with a peremptory order that "sending to Rome" should be at once discontinued in my trains. The wretched "Whisky," after his voyage to the Eternal City, appeared quite overcome with what he had there seen, and continued to stagger along the trail, making feeble efforts to keep straight. This tendency to wobble caused the half-breeds to indulge in funny remarks, one of them calling the track a "drunken trail."
Eventually, "Whisky" was abandoned to his fate. I had never been a believer in the pluck and courage of the men who are the descendants of mixed European and Indian parents. Admirable as guides, unequalled as voyageurs, trappers, and hunters, they nevertheless are wanting in those qualities which give courage or true manhood. "Tell me your friends and I will tell you what you are ": is a sound proverb, and in no sense more true than when the bounds of man"s friendships are stretched Wide.
enough to admit those dumb companions, the horse and the dog. I never knew a man yet, or for that matter a woman, worth much who did not like dogs and horses, and I would always feel inclined to suspect a man who was shunned by a dog. The cruelty so systematically practised upon dogs by their half-breed drivers is utterly unwarrantable. In winter the poor brutes become more than ever the benefactors of man, uniting in themselves all the services of horse and dog--by day they work, by night they watch, and the man must be a very cur in nature who would inflict, at such a time, needless cruelty upon the animal that renders him so much a.s.sistance. On this day, the 29th December, we made a night march in the hope of reaching Fort Pitt. For four hours we walked on through the dark until the trail led us suddenly into the midst of an immense band of animals, which commenced to dash around us in a high state of alarm. At first we fancied in the indistinct moonlight that they were buffalo, but another instant sufficed to prove them horses. We had, in fact, struck into the middle of the Fort Pitt band of horses, numbering some ninety or a hundred head. We were, however, still a long way from the fort, and as the trail was utterly lost in the confused medley of tracks all round us, we were compelled to halt for the night near midnight. In a small clump of willows we made a hasty camp and lay down to sleep. Daylight next morning showed that conspicuous landmark called the Frenchman"s Knoll rising north-east; and lying in the snow close beside us was poor "Whisky." He had followed on during the night from the place where he had been abandoned on the previous day, and had come up again with his persecutors while they lay asleep; for, after all, there was one fate worse than being "sent to Rome," and that was being left to starve. After a few hours run we reached Fort Pitt, having travelled about 150 miles in three days and a half.
Fort Pitt was dest.i.tute of fresh dogs or drivers, and consequently a delay of some days became necessary before my onward journey could be resumed. In the absence of dogs and drivers Fort Pitt, however, offered small-pox to its visitors. A case had broken out a few days previous to my arrival impossible to trace in any way, but probably the result of some infection conveyed into the fort during the terrible visitation of the autumn. I have already spoken of the power which the Indian possesses of continuing the ordinary avocations of his life in the presence of disease. This power he also possesses under that most terrible affliction-the loss of sight. Blindness is by no means an uncommon occurrence among the tribes of the Saskatchewan. The blinding glare of the snow-covered plains, the sand in summer, and, above all, the dense smoke of the tents, where the fire of wood, lighted in the centre, fills the whole lodge with a smoke which is peculiarly trying to the sight-all these causes render ophthalmic affections among the Indians a common misfortune. Here is the story of a blind Cree who arrived at Fort Pitt one day weak with starvation: From a distant camp he had started five days before, in company with his wife. They had some skins to trade, so they loaded their dog and set out on the march--the woman led the way, the blind man followed next, and the dog brought up the rear. Soon they approached a plain upon which buffalo were feeding. The dog, seeing the buffalo, left the trail, and, carrying the furs with him, gave chase.
Away out of sight he went, until there was nothing for it but to set out in pursuit of him. Telling her husband to wait in this spot until she returned, the woman now started after the dog. Time pa.s.sed,--it was growing late, and the wind swept coldly over the snow. The blind man began to grow uneasy; "She has lost her way," he said to himself; "I will go on, and we may meet." He walked on--he called aloud, but there was no answer; go back he could not; he knew by the coldness of the air that night had fallen on the plain, but day and night were alike to him. He was alone--he was lost. Suddenly he felt against his feet the rustle of long sedgy gra.s.s--he stooped down and found that he had reached the margin of a frozen lake. He was tired, and it was time to rest; so with his knife he cut a quant.i.ty of long dry gra.s.s, and, making a bed for himself on the margin of the lake, lay down and slept. Let us go back to the woman. The dog had led her a long chase, and it was very late when she got back to the spot where she had left her husband-he was gone, but his tracks in the snow were visible, and she hurried after him. Suddenly the wind arose, the light powdery snow began to drift in clouds over the surface of the plain, the track was speedily obliterated and night was coming on. Still she followed the general direction of the footprints, and at last came to the border of the same lake by which her husband was lying asleep, but it was at some distance from the spot. She too was tired, and, making a fire in a thicket, she lay down to sleep. About the middle of the night the man awoke and set out again on his solitary way.
