet of birch-bark, a little gum, and a bundle of fibre were our only resources for effecting repairs.
The day"s journey began with a rapid, below which was a reach of quiet water gradually broadening out into a lake some eight miles in length; its surface was covered with ice at the north end, but we found an open channel close ash.o.r.e on the west side and effected a pa.s.sage through by skirting the bays. Several bands of musk-ox were seen, and there was always too much anxiety among the men to put ash.o.r.e and shoot, or to do anything except push steadily on; just as we were leaving the lake a magnificent bull appeared on the top of a high ridge, and, standing on a flat rock within one hundred yards of us, leisurely surveyed the first human beings who had encroached upon his sanctuary for so many years.
Below the lake the river makes a sharp bend eastward, and for three miles is nothing but a succession of rapids. Moise when once at work was a splendid steersman, and he certainly handled the canoe with great skill through this difficult piece of navigation; we pa.s.sed the mouths of two big streams coming in from the west, and at camping-time shot into a quiet sandy lake and put ash.o.r.e for the night. A musk-ox that I killed from the door of the lodge, and the unlimited number of trout that we could catch in the river, enabled us to spend a peaceful Sunday without hunting. We explored towards the east, and came once more upon the iron country, which seems to run with a sharply defined edge in a north-easterly direction. There were few lakes out of the course of the river, but long stretches of flat gra.s.sy muskegs extended as far as the eye could see to the west. Four-footed game was plentiful, especially musk-ox; the caribou that we saw were generally solitary bucks, but it was now nearly time for the does to be coming back from the sea-coast; of the smaller animals we often came across a skulking wolf, a wolverine, an Arctic fox, or a hare, while the holes in the sand-hills were the abode of numerous _siffleurs_ and ermines. A ferocious little mouse, brown in summer, but turning white as the winter comes on, is very common all over the Barren Ground; if disturbed from a tuft of gra.s.s it will turn on a man and dance with impotent rage at his feet; these mice naturally fall an easy prey to the hawks and owls, which make a good living here during the summer months. Beyond these predatory birds little feathered life was visible in this part of the country; a few gulls, terns, and skuas flitted along the reaches of the river, and occasionally a loon or a long-tailed duck could be seen in the lakes.
The Canada goose and grey wavy were breeding in the marshes, but not in great quant.i.ties; the main body of geese go right out to the coast to lay their eggs, and do not start for the South till the end of August.
In the early morning we made a short portage over a small cascade immediately below the camp, and found that the river still held its northerly course through a chain of small lakes connected by short stretches of bad water. We made one more portage at mid-day and ran several rather nasty rapids. After dinner we were obliged to portage fully a mile to avoid an impa.s.sable reach, and then took more risk than we were justified in doing with our only canoe by running a couple of miles of broken water, full of boulders and with such a heavy sea that we shipped a good deal of water; luckily we did not touch anything, and dropped safely into a long narrow lake, on the east side of which camp was made for the night. This was the most dangerous day that we made; as although we always put ash.o.r.e to inspect the rapids in case we might discover a waterfall below, we became emboldened by success and ran in safety through some places that we should not have attempted. Back"s map of the river would have been a great help to us, but neither this nor an account of the previous journeys that had been made down the stream was procurable at the fort.
The next day a curious blue haze hung over everything, closely resembling the smoke of a forest fire at a distance from the scene of conflagration. The lake that we had camped on proved to be about six miles in length, with the usual rapid at its north end connecting it with another lake, the size of which we could not at first determine owing to the murky state of the air; nor could we at once find its outlet, but by keeping in a north-easterly direction soon felt the influence of a current, and found the volume of water much increased by the junction of a tributary, which we afterwards discovered came in from the north-west. On the east side of the stream, just as it left the lake, we noticed a circle of flat stones standing on end, evidently put up by human hands, and on landing discovered unmistakable signs of a band of Esquimaux having been encamped there not very long before. Seven small oval-shaped enclosures, surrounded by rough turf-heaps six inches in height, had been the dwelling-places, but we could not determine whether these low walls were the foundations of snow-houses or deer-skin lodges; there were several blackened fireplaces outside, but the fires must have been very small judging from the charred stumps of tiny green willow twigs, and we saw no wood within several miles of the encampment.
