CHAPTER IX
WE LOSE THE TRAIL
Saturday morning, August fifth, broke with a radiance and a glory seldom equaled even in that land of glorious sunrises and sunsets. A flame of red and orange in the east ushered in the rising sun, not a cloud marred the azure of the heavens, the moss was white with frost, and the crisp, clear atmosphere sweet with the scent of the new day. Labrador was in her most amiable mood, displaying to the best advantage her peculiar charms and beauties.
While we ate a hurried breakfast of corn-meal mush, boiled fat pork and tea, and broke camp, Michikamau was the subject of our conversation, for now it was ho for the big lake! A rapid advance was expected upon the river, and the trail above, where it left the Nascaupee to avoid the rapids which the Indians had told us about, would probably be found without trouble. So this new stage of our journey was begun with something of the enthusiasm that we had felt the day we left Tom Blake’s cabin and started up Grand Lake.
We had gone but a mile when Pete drew his paddle from the water and pointed with it at a narrow, sandy beach ahead, above which rose a steep bank. Almost at the same instant I saw the object of his interests—a buck caribou asleep on the sand. The wind was blowing toward the river, and maintaining absolute silence, we landed below a bend that hid us from the caribou. Fresh meat was in sight and we must have it, for we were hungry now for venison. To cover the retreat of the animal should it take alarm, Pete was to go on the top of the bank above it, Easton to take a stand opposite it and I a little below it. We crawled to our positions with the greatest care; but the caribou was alert. The shore breeze carried to it the scent of danger, and almost before we knew, that we were discovered it was on its feet and away. For a fraction of a second I had one glimpse of the animal through the brush. Pete did not see it when it started, but heard it running up the shore, and away be started in that direction, running and leaping recklessly over the fallen tree trunks. Presently the caribou turned from the river and showed itself on the burned plateau above, two hundred yards from Pete. The Indian halted for a moment and fired—then fired again. I hastened up and came upon Pete standing by the prostrate caribou and grinning from ear to ear.
The carcass was quickly skinned and the meat stripped from the bones and carried to the canoe. Here on the shore we made a fire, broiled some thick luscious steaks, roasted some marrow bones and made tea. All the bones except the marrow bones of the legs were abandoned as an unnecessary weight. Pete broke a hole through one of the shoulder blades and stuck it on a limb of a tree above the reach of animals. That, you know, insures further good luck in hunting. It is a sort of offering to the Manitou. We took the skin with us. “Maybe we need him for something,” said Pete. “Clean and smoke him nice, me; maybe mend clothes with him.”
The larger pieces of our venison were to be roasted when we halted in the evening. We could not dally now, and I chose this method of preserving the meat, rather than “jerk” it (that is, dry it in the open air over a smoky fire), which would have necessitated a halt of three or four days.
Within three hours after we had first seen the caribou we were on our way again. The river up which we were passing was from two to four hundred yards in width, and with the exception of an occasional rock, had a gravelly bottom, and the banks were generally low and gravelly. A little distance back ridges of low hills paralleled the stream, and on the south side behind the lower ridge was a higher one of rough hills; but none of them with an elevation above the valley of more than three hundred feet. The country had been burned on both sides of the river and there was little new growth to hide the dead trees.
Twenty-five miles above Seal Lake we encountered a rapid which necessitated a mile and a half portage around it. Where we landed to make the portage I noticed along the edge of the sandy beach a black band about two feet in width. I thought at first that the water had discolored the sand, but upon a closer examination discovered that it was nothing more nor less than myriads of our black fly pests that had lost their lives in the water and been washed ashore.
We had much rain and progress was slow and difficult in the face of a strong wind and current. Seven or eight miles above the rapid around which we had portaged we passed into a large expansion of the river which the Indians at Northwest River Post had told us to look for, and which they called Wuchusknipi (Big Muskrat) Lake.
High gravelly banks, rising in terraces sometimes fully fifty feet above the water’s edge, had now become the feature of the stream. The current increased in strength, and only for short distances above Wuchusknipi, where the river occasionally broadened, were we able to paddle. The tracking lines were brought into service, one man hauling each canoe, while the others, wading in the water, or walking on the bank with poles where the stream was too deep to wade, kept the canoes straight in the current and clear of the shore. Once when it became necessary to cross a wide place in the river a squall struck us, and Richards and Stanton in the smaller canoe were nearly swamped. The strong head wind precluded paddling, even when the current would otherwise have permitted it.
Finally the sky cleared and the wind ceased to blow; but with the calm came a cause for disquietude. A light smoke had settled in the valley and the air held the odor of it, suggesting a forest fire somewhere above. This would mean retreat, if not disaster, for when these fires once start rivers and lakes prove small obstacles in their path. From a view-point on the hills no dense smoke could be discovered, only the light haze that we had seen and smelled in the valley, and we therefore decided that the gale that had blown for several days from the northwest may have carried it for a long distance, even from the district far west of Michikamau, and that at any rate there was no cause for immediate alarm.
