Poor Carrière, too, though very lame, rather than let the baggage be left behind and Mr. K—— inconvenienced, also came. For the first mile it was muddy, but, thinking it better than our expectations, we slipped and plodded along very contentedly, stopping every now and then to scrape our boots, but this made our progress slow, and we had no time to waste. Soon the path, or what had once been one, terminated, and we had to jump the drain to the embankment, and climb that. In five minutes our feet weighed pounds, and we understood the navvies' saying that they "took up land wherever they worked." Goloshes were useless, and we soon discarded them, and, but for fear of hurting my feet with hidden stones or sticks, I would have discarded my shoes too. Still on we plodded, sinking to our ankles at almost every step; it was warm work. At the end of the second mile, near a group of shanties, the road was a little dryer, and a pile of ties gave us a resting-place for a few minutes. After this the road got worse and worse, and trying to walk on the greasy, slippery railway ties scattered about was even more difficult than plodding through the mud. The maid, who entered a protest against the country at every opportunity, was sliding and slipping over these ties in front; glancing down the embankment, three or four feet in depth, she uttered a heartfelt "Thank God! a path at last," and, giving one jump, she sank nearly to her knees in the marsh. The doleful expression of her face, and the hopeless disappointment with which she scrambled up the muddy bank back to the slippery ties, was too much for my gravity. I am afraid my laughter offended the poor girl, and it was scarcely fair, either, as she had borne all the disagreeables far better than people in her class generally do.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Tilford—Pedestrians under Difficulties—The Railway at last—Not exactly
a First-class Carriage—The Jules Muskeg—Whitemouth and Broken-Head
Rivers—Vagaries of the Engine-driver—The Hotel at St. Boniface—Red
River Ferry—Winnipeg—"A Vagabond Heroine"—The Terrier at fault.
We reached Tilford about six. How we pitied the pretty, sad-looking woman, wife of the engineer, for having to live in a house stranded upon a bank of mud, just high enough to keep the water out, and with mud and marsh on all sides for miles, making it impossible to go out! They had no society, and only the bare necessaries of life about them; the mail carrier and the telegraph were their only means of communication with the outside world.
Excusing our travel-stained appearance, they persuaded us to stay to dinner. My hands were so muddy that I tried to keep them under the table as much as possible; but, finding this awkward, I looked to see if it was noticed, and was relieved by finding I had companions in misery.
We left Tilford at seven, and for some little distance the road seemed better. Fortunately, it was a moonlight night, or we should have had difficulty in keeping the trail. For some distance it ran along the muddy dump, then came a great open culvert, with a gang of men sitting round a fire at the bottom. One of them called out as we appeared, "Ye's can't git down here; ye's'll have to go round." Retracing our steps a hundred feet, we found a track down the side to a submerged bridge, which we traversed as quickly as possible, but not without getting wet to our knees in ice-cold water. Next we climbed up a narrow path, so close to the edge that a false step would have precipitated us ten or twelve feet to the rock below. A steep, uneven fragment of path had to be traversed, and we were in the middle of the cutting. Just beyond was another culvert in a more advanced stage; and we walked carefully across a narrow single board, whose ends lay loosely over one another in the careless way in which men generally run up scaffolding, so that one nail is the only thing that keeps them in this world. The planks were slippery, and in the uncertain moonlight we scarcely breathed while crossing them. On, on, through more mud and water, until, about half-past eight, we saw the whitewashed walls of the telegraph office at the end of the track, and Mr. M—— came springing down the bank to meet us.
"I have just been asking if you were still at Tilford," he said. "I never thought you could get through but would give in and stay there all night. The engine-driver was getting impatient to be off, so I came to find out."
When we reached the train a load of ties blocked the way, so we had to climb up on a truck, jump down again, and go round a cattle-van to the open truck or freight-car, where our luggage was already piled, and on which we were to make our trip to Winnipeg. Spreading the robes on the floor, Mr. M—— piled the bags and valises in the centre for us to lean against, and covered us with blankets and shawls. Before settling down, however, I took friendly advice, and trusting to the covering of the semi-darkness, changed my shoes, throwing the mud-laden ones overboard. Then, when well under the blankets, I was comparatively warm. Carrière and Frank came to say good-bye before the train started. They, poor fellows, had to trudge back to the ranche that night, and I, being perhaps the only one of the party who was never likely to see them again, parted from the kindly, good-natured men with regret. Mr. D—— also left us, with many good wishes and good-byes.
The track was not ballasted for the first forty-five miles, and the car rocked frightfully. The wind was bitterly cold, and we crouched down closer under the blankets, but were unable to keep warm until after ten o'clock, when Mr. F—— stopped the train at Whitemouth and borrowed a roll of blankets from the engineer there. With this additional covering, we succeeded in warming our wet clothes. The dear little baby slept all the time in its mother's arms, as cozy and comfortable as possible. Her only dread was that it might be smothered, and many an anxious peep was taken under its many coverings to make sure of its existence. We talked in snatches; and until after eleven amused ourselves with learning some railway technicalities, in order that we might be able to talk of "when we were out on the line." But as the moonlight faded, we grew very quiet and drowsy. Once, when I was just dropping into a little nap, Mrs. F——'s caution, "Don't go to sleep, or you will roll off!" roused me to the consciousness of not having a sofa or even terra firma to repose upon.
On that part of the line the country is flat and uninteresting, entirely muskeg or marsh, with the exception of one small rock cutting, where the necessary drainage formed the principal item in the cost of construction. On each side we could see the long "take offs" glittering in the moonlight, like silver ribbons thrown at random on the grass. The Jules muskeg, about two miles across, was at first only passable when frozen in winter, except for pedestrians, and we heard of several gangs of men who were sent there to work, digging all day and being unable next morning to find any trace of their labours. The only breaks in this monotonous marsh are Whitemouth and Broken-Head Rivers, flowing between wooded shores. The former is about forty miles from Ingolf, and the latter nearly seventy. Both are small streams flowing into the most southerly end of Lake Winnipeg. At the junction near Selkirk are a small store and bar-room, apparently well patronized, if one may judge from the mental and physical wanderings of a man who asked the way to Winnipeg, and the wild notes of a fiddle issuing from the open doorway. While the train waited for the switch signal, we were too tired to take much note of our surroundings, the appearance of a rail fence between the track and the outlying country being more suggestive of approaching civilization to our Ontario eyes than anything else.