It snowed all night: the morning came, the day pa.s.sed, the night closed again--again the morning dawned, and still he wandered on. For three days he travelled thus over an immense plain, without food, and having only the snow wherewith to quench his thirst. On the third day he walked into a thicket; he felt around, and found that the timber was dry; with his axe he cut down some wood, then struck a light and made a fire. When the fire was alight he laid his gun down beside it, and went to gather more wood; but fate was heavy against him, he was unable to find the fire which he had lighted, and by which he had left his gun. He made another fire, and again the same result. A third time he set to work; and now, to make certain of his getting back, again, he tied a line to a tree close beside his fire, and then set on to gather wood. Again the fates smote him-his line broke, and he had to grope his way in weary search. But chance, tired of ill-treating him so long, now stood his friend--he found the first fire, and with it his gun and blanket. Again he travelled on, but now his strength began to fail, and for the first time his heart sank within him--blind, starving, and utterly lost, there seemed no hope on earth for him. "Then," he said, "I thought of the Great Spirit of whom the white men speak, and I called aloud to him, "O Great Spirit! have pity on me, and show me the path! and as I said it I heard close by the calling of a crow, and I knew that the road was not far off. I followed the call; soon I felt the crusted snow of a path under my feet, and the next day reached the fort." He had been five days without food.
No man can starve better than the Indian--no man can feast better either.
For long days and nights, he will go without sustenance of any kind; but see him when the buffalo are near, when the cows are fat; see him then if you want to know what quant.i.ty of food it is possible for a man to consume at a sitting. Here is one bill of fare:--Seven men in thirteen days consumed two buffalo bulls, seven cabri, 40 lbs. of pemmican, and a great many ducks and geese, and on the last day there was nothing to eat.
I am perfectly aware that this enormous quant.i.ty could not have weighed less than 1600 lbs. at the very lowest estimate, which would give a daily ration to each man of 18 lbs.; but, incredible as this may appear, it is by no means impossible. During the entire time I remained at Fort Pitt the daily ration issued to each man was 10 lbs. of beef.
Beef is so much richer and coa.r.s.er food than buffalo meat, that 10 lbs.
of the former would be equivalent-to 15lbs. or 16 lbs. of the latter, and yet every sc.r.a.p of that 10 lbs. was eaten by the man who received it. The women got 5 lbs., and the children, no matter how small, 3 lbs. each.
Fancy a child in arms getting 3 lbs. of beef for its daily sustenance!
The old Orkney men of the Hudson Bay Company servants must have seen in such a ration the realization of the poet"s lines, "O Caledonia, stern and wild! Meet nurse for a poetic child," etc. All these people at Fort Pitt were idle, and therefore were not capable of eating as much as if they had been on the plains. The wild hills that surround Fort Pitt are frequently the scenes of Indian ambush and attack, and on more than one occasion the fort itself has been captured by the Blackfeet. The region in which Fort Pitt stands is a favourite camping-ground of the Crees, and the Blackfeet cannot be persuaded that the people of the fort are not the active friends and allies of their enemies in fact, Fort Pitt and Carlton are looked upon by them as places belonging to another company altogether from the one which rules at the Mountain House and at Edmonton. "If it was the same company," they-say, "how could they give our enemies, the Crees, guns and powder; for do they not give us guns and powder too?" This mode of argument, which refuses to recognize that species of neutrality so dear to the English heart, is eminently calculated to lay Fort Pitt open to Blackfeet raid. It is only a few years since the place was plundered by a large band, but the general forbearance displayed by the Indians on that occasion is nevertheless remarkable. Here is the story:
One morning the people in the fort beheld a small party of Blackfeet on a high hill at the opposite side of the Saskatchewan. The usual flag carried by the chief was waved to denote a wish to trade, and accordingly the officer in charge pushed off in his boat to meet and hold converse with the party. When he reached the other side he found the chief and a few men drawn up to receive him.
"Are there Crees around the fort?" asked the chief.
"No," replied the trader; "there are none with us."
"You speak with a forked tongue," answered the Blackfoot--dividing his fingers as he spoke to indicate that the-other was speaking falsely.
Just at that moment something caught the traders eye in the bushes along the river bank; he looked again and saw, close alongside, the willows swarming with naked Blackfeet. He made one spring back into his boat, and called to his men to shove off; but it was too late. In an instant two hundred braves rose out of the gra.s.s and willows and rushed into the water; they caught the boat and brought her back to the sh.o.r.e; then, filling her as full as she would hold with men, they pushed off for the other side. To put as good a face upon matters as possible, the trader commenced a trade, and at first the batch that had crossed, about forty in number, kept quiet enough, but some-of their number took the boat back again to the south sh.o.r.e and brought over the entire band; then the wild work commenced, bolts and bars were broken open, the trading-shop was quickly cleared out, and in the highest spirits, laughing loudly at the glorious fun they were having, the braves commenced to enter the houses, ripping up the feather beds to look for guns and tearing down calico curtains for finery. The men of the fort were nearly all away in the plains, and the women and children were in a high state of alarm.
Sometimes the Indians would point their guns at the women, then drag them off the beds on which they were sitting and rip open bedding and mattress, looking for concealed weapons; but no further violence was attempted, and the whole thing was accompanied by such peals of laughter that it was evident the braves had not enjoyed such a "high old time" for a very long period. At last the chief, thinking, perhaps, that things had gone quite far enough, called out, in a loud voice, "Crees! Crees!" and, dashing out of the fort, was quickly followed by the whole band.