The ridges with an increasing altitude were crowding in upon us more closely. Once when we stopped to portage around a low fall we climbed some of the hills that were near at hand that we might obtain a better knowledge of the topography of the country than could be had from the confined river valley. Away to the northwest we found the country to be much more rugged than the district we had recently passed through. Observations showed us that the highest of the hills we were on had an elevation of six hundred feet above the river. We had but a single day of fine weather and then a fog came so thick that we could not see the opposite banks of the Nascaupee, and after it a cold rain set in which made our work in the icy current doubly hard. One morning I slipped on a bowlder in the river and strained my side, and for me the remainder of the day was very trying. That evening we reached a little group of three or four islands, where the Nascaupee was wide and shallow, but just above the islands it narrowed down again and a low fall occurred. Not far from the fall a small river tumbled down over the rocks a sheer thirty feet, and emptied into the Nascaupee. Since leaving Seal Lake we had passed two rivers flowing in from the north, and this was the second one coming from the south, marking the point on the Indian map where we were to look for the portage trail leading to the northward. Therefore a halt was made and camp was pitched.
During the night the weather cleared, and Pete, Richards and Easton were dispatched in the morning to scout the country to the northward in search of the trail and signs of Indians. The ligaments of my side were very stiff and sore from the strain they received the previous day, and I remained in camp with Stanton to write up my records, take an inventory of our food supply, and consider plans for the future.
It was August twelfth. How far we had still to go before reaching Michikamau was uncertain, but, in view of our experiences below Seal Lake and the difficulties met with in finding and following the old Indian trail there, our progress would now, for a time at least, if we traveled the portage route, be slower than on the river where we had done fairly well. True, our outfit was much lighter than it had been in the beginning, and we were in better shape for packing and were able to carry heavier loads. Still we must make two trips over every portage, and that meant, for every five miles of advance, fifteen miles of walking and ten of those miles with packs on our backs. Had we not better, therefore, abandon the further attempt to locate the trail and, instead, follow the river which was beyond doubt the quicker and the easier route? My inclinations rebelled against this course. One of the objects of the expedition, for it was one of the things that Hubbard had planned to do, was to locate the old trail, if possible. To abandon the search for it now, and to follow the easier route, seemed to me a surrender.
On the other hand, should we not find game or fish and have delays scouting for the trail, it would be necessary to go on short rations before reaching Michikamau, for enough food must be held back to take us out of the country in safety.
In my present consideration of the situation it seemed to me highly improbable that we could reach George River Post in season to connect with the Hudson’s Bay Company’s steamer Pelican, which touches there to land supplies about the middle of September, and that is the only steamer that ever visits that Post. Not to connect with the Pelican would, therefore, mean imprisonment in the north for an entire year, or a return around the coast by dog train in winter. The former of these alternatives was out of the question; the latter would be impossible with an encumbrance of four men, for dog teams and drivers in the early winter are usually all away to the hunting grounds and hard to engage. I therefore concluded that but one course was open to me. Three of the men must be sent back and with a single companion I would push on to Ungava. This, then, was the line of action I decided upon.
Toward evening gathering clouds augured an early renewal of the storm, and Stanton and I had just put up the stove in the tent in anticipation of it when Pete and Easton, the latter thoroughly fagged out, came into camp.
“Well, Pete,” I asked, “what luck?”
“Find trail all right,” he answered. “Can’t follow him easy. Long carry. First lake far, maybe eleven, twelve mile. Little ponds not much good for canoe. Trail old. Not used long time. All time go up hill.”
“Where’s Richards?” I inquired, noticing his absence.
“Left us about four miles back to take a short cut to the river and follow it down to camp,” said Easton. “He thought you might want to know how it looked above, and perhaps keep on that way instead of tackling the portage, for the trail’s going to be mighty hard. It looks as though the river would be better.”
We waited until near dark for Richards, but he did not come. Then we ate our supper without him.
The rain grew into a downpour and darkness came, but no Richards, and at length I became alarmed for his safety. I pushed back the tent flaps and peered out into the pitchy darkness and pouring rain.
“He’ll never get in to-night,” I remarked. “No,” said some one, “and he’ll have a hard time of it out there in the rain.” There was nothing to do but wait. Pete rummaged in his bag and produced a candle (we had a dozen in our outfit), sharpened one end of a stick, split the other end for two or three inches down, forced open the split end and set the candle in it and stuck the sharpened end in the ground, all the while working in the dark. Then he lit the candle.
