The general course of the river for several days was north, thirty degrees east, but later assumed an almost due northerly course. It made some wide sweeps as it worked its tortuous way through the ranges, sometimes almost doubling on itself. At intervals small streams joined it and it was constantly growing in width and depth. Once we came to a place where it dropped over massive bed rock in a series of falls, some of which were thirty or more feet in height. Few portages, however, were necessary. We took our chances on everything that there was any prospect of the canoe living through— rapids that under ordinary circumstances we should never have trusted--for the grip of the cold weather was tightening with each October day. The small lakes away from the river, where the water was still, must even now have been frozen, but the river current was so big and strong that it had as yet warded off the frost shackles. When the real winter came, however, it would be upon us in a night, and then even this mighty torrent must submit to its power.
At one point the valley suddenly widened and the hills receded, and here the river broke up into many small streams—no less than five— but some four or five miles farther on these various channels came together again, and then the growing hills closed in until they pinched the river banks more closely than ever.
On the morning of October sixth we swung around a big bend in the river, ran a short but precipitous rapid and suddenly came upon another large river flowing in from the west. This stream came through a sandy valley, and below the junction of the rivers the sand banks rose on the east side a hundred feet or so above the water. The increase here in the size of the stream was marked—it was wide and deep. A terrific gale was blowing and caught us directly in our faces as we turned the bend and lost the cover of the lee share above the curve, and paddling ahead was impossible. The waves were so strong, in fact, that we barely escaped swamping before we effected a landing.
We here found ourselves in an exceedingly unpleasant position. We were only fitted with summer clothing, which was now insufficient protection. There was not enough loose wood to make an open fire to keep us warm for more than an hour or so, and we could not go on to look for a better camping place. In a notch between the sand ridges we found a small cluster of trees, between two of which our tent was stretched, but it was mighty uncomfortable with no means of warming. “If we only had our stovepipe now we’d be able to break enough small stuff to keep the stove going,” said Easton. With nothing else to do we climbed a knoll to look at the river below, and there on the knoll what should we find but several lengths of nearly worn-out but still serviceable pipe that some Indian had abandoned. “It’s like Robinson Crusoe,” said Easton. “Just as soon as we need something that we can’t get on very well without we find it. A special Providence is surely caring for us.” We appropriated that pipe, all right, and it did not take us long to get a fire in the stove, which we had clung to, useless as it had seemed to be.
A mass of ripe cranberries, so thick that we crushed them with every step, grew on the hills, and we picked our pailful and stewed them, using crystallose (a small phial of which I had in my dunnage bag) as sweetening. A pound of pemmican a day with a bit of tallow is sustaining, but not filling, and left us with a constant, gnawing hunger. These berries were a godsend, and sour as they were we filled up on them and for once gratified our appetites. We had a great desire, too, for something sweet, and always pounced upon the stray raisins in the pemmican. When either of us found one in his ration it was divided between us. Our great longing was for bread and molasses, just as it had been with Hubbard and me when we were short of food, and we were constantly talking of the feasts we would have of these delicacies when we reached the Post—wheat bread and common black molasses.
The George River all the way down to this point had been in past years a veritable slaughter house. There were great piles of caribou antlers (the barren-ground caribou or reindeer), sometimes as many as two or three hundred pairs in a single pile, where the Indians had speared the animals in the river, and everywhere along the banks were scattered dry bones. Abandoned camps, and some of them large ones and not very old, were distributed at frequent intervals, though we saw no more of the Indians themselves until we reached Ungava Bay.
Wolves were numerous. We saw their tracks in the sand and fresh signs of them were common. They always abound where there are caribou, which form their main living. Ptarmigans in the early morning clucked on the river banks like chickens in a barnyard, and we saw some very large flocks of them. Geese and black ducks, making their way to the southward, were met with daily. But we had no arms or ammunition with which to kill them. I saw some fox signs, but there were very few or no rabbit signs, strange to say, until we were a full hundred miles farther down the river.
This camp, where we found the stovepipe, we soon discovered was nearly at the head of Indian House Lake, so called by a Hudson’s Bay Company factor-John McLean-because of the numbers of Indians that he found living on its shores. McLean, about seventy years earlier, had ascended the river in the interests of his company, for the purpose of establishing interior posts. The most inland Post that he erected was at the lower end of this lake, which is fifty-five miles in length. He also built a Post on a large lake which he describes in his published journal as lying to the west of Indian House Lake. The exact location of this latter lake is not now known, but I am inclined to think it is one which the Indians say is the source of Whale River, a stream of considerable size emptying into Ungava Bay one hundred and twenty miles to the westward of the mouth of the George River. These two rivers are doubtless much nearer together, however, farther inland, where Whale River has its rise. The difficulty experienced by McLean in getting supplies to these two Posts rendered them unprofitable, and after experimenting with them for three years they were abandoned. The agents in charge were each spring on the verge of starvation before the opening of the waters brought fish and food or they were relieved by the brigades from Ungava. They had to depend almost wholly upon their hunters for provisions. It was not attempted in those days to carry in flour, pork and other food stuffs now considered by the traders necessaries. And almost the only goods handled by them in the Indian trade were axes, knives, guns, ammunition and beads.
Indian House Lake now, as then, is a general rendezvous for the Indians during the summer months, when they congregate there to fish and to hunt reindeer. In the autumn they scatter to the better trapping grounds, where fur bearing animals are found in greater abun-dance. We were too late in the season to meet these Indians, though we saw many of their camping places.
A snowstorm began on October seventh, but the wind had so far abated that we were able to resume our journey. It was a bleak and dismal day. Save for now and then a small grove of spruce trees in some sheltered nook, and these at long intervals, the country was destitute and barren of growth. Below our camp, upon entering the lake, there was a wide, flat stretch of sand wash from the river, and below this from the lake shore on either side, great barren, grim hills rose in solemn majesty, across whose rocky face the wind swept the snow in fitful gusts and squalls. Off on a mountain side a wolf disturbed the white silence with his dismal cry, and farther on a big black fellow came to the water’s edge, and with the snow blowing wildly about him held his head in the air and howled a challenge at us as we passed close by. Perhaps he yearned for companionship and welcomed the sight of living things. For my part, grim and uncanny as he looked, I was glad to see him. He was something to vary the monotony of the great solemn silence of our world.