PROVIDENCE TO SIMPSON, ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILES DOWN THE MACKENZIE
"Never the Spirit was born: the Spirit shall cease to be never.
Never was time, it was not; end and beginning are dreams.
Birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the Spirit,
Death hath not touched it at all, though dead the house of it seems."
We have just finished supper and are sitting reading on the upper deck about seven o'clock, when a cry comes from below, followed by the rushing back and forth of moccasined feet. In a flash Bunny Langford, one of the engineers, has grabbed a lifebuoy, runs past us to the stern, and throws it well out toward a floating figure.
It is De-deed, De-deed who had smilingly helped us aboard at Resolution just twenty-four hours before. Finishing his turn at stoking, he had gone to draw a bucket of water, leaned over too far, and fallen, carrying the hatch with him. At first we think nothing of the incident, as he is a good swimmer and the current is with him. As soon as the startled people realise what has happened the steamer's engines are reversed and a boat is lowered. We call out to De-deed to swim to the buoy, but he doesn't see it or doesn't understand. The black head gets smaller in the distance; it disappears, and comes up again. Down it goes for the second time. A strange, constricted feeling comes into our throats as we cry out, "Swim, De-deed, the boat is coming! They are almost up to you!" The boat, pulling hard against the current, seems but a dozen yards away. Will he hold up? As we look, the head sinks, and it does not come up. Within a few feet of buoy and boat, the body of De-deed disappears for the last time. We search for an hour or more with grappling irons, but he is never seen again. A strange silence settles down above and below deck, and all night long two faces flit before us—the grave face of the mother calling down blessings on her boy, the rallying smile of De-deed bidding her good-by and telling her all is well. It is a brave and happy spirit which, in the "Little Lake" of the Mackenzie, goes out with the current.
The Mackenzie River, "La Grande Rivière en Bas," as the people of Resolution call it, on whose waters we are now fairly embarked, is the greatest water-way in the British Empire, and of earth's great rivers the one least traversed by man. Counting back from the headwaters of either its more northerly tributary the Peace or its southern feeder the Athabasca, the length of the river is three thousand miles. At Little Lake, where it issues out of Great Slave Lake, the Mackenzie is eight miles wide, and its delta a thousand miles below here has an expansion of fifty miles. The average width of the stream, as we traverse it from source to mouth, is a mile and a half, widening out often in its sweep to two and a half to three miles.
From Little Lake the current is somewhat sluggish, the river bank seldom exceeding one hundred feet in height until we reach what is known as "The Head of the Line." Before the advent of steam on the Mackenzie, when the patient voyager made his way up south from the ocean, it was at this point that the tracking-line was exchanged for oars. The plains bordering the river here are forested with white spruce and broken with muskeg and lakes. The statistician on board works out that the volume of water the Mackenzie carries to the sea is half a million feet a second. No one is wise enough to challenge his calculation, and we merely hazard a wonder if this most magnificent water-power will ever be used for commercial and economic purposes. There is surely enough "white coal" rushing by us to turn the wheels of the factories of a continent. The Mackenzie is the only river whose basin is cut by a thousand mile range. The sources of the Peace and the Liard lie on the west side of the Rockies, from where these giant feeders bring their tribute to the main river through passes in that range.
At intervals all the way down the river to Fort Simpson we are treated on our right hand to views of the Horn Mountains, which slope away on their north side but show a steep face to the south. Along our course the bluish Devonian shales are capped by yellow boulder-clay.
We awaken on Friday, July 10th, to find ourselves at Rabbitskin River and everybody busy carrying on wood for fuel. By ten o'clock we are at Fort Simpson in latitude 62°, the old metropolis of the North. Fort Simpson is built on an island where the Liard River joins the Mackenzie, the river being a mile and a half wide at this point. The foundation of the fort dates back to the beginning of the nineteenth century, when it was known in fur annals as "The Forks of the Mackenzie."