Still in high good humour, the braves recrossed the river, and, turning round on the farther sh.o.r.e, fired a volley to Wards the fort; but as the distance was at least 500 yards, this parting salute was simply as a bravado. This band was evidently bent on mischief. As they retreated south to their own country they met the carts belonging to the fort on their way from the plains; the men in charge ran off with the fleetest horses, but the carts were all captured and ransacked, and an old Scotchman, a servant of the Company, who stood his ground, was reduced to a state bordering upon nudity by the frequent demands of his captors.
The Blackfeet chiefs exercise great authority over their braves; some of them are men of considerable natural abilities, and all-must be brave and celebrated in battle. To disobey the mandate of a chief is at times to court instant death at his hands. At the present time the two most formidable chiefs of the Blackfeet nations are Sapoo-max-sikes, or "The Great Crow"s Claw;" and Oma-ka-pee-mulkee-yeu, or "The Great Swan."
These men are widely different in their characters; the Crow"s Claw being a man whose word once given can be relied on to the death, but the other is represented as a man of colossal size and savage disposition, crafty and treacherous.
During the year just past death had struck heavily among the Blackfeet chiefs. The death of one of their greatest men, Pe-na-koam, or "The Far-off Dawn," was worthy of a great brave. When he felt that his last night had come, he ordered his best horse to be brought to the door of the tent, and mounting him he rode slowly around the camp; at each corner he halted and called out, in a loud voice to his people, "The last hour of Pe-na-koam has come; but to his people he says, Be brave; separate into small parties, so that this disease will have less power to kill you; be strong to fight our enemies the Crees, and be able to destroy them. It is no matter now that this disease has come upon us, for our enemies have got it too, and they will also die of it. Pe-na-koam tells his people before he dies to live so that they may fight their enemies, and be strong." It is said that, having spoken thus, he died quietly. Upon the top of a lonely hill they laid the body of their chief beneath a tent hung round with scarlet cloth; beside him they put six revolvers and two American repeating rifles, an at the door of his tent twelve horses were slain, so that their spirits would carry him in the green prairies of the happy hunting-grounds; four hundred blankets were piled around as offerings to his memory, and then the tribe moved away from the spot, leaving the tomb of their dead king to the winds and to the wolves.
CHAPTER TWENTY.
The Buffalo--His Limits and favourite Grounds--Modes of Hunting--A Fight --His inevitable End--I become a Medicine-man--Great Cold-Carlton--Family Responsibilities.
WHEN the early Spanish adventurers penetrated from the sea-board of America into the great central prairie region, they beheld for the first time a strange animal whose countless numbers covered the face of the country. When De Soto had been buried in the dark waters of the Mississippi, the remnant of his band, pursuing their western way, entered the "Country of the Wild Cows." When in the same year explorers pushed their way northward from Mexico into the region of the Rio-del-Norte, they looked over immense plains black with moving beasts. Nearly 100 years later settlers on the coasts of New England heard from westward-hailing Indians of huge beasts on the sh.o.r.es of a great lake not many days journey to the north-west. Naturalists in Europe, hearing of the new animal, named it the bison; but the colonists united in calling it the buffalo, and, as is usual in such cases, although science clearly demonstrated that it was a bison, and was not a buffalo, scientific knowledge had not a chance against practical ignorance, and "buffalo"
carried the day. The true home of this animal lay in the great prairie region between the Rocky Mountains, the Mississippi, the Texan forest, and the Saskatchewan River and although undoubted evidence exists to show that at some period the buffalo reached in his vast migrations the sh.o.r.es of the Pacific and the Atlantic; yet since the party of De Soto only entered the Country of the Wild Cows after they had crossed the Mississippi, it may fairly be inferred that the Ohio River and the lower Mississippi formed the eastern boundaries to the wanderings of the herds since the New World has been known to the white man. Still even within this immense region, a region not less than 1,000,000 of square miles in area, the havoc worked by the European has been terrible. Faster even than the decay of the Indian has gone on the destruction-of the bison and only a few years must elapse before this n.o.ble beast, hunted down in the last recesses of his breeding-grounds, will have taken his place in the long list of those extinct giants which once dwelt in our world. Many favourite spots had this huge animal throughout the great domain over which he roamed-many beautiful scenes where, along river meadows, the gra.s.s in winter was still succulent and the wooded "bays" gave food and shelter, but-no more favourite ground than this valley of the Saskatchewan; thither he wended his way from the bleak plains of the Missouri in herds that pa.s.sed and pa.s.sed for days and nights in seemingly never-ending numbers. Along the countless creeks and rivers that add their tribute to the great stream, along the banks of the Battle River and the Vermilion River, along the many White Earth Rivers and Sturgeon Creeks of the upper and middle Saskatchewan, down through the willow copses and aspen thickets of the Touchwood Hills and the a.s.sineboine, the great beasts dwelt in all the happiness of calf-rearing and connubial felicity. The Indians who then occupied these regions killed only what was required for the supply of the camps-a mere speck in the dense herds that roamed up to the very doors of the wigwams; but when the trader pushed his adventurous way into the fur regions of the North, the herds of the Saskatchewan plains began to experience a change in their surroundings. The meat, pounded down" and mixed with fat into "pemmican,"
was found to supply a most excellent food for transport service, and accordingly vast numbers of buffalo were destroyed to supply the demand of the fur traders. In the border-land between the wooded country and the plains, the Crees, not satisfied with the ordinary methods of destroying the buffalo, devised a plan by which great mult.i.tudes could be easily annihilated. This method of hunting, consists in the erection of strong wooden enclosures called pounds, into which the buffalo are guided by the supposed magic power of a medicine-man. Sometimes for two days the medicine-man will live with the herd, which he half guides and half drives into the enclosures; sometimes he is on the right, sometimes on the left, and sometimes, again, in rear of the herd, but never to windward of them. At last they approach the pound, which is usually concealed in a thicket of wood. For many miles from the entrance to this pound two gradually diverging lines of tree-stumps and heaps of snow lead out into the plains. Within these lines the buffalo are led by the medicine-man, and as the lines narrow towards the entrance, the herd, finding itself hemmed in on both sides, becomes more and more alarmed, until at length the great beasts plunge on into the pound itself, across the mouth of which ropes are quickly thrown and barriers raised. Then commences the slaughter. From the wooded fence around arrows and bullets are poured into the dense plunging ma.s.s of buffalo careering wildly round the ring. Always going in one direction, with the sun, the poor beasts race on until not a living thing is left; then, when there is nothing more to kill, the cutting-up commences, and pemmican-making goes on.
