CHAPTER III
THE LAST OF CIVILIZATION
The time for action had come. Our canoes were loaded near the wharf, we said good-by to Cotter and a group of native trapper friends, and as we took our places in the canoes and dipped our paddles into the waters that were to carry us northward the Post flag was run up on the flagpole as a salute and farewell, and we were away. We soon rounded the point, and Cotter and the trappers and the Post were lost to view. Duncan was to follow later in the evening in his rowboat with some of our outfit which we left in his charge.
Silently we paddled through the “little lake.” The clouds hung somber and dull with threatening rain, and a gentle breeze wafted to us now and again a bit of fragrance from the spruce-covered hills above us. Almost before I realized it we were at the rapid. Away to the westward stretched Grand Lake, deep and dark and still, with the rugged outline of Cape Corbeau in the distance.
Tom Blake and his family, one and all, came out to give us the whole-souled, hospitable welcome of “The Labrador.” Even Atikamish, the little Indian dog that Mackenzie used to have, but which he had given to Tom when he left Northwest River, was on hand to tell me in his dog language that he remembered me and was delighted to see me back. Here we would stay for the night—the last night for months that we were to sleep in a habitation of civilized man.
The house was a very comfortable little log dwelling containing a small kitchen, a larger living-room which also served as a sleeping-room, and an attic which was the boys’ bedroom. The house was comfortably furnished, everything clean to perfection, and the atmos-phere of love and home that dwelt here was long remembered by us while we huddled in many a dreary camp during the weeks that followed.
Duncan did not come that night, and it was not until ten o’clock the next morning (June twenty-seventh) that he appeared. Then we made ready for the start. Tom and his young son Henry announced their intention of accompanying us a short distance up Grand Lake in their small sailboat. Mrs. Blake gave us enough bread and buns, which she had baked especially for us, to last two or three days, and she gave us also a few fresh eggs, saying, “’Twill be a long time before you has eggs again.”
At half-past ten o’clock our canoes were afloat, farewell was said, and we were beyond the last fringe of civilization.