Simpson is essentially a has-been. We look upon the warehouses of its quadrangle with their slanting walls and dipping moss-covered roofs and try to conjure up the time long past when all was smart and imposing. In those days when the Indians brought in their precious peltries they were received and sent out again with military precision and all that goes with red tape and gold braid. Surely the musty archives of Simpson hold stories well worth the reading! We would fain linger and dream in front of this sun-dial across whose dulled face the suns of twenty lustrums have cast their shadows, but we begrudge every moment not spent in fossicking round the old buildings. We seek for threads which shall unite this mid-summer day to all the days of glamour that are gone. In a rambling building, forming the back of a hollow square, we come across the mouldy remains of a once splendid museum of natural history, the life work of one Captain Bell of the Old Company. It gives us a sorry feeling to look at these specimens, now dropping their glass eyes and exposing their cotton-batting vitals to the careless on-looker, while the skeleton ribs of that canoe with which Dr. Richardson made history so long ago add their share to the general desolation. In a journal of the vintage of 1842 we read an appeal for natural history exhibits sent to Fort Simpson by an official of the British Museum. He writes,
Hudson's Bay House, Fort Simpson
"I may observe that in addition to the specimens asked for, any mice, bats, shrew-mice, moles, lizards, snakes or other small quadrupeds or reptiles would be acceptable. They may either be skinned or placed in rum or strong spirits of any kind, a cut being first made in the side of the body to admit the spirits to the intestines."
Of all the rare humour disclosed in the old records, this entry most tickles my fancy.
I think of the little group that we had forgathered with at Chipewyan, driven even in this year of grace to lavender-water and red ink, when permits run dry. One turns back the clock to the time of the Chartists and the year of the nuptials of the young Queen in England. We see up here on the fringe of things the dour and canny but exceedingly humorous Adam McBeaths, John Lee Lewises, and George Simpsons, the outer vedette of the British Empire; and, seeing them, get some half-way adequate conception of what a modicum of rum or "strong spirits of any kind" meant in the way of cheer at old Fort Simpson in those days. When we try to get a picture of one of these Hudson's Bay men gravely opening a shrew-mouse, mole, or "other small quadruped," while his chum pours in the aqua vitae or precious conversation water, we declare that science asks too much.
An outer stairway leading to the second story of a big building invites us. Opening the door, we find ourselves in the midst of an old library, and moth and rust, too, here corrupt. We close the door softly behind us and try to realise what it meant to bring a library from England to Fort Simpson a generation ago. First, there arose the desire in the mind of some man for something beyond dried meat and bales of fur. He had to persuade the authorities in England to send out the books. Leather-covered books cost something six or seven decades ago, and the London shareholders liked better to get money than to spend it. We see the precious volumes finally coming across the Atlantic in wooden sailing-ships to Hudson Bay, follow them on the long portages, watch them shoot rapids and make journeys by winter dog-sled, to reach Simpson at last on the backs of men. The old journals reveal stories of the discussion evoked by the reading of these books afterward as, along with the dried fish, deer-meat, and other inter-fort courtesies, they passed from post to post. Was never a circulating library like this one. And now the old books, broken-backed and disembowelled, lie under foot, and none so poor to do them reverence. Everything is so old in this North that there is no veneration for old things.
It is but a few years since the founder of this library died, and his son now sits in his saddle at Fort Simpson. If you were to wander across the court, as I did to-day, and look into the Sales Shop, you would see the presentation sword of this last-generation Carnegie, ignobly slicing bacon for an Indian customer. Sic transit gloria mundi!
What are the books which this sub-Arctic library sent out? We get down on the floor and gently touch the historic old things. Isn't it Johnson who says, "I love to browse in a library"? Judging by the dust and cobwebs, there hasn't been much browsing done among these volumes for years. Present-day Simpson has seldom "fed on the dainties that are bred in a book." Here is a first edition of The Spectator, and next it a Life of Garrick, with copies of Virgil, and all Voltaire and Corneille in the original. A set of Shakespeare with exquisite line drawings by Howard shows signs of hard reading, and so does the Apology for the Life of Mr. Colly Cibber. One wonders how a man embedded in Fort Simpson, as a fly in amber, would ever think of sending to the Grand Pays for Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, yet we find it here, cheek by jowl with The Philosophy of Living or the Way to Enjoy Life and Its Comforts. The Annual Register of History, Politics, and Literature of the Year 1764 looks plummy, but we have to forego it. The lengthy titles of the books of this vintage, as for instance, Death-Bed Triumphs of Eminent Christians, Exemplifying the Power of Religion in a Dying Hour, bring to mind the small boy's definition of porridge—"fillin', but not satis-fyin'." Two more little books with big titles are Actors' Budget of Wit and Merriment, Consisting of Monologues, Prologues and Epilogues, and The London Prisons, with an Account of the More Distinguished Persons Who Have Been Confined in Them.