The stones propped on end had been used probably for drying meat, and for tying up the dogs to keep them from stealing. Bones and horns of musk-ox and caribou were lying about in every direction, and their numbers showed that this must be a favourite camping-place of the Esquimaux; some of the musk-ox horns had been cut into rough spoons, and several were found in a half-finished condition. A flat stone kettle was picked up with the grease still sticking to it, and a small piece of copper let into the back, possibly an arrangement for a handle, showed that these people are able to work this metal; there were also a few bone arrow-heads scattered about in the camp. If any further proof were necessary to determine what tribe of people had camped here, it was forthcoming in the form of several pieces of undressed sealskin with the hair on, and these seemed to be of greater interest to our crew than any of the other discoveries; arrow-heads, spoons, and kettle were dropped in the contemplation of the skin of an animal they had never seen, and they instantly demanded a description of the seal. After we had told them all we knew upon the subject, we asked their opinion as to the length of time that the Esquimaux had remained here, and when they had left. Saltatha, reading the signs that a white man might miss, came to the conclusion that they had come here in the autumn, as was proved by the hard horns of male caribou lying about, that they had stayed here through the winter, and left late in the spring with dogs on the last snow, about six weeks before our arrival. He thought too that they made a practice of coming here regularly, in the same manner that the Yellow Knives come to the head-waters of the river, as the bones appeared to him to have belonged to animals killed at widely differing dates. We found hiding-places among the rocks close to the edge of the river, which had evidently been used for concealing men engaged in spearing the swimming caribou. The only weak point in Saltatha"s theory seemed to be the absence of any carca.s.ses of freshly killed caribou; but it is possible that the Esquimaux may have left before the females came out so far, and the animals would have been later than usual in arriving here owing to the backward nature of the spring.
When we had thoroughly inspected everything we left again down stream, with a swift current and good water without rapids for eight miles, where we found another lake running more to the eastward than the general course of the river; on the west side of this lake we were obliged to camp, as a strong head-wind raised too much sea to travel against, and rain was falling in torrents. We explored the sh.o.r.e of the lake in hopes of finding further traces of the Esquimaux, but made no discoveries of any kind. No musk-ox were seen this day, but there were enough caribou to provide food for the party.
With better weather we made an early start in the morning, the river on leaving the lake bending a little more to the eastward, with a swift current for several miles, and two rapids which we ran in safety. A short distance below the second rapid the current slackens and the stream gets rapidly broader, till, with a sudden sweep to the south-east, the whole length of Beechey Lake comes open; a long narrow sheet of water, twenty-five miles in length, and nowhere more than two in breadth, lying east and west, and forming a well-defined elbow in the course of the Great Fish River. With a light fair wind, and a blanket set for a sail, we ran down the lake and pitched our lodge on the north sh.o.r.e. Two days were spent in exploration, but again we failed entirely to find any signs of the Esquimaux. Towards the east end of the lake the iron formation shows up once more, and the country is rough to travel through. There was a slight difficulty about provisions at this time as game was scarce, and, though we fully expected to catch fish in the lake and put out our net both nights, not a single fish was taken; just at the critical time, however, a few female caribou with their young turned up on their way back to the South, and we were relieved of all anxiety.
As we had promised our crew that we would not descend the river beyond Beechey Lake, and it was already the end of July, orders were reluctantly given on the third day to start up stream with the intention of doing a little exploration to the northward of the old Esquimaux camp, to see if there was any feasible route from there to Bathurst Inlet, as there were no signs of these people having camped in any other place along the river. It seemed a pity to abandon the voyage just at the interesting time, after we had got over all the difficulties of the upper part of the river and had now only a broad stream to follow, with a great deal of easy lake-travel, to reach the Arctic Ocean, and the scene of the final sufferings of the members of Sir John Franklin"s last expedition. On the other hand, we had no object in going down to the sea, and there is little pleasure to be got out of a journey of this kind with an unwilling and untrustworthy crew; our canoe, too, which was already leaking badly, would have been of very little service for sea work.
As far as Beechey Lake the south side of the Great Fish River is free from any large tributary streams, so that, if our canoe had been smashed up in a rapid, and we had been able to save guns and ammunition, it would have been easy enough to follow the river on foot; but on the north side there are several large streams to be forded, and a long detour might be necessary to find a spot shallow enough for this purpose.
There was much more enthusiasm displayed by the Indian portion of the crew on the up-stream journey, and no encouragement was needful to get a good day"s work done. In the river stretches the tracking line was used, and three men at the sh.o.r.e end of it kept the canoe travelling at a lively pace except in the very strong water; in mounting the second rapid a mistake on the part of Noel, our bowsman, caused a heavy collision with a rock, and several hours were spent in putting in a patch of birch-bark. On the second night we pitched our lodge on the sandy lake within sight of the Esquimaux camp, and found a considerable stream coming in from a north-westerly direction. I cannot find any mention of this stream in the accounts of the two former journeys down the river, nor is it marked on the maps; it was probably unnoticed on both occasions, as it comes in at the west end of the lake, out of the course of a canoe pa.s.sing up or down the main river.