Eight miles farther we camped in the rain, reaching the Buffalo Portage next morning at 10, and had everything over its 5 miles by 7 o'clock at night.
It is easily set down on paper, but the uninitiated can scarcely realise the fearful toil of portaging. If you are an office man, suppose you take an angular box weighing 20 or 30 pounds; if a farmer, double the weight, poise it on your shoulders or otherwise, as you please, and carry it half a mile on a level pavement in cool, bright weather, and I am mistaken if you do not find yourself suffering horribly before the end of a quarter-mile; the last part of the trip will have been made in something like mortal agony. Remember, then, that each of these portagers was carrying 150 to 250 pounds of broken stuff, not half a mile, but several miles, not on level pavement, but over broken rocks, up banks, through quagmires and brush—in short, across ground that would be difficult walking without any burden, and not in cool, clear weather, but through stifling swamps with no free hand to ease the myriad punctures of his body, face, and limbs whenever unsufficiently protected from the stingers that roam in clouds. It is the hardest work I ever saw performed by human beings; the burdens are heavier than some men will allow their horses to carry.
Yet all this frightful labour was cheerfully gone through by white men, half-breeds, and Indians alike. They accept it as a part of their daily routine. This fact alone is enough to guarantee the industrial future of the red-man when the hunter life is no longer possible.
Next day we embarked on the Little Buffalo River, beginning what should have been and would have been a trip of memorable joys but for the awful, awful, awful—see Chapter IX.
The Little Buffalo is the most beautiful river in the whole world except, perhaps, its affluent, the Nyarling.
This statement sounds like the exaggeration of mere impulsive utterance. Perhaps it is; but I am writing now after thinking the matter over for two and a half years, during, which time I have seen a thousand others, including the upper Thames, the Afton, the Seine, the Arno, the Tiber, the Iser, the Spree, and the Rhine.
A hundred miles long is this uncharted stream; fifty feet its breadth of limpid tide; eight feet deep, crystal clear, calm, slow, and deep to the margin. A steamer could ply on its placid, unobstructed flood, a child could navigate it anywhere. The heavenly beauty of the shores, with virgin forest of fresh, green spruces towering a hundred feet on every side, or varied in open places with long rows and thick-set hedges of the gorgeous, wild, red, Athabaska rose, made a stream that most canoemen, woodmen, and naturalists would think without a fault or flaw, and with every river beauty in its highest possible degree. Not trees and flood alone had strenuous power to win our souls; at every point and bank, in every bend, were living creatures of the north, Beaver and Bear, not often seen but abundant; Moose tracks showed from time to time and birds were here in thousands. Rare winter birds, as we had long been taught to think them in our southern homes; here we found them in their native land and heard not a few sweet melodies, of which in faraway Ontario, New Jersey, and Maryland we had been favoured only with promising scraps when wintry clouds were broken by the sun. Nor were the old familiar ones away—Flicker, Sapsucker, Hairy Woodpecker, Kingfisher, Least Flycatcher, Alder Flycatcher, Robin, Crow, and Horned Owl were here to mingle their noises with the stranger melodies and calls of Lincoln Sparrow, Fox Sparrow, Olive-sided Flycatcher, Snipe, Rusty Blackbird, and Bohemian Waxwing.
Never elsewhere have I seen Horned Owls so plentiful. I did not know that there were so many Bear and Beaver left; I never was so much impressed by the inspiring raucous clamour of the Cranes, the continual spatter of Ducks, the cries of Gulls and Yellowlegs. Hour after hour we paddled down that stately river adding our 3 1/2 miles to its 1 mile speed; each turn brought to view some new and lovelier aspect of bird and forest life. I never knew a land of balmier air; I never felt the piney breeze more sweet; nowhere but in the higher mountains is there such a tonic sense abroad; the bright woods and river reaches were eloquent of a clime whose maladies are mostly foreign-born. But alas! I had to view it all swaddled, body, hands, and head, like a bee-man handling his swarms. Songs were muffled, scenes were dimmed by the thick, protecting, suffocating veil without which men can scarcely live.
Ten billion dollars would be all too small reward, a trifle totally inadequate to compensate, mere nominal recognition of the man who shall invent and realise a scheme to save this earthly paradise from this its damning pest and malediction.