The Fair Dominion: A Record of Canadian Impressions

by R. E. Vernède

CHAPTER XXVI
FROM GOLDEN TO THE COAST

I managed to get that train, and also a half bottle of rye whisky on the way to it, and sank into a seat in the smoking compartment, where I sat all soaked and miserable, supping my rye whisky at intervals and half dozing until two grizzly-bear hunters got in a few stations down the line. They were very wonderfully arrayed in moccasins and Arctic socks and turned-up overalls and sweaters and cartridge belts; and though they were modest enough in their bearing, and did not talk about their exploits until they were asked questions, the whole compartment was soon eagerly chatting of nothing but grizzly bears. The two hunters, who were amateurs of the sport, had been up in the mountains alone, a three days' portage from the railroad, and had got three grizzlies, and would have got more, they said, but that heavy falls of snow had forced them to decamp. They spoke like good shots—which does not mean that they said they were good shots—and they seemed very keen on their sport, which they claimed to be the most dangerous and exacting in the world; nor would they listen to my meek suggestion that the Bengal tiger would compare favourably with the grizzly.

'It's a cat,' one of them said sniffily; 'you shoot it off elephants.'

I said that I knew Anglo-Indians who went after tigers on foot, and I also argued that even in the case of shooting from elephants the combination of a charging tiger and a restive elephant offered opportunity of showing one's nerve to be in order such as is not to be despised, especially if the howdah happens to have been inexpertly fixed and slides at the critical moment. They allowed that there might be something in this, but persisted that in any case tiger-hunting was done at ease, with natives to do all the portering, whereas grizzly-bear hunters like themselves had to carry everything with them, and camp in the snow, and shoot on mountain-sides, down which a grizzly bear would charge at a man quicker than a racehorse. They gave graphic descriptions of charges of grizzly bears, with their back legs flying ahead of their front ones. The last bear they had bagged had dropped, they said, within twenty paces of them, after being rolled over three times.

I fancy they spoke reasonably enough, and that the pursuit of the grizzly—certainly if done without a guide—is as good a test of a man's nerve as any other. As to the merits of the grizzly considered as a brute likely to do for you if you do not previously do for it, and compared with such others as the tiger, the buffalo, the rhinoceros, the elephant, or the lion, there is no arriving at any final conclusion. African hunters never seem agreed about the comparative merits of the last three; while one Indian sportsman supports the buffalo, another will support the tiger. Not having any experience of the grizzly bear myself, I can only say that, judging from what I have heard, he must be accounted big enough game for anybody. There is no doubt that most of the old trappers have a wholesome respect for him, and the longer they are after him, the greater, as a rule, their respect grows. His pace, when charging, is said to be something terrific, and, downhill, it always charges as soon as hit, its back legs flying out before it at a nightmare speed. Add that it seems less easy to drop finally than any other animal, that your fingers may be frozen to the trigger in the intervals of shooting, and that a single blow from one of its front paws is strong enough to claw the face out of an ox, and it will be seen that it is no contemptible foe. On the other hand, experts seem agreed that it rarely if ever charges uphill, and if shot from above is therefore comparatively harmless. If a man could always pick his position for shooting, this would reduce the value of the grizzly bear as a sporting animal; but obviously the hunter cannot always choose. Any one who has been on a snowslide will realise that. From the point of view of an unarmed person, the grizzly bear would seem to be rather less dangerous than he is sometimes made out to be. You will often hear that grizzly bears will attack a man at sight. The truth seems to be that—as is the case with any other bears—attacks are only to be feared either from female grizzlies with cubs, or from a grizzly of either sex, if the intruder is so placed as to appear to the grizzly's eyes to be cutting off its retreat to its lair. Of course no unarmed man would elect to put himself in either of these positions, and equally naturally he might unwittingly do so—in which case it would be better not to be that man, though I believe there is an authentic story of a lumberman who, returning alone from his work, was suddenly attacked by two grizzlies, and managed to kill both of them with his axe, though the second mauled him badly. Authentic or not, and one grizzly or two, it is pretty certain that few people would care to try a similar encounter.