Widely different from this indiscriminate slaughter is the fair hunt on horseback in the great open plains. The approach, the cautious survey over some hill-top, the wild charge on the herd, the headlong flight, the turn to bay, the flight and fall--all this contains a large share of that excitement which we call by the much abused term sport. It is possible, however, that many of those who delight in killing placid pheasants and stoical partridges might enjoy the huge battue of an Indian "pound" in preference to the wild charge over the sky bound prairie, but, for my part, not being of the privileged few who breed pheasants at the expense of peasants (what a difference the "h" makes in Malthusian theories!), I have been compelled to seek my sport in hot climates instead of in hot corners, and in the sandy bluffs of Nebraska and the Missouri have drawn many an hour of keen enjoyment from the long chase of the buffalo. One evening, shortly before sunset, I was steering my way through the sandy hills of the Platte Valley, in the State of Nebraska, slowly towards Fort Kearney; both horse and rider were tired after a long day over sand-bluff and meadow-land, for buffalo were plenty, and five tongues dangling to the saddle told that horse, man, and rifle had not been idle. Crossing a gra.s.sy ridge, I suddenly came in sight of three buffalo just emerging from the broken bluff. Tired as was my horse, the sight of one of these three animals urged me to one last chase. He was a very large bull, whose black s.h.a.ggy mane and dewlaps nearly brushed the short prairie gra.s.s beneath him. I dismounted behind the hill, tightened the saddle-girths, looked to rifle and cartridge touch, and then remounting rode slowly over the intervening ridge. As I came in view of the three beasts thus majestically stalking their way towards the Platte for the luxury of an evening drink, the three s.h.a.ggy heads were thrown up--one steady look given, then round went the animals and away for the bluffs again. With a whoop and a cheer I gave chase, and the mustang, answering gamely to my call, launched himself well over the prairie. Singling out the large bull, I urged the horse with spur and voice, then, rising in the stirrups I took a snap-shot at my quarry. The bullet struck him in the flanks, and quick as lightning he wheeled down upon me. It was now my turn to run. I had urged the horse with voice and spur to close with the buffalo, but still more vigorously did I endeavour, under the altered position of affairs, to make him increase the distance lying between us. Down the sandy incline thundered the huge beast, gaining on us at every stride.
Looking back over my shoulder, I saw him close to my horse"s tail, with head lowered and eyes flashing furiously-under their s.h.a.ggy covering. The horse was tired; the buffalo was fresh, and it seemed as though another instant must bring pursuer and pursued into wild collision. Throwing back my rifle over the crupper; I laid it at arm"s length, with muzzle full upon the buffalo"s head. The shot struck the centre of his forehead, but he only shook his head when he received it; still it seemed to check his pace a little, and as we had now reached level ground the horse began to gain something upon his pursuer. Quite as suddenly as he had charged the bull now changed his tactics. Wheeling off he followed his companions, who by this time had vanished into the bluffs. It never would have done to lose him after such a fight, so Ii brought the mustang round again, and gave chase. This time a shot fired low behind the shoulder brought my fierce friend to bay. Proudly he turned upon me, but now his rage was calm and stately, he pawed the ground, and blew with short angry snorts the sand in clouds from the plain; moving thus slowly towards me, he looked the incarnation of strength and angry pride. But his doom was sealed. I remember so vividly all the wild surroundings of the scene--the great silent waste, the two buffalo watching from a hill-top the fight of their leader, the n.o.ble beast himself stricken but defiant, and beyond, the thousand glories of the prairie sunset. It was only to last an instant, for the giant bull, still with low-bent head and angry snorts, advancing slowly towards his puny enemy, sank quietly to the plain and stretched his limbs in death. Late that night I reached the American fort with six tongues hanging to my saddle, but never since that hour, though often but a two days ride from buffalo, have I sought to take the life of one of these n.o.ble animals. Too soon will the last of them have vanished from the great central prairie land; never again will those countless herds roam from the Platte to the Missouri, from the Missouri to the Saskatchewan; chased for his robe, for his beef, for sport, for the very pastime of his death, he is rapidly vanishing from the land. Far in the northern forests of the Athabasca a few buffaloes may for a time bid defiance to man, but they, too, must disappear and nothing be left of this giant beast save the bones that for many an age will whiten the prairies over which the great herds roamed at will in times before the white man came.
