TIDE WATER AND THE POST
When Easton came to his senses, he found himself warming by the fire. It is wonderful how quickly a half-frozen man will revive. As soon as we were thoroughly thawed out we stripped to our underclothing and hung our things up to dry, permitting our underclothing to dry on us as we stood near the blaze. We were little the worse for our dip, escaping with slightly frosted fingers and toes. I discovered in my pockets a half plug of black tobacco such as we use in the North, put it on the end of a stick and dried it out, and then we had a smoke. We agreed that we had never in our life before had so satisfactory a smoke as that. The stimulant was needed and it put new life into us.
Easton was very pessimistic. He was generally inclined to look upon the dark side of things anyway, and now he believed our fate was sealed, especially if we could not find our paddles, and he began to talk about returning to our cache and thence to the Indians. But I had been in much worse predicaments than this, and paddles or no paddles, determined to go on, for we could work our way down the river somehow with poles and the bag of pemmican would keep us alive until we reached the Post—unless the freeze-up caught us.
When we had dried ourselves we went to the canoe to make an inventory of our remaining goods and chattels, and with a vague hope that a paddle might be found on the shore. What, then, was our surprise and our joy to find not only the paddles but our dunnage bags and my instrument bag amongst the rocks, where an eddy below the rapid swirled the water in. Thus our blankets and clothing were safe, we had fifty pounds of pemmican, our tent and tent stove, and in the small bag that I have mentioned as having remained in the canoe with the other things was all our tea and five or six pounds of caribou tallow. Our matches—and this was a great piece of good fortune—were uninjured, and we had a good stock of them. The tent stove seemed useless without the pipe, but we determined to cling to it, as our luggage now was light. Our guns, axes, the balance of our provisions, including salt, the tea kettle and all our other cooking utensils, were gone, and worst of all, three hundred and fifty unexposed photographic films. Only twenty or thirty unexposed films were saved, but fortunately, only one roll of ten exposed films, which was in one of the cameras, was injured, and none of the exposed films was lost. One camera was damaged beyond use, as were also my aneroid barometer and binoculars. However, we were fortunate to get off so easily as we did, and the accident taught us the lesson to take no chances in rapids and to tie everything fast at all times. Carelessness is pretty sure to demand its penalty, and the wilderness is constantly springing surprises upon those who submit themselves to its care.
A pretty dreary camp we pitched that evening near the place of our mishap. Fortunately there was plenty of dead wood loose on the ground, and we did very well for our camp fire without the axes. A pemmican can with the end cut off about an inch from the top, with a piece of copper wire that I found in my dunnage bag fashioned into a bale, made a very serviceable tea pail, from which we drank in turn, as our cups were lost. The top of the can answered for a frying pan in which to melt our caribou tallow and pemmican when we wanted our ration hot, and as a plate. Tent pegs were cut with our jackknives and the tent stretched between two trees, which avoided the necessity of tent poles. Thus, with our cooking and living outfit reduced to the simplest and crudest form, and with a limited and unvaried diet of pemmican, tallow and tea, we were on the whole able, so long as loose wood could be found for our night camps, to keep comparatively comfortable and free from any severe hardships.
We certainly had great reason to be thankful, and that night before we rolled into our blankets I read aloud by the light of our camp fire from my little Bible the one hundred and seventh Psalm, in thanksgiving.
The next morning before starting forward we paddled out to the rapid, in the vain hope that we might be able to recover some of the lost articles from the bottom of the river, but at the place where the spill had occurred the water was too swift and deep for us to do anything, and we were forced to abandon the attempt and reluctantly resume our journey without the things.
That night we felt sorely the loss of the axes. Our camp was pitched in a spot where no loose wood was to be found save very small sticks, insufficient in quantity for an adequate fire in the open, for the evening was cold. We could not pitch our tent wigwam fashion with an opening at the top for the smoke to escape, as to do that several poles were necessary, and we had no means of cutting them. However, with the expectation that enough smoke would find its way out of the stovepipe hole to permit us to remain inside, we built a small round Indian fire in the center of the tent. We managed to endure the smoke and warm ourselves while tea was making, but the experiment proved a failure and was not to be resorted to again, for I feared it might result in an attack of smoke-blindness. This is an affliction almost identical in effect to snow-blindness. I had suffered from it in the first days of my wandering alone in the Susan Valley in the winter of 1903, and knew what it meant, and that an attack of it would preclude traveling while it lasted, to say nothing of the pain that it would inflict.
Here a portage was necessary around a half-mile canyon through which the river, a rushing torrent, tumbled in the interval over a series of small falls, and all the way the perpendicular walls of basaltic rock that confined it rose on either side to a height of fifty to seventy-five feet above the seething water. Just below this canyon another river joined us from the east, increasing the volume of water very materially. Our tumplines were gone, but with the tracking line and pieces of deer skin we improvised new ones that answered our purpose very well.
The hills, barren almost to their base, and growing in altitude with every mile we traveled, were now closely hugging the river valley, which was almost destitute of trees. Rapids were practically continuous and always strewn with dangerous rocks that kept us constantly on the alert and our nerves strung to the highest tension.