Afterwards the conversation shifted to timber-wolves and the Yukon. One of the passengers scoffed at the notion of a dog being able to kill a timber-wolf, as happens in one of Mr. Jack London's novels. A northern timber-wolf, according to this critic, is at least twice the size of the European wolf, with a disproportionately large and powerful jaw—a single snap from which would polish off any dog. Two or three of the biggest dogs known could hardly even hold a timber-wolf much less kill it. I dare say there was more in this criticism than in one I heard later, anent Mr. Maurice Hewlett. A very solemn fruit-rancher was ploughing wearily through one of Mr. Hewlett's earlier romances, and he looked up presently to say it was funny the sort of yarns these writing chaps seemed to believe in. There was a girl in the book who milked a wild deer. He had seen plenty of deer in his time, but none of them had seemed to fancy coming close enough to be milked. If a chap wanted to write about the country he ought to know it right through like Mr. Service. Had we read Service's poems? Several of the men in the compartment evidently had read them; and, indeed, Mr. Service's poems concerning the Yukon seemed to have reached the heights of popularity. I think it is due in part to the fascination which the north exercises on all sorts and conditions of Canadians, not only because it stands for romance and mystery, but because a sort of idea is gaining ground that these inhospitable and well-nigh polar regions only await a sufficiently hardy type of colonist to have as great a boom almost as some of the more southern districts. The idea exists not only among business-like estate-agents, who see themselves in fancy selling Arctic blocks to this expected race, but among quite disinterested and patriotic people, who talk of it, as Mr. Service himself does, as a strong man's land. A few peculiarly strong men may survive there; and it is excusable for a poet to regard them as super-men—Canada's noblest type. As a matter of fact it is at least as romantic to weave halos about the heads of the crowd that seeks the Yukon country as it is to make one's heroine milk a wild deer. A certain praise is always due to pioneers, and the struggle with nature at its cruellest and most wild is not a bad test of an individual's character; but for respectable ranchers and fruit-growers (who have never been to the Yukon themselves, but have struggled with nature quite as valiantly elsewhere) to talk enthusiastically about the great lone land as the country for breeding men is absurd. Canadians may be able to colonise further north than they have done at present, and their descendants will, no doubt, be a fine and hardy race. But there is a point in the north just as there is a point in the south beyond which no white man's country lies. If any strong men are going to perpetuate their families beyond that northern point, they are going to be strong Esquimaux—not strong Canadians. Esquimaux already do quite a lot of grappling with nature in lone lands, but they are not the heroes of Mr. Service's poems. I don't wish to labour the point, but this northern strong man business seems to me entirely overdone. There is always going to be romance attached to the uninhabitable country, and adventurous young men will get there; but the theory that these are the people of whom Canada has peculiarly to be proud will not do. Adam Gordon's bush-riders had a certain merit; so had Mr. Kipling's gentlemen-rankers; so have Mr. Service's prospectors; but none of them ever forwarded civilisation very greatly. The fact is, there are true and admirable pioneers, men like Hudson and Thompson, of whom Canada has had plenty; and there are pioneers of doubtful value like those in Mr. Service's poems. These latter are picturesque enough in verse, especially in Mr. Service's verse, which catches the fascination of the north at times admirably, but the others are the men worth boasting about.

The rain persisted while we sat talking of all these matters, and the mountains were hung about with a clammy vapour which spoilt the view from the train. I should like to have stopped at Glacier, which is the usual centre for the better-known Selkirks, of which many of the giants have been climbed only within the last six or seven years, but I had not time, and they all swam by in the mist, which changed into dusk as we reached Revelstoke. There a number of lumberjacks filled up the carriage, and were very cheery and conversational all night. Having slept only two hours the night before, I should not have minded being able to get a sleeper, but they were all taken; and indeed there were not even seats enough to go all round, though it was a first-class carriage. In any case the lumberjacks in my part of the carriage would have prevented sleep. Sometimes they would sit down for a few minutes and tell stories, then they would dart off to have a look at a carriage-load of Doukhobors who were on in front and seemed rather better than a show to judge by the lumbermen's guffaws when they came back from these trips. Canadian trains may not always be restful, but they are generally entertaining. The distances traversed are so great that people cannot afford to sit in them in hunched silence. They have to unbend, and some of them unbend thoroughly. That is why, though the ordinary traveller has to pass through great tracts of land in the train, he is not losing local colour to quite the extent one loses it in an European train. Some one in the carriage is sure to know something about the district one is passing through and to be ready to talk about it. The smoking compartment becomes an animated club-room in which conversation becomes general on any subject. There is no better place for a discussion of political problems, and I fancy a great many Canadians reserve their consideration of these for the time they have to spend in the train. Certainly they grow very keen in the train, and I have heard the warmest arguments and the most libellous denunciations of leading Canadian statesmen hurled freely about among men who had never set eyes on one another before. And there are plenty of other arguments with which to pass the time. As we got to Sicamous Junction, for example, we took on board two fruit-growers, one of whom was a 'wet' grower and the other a 'dry.' A wet fruit-grower is a man who does not irrigate his fruit-land, and a dry fruit-grower is one who, having settled in the dry belt, has to irrigate. As fierce a debate was started between these two as ever you heard between exponents of wet and dry fly-fishing.