I do not know how long we had been sitting by the candle light and putting forth all sorts of conjectures about Richards and his uncomfortable position in the bush without cover and the probable reasons for his failure to return, when the tent front opened and in he came, as wet as though he had been in the river.
“Well, Richards,” I asked, when he was comfortably settled at his meal, “what do you think of the river?”
“The river!” he paused between mouthfuls to exclaim, “that’s the only thing within twenty miles that I didn’t see. I’ve been looking for it for four hours, but it kept changing its location and I never found it till I struck camp just now.”
“Now, boys,” said I, when all the pipes were going, “I’ve something to say to you. Up to this time we’ve had no real hardships to meet. We’ve had hard work, and it’s been most trying at times, but there’s been no hardship to endure that might not be met with upon any journey in the bush. If we go on we shall have hardships, and perhaps, some pretty severe ones. There’ll soon be sleet and snow in the air, and cold days and shivery nights, and the portages will be long and hard. On the whole, there’s been plenty to eat—not what we would have had at home, perhaps, but good, wholesome grub—and we’re all in better condition and stronger than when we started, but flour and pork are getting low, lentils and corn meal are nearly gone, and short rations, with hungry days, are soon to come if we don’t strike game, and you know how uncertain that is. I cannot say what is before us, and I’m not going to drag you fellows into trouble. I’m going to ask for one volunteer to go on with me to Ungava with the small canoe, and let the rest return from here with the other canoe and what grub they need to take them out. Who wants to go home?”
It came to them like a shock. Outside, the wind howled through the trees and dashed the rain spitefully against the tent. The water dripped through on us, and the candle flickered and sputtered and almost went out. In the weird light I could see the faces of the men work with emotion. For a moment no one spoke. Finally Richards, in a tone of reproach that made me feel sorry for the very suggestion, asked: “Do you think there’s a quitter here?”
The loyalty and grit of the men touched my heart. Not one of them would think of leaving me. Nothing but a positive order would have turned them back, and I decided to postpone our parting until we reached Michikaumau at least, if it could be postponed so long consistently with safety.
The next day was Sunday, and it was spent in rest and in preparation for our advance up the trail. The weather was damp and cheerless, with rain falling intermittently throughout the day.
To cover a possible retreat a cache was made near our camp of thirty pounds of pemmican in tin cans and forty-five pounds of flour and some tea in a waterproof bag. A hole was dug in the ground and the provisions were deposited in it, then covered with stones as a pro-tection from animals.
By Monday morning the storm had gained new strength, and steadily and pitilessly the rain fell, accompanied by a cold, northwest wind.
What narrowly escaped being a serious accident occurred when we halted that day for dinner. Easton was cutting firewood, when suddenly he dropped the ax he was using with the exclamation “That fixes me!” He had given himself what looked at first like an ugly cut near the shin bone. Fortunately, however, upon examination, it proved to be only a flesh wound and not sufficiently severe to interfere with his traveling. Stanton dressed the cut. Our adhesive plaster we found had become useless by exposure and electrician’s tape was substituted for it to draw the flesh together.
On the evening of the second day after leaving the Nascaupee, our tent was pitched upon the site of an extensive but ancient Indian camp beside a mile-long lake, four hundred and fifty feet above the river. Five ponds had been passed en route, but all of them so small it was scarcely worth while floating the canoe in any of them.
In these two days we had covered but eleven miles, but during the whole time the wind had driven the rain in sweeping gusts into our faces and made it impossible for a man, single-handed, to portage a canoe. Thus, with two men to carry each canoe we had been compelled to make three loads of our outfit, and this meant fifty-five miles actual walking, and thirty-three miles of this distance with packs on our backs. The weather conditions had made the work more than hard— it was heartrending—as we toiled over naked hills, across marshes and moraines, or through dripping brush and timber land.
A beautiful afternoon, two days later, found us paddling down the first lake worthy of mention since leaving the Nascaupee River. The azure sky overhead shaded to a pearly blue at the horizon, with a fleecy cloud or two floating lazily across its face. The atmosphere was perfect in its purity, and only the sound of screeching gulls and the dip of our paddles disturbed the quiet of the wilderness. Lake Bibiquasin, as we shall call it, was five miles in length and nestled between ridges of low, moss-covered hills. It lay in a southeasterly and northwesterly direction, and rested upon the summit of a sub-sidiary divide that we had been gradually ascending. A creek ran out of its northwesterly end, flowing in that direction.
Until now we had found the trail with little difficulty, but here we were baffled. A search in the afternoon failed to uncover it, and we were forced to halt, perplexed again as to our course. Camp was pitched in a grove of spruces at the lower end of the lake. Not far from us was an old hunting camp which Pete said was “most hundred years old,” and he was not far wrong in his estimate, for the frames upon which the Indians had stretched skins and the tepee poles crumbled to pieces when we touched them.