But the book that most tempts our cupidity is Memoirs of Miss A—— n, Who Was Educated For a Nun, with Many Interesting Particulars. We want that book, we want to take it on with us and read it when we reach the Land of the Eskimo, where the Mackenzie slips into the Arctic by all its silver mouths. We lift the volume up, and put it down again, and we hunger to steal it. Jekyll struggles with Hyde. At last the Shorter Catechism and the Westminster Confession of Faith triumph; we put it down and softly close the door behind us. And ever since we have regretted our Presbyterian training.
At Fort Simpson, it is like walking across a churchyard or through an old cathedral. Here men lived and wrought and hoped, cut off from their kind, and did it all with no thought of being heroic. We walk along the shore to watch Indian women busied in making a birchbark canoe and in washing clothes with washboards—the old order and the new. A little dive into the mosquito-ridden woods discloses a wonderful patch of Pyrola and a nest of Traills' flycatcher, and makes us wish that the minutes were longer and the mosquitoes fewer. What a beautiful tiling this Pyrola is, with its inverted anthers and the cobwebby margins of its capsule! Its bracted, nodding flowers run through all shades of white, pale yellow, and dark yellow.
Down on the beach we chat with a prospector and his son, a lad of fifteen, who are building a skiff in which to ascend the Liard, hunting gold. Yesterday a Mr. and Mrs. Carl and a Mr. and Mrs. Hall passed us on the river. Outfitted for two years, they will prospect for gold in the Nahanni Mountains and toward the headwaters of the Liard. One of the couples has just come out from Glasgow and this is their honeymoon. We half envy them their journey. Can anything compare with the dear delights of travelling when you do not know and nobody knows just what lies round the next corner?
A Slavi Family at Fort Simpson
The dogs at Simpson are "wicked." Picking our way among them, I particularly approve this term of the natives, attributing as it does a human conception and malice aforethought to these long-legged wraiths. The first articulate sound an Indian child of the Mackenzie learns to make is "Mash!" an evident corruption of the French "Marche." This is what Shakespeare meant when he speaks of "a word to throw at a dog." A brown baby just emerged from the cocoon stage of the moss-bag toddles with uplifted pole into a bunch of these hungry mongrels and disperses them with a whack of the stick and the lordly "Mash!" of the superior animal. For our own part we are "scared stiff," but follow along in the wake of our infant protector to a wee wooden church which staggers under the official title, "The Cathedral of St. David."
A Slavi Type from Fort Simpson
We have had occasion to speak of the splendid service rendered to Northern and Western Canada by the Hudson's Bay Company and by the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. A third factor through the years has been building Empire with these. Are we not as a people too prone to minimise the great nation-building work performed by the scattered missionaries in the lone lands beyond the railway? Ostensibly engaged in the work of saving souls, Canadian missionaries, both Roman and English, have opened the gates of commerce, prosecuted geographical discovery, tried to correct social evils, and added materially to our store of exact science. Through their influence, orphanages have been founded, schools established, and hospitals opened. Creeds take a secondary place to deeds in this land, and when you discuss a man, be he cleric or layman, the last thing you ask is, "To what church does he belong?" Incidentally, it does seem rather odd that with Scottish blood running through the veins of nine-tenths of the people of this North as yet no Presbyterian missionary has penetrated beyond the latitude of Edmonton. The great Churches of England and Rome, north of the Athabasca, divide the field between them.
The records of the whole missionary world show no more striking figure than that of Bishop Bompas of the Anglican Church. We have already had two glimpses of this young Cockney curate; once, hoisting his homemade Union Jack on the ox-cart at St. Cloud, and, again, passing north as the wild-fowl flew south in October, 1865, chronicled by the Chipewyan scribe merely as "a Protestant missionary coming in a canoe from the Portage." In the forty years of missionary life which intervened between his coming into the North and his death in the Yukon just two years ago, only twice did the Bishop emerge from these Northern fastnesses. It is literal truth to state that no one on any part of the world's map has ever made so many long and toilsome journeys as did this man. With his sheep scattered over a country a million square miles in extent, we might compare a parochial visit of this parson to a barge-journey from London to Constantinople, replacing the European capitals by Hudson's Bay forts, and substituting for Europe's vineyards and pleasant vales an unbroken line of jack-pine and muskeg.
We are told that Bishop Bompas's father was Dicken's prototype for Sergeant Buzfuz. A new vista would open up to the counsel for Mrs. Bardell could he turn from his chops and tomato-sauce to follow the forty-years' wandering in the wilderness of this splendid man of God, who succeeded, if ever man succeeds, in following Paul's advice of keeping his body under.
