Two days later we reached the Post at Romain, and on the afternoon of April seventeenth reached Natashquan and open water. Here I engaged passage on a small schooner—the first afloat in the St. Lawrence—to take us on to Eskimo Point, seventy miles farther, where the Quebec steamer, King Edward, was expected to arrive in a week or so. That night we boarded the schooner and sailed at once. Into the sea I threw the clothes I had been wearing, and donned fresh ones. What a relief it was to be clear of the innumerable horde “o’ wee sma’ beasties” that had been my close companions all the way down from the Eskimo igloos in the North. I have wondered many times since whether those clothes swam ashore, and if they did what happened to them.
It was a great pleasure to be upon the water again, and see the shore slip past, and feel that no more snowstorms, no more bitter northern blasts, no more hungry days and nights were to be faced.
Since June twenty-fifth, the day we dipped our paddles into the water of Northwest River and turned northward into the wastes of the great unknown wilderness, eight hundred miles had been traversed in reaching Fort Chimo, and on our return journey with dogs and komatik and snowshoes, two thousand more.
We reached Eskimo Point on April twentieth, and that very day a rain began that turned the world into a sea of slush. I was glad indeed that our komatik work was finished, for it would now have been very difficult, if not impossible, to travel farther with dogs.
I at once deposited in the post office the bag of letters that I had carried all the way from far-off Ungava. This was the first mail that any single messenger had ever carried by dog train from that distant point, and I felt quite puffed up with the honor of it.
The week that we waited here for the King Edward was a dismal one, and when the ship finally arrived we lost no time in getting ourselves and our belongings aboard. It was a mighty satisfaction to feel the pulse of the engines that with every revolution took us nearer home, and when at last we tied up at the steamer’s wharf in Quebec, I heaved a sigh of relief.
On April thirtieth, after an absence of just eleven months, we found ourselves again in the whirl and racket of New York. The portages and rapids and camp fires, the Indian wigwams and Eskimo igloos and the great, silent white world of the North that we had so recently left were now only memories. We had reached the end of The Long Trail. The work of exploration begun by Hubbard was finished.
APPENDIX
LABRADOR PLANTS