Strange to say, not a fish of any description had been seen for several days and not one could be induced to rise to fly or bait, and our net was always empty now. Game, too, was scarce. There were no fresh caribou tracks this side of the Nascaupee River, and but one duck and one spruce partridge had been killed. The last bit of our venison was eaten the day before. It was pretty badly spoiled and turning a little green in color, but Pete washed it well several times and we all avoided the lee side of the kettle while it was cooking. It was pronounced “not so bad.”
Another day was lost on Lake Bibiquasin in an ineffectual hunt for the trail. I scouted alone all day and in my wanderings came upon the first ptarmigans of the trip and shot one of them with my rifle. The others flew away. They wore their mottled summer coat, as it was still too early for them to don their pure white dress of winter.
During my scouting trip I also discovered the first ripe bake-apple berries we had seen. This is a salmon-colored berry resembling in size and shape the raspberry, and grows on a low plant like the strawberry.
On Saturday morning, August nineteenth, the temperature was four degrees below the freezing point, and the ground was stiff with frost. In a further search on the north side of the lake opposite our camp we found an old blaze and a trail leading from it along a ridge and through marshes to a small lake. This was the only trail that we could find anywhere, so we decided to follow it, though it did not bear all the earmarks of the portage trail we had been tracing—it was decidedly more ancient. We started our work with a will. It was a hard portage and we sometimes sank knee deep into the marsh and got mired frequently, but finally reached the lake.
Indian signs now completely disappeared. Down the lake, where a creek flowed out, was a bare hill, and Pete and I climbed it. From its summit we could easily locate the creek taking a turn to the north and then to the northeast and, finally, flowing into one of a series of lakes extending in an easterly and westerly direction. The land was comparatively flat to the eastward and the lakes no doubt fed a river flowing out of that end, probably one of those that we had noted as joining the Nascaupee on its north side. To the north of these lakes were high, rugged ridges. It was possible there was an opening in the hills to the westward, where they seemed lower; we could not tell from where we were, but we determined to portage along the creek into the lakes with that hope.
Again the smoke of a forest fire hung in the valleys and over the hills, and the air was heavy with the smell of it, which revived the former uneasiness, but by the next day every trace of it had disappeared.
Another day found us afloat upon the first of the lakes. Several short carries across necks of land took us from this lake into the one which Pete and I had seen extending back to the ridges to the westward, and which we shall call Lake Desolation.
On the northern shore of Lake Desolation we stopped to climb a mountain. A decided change in the features of the country had taken place since leaving Lake Bibiquasin, and the low moss-covered hills had given place to rough mountains of bare rock. To the northward from where we stood nothing but higher mountains of similar formation met our view—a great, rolling vista of bare, desolate rocks. To the westward the country was not, perhaps, so rough, though there, too, in the far distance could be discerned the tops of rugged hills breaking the line of the horizon. Through a valley in that direction was distinguishable, with a considerable interval between them, a string of small lakes or ponds. This valley led up from the western end of Lake Desolation, and there was no other possible place for the trail to leave the lake. The valley was the only opening.
Our mountain climbing had consumed a good part of an afternoon, and it was evening when finally we reached the western end of the lake and pitched our camp near a creek flowing in. As we paddled we tried our trolls, but were not rewarded with a single strike. When camp was made the net was stretched across the creek’s mouth and we tried our rods in the stream for trout, but our efforts were useless. No fish were caught.
The prospect for game had not improved, in fact was growing steadily worse. We were now in a country that had been desolated by a forest fire within four or five years. The moss under foot had not renewed itself and where any of it remained at all, it was charred and black. The trees were dead and the land harbored almost no life. It seemed to me that even the fish had been scalded out of the water and the streams had never restocked themselves.
A thorough search was made for Indian signs, but there were absolutely none. There was nothing to show that any human being had ever been here before us. Back on Lake Bibiquasin we had lost the trail and now on Lake Desolation we were far and hopelessly astray, with only the compass to guide us.
After supper the men sat around the camp fire, smoking and talking of their friends at home, while I walked alone by the lake shore. It was a wild scene that lay before me—the aurora, with its waves of changing color flashing weirdly as they swept and lighted the sky, the dead trees everywhere like skeletons gray and gaunt, the blazing camp fire in the foreground, with the figures lying about it and the little white tent in the background. Somewhere hidden in the depths of that vast and silent wilderness to the westward lay Michikamau.
There was no mark on the face of the earth to direct us on our road. We must blaze a new trail up that valley and over those ridges that looked so dark and forbidding in the uncertain light of the aurora. We must find Michikamau.