The hills were assuming a different aspect—less conical in form and not so high. The bowlders on the river banks were superseded by massive bed-rock granite. The coves and hollows were better wooded and there were some stretches of slack water. On October fifteenth we portaged around a series of low falls, below which was a small lake expansion with a river flowing into it from the east. Here we found the first evidence of human life that we had seen in a long while—a wide portage trail that had been cut through now burned and dead trees on the eastern side of the river. It was fully six feet in width and had been used for the passage of larger boats than canoes. The moss was still unrenewed where the tramp of many moccasins had worn it off. This was the trail made by John McLean’s brigades nearly three-quarters of a century before, for in their journeys to Indian House Lake they had used rowboats and not canoes for the transportation of supplies.
The day we passed over this portage was a most miserable one. We were soaked from morning till night with mingled snow and rain, and numb with the cold, but when we made our night camp, below the junction of the rivers, one or two ax cuttings were found, and I knew that now our troubles were nearly at an end and we were not far from men. The next afternoon (Monday, October sixteenth) we stopped two or three miles below a rapid to boil our kettle, and before our tea was made the canoe was high and dry on the rocks. We had reached tide water at last! How we hurried through that luncheon, and with what light hearts we launched the canoe again, and how we peered into every bay for the Post buildings that we knew were now close at hand can be imagined. These bays were being left wide stretches of mud and rocks by the receding water, which has a tide fall here of nearly forty feet. At last, as we rounded a rocky point, we saw the Post. The group of little white buildings nestling deep in a cove, a feathery curl of smoke rising peacefully from the agent’s house, an Eskimo tupek (tent), boats standing high on the mud flat below, and the howl of a husky dog in the distance, formed a picture of comfort that I shall long remember.
CHAPTER XV
OFF WITH THE ESKIMOS
The tide had left the bay drained, on the farther side and well toward the bottom of which the Post stands, and between us and the buildings was a lake of soft mud. There seemed no approach for the canoe, and rather than sit idly until the incoming tide covered the mud again so that we could paddle in, we carried our belongings high up the side of the hill, safely out of reach of the water when it should rise, and then started to pick our way around the face of the clifflike hill, with the intention of skirting the bay and reaching the Post at once from the upper side.
It was much like walking on the side of a wall, and to add to our discomfiture night began to fall before we were half way around, for it was slow work. Once I descended cautiously to the mud, thinking that I might be able to walk across it, but a deep channel filled with running water intercepted me, and I had to return to Easton, who had remained above. We finally realized that we could not get around the hill before dark and the footing was too uncertain to attempt to retrace our steps to the canoe in the fading light, as a false move would have hurled us down a hundred feet into the mud and rocks below. Fortunately a niche in the hillside offered a safe resting place, and we drew together here all the brush within reach, to be burned later as a signal to the Post folk that some one was on the hill, hoping that when the tide rose it would bring them in, a boat to rescue us from our unpleasant position. When the brush was arranged for firing at an opportune time we sat down in the thickening darkness to watch the lights which were now flickering cozily in the windows of the Post house.
“Well, this is hard luck,” said Easton. “There’s good bread and molasses almost within hailing distance and we’ve likely got to sit out here on the rocks all night without wood enough to keep fire, and it’s going to rain pretty soon and we can’t even get back to our pemmican and tent.”