It was the 5th of January before the return of the dogs from an Indian trade enabled me to get away from Fort Pitt. During the days I had remained in the fort the snow covering had deepened on the plains and winter had got a still firmer grasp upon the river and meadow. In two days travel we ran the length of the river between Fort Pitt and Battle River, travelling rapidly over the ice down the centre of the stream. The dogs were good ones, the drivers well versed in their work, and although the thermometer stood at 20 degrees below zero on the evening of the 6th, the whole run tended in no small degree to improve the general opinion which I had previously formed upon the delights of dog-travel. Arrived at Battle River, I found that the Crees had disappeared since my former visit; the place was now tenanted only by a few Indians and half-breeds.
It seemed to be my fate to encounter cases of sickness at every post on my return journey. Here a woman was lying in a state of complete unconsciousness with intervals of convulsion and spitting of blood. It was in vain that I represented my total inability to deal with such a case. The friends of the lady all declared that it was necessary that I should see her, and accordingly I was introduced into the miserable hut in which she lay. She was stretched upon a low bed in one corner of a room about seven feet square; the roof approached so near the ground that I was unable to stand straight in any part of the place; the rough floor was crowded with women squatted thickly upon it, and a huge fire blazed in a corner, making the heat something terrible. Having gone through the ordinary medical programme of pulse feeling, I put some general questions to the surrounding bevy of women which, being duly interpreted into Cree, elicited the fact that the sick woman had been engaged in carrying a very heavy load of wood on her back for the use of her lord and master, and that while she had been thus employed she was seized with convulsions and became senseless. "What is it?" said the Hudson Bay man, looking at me in a manner which seemed to indicate complete confidence in my professional sagacity. "Do you think it"s small-pox?" Some acquaintance with this disease enabled me to state my deliberate conviction that it was not small-pox, but as to what particular form of the many "ills that flesh is heir to" it really was, I could not for the life of me determine. I had not even that clue which the Yankee pract.i.tioner is said to have established for his guidance in the case of his infant patient, whose puzzling ailment he endeavoured to diagnosticate by administering what he termed "a convulsion powder,"
being a whale at the treatment of convulsions. In the case now before me convulsions were unfortunately of frequent occurrence, and I could not lay claim to the high powers of pathology which the Yankee had a.s.serted himself to be the possessor of. Under all the circ.u.mstances I judged it expedient to forego any direct opinion upon the case, and to administer a compound quite as innocuous in its nature as the "soothing syrup" of infantile notoriety. It was, how ever, a gratifying fact to learn next morning that--whether owing to the syrup or not, I am not prepared to state the patient had shown decided symptoms of rallying, and took my departure from Battle River with the reputation of being a "medicine-man"
of the very first order.
I now began to experience the full toil and labour of a winter journey.
Our course lay across a bare, open region on which for distances of thirty to forty miles not one tree or bush was visible; the cold was very great, and the snow, lying loosely as it had fallen, was so soft that the dogs sank through the drifts as they pulled slowly at their loads. On the evening of the 10th January we reached a little clump of poplars on the edge of a large plain on which no tree was visible. It was piercingly cold, a bitter wind swept across the snow, making us glad to find even this poor shelter against the coming night. Two hours after dark the thermometer stood at minus 38 degrees, or 70 degrees of frost. The wood was small and poor; the wind howled through the scanty thicket, driving the smoke into our eyes as we cowered over the fire. Oh, what misery it was! and how blank seemed the prospect before me! 900 miles still to travel, and to-day I had only made about twenty miles, toiling from dawn to dark through blinding drift and intense cold. On again next morning over the trackless plain, thermometer at minus 20 in morning, and minus 12 at midday, with high wind, snow, and heavy drift. One of my men, a half-breed in name, an Indian in reality, became utterly done up from cold and exposure-the others would have left him behind to make his own way through the snow, or most likely to lie down and die, but I stopped the doggs until he came up, and then let him lie on one of the sleds for the remainder of the day. He was a miserable-looking wretch, but he ate enormous quant.i.ties of pemmican at every meal. After four days of very arduous travel we reached Carlton at sunset on the 12th January. The thermometer had kept varying between 20 and 38 degrees below zero every night, but on the night of the 12th surpa.s.sed any thing I had yet experienced. I spent that night in a room at Carlton, a room in which a fire had been burning until midnight, nevertheless at daybreak on the 13th the thermometer showed -20 degrees on the table close to my bed. At half-past ten o"clock, when placed outside, facing north, it fell to -44 degrees, and I afterwards ascertained that an instrument kept at the mission of Prince Albert, 60 miles east from Carlton, showed the enormous amount of 51 degrees below zero at daybreak that morning, 83 degrees of frost. This was the coldest night during the winter, but it was clear, calm, and fine. I now determined to leave the usual winter route from Carlton to Red River, and to strike out a new line of travel, which, though very much longer than the trail via Fort Pelly, had several advantages to recommend it to my choice. In the first place, it promised a new line of country down the great valley of the Saskatchewan River to its expansion into the sheet of water called Cedar Lake, and from thence across the dividing ridge into the Lake Winnipegosis, down the length of that water and its southern neighbour, the Lake Manitoba, until the boundary of the new province would be again reached, fully 700 miles from Carlton. It was a long, cold travel, but it promised the novelty of tracing to its delta in the vast marshes of c.u.mberland and the Pasquia, the great river whose foaming torrent I had forded at the Rocky Mountains, and whose middle course I had followed for more than a month of wintry travel.