Bishops Bompas was one of the greatest linguists the Mother Country ever produced. Steeped in Hebrew and the classics when he entered the Northland, he immediately set himself to studying the various native languages, becoming thoroughly master of the Slavi, Beaver, Dog-Rib, and Tukudk dialects. When Mrs. Bompas sent him a Syriac testament and lexicon, he threw himself with characteristic energy into the study of that tongue. There is something in the picture of this devoted man writing Gospels in Slavi, primers in Dog-Rib, and a Prayer Book in syllabic Chipewyan, which brings to mind the figure of Caxton bending his silvered head over the blocks of the first printing-press in the old Almonry so many years before. What were the "libraries" in which this Arctic Apostle did his work? The floor of a scow on the Peace, a hole in the snow, a fetid corner of an Eskimo hut. His "Bishop's Palace," when he was not afloat, consisted of a bare room twelve feet by eight, in which he studied, cooked, slept, and taught the Indians.
They tell you stories up here of seeing the good Bishop come back from a distant journey to some isolated tribe, followed at heel by a dozen little Indian babies, his disciples for the days to come. Bishop Bompas lived in one continent, but manifested in two, keeping himself closely in touch with the religious and Church growth of the Old World. When the British press had been given over to any particular religious-controversial subject, and the savants had finally disposed of the matter to their own satisfaction, travelling out by summer traverse or winter dog-sled would come a convincing pamphlet by Bishop Bompas, to upset altogether the conclusions of the wranglers.
There is one tale of this man which only those can appreciate who travel his trail. An Indian lad confides to us, "Yes, my name is William Carpenter—Bishop Bompas gave me my name, he was a good man. He wouldn't hurt anybody, he never hit a dog, he wouldn't kill a mosquito. He had not much hair on his head, and when it was meetsu, when the Bishop eat his fish, he shoo that mosquito away and he say, 'Room for you, my little friend, and room for me, but this is not your place: go.'"
We call upon the present incumbents of the little church of St. David. They are young people, the Rev. and Mrs. Day, putting in their first year in this Northern charge. Their home with its spotless floors and walls papered with old copies of The Graphic and Illustrated London News is restful and attractive. The garden of the parsonage shows an amount of patient work on the part of some one. Potatoes eighteen inches high and peas twice the height of this, with turnips and cabbages and cauliflower are good to look at. There are records to show that, years ago, Fort Simpson produced tomatoes and decent crops of barley.
Interior of St. David's Cathedral
Entering the little church we see the neat font sent here by Mrs. Bompas, "In dear memory of Lucy May Owindia, baptised in this Church, January, 1879." Owindia was one of the many red waifs that the good Bishop and Mrs. Bompas took into their big hearts. Her story is a sad one. Along the beach at Simpson, Friday, an Indian, in a burst of ungovernable temper murdered his wife and fled, leaving their one baby to perish. It was not until next day that the little one was found, unconscious and dying. The Bishop and Mrs. Bompas took the child into their loving care. To the name Owindia, which means The Weeping One, was added the modern Lucy May, and the little girlie twined herself closely round the hearts of her protectors. When the time seemed ripe, Owindia was taken back to England to school, but the wee red plant would not flourish in that soil. She sickened and died. Hence the memorial and the inscription we read this July day. Much history of militant energy, much of endurance, and countless chapters of benevolence did the good Bishop write into the history of the North before, off on the Yukon side in 1906, "God's finger touched him and he slept."
Missionaries of the present day are not without their troubles. Mrs. Day tells of potato-whiskey making in some illicit still back in the mosquito-woods, the results of which she fears; and, even as we speak, an Indian lunatic pokes his head through the palings of the potato-patch. From far back in Fort Nelson, British Columbia, and from Fort Liard, the Hudson's Bay men have come to make their reports to Mr. Brabant at Simpson. They brought their wives and babies with them, brought also a quantity of beautiful porcupine-quill work, Fort Liard being one of the few places in the North where this art flourishes. Tomorrow they will start back, tacking against the stream, as the imported brides are doing before them.
To dive into the journals of the past, of which the loft above the offices here at Simpson is full, is even more interesting than talking with the people of the present. We take 1837, the year which saw the accession in England of the young and well-beloved Queen, and from these musty books unearth a running commentary of what is doing in Fort Simpson in that year.
"1837, January 1. The people were brought into the Hall, and enjoyed their meal with great appetites, being also treated to a glass of wine and a fathom of tobacco and a pipe. Wind East."
