CHAPTER X
ON THE ATHABASCA RIVER
I am but mad north-northwest: when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.—Hamlet.
All the world is a deluge of rain when we leave Athabasca Landing, and we wait at the hotel till the last minute, hoping the storm may abate in order that we may reach our steamer without losing too much starch. But the horn is making the asthmatic lamentations, meaning thereby that everybody should be aboard, so we say good-bye to all at the hotel; promise to be good; to take care of ourselves; and to come back soon. I say "we" because it is journalistic etiquette to be impersonal, but actually there is only myself, the other passengers having gone down to the river over an hour ago.
It is a troublous jaunt which I make, for a streak of wind turns my umbrella into a cornucopia; the fat drops of rain splash into my eyes; I take the wrong turn, get mired and lose my rubber shoes. When the river is reached, I find the descent to the steamer is buttered with mud and so steep that sliding is the only method of locomotion possible.
A vastly tall man stands on the gangway at the foot of the hill; holds out a pair of arms that must measure ten feet from tip to tip and says, "Come on, lady." The lady comes, but with such impact that we nearly go through to the opposite side of the steamer. Our final resting place is on a banana crate, which, in all conscience, is yielding enough, the fruit proving to be over-ripe. The passengers are distinctly amused, but the freight master is in no gallant temper over it and disapproves of the whole affair. I could tell you what he said to the vastly tall man, but you would have to come very close to hear me.
After supper, which consists of beef with stuffing, macaroni with cheese, pork with beans, white fish, stewed tomatoes, escalloped corn, boiled potatoes, walnut pickles, catsup, soda biscuits, pumpkin-pie, apple-pie, currant buns, cocoanut cake, cheese, coffee, stewed figs, tooth-picks and other things which I cannot remember, I crawl to the deck to find out where Grouard is, and how we are to get there.
Although thither bound, my knowledge of its location is shamefully vague. Here is what I learn. We sail north and west on the Athabasca River till we come to Mirror Landing, at the confluence of the Athabasca and Lesser Slave River, at which point we leave the steamer and make a portage of fourteen miles to Soto Landing. This portage is to avoid the government dams which have been built to make the Lesser Slave River navigable. At Soto Landing we embark on the Midnight Sun, another steamer of the Northern Navigation Company, and travel on till we enter Lesser Slave Lake, down which we journey to its extreme western end, where Grouard sits on a hill overlooking a bit of the lake called Buffalo Bay. Without mishaps, we ought to reach Grouard in four or five days, but no one will cut off our heads if we loiter a bit on the way.
There are about thirty male passengers on board and seven women. This half-hour I have been talking to a plausible prolix villain whom it would be easy to like greatly. He is going to make three million dollars from his oil-wells on the Mackenzie River. He says so himself. He has been down north for several years and walks like one who has been used to the spring of a snowshoe beneath his foot. His clothes have the odour of the forest—that is to say of leaf mould, poplar smoke and spruce resin. He went to England two years ago to persuade Grandfather Bull to invest in oil and asphaltum, but was not as successful as he could desire. "I figure," he says, "it will take another century to convince Grandfather, and by that time the fourth generation of America 'Coal-oil Johnnies' will have squandered the dividends on actresses and aeroplanes. Pouf! these Americans have no idea the world belongs to the Lord."
It was well I agreed with him so civilly, for he said, "If you wish to invest in some oil-stocks, Madam—and no doubt you will after what I have told you—I will see to it that you get in on the ground-floor and no questions asked."
Now I did not like to inquire of him what is meant by the ground-floor, lest he should think me the veriest ignoramus, but I am persuaded it means something most excellent, for I have frequently heard promoters mention it to people like me, who have not much money to buy with.
This man originally hailed from New Zealand, but he tells me that country is no good; it is too far from Fort McMurray. At Fort McMurray life is one round of pleasurable anticipation and all the day seems morning. Who can tell at what moment a gusher may shoot into the clouds and blot out the sun itself? Then it's gorged with gold we should all be—those of us on the ground-floor—and are millionaires, with hundreds of universities and public libraries to give away. What would be the use of having oil and hiding it under bushels of rocks, we'd like to know.
At this point the purser explains that the steep ascent to our right is called Bald Hill. It can be seen from a long distance, and is one of the features of the landscape from which, in the winter, the freighters measure distances—a kind of millarium or central milestone. Surely this is a country of vast horizons, both mentally and visually.
About every twelve miles we pass a stopping place where the winter freighters and their teams are fed. These houses and stables are built of logs and are sheltered by the forest. I prefer to say they have a roof-tree, the words seeming to suggest a good deal more. In spite of their splendid isolation, these stopping places do an excellent business and, while warm and well-provisioned, are still somewhat in the rough. The purser says this roughness is not worth regarding, for while here is the country a fellow roughs it, in the city he "gets it rough."
"And that reminds me, ladies, of my errand to you," he continues; "you are probably aware there are only sixteen bunks on this boat and eight mattresses. You, of course, will use your own blankets and pillows, but I perceive you have not secured mattresses. It would be wonderfully easy if you were to carry off one, or even two, from the priests' state-rooms, for at this very minute the priests say prayers on the lower deck."