Great as Were the hardships and privations of this Winter journey, it had nevertheless many moments of keen pleasure, moments filled with those instincts of that long-ago time before our civilization and its servitude had commenced--that time when, like the Arab and the Indian, we were all rovers over the earth; as a dog on a drawing-room carpet twists himself round and round before he lies down to sleep--the instinct bred in him in that time when bhis ancestors thus trampled smooth their beds in the long gra.s.ses of the primeval prairies--so man, in the midst of his civilization, instinctively goes back to some half-hidden reminiscence of the forest and the wilderness in which his savage forefathers dwelt. My lord seeks his highland moor, Norvegian salmon river, or more homely coverside; the retired grocer, in his snug retreat at Tooting, builds himself an arbour of rocks and mosses, and, by dint of strong imagination and stronger tobacco, becomes a very Kalmuck in his back-garden; and it is by no means improbable that the grocer in his rockery and the grandee at his rocketers draw their instincts of pleasure from the same long-ago time "When wild in woods the n.o.ble savage ran." But be this as it may, -this long journey of mine, despite its excessive cold, its nights under the wintry heavens, its days of ceaseless travel, had not as yet grown monotonous or devoid of pleasure, and although there were moments long before daylight when the shivering scene around the camp-fire froze one to the marrow, and I half feared to ask myself how many more mornings like this will I have to endure? how many more miles have been taken from that long total of travel? still, as the day wore on and the hour of the midday meal came round, and, warmed and hungry by exercise, I would relish with keen appet.i.te the plate of moose steaks and the hot delicious tea, as camped amidst the snow, with buffalo robe spread out before the fire, and the dogs watching the feast with perspective ideas of bones and pan-licking, then the balance would veer back again to the side of enjoyment; and I could look forward to twice 600 miles of ice and snow without one feeling of despondency. These icy nights, too, were often filled with the strange meteors of the north. Hour by hour have I watched the many-hued shafts of the aurora trembling from their northern home across the starlight of the zenith, till their l.u.s.tre lighted up the silent landscape of the frozen river with that weird light which the Indians name "the dance of the dead spirits." At times, too, the "sun dogs" hung about the sun so close, that it was not always easy to tell which was the real sun and which the mock one; but wild weather usually followed the track of the sun dogs; and whenever I saw them in the heavens I looked for deeper snow and colder bivouacs.
Carlton stands on the edge of the great forest region whose sh.o.r.es, if we may use the expression, are washed by the waves of the prairie ocean lying south of it; but the waves are of fire, not of water. Year by year the great torrent of flame moves on deeper and deeper into the dark ranks of the solemn-standing pines; year by year a wider region is laid open to the influences of sun and shower, and soon the traces of the conflict are hidden beneath the waving gra.s.s, and clinging vetches, and the clumps of tufted prairie roses. But another species of vegetation also springs up in the track of the fire; groves of aspens and poplars grow out of the burnt soil, giving to the country that park-like appearance already spoken of. Nestling along the borders of the innumerable lakes that stud the face of the Saskatchewan region, these poplar thickets sometimes attain large growth, but the fire too frequently checks their progress, and many of them stand bare and dry to delight the eye of the traveller with the a.s.surance of an ample store of bright and warm firewood for his winter camp when the sunset bids him begin to make all cosy against the night.
After my usual delay of one day, I set out from Carlton, bound for the pine woods of the Lower Saskatchewan. My first stage was to be a short one. Sixty miles east from Carlton lies the small Presbyterian mission called Prince Albert. Carlton being dest.i.tute of dogs, I was obliged to take horses again into use; but the distance was only a two days march, and the track lay all the way upon the river. The wife of one of the Hudson Bay officers, desirous of visiting the mission, took advantage of my escort to travel to Prince Albert; and thus a lady, a nurse, and an infant aged eight months, became suddenly added to my responsibilities, with the thermometer varying between 70 and 80 degrees of frost I must candidly admit to having entertained very grave feelings at the contemplation of these family liabilities. A baby at any period of a man"s life is a very serious affair, but a baby below zero is something appalling.
The first night pa.s.sed over without accident." I resigned my deerskin bag to the lady and her infant, and Mrs. Winslow herself could not have desired a more peaceful state of slumber than that enjoyed by the youthful traveller. But the second night was a terror long to be remembered; the cold was intense. Out of the inmost recesses of my abandoned bag came those dire screams which result from infantile disquietude. Shivering, under my blanket, I listened to the terrible commotion going on in the interior of that cold-defying construction that so long had stood my warmest friend.