"1837, February 11. Rabbits are numerous, but the ladies of the Establishment make no great effort in snaring them."
"1837, February 14. Late last night arrived a woman, Thawyase, and a boy, the family of the late Thoesty. They have all come to take refuge here as they are starving. The woman at dusk decoyed old Jack away to camp in the woods—and the old fellow has found a mate."
One wonders if either Thawyase, the decoyed Jack, or the old chronicler was conscious of the fact that this was St. Valentine's Day.
"1837, March 27. Two geese have been seen to-day, the first this season."
"1837, May 2. Marcel sowed some oats. Mosquitoes begin to become annoying."
"1837, May 5. Wild fowl are beginning to frequent the small lakes of the neighbourhood. The willows and young trees are now budding forth beautifully."
"1837, May 18. Hope began to plough this morning with the bull, but as this is the first time he has been yoked, the day's work is found to be but poor."
"1837, May 19. Felix and Roderick McLeod made twelve bags of pemmican to-day."
1837, May 21. The Mackenzie River broke up to-day, and continued drifting pretty thick till evening."
"1837, June 18. Some of the Indians killed a bear before the door and it supplied us with a little fresh meat."
"1837, June 19. Flies so numerous that we are under the necessity of putting our cattle into the stable, otherwise they will fall victims to the cruel insects."
"1837, June 20. Weather very suffocating, thermometer 85 above at three p.m., not as much as a cloud to be seen in the firmament and not the least air to afford any refreshment; this along with the solitude of the time is enough to make people dull. No Indian from any quarter: well supplied with ammunition last spring, they forget us when they can get their own mouths satisfied. Ashley grinding barley in the steel mill."
"1837, June 21. Le Mari has just brought in some fish and a little bearskin in order to get a chemise, he says he is not able to hunt without a chemise, as there are so many flies just now. I have taken it upon myself to give him the shirt on credit."
Here a new hand writes the records, untrammelled by any orthographic rules.
"1837, June 24. Flys very numerus and trublsome to the Cattel."
"1837, July 11. Starvan Indians going and coming ourly."
"1837, July 13. Six squas arrived with plenty Bearrys—that's all they subsist on in this part of the River."
"1837, July 26. Barley is getting ripe. But small birds nip off the ends of the stalks as fast as it ripens."
"1837, August 23. Last night the bull broke into one of the gardens where oats was sown and eat the whole up."
"1837, September 18. An Express arrived from Fort Norman with despatches from the Gentlemen of the Arctic Discovery Expedition, and it is most satisfying to learn that the first object of the Expedition was successfully accomplished: on the 4th August the Company's flag was planted on Point Barrow."
"1837, September 19th. Louson put parchment in the window-frames."
"1837, October 11. Ice is forming since yesterday along the beach."
"1837, November 1. This being the holiday for All Saints, the men though no saints celebrated it off duty. The weather cold but fine."
"1837, November 2. I have been these two days occupied with the blacksmith in making an oven, and this evening it being finished we give it a fair trial by placing a large trout in it for supper and it is found to answer most excellently."
"1837, November 3. Strong northwest wind with drift and cold. About one o'clock of last night the Aurora had a most unusual appearance, seemingly black in place of the white commonly observed and forming an arch from east to west, consisting of five streaks, here and there broken off."
"1827, November 5. Blacksmith making iron runners for our traineaux from old gun-barrels."
"1837, November 30. This being the anniversary of the Tutelar Saint of Scotland, we had in addition to our usual dinner a roasted swan and a moose-nose, a rice pudding, a cranberry tart, and a glass of wine."
"1837, December 1. I was obliged to give four pounds of dried meat to the dogs for there are some that are almost dead and they et all the windows of the Forge."
"1837, December 2. Three of the Fort women fell into a fit of insanity and kept all of the men at the Fort to hold them and prevent them devouring themselves."
December 25. Thermometer 35 below the cypher this morning, this being Christmas no labour done. Wind N.W."
"1838, January 1. The morning was ushered in by a salute fired by our people at the windows and doors, after which they came to wish us a Happy New Year—and in return, in conformity to the custom of the country they were treated, the men with half a glass of brandy each, and the women with a kiss, and the whole of them with as many cakes as they choose to take and some raisins. One of our gentlemen who had a bottle of shrub treated them to a glass, and after some chit-chat conversation they retired, firing a salute on going out. In the evening they played at Blind-man's-buff, concluding the fête by a supper in the Hall. I also gave each of the men a fathom of twist tobacco and a clay pipe."