"And believe me," he concludes in a highly chivalrous manner, "you two ladies have an unquestionable right to the mattresses, so that I shall consider your act to be one of perfect propriety."
Thus encouraged by the pursuer I proceeded with my room-mate to seize our "unquestionable rights," but, approaching the priests' door, my heart failed me, and our undertaking seemed a plain and undeniable demonstration of wickedness like the robbing of a child's bank. They are such quiet, well-deserving men, these eight black-smocked Brothers who are going North to the jubilee of the great Bishop Grouard, the like of whom there never was. Also, they are very polite, and the one who is an astronomer and comes from Italy, picked out the tenderest cut of beef for me at supper.
"Pray don't be silly," snorted my room-mate, "the rules of their Order say distinctly they shall deny themselves and not sleep softly. Besides, when men take terrible vows that they will never get married, it is a woman's stoutest duty to steal their mattress whenever the opportunity serves."
She also told me with rapid brevity some names which Clement of Alexandria, a Father of the Church, applied to women in the early days of the Christian era. She had read about them in a history......
In the falling of the night, at the mauve hour, our ship having been made fast, we go ashore and talk with the Indians who are camped here in a wigwam. One of the passengers, who has lived among the Crees for many years, tells me I express myself with redundancy in that the literal meaning of wigwam is camping-ground. She says the Indians have many grotesque folk tales, which are told by the men. Each story has a moral which they desire their wives to consider from an educative standpoint. Once there was a man whose utim (that is to say his dog) used to turn into an iskwao, or woman, when it became dark. She had yellow hair and her arms were white and soft like the breast feathers of a young bird. This happened long ago, before the Indians were baptized and when people were not so pious as they are now. Any man can do the same thing to this day if he happens to know the magic formula.
There is also a tale about a woman of the woods whom we, in our scientific conceit, call the echo. Once when her man was away for many moons on the great sepe, or river, the woman took another husband, so that when her man came back she flouted him and slapped his face. That night the moon changed her into a voice, and now she calls for her husband to come and love her, but he only mocks at her.
This habit of the husbands in telling tales with palpable deductions attached would seem to be common to other races than the Indians, for the Romans, likewise, had a story about the echo. It appears that Jupiter confided to Madam Echo the history of his amours, and when she told his secrets among her friends she was deprived of speech and could only repeat the questions which were asked of her. The Cree story is the better one. It has a fine human motive which the other lacks, and also it drops, a much-needed tribute on the worn altar of domesticity.
When a fire is lighted with birch bark and tamarack knots, we sit beside it and are more merry than you could believe.
The sweetheart of Jacques dances for us to the well-cadenced rhythm of a Tea Song. I cannot spell her Indian name, but it means "Fat of the Flowers," by which term they express our word "nectar." The cree is a droll language.
"Ha! He! ne matatow,
Ha! He! ne saghehow."
she chants and rechants as the fitful flames make sharp high-lights on her dark skin, causing her to appear as the flying figure of a bronze Daphne, and, in truth, the boughs of the trees lend likeness to my fancy, for as she dances into them, they seem to absorb her, even as the laurel absorbed the Grecian nymph of old time.
Translated literally, the words of the Tea Song read thus—
"Ha! He! I love him,
Ha! He! I miss him."
This is a supremely cunning song, in that it utters in six words (if we exclude the interjections) the summary of all the love songs which have ever been written—"I love him: I miss him." I am glad it was framed in the unsophisticated North.
And Fat of the Flowers sings another song which is addressed to her lover. She is lonely for him, our interpreter explains, but drinks her tears in silence. Sometimes his presence comes to her in the hour of twilight, and she kneels to it as the poplar kneels to the wind. When he returns to the camp fire she will give to him a blanket made out of the claw skins of the lynx, and a white and scarlet belt from the young quills of the porcupine.
I can see that her honeyed words are agreeable to Jacques and give him fullness of pleasure, for there is a tell-tale joy in his face that refuses to be hid.
Jacques, who is a riverman, was educated at a mission school on the Mackenzie, and he tells me that Fat of the Flowers is nearly as "magneloquent" and clever as a man. He is almost sure there is a little white bird that sings in her heart.
After a time, our dusky friends steal away one by one to their rest, or two by two. The ship lolls lazily on the bank and there is no sound save the whimper of the fire and the deep breathing of some over-tired sleeper, but once a sleeper laughed aloud.
I step carefully between the recumbent forms on the deck lest I hurt them or disturb their quietude. I am sorry now that I stole the mattresses. Surely I am a bitter sinner and unlovely of heart.
In the morning, when I told the Brothers how I had privily taken the mattresses because I disapproved of their vows concerning marriage, and because of the unseemly remarks Clement of Alexandria had applied to women in the early days of the Christian era, they laughed again and again with much hilarity. Indeed, one of the Brothers said he applauded my moderation and marvelled that I was good enough to leave their blankets and pillows. Another gave it as his opinion that Clement's pleasantry was a shabby-minded one and needlessly sarcastic, the result of an ill-governed disposition. But this Brother, like the others, took full care to evade the question I had raised as to celibacy....
What Clement of Alexandria said was that women, like Egyptian temples, were beautiful without, but when you entered and withdrew the veil, there was nothing behind it but a cat or a crocodile.