CHAPTER II
ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE UNKNOWN
“When shall we reach Rigolet, Captain?”
“Before daylight, I hopes, sir, if the fog holds off, but there’s a mist settling, and if it gets too thick, we may have to come to.”
Crowded with an unusual cargo of humanity, fishermen going to their summer work on “The Labrador” with their accompanying tackle and household goods, meeting with many vexatious delays in discharging the men and goods at the numerous ports of call, and impeded by fog and wind, the mail boat Virginia Lake had been much longer than is her wont on her trip “down north.”
It was now June twenty-first. Six days before (June fifteenth), when we boarded the ship at St. Johns we had been informed that the steamer Harlow, with a cargo for the lumber mills at Kenemish, in Groswater Bay, was to leave Halifax that very afternoon. She could save us a long and disagreeable trip in an open boat, ninety miles up Groswater Bay, and I bad hoped that we might reach Rigolet in time to secure a passage for myself and party from that point. But the Harlow had no ports of call to make, and it was predicted that her passage from Halifax to Rigolet would be made in four days.
I had no hope now of reaching Rigolet before her, or of finding her there, and, resigned to my fate, I left the captain on the bridge and went below to my stateroom to rest until daylight. Some time in the night I was aroused by some one saying:
“We’re at Rigolet, sir, and there’s a ship at anchor close by.”
Whether I had been asleep or not, I was fully awake now, and found that the captain had come to tell me of our arrival. The fog had held off and we had done much better than the captain’s prediction. Hurrying into my clothes, I went on deck, from which, through the slight haze that hung over the water, I could discern the lights of a ship, and beyond, dimly visible, the old familiar line of Post buildings showing against the dark spruce-covered hills behind, where the great silent forest begins.
All was quiet save for the thud, thud, thud of the oarlocks of a small boat approaching our ship and the dismal howl of a solitary “husky” dog somewhere ashore. The captain had preceded me on deck, and in answer to my inquiries as to her identity said he did not know whether the stranger at anchor was the Harlow or not, but he thought it was.
We had to wait but a moment, however, for the information. The small boat was already alongside, and John Groves, a Goose Bay trader and one of my friends of two years before, clambered aboard and had me by the hand.
“I’m glad to see you, sir; and how is you?”
Assuring him that I was quite well, I asked the name of the other ship.
“The Harlow, sir, an’ she’s goin’ to Kenemish with daylight.”
“Well, I must get aboard of her then, and try to get a passage up. Is your flat free, John, to take me aboard of her?”
“Yes, sir. Step right in, sir. But I thinks you’d better go ashore, for the Harlow’s purser’s ashore. If you can’t get passage on the Harlow my schooner’s here doing nothin’ while I goes to St. Johns for goods, and I’ll have my men run you up to Nor’west River.”
I thanked him and lost no time in going ashore in his boat, where I found Mr. James Fraser, the factor, and received a hearty welcome. In Mr. Fraser’s office I found also the purser of the Harlow, and I quickly arranged with him for a passage to Kenemish, which is ninety miles up the inlet, and just across Groswater Bay (twelve miles) from Northwest River Post. The Harlow was to sail at daylight and I at once returned to the mail boat, called the boys and, with the help of the Virginia’s crew and one of their small boats, we were transferred, bag and baggage, to the Harlow.
Owing to customs complications the Harlow was later than expected in leaving Rigolet, and it was evening before she dropped anchor at Kenemish. I went ashore in the ship’s boat and visited again the lumber camp “cook house” where Dr. Hardy and I lay ill throng those weary winter weeks, and where poor Hardy died. Hardy was the young lumber company doctor who treated my frozen feet in the winter of 1903-1904. Here I met Fred Blake, a Northwest River trapper. Fred had his flat, and I engaged him to take a part of our luggage to Northwest River. Then I returned to the ship to send the boys ahead with the canoes and some of our baggage, while I waited behind to follow with Fred and the rest of the kit in his flat a half hour later.
Fred and I were hardly a mile from the ship when a heavy thunderstorm broke upon us, and we were soon drenching wet—the baptism of our expedition. This rain was followed by a dense fog and early darkness. On and on we rowed, and I was berating myself for permitting the men to go on so far ahead of us with the canoes, for they did not know the way and the fog had completely shut out the lights of the Post buildings, which otherwise would have been visible across the bay for a considerable distance.
Suddenly through the fog and darkness, from shoreward, came a “Hello! Hello!” We answered, and heading our boat toward the sound of continued “Hellos,” found the men, with the canoes unloaded and hauled ashore, preparing to make a night camp. I joined them and, launching and reloading the canoes again, with Richards and Easton in one canoe and Pete and I in the other, we followed Fred and Stanton, who preceded us in the rowboat, keeping our canoes religiously within earshot of Fred’s thumping oarlocks. Finally the fog lifted, and not far away we caught a glimmer of lights at the French Post. All was dark at the Hudson Bay Post across the river when at last our canoes touched the sandy beach and we sprang ashore.