At daybreak, chilled to the marrow, I rose, and gathered the fire together in speechless agony: no wonder, the thermometer stood at 40 degrees below zero; and yet, can it be believed? the baby seemed to be perfectly oblivious to the benefits of the bag, and continued to howl unmercifully.
Such is the perversity of human nature even at that early age! Our arrival at the mission put an end to my family responsibilities, and restored me once more to the beloved bag; but the warm atmosphere of a house soon revealed the cause of much of the commotion of the night.
"Wasn"t-it-its-mother"s-pet" displayed two round red marks upon its chubby countenance! "Wasn"t-it-its-mother"s-pet" had, in fact, been frost-bitten about the region of the nose and cheeks, and hence the hubbub. After a delay of two days at the mission, during which the thermometer always showed more than 60 degrees of frost in the early morning, I continued my journey towards the east, crossing over from the North to the South Branch of the Saskatchewan at a point some twenty miles from the junction of the two rivers--a rich and fertile land, well wooded and watered, a region destined in the near future to hear its echoes wake to other sounds than those of moose-call or wolf-howl. It was dusk in the evening of the 19th of January when we reached the high ground which looks down upon the "forks" of the Saskatchewan River. On some low ground at the farther side of the North Branch a camp-fire glimmered in the twilight. On the ridges beyond stood the dark pines of the Great Sub-Arctic Forest, and below lay the two broad converging rivers whose immense currents; hushed beneath the weight of ice, here merged into the single channel of the Lower Saskatchewan--a wild, weird scene it looked as the shadows closed around it. We descended with difficulty the steep bank and crossed the river to the camp-fire on the north sh.o.r.e. Three red-deer hunters were around it; they had some freshly killed elk meat, and potatoes from Fort-a-la-Corne, eighteen miles below the forks; and with so many delicacies our supper a-la-fourchette, despite a snow-storm, was a decided success.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Great Sub-Arctic Forest--The "Forks" of the Saskatchewan--An Iroquois --Fort-a-la-Corne--News from the outside World--All haste for Home--The solitary Wigwam--Joe Miller"s Death.
AT the "forks" of the Saskatchcwan the traveller to the east enters the Great Sub-Arctic Forest. Let us look for a moment at this region where the earth dwells in the perpetual gloom of the pine-trees. Travelling north from the Saskatchewan River at any portion of its course From Carlton to Edmonton, one enters on the second day"s journey this region of the Great Pine Forest. We have before compared it to the sh.o.r.e of an ocean, and like a sh.o.r.e it has its capes and promontories which stretch far into the sea-like prairie, the indentations caused by the fires sometimes forming large bays and open s.p.a.ces won from the domain of the forest by the fierce flames which beat against it in the dry days of autumn. Some 500 or 600 miles to the north this forest ends, giving place to that most desolate region of the earth, the barren grounds of the extreme north, the lasting home of the musk-ox and the summer haunt of the reindeer; but along the valley of the Mackenzie River the wooded tract is continued close to the Arctic Sea, and on the sh.o.r.es of the great Bear Lake a slow growth of four centuries scarce brings a circ.u.mference of thirty inches to the trunks of the white spruce. Swamp and lake, muskeg, and river rocks of the earliest formations, wild wooded tracts of impenetrable wilderness combine to make this region the great preserve of the rich fur-bearing animals whose skins are rated in the marts of Europe at four times their weight in gold. Here the darkest mink, the silkiest sable, the blackest otter are trapped and traded; here are bred these rich furs whose possession women prize as second only to precious stones. Into the extreme north of this region only the fur trader and the missionary have as yet penetrated. The sullen Chipwayan, the feeble Dogrib, and the fierce and warlike Kutchin dwell along the systems which carry the waters of this vast forest into Hudson Bay and thee Arctic Ocean.
This place, the "forks" of the Saskatchewan, is destined at some time or other to be an important centre of commerce and civilization. When men shall have cast down the barriers which now intervene between the sh.o.r.es of Lake Winnipeg and Lake Superior, what a highway will not these two great river Systems of the St. Lawrence and the Saskatchewan offer to the trader! Less than 100 miles of ca.n.a.l through low alluvial soil have only to be built to carry a boat from the foot of the Rocky Mountains to the head of Rainy Lake, within 100 miles of Lake Superior. With inexhaustible supplies of water held at a level high above the current surface of the height of land, it is not too much to say, that before many years have rolled by, boats will float from the base of the Rocky Mountains to the harbour of Quebec. But long before that time the Saskatchewan must have risen to importance from its fertility, its beauty, and its mineral wealth. Long before the period shall arrive when the Saskatchewan will ship its products to the ocean, another period will have come, when the mining populations of Montana and Idaho will seek in the fertile lands of the middle Saskatchewan a supply of those necessaries of life which the arid soil of the central States is powerless to yield. It is impossible that the wave of life which rolls so unceasingly into America can leave unoccupied this great fertile tract; as the river valleys farther east have all been peopled long before settlers found their way into the countries lying at the back, so must this great valley of the Saskatchewan, when once brought within the reach of the emigrant, become the scene of numerous settlements. As I stood in twilight looking down on the silent rivers merging into the great single stream which here enters the forest region, the mind had little difficulty in seeing another picture, when the river forks would be a busy scene of commerce, and man"s labour would waken echoes now answering only to the wild things of plain and forest. At this point, as I have said, we leave the plains and the park-like country. The land of the prairie Indian and the buffalo-hunter lies behind us-of the thick-wood Indian and moose-hunter before us.
