The storm increased, and early in the day the snow began to fall so heavily that we could not see our way, and forced us to turn into a bay where we found a small cluster of trees amongst big bowlders, and pitched our tent in their shelter. The snow had drifted in and filled the space between the rocks, and on this we piled armfuls of scraggy boughs and made a fairly level and wholly comfortable bed; but it was a long, tedious job digging with our hands and feet into the snow for bits of wood for our stove. The conditions were growing harder and harder with every day, and our experience here was a common one with us for the most of the remainder of the way down the river from this point.
The day we reached the lower end of the lake I summed up briefly its characteristics in my field book as follows:
“Indian House Lake has a varying width of from a quarter mile to three miles. It is apparently not deep. Both shores are followed by ridges of the most barren, rocky hills imaginable, some of them rising to a height of eight to nine hundred feet and sloping down sharply to the shores, which are strewn with large loose bowlders or are precipitous bed rock. An occasional sand knoll occurs, and upon nearly every one of these is an abandoned Indian camp. The timber growth—none at all or very scanty spruce and tamarack. Length of lake (approximated) fifty-five miles.”
I had hoped to locate the site of McLean’s old Post buildings, more than three score years ago destroyed by the Indians, doubtless for firewood, but the snow had bidden what few traces of them time had not destroyed, and they were passed unnoticed. The storm which raged all the time we were here made progress slow, and it was not until the morning of the tenth that we reached the end of the lake, where the river, vastly increased in volume, poured out through a rapid.
Below Indian House Lake there were only a few short stretches of slack water to relieve the pretty continuous rapids. The river wound in and out, in and out, rushing on its tumultuous way amongst ever higher mountains. There was no time to examine the rapids before we shot them. We had to take our chances, and as we swung around every curve we half expected to find before us a cataract that would hurl us to destruction. The banks were often sheer from the water’s edge, and made landing difficult or even impossible. In one place for a dis-tance of many miles the river had worn its way through the mountains, leaving high, perpendicular walls of solid rock on either side, forming a sort of canyon. In other places high bowlders, piled by some giant force, formed fifty-foot high walls, which we had to scale each night to make our camp. In the morning some peak in the blue distance would be noted as a landmark. In a couple of hours we would rush past it and mark another one, which, too, would soon be left behind.
The rapids continued the characteristic of the river and were terrific. Often it would seem that no canoe could ride the high, white waves, or that we could not avoid the swirl of mighty cross-current eddies, which would have swallowed up our canoe like a chip had we got into them. There were rapids whose roar could be distinctly heard for five or six miles. These we approached with the greatest care, and portaged around the worst places. The water was so clear that often we found ourselves dodging rocks, which, when we passed them, were ten or twelve feet below the surface. It was here that a peculiar optical illusion occurred. The water appeared to be running down an incline of about twenty degrees. At the place where this was noticed, however, the current was not exceptionally swift. We were in a section now where the Indians never go, owing to the character of the river—a section that is wholly untraveled and unhunted.
After leaving Indian House Lake, as we descended from the plateau, the weather grew milder. There were chilly winds and bleak rains, but the snow, though remaining on the mountains, disappeared gradually from the valley, and this was a blessing to us, for it enabled us to make camp with a little less labor, and the bits of wood were left uncovered, to be gathered with more ease. Every hour of light we needed, for with each dawn and twilight the days were becoming noticeably shorter. The sun now rose in the southeast, crossed a small segment of the sky, and almost before we were aware of it set in the southwest.
The wilderness gripped us closer and closer as the days went by. Remembrances of the outside world were becoming like dreamland fancies—something hazy, indefinite and unreal. We could hardly bring ourselves to believe that we had really met the Indians. It seemed to us that all our lives we had been going on and on through rushing water, or with packs over rocky portages, and the Post we were aiming to reach appeared no nearer to us than it did the day we left Northwest River—long, long ago. We seldom spoke. Sometimes in a whole day not a dozen words would be exchanged. If we did talk at all it was at night over soothing pipes, after the bit of pemmican we allowed ourselves was disposed of, and was usually of something to eat—planning feasts of darn goods, bread and molasses when we should reach a place where these luxuries were to be had. It was much like the way children plan what wonderful things they will do, and what unbounded good things they will indulge in, when they attain that high pinnacle of their ambition—“grown-ups.”
After our upset in the rapid Easton eschewed water entirely, except for drinking purposes. He had had enough of it, he said. I did bathe my hands and face occasionally, particularly in the morning, to rouse me from the torpor of the always heavy sleep of night. What savages men will revert into when they are buried for a long period in the wilderness and shake off the trammels and customs of the conventionalism of civilization! It does not take long to make an Indian out of a white man so far as habits and customs of living go.
Our routine of daily life was always the same. Long before daylight I would arise, kindle a fire, put over it our tea water, and then get Easton out of his blankets. At daylight we would start. At midday we had tea, and at twilight made the best camp we could.