What a flood of remembrances came to me as I stepped again upon the old familiar ground! How vividly I remembered that June day when Hubbard and I had first set foot on this very ground and Mackenzie had greeted us so cordially! And also that other day in November when, ragged and starved, I came here to tell of Hubbard, lying dead in the dark forest beyond! The same dogs that I had known then came running to meet us now, the faithful fellows with which I began that sad funeral journey homeward over the ice. I called some of them by name “Kumalik,” “Bo’sun,” “Captain,” “Tinker”—and they pushed their great heads against my legs and, I believe, recognized me.
It was nearly two o’clock in the morning. We went immediately to the Post house and roused out Mr. Stuart Cotter, the agent (Mackenzie is no longer there), and received from him a royal welcome. He called his Post servant and instructed him to bring in our things, and while we changed our dripping clothes for dry ones, his housekeeper prepared a light supper. It was five o’clock in the morning when I retired.
In the previous autumn I had written Duncan McLean, one of the four men who came to my rescue on the Susan River, that should I ever come to Labrador again and be in need of a man I would like to engage him. Cotter told me that Duncan had just come from his trapping path and was at the Post kitchen, so when we had finished breakfast, at eight o’clock that morning, I saw Duncan and, as he was quite willing to go with us, I arranged with him to accompany us a short distance into the country to help us pack over the first portage and to bring back letters.
He expressed a wish to visit his father at Kenemish before starting into the country, but promised to be back the next evening ready for the start on Monday morning, the twenty-sixth, and I consented. I knew hard work was before us, and as I wished all hands to be well rested and fresh at the outset, I felt that a couple of days’ idleness would do us no harm.
Some five hundred yards east of Mr. Cotter’s house is an old, abandoned mission chapel, and behind it an Indian burying ground. The cleared space of level ground between the house and chapel was, for a century or more, the camping ground of the Mountaineer Indians who come to the Post each spring to barter or sell their furs. In the olden time there were nearly a hundred families of them, whose hunting ground was that section of country between Hamilton Inlet and the Upper George River.
These people now, for the most part, hunt south of the inlet and trade at the St. Lawrence Posts. The chapel was erected about 1872, but ten years ago the Jesuit missionary was withdrawn, and since then the building has fallen into decay and ruin, and the crosses that marked the graves in the old burying grounds have been broken down by the heavy winter snows. It was this withdrawal of the missionary that turned the Indians to the southward, where priests are more easily found. The Mountaineer Indian, unlike the Nascaupee, is very religious, and must, at least once a year, meet his father confessor. The camping ground since the abandonment of the mission, has lain lonely and deserted, save for three or four families who, occasionally in the summer season, come back again to pitch their tents where their forefathers camped and held their annual feasts in the old days.
Competition between the trading companies at this point has raised the price of furs to such an extent that the few families of Indians that trade at this Post are well-to-do and very independent. There were two tents of them here when we arrived—five men and several women and children. I found two of my old friends there—John and William Ahsini. They expressed pleasure in meeting me again, and a lively interest in our trip. With Mr. Cotter acting as interpreter, John made for me a map of the old Indian trail from Grand Lake to Seal Lake, and William a map to Lake Michikamau and over the height of land to the George River, indicating the portages and principal intervening lakes as they remembered them.
Seal Lake is a large lake expansion of the Nascaupee River, which river, it should be explained, is the outlet of Lake Michikamau and discharges its waters into Grand Lake and through Grand Lake into Groswater Bay. Lake Michikamau, next to Lake Mistasinni, is the larg-est lake in the Labrador peninsula, and approximately from eighty to ninety miles in length. Neither John nor William had been to Lake Michikamau by this route since they were young lads, but they told us that the Indians, when traveling very light without their families, used to make the journey in twenty-three days.
During my previous stay in Labrador one Indian told me it could be done in ten days, while another said that Indians traveling very fast would require about thirty days. It is difficult to base calculations upon information of this kind. But I was sure that, with our com-paratively heavy outfit, and the fact that we would have to find the trail for ourselves, we should require at least twice the time of the Indians, who know every foot of the way as we know our familiar city streets at home.
They expressed their belief that the old trail could be easily found, and assured us that each portage, as we asked about it in detail, was a “miam potagan” (good portage), but at the same time expressed their doubts as to our ability to cross the country safely.
In fact, it has always been the Indians’ boast, and I have heard it many times, that no white man could go from Groswater Bay to Ungava alive without Indians to help him through. “Pete” was a Lake Superior Indian and had never run a rapid in his life. He was to spend the night with Tom Blake and his family in their snug little log cabin, and be ready for an early start up Grand Lake on the morrow. It was Tom that headed the little party sent by me up the Susan Valley to bring to the Post Hubbard’s body in March, 1904; and it was through his perseverance, loyalty and hard work at the time that I finally succeeded in recovering the body. Tom’s daughter, Lillie, was Mackenzie’s little housekeeper, who showed me so many kindnesses then. The whole family, in fact, were very good to me during those trying days, and I count them among my true and loyal friends.
We had supper with Cotter, who sang some Hudson’s Bay songs, Richards sang a jolly college song or two, Stanton a “classic,” and then all who could sing joined in “Auld Lang Syne.”
My thoughts were of that other day, when Hubbard, so full of hope, had begun this same journey-of the sunshine and fleecy clouds and beckoning fir tops, and I wondered what was in store for us now.