As far back as 1780 the French had pushed their Way into the Saskatchewan and established forts along its banks. It is generally held that their most western post was situated below the junction of the Saskatchewans, at a place called Nippoween; but I am of opinion that this is an error, and That their pioneer settlements had even gone west of Carlton. One of the earliest English travellers into the country, in 1776, speaks of Fort-des-Prairies as a post twenty-four days journey from c.u.mberland on the lower river, and as the Hudson Bay Company only moved west of c.u.mberland in 1774, it is only natural to suppose that this Fort-des Prairies had originally been a French post. Nothing proves more conclusively that the whole territory of the Saskatchewan was supposed to have belonged by treaty to Canada, and not to England, than does the fact that it was only at this date--1774--that the Hudson Bay Company took possession of it.
During the bitter rivalry between the North-west and the Hudson Bay Companies a small colony of Iroquois indians was brought from Canada to the Saskatchewan and planted near the forks of the river. The descendants of these men are still to be found scattered over different portions of the country; nor have they lost that boldness and skill in all the wild works of Indian life which made their tribe such formidable warriors in the early contests of the French colonists; neither, have they lost that gift of eloquence which was so much prized in the days of Champlain and Frontinac. Here are the concluding words of a speech addressed by an Iroquois against the establishment of a missionary station near the junction of the Saskatchewan:
"You have spoken of your Great Spirit," said the Indian; "you have told us He died for all men--for the red tribes of the West as for the white tribes of the East; but did He not die with His arms stretched forth in different directions, one hang towards the rising sun and the other towards the setting sun?"
"Well, it is true."
"And now say, did He not mean by those outstretched arms that for evermore the white tribes should dwell in the East and the red tribes in the West? when the Great Spirit could not speak, did He not still point out where His children should live?" What a curious compound must be the man who is capable of such a strange, beautiful metaphor and yet remain a savage!
Fort-a-la-Corne lies some twenty miles below the point of junction of the rivers. Towards Fort-a-la-Corne I bent my steps with a strange anxiety, for at that point I was to intercept the "Winter Express" carrying from Red River its burden of news to the far-distant forts of the Mackenzie River. This winter packet had left Fort Garry in mid-December, and travelling by way of Lake Winnipeg, Norway House and c.u.mberland, was due at Fort-a-la-Corne about the 21st January. Anxiously then did I press on to the little fort, where I expected to get tidings of that strife whose echoes during the past month had been powerless to pierce the solitudes of this lone land. With tired dogs whose pace no whip or call could accelerate, we reached the fort at midday on the 21st. On the river, "close by, an old Indian met us. Has the packet arrived? "Ask him if the packet has come," I said. He only stared blankly at me and shook his head. I had forgotten, what was the packet to him? the capture of a musk-rat was of more consequence than the capture of Metz. The packet had not come, I found when we reached the fort, but it was hourly expected, and I determined to await its arrival.
Two days pa.s.sed away in wild storms of snow. The wind howled dismally through the pine woods, but within the logs crackled and flew, and the board of my host was always set with moose steaks and good things, although outside, and far down the river, starvation had laid his hand heavily upon the red man. It had fallen dark some hours on the evening of the 22nd January when there came a knock at the door of our house; the raised latch gave admittance to an old travel-worn Indian who held in his hand a small bundle of papers. He had cached the packet, he said, many miles down the river, for his dogs were utterly tired out and unable to move; he had come on himself with a few papers for the fort: the snow was very deep to c.u.mberland. He had been eight days in travelling 200 miles; he was tired and starving, and white with drift and storm. Such was his tale. I tore open the packet--it was a paper of mid-November.
Metz had surrendered; Orleans been retaken; Paris, starving, still held out; for the rest, the Russians had torn to pieces the Treaty of Paris, and our millions and our priceless blood had been spilt and spent in vain on the Peninsula of the Black Sea--perhaps, after all, we would fight? So the night drew itself out, and the pine-tops began to jag the horizon before I ceased to read.
Early on the following morning, the express was hauled from its cache and brought to the fort; but it failed to throw much later light upon the meagre news of the previous evening. Old Adam was tried for verbal intelligence, but he too proved a failure. He had carried the packet from Norway House on Lake Winnipeg to Carlton for more than a score of winters, and, from the fact of his being the bearer of so much news in his lifetime, was looked upon by his compeers as a kind of condensed electric telegraph; but when the question of war was fairly put to him, he gravely replied that at the forts he had heard there was war, and "England," he added, "was gaining the day." This latter fact was too much for me, for I was but too well aware that had war been declared in November, an army organization based upon the Parliamentary system was not likely to have "gained the day" in the short s.p.a.ce of three weeks.