The Long Labrador Trail

by Dillon Wallace

The rain had ceased early in the afternoon, and the evening was delightfully cool, so that the warmth of a big camp fire was most grateful and comforting. Our day’s march had carried us into a well-wooded country, and the spectral dry sticks of the old burnt forest were behind us. The clouds hung low and threatening, and in the twilight beyond the glow of our leaping fire made the still waters of the lake, with its encircling wilderness of fir trees, seem very dark and somber. The genial warmth of the fire was so in contrast to the chilly darkness of the tent that we sat long around it and talked of our travels and prospects and the lake and the wilderness before us that no white man had ever before seen, while the brook near by tumbling over its rocky bed roared a constant complaint at our intrusion into this land of solitude.

The following morning was cool and fine, but showers developed during the day. Our venison, improderly dried, was molding, and much of it we found, upon unpacking, to be maggoty. After breakfast I instructed the others to cut out the wormy parts as far as possible and hang the good meat over the fire for further drying, while with Easton I explored a portion of the lake shore in search of the trail leading out. We returned for a late dinner, and then while Easton, Richards and I caught trout, I dispatched Pete and Stanton to continue the search beyond the point where Easton and I had left off. It was near evening when they came back with the information that they had found the trail, very difficult to follow, leading to a river, some two miles and a half beyond our camp. This was undoubtedly the Crooked River, which empties into Grand Lake close to the Nascaupee, and which the Indians had told us had its rise in Lake Nipishish.

The evening was very warm, and mosquitoes were so thick in the tent that we almost breathed them. Stanton, after much turning and fidgeting, finally took his blanket out of doors, where he said it was cooler and he could sleep with his head covered to protect him; but in an hour he was back, and with his blanket wet with dew took his usual place beside me.

Below the point where the trail enters the Crooked River it is said by the Indians to be exceedingly rough and entirely impassable. We portaged into it the next morning, paddled a short distance up the stream, which is here some two hundred yards in width and rather shallow, then poled through a short rapid and tracked through two others, wading almost to our waists in some places. We now came to a widening of the river where it spread out into a small lake. Near the upper end of this expansion was an island upon which we found a long-disused log cache of the Indians. A little distance above the island what appeared to be two rivers flowed into the expansion. Richards, Duncan and I explored up the right-hand branch until we struck a rapid. Upon our return to the point where the two streams came together we found that the other canoe, against my positive instructions not to proceed at uncertain points until I had decided upon the proper route to take, had gone up the branch on the left, tracked through a rapid and disappeared.

There were no signs of Indians on either of these branches so far as we could discover, and I was well satisfied that somewhere on the north bank of the expansion, probably not far from the island and old cache which we had passed, was the trail. But evening was coming on and rain was threatening, so there was nothing to do but follow the other canoe, which had gone blindly ahead, until we should overtake it, as it contained all the cooking utensils and our tent. This fail-ure of the men to obey instructions took us a considerable distance out of our way and cost us several days’ time, as we discovered later.

We tracked through some rapids and finally overhauled the others at a place where the river branched again. It was after seven o’clock, a drizzling rain was falling, and here we pitched camp on the east side of the river just opposite the junction of the two branches.

On the west fork and directly across from our camp was a rough rapid, and while supper was cooking I paddled over with Richards to try for fish. We made our casts, and I quickly landed a twenty-inch ouananiche and Richards hooked a big trout that, after much play, was brought ashore. It measured twenty-two and a half inches from tip to tip and eleven and a half inches around the shoulders. I had landed a couple more large trout, when Richards enthusiastically announced that he had a big fellow hooked. He played the fish for half an hour before he brought it to the edge of the rock, so completely exhausted that it could scarcely move a fin. We had no landing net and he attempted to lift it out by the line, when snap went the hook and the fish was free! I made a dash, caught it in my hands and triumphantly brought it ashore. It proved to be an ouananiche that measured twenty-seven and one-half inches in length by eleven and one-quarter inches in girth.

In our excitement we had forgotten all about supper and did not even know that it was raining; but we now saw Pete on the further shore gesticulating wildly and pointing at his open mouth, in pantomime suggestion that the meal was waiting.