Hudson Bay

by R. M. Ballantyne

Norway House is also an agreeable and interesting place, from its being in a manner the gate to the only route to Hudson Bay, so that during the spring and summer months all the brigades of boats and canoes from every part of the northern department must necessarily pass it on their way to York Factory with furs: and as they all return in the autumn, and some of the gentlemen leave their wives and families for a few weeks till they return to the interior, it is at this sunny season of the year quite gay and bustling; and the clerks’ house, in which I lived, was often filled with a strange and noisy collection of human beings, who rested here a while ere they started for the shores of Hudson Bay, for the distant region of Mackenzie River, or the still more distant land of Oregon.

During winter our principal amusement was white-partridge shooting. This bird is a species of ptarmigan, and is pure white, with the exception of the tips of the wings and tail. They were very numerous during the winter, and formed an agreeable dish at our mess-table. I also enjoyed a little skating at the beginning of the winter; but the falling snow soon put an end to this amusement.

Spring, beautiful spring! returned again to cheer us in our solitude, and to open into life the waters and streams of Hudson Bay. Great will be the difference between the reader’s idea of that season in that place and the reality. Spring, with its fresh green leaves and opening flowers, its emerald fields and shady groves, filled with sounds of melody! No, reader; that is not the spring we depict: not quite so beautiful, though far more prized by those who spend a monotonous winter of more than six months in solitude. The sun shines brightly in a cloudless sky, lighting up the pure white fields and plains with dazzling brilliancy. The gushing waters of a thousand rills, formed by the melting snow, break sweetly on the ear, like the well-remembered voice of a long-absent friend. The whistling wings of wild-fowl, as they ever and anon desert the pools of water now open in the lake and hurry over the forest-trees, accord well with the shrill cry of the yellow-leg and curlew, and with the general wildness of the scene; while the reviving frogs chirrup gladly in the swamps to see the breaking up of winter and welcome back the spring. This is the spring I write of; and to have a correct idea of the beauties and the sweetness of this spring, you must first spend a winter in Hudson Bay.

As I said, then, spring returned. The ice melted, floated off, and vanished. Jack River flowed gently on its way, as if it had never gone to sleep; and the lake rolled and tumbled on its shores, as if to congratulate them on the happy change. Soon the boats began to arrive. First came the “Portage Brigade,” in charge of L’Esperance. There were seven or eight boats; and ere long as many fires burned on the green beside the fort, with a merry, careless band of wild-looking Canadian and half-breed voyageurs round each. And a more picturesque set of fellows I never saw. They were all dressed out in new light-blue capotes and corduroy trousers, which they tied at the knee with beadwork garters. Moose-skin moccasins cased their feet, and their brawny, sunburned necks were bare. A scarlet belt encircled the waist of each; and while some wore hats with gaudy feathers, others had their heads adorned with caps and bonnets, surrounded with gold and silver tinsel hat-cords. A few, however, despising coats, travelled in blue and white striped shirts, and trusted to their thickly-matted hair to guard them from the rain and sun. They were truly a wild yet handsome set of men; and no one, when gazing on their happy faces as they lay or stood in careless attitudes round the fires, puffing clouds of smoke from their ever-burning pipes, would have believed that these men had left their wives and families but the week before, to start on a five months’ voyage of the most harassing description, fraught with the dangers of the boiling cataracts and foaming rapids of the interior.

They stopped at Norway House on their way, to receive the outfit of goods for the Indian trade of Athabasca (one of the interior districts); and were then to start for Portage la Loche, a place where the whole cargoes are carried on the men’s shoulders overland for twelve miles to the head-waters of another river, where the traders from the northern posts come to meet them, and, taking the goods, give in exchange the “returns” in furs of the district.

Next came old Mr Mottle, with his brigade of five boats from Isle à la Crosse, one of the interior districts; and soon another set of camp-fires burned on the green, and the clerks’ house received another occupant. After them came the Red River brigades in quick succession: careful, funny, uproarious Mr Mott, on his way to York for goods expected by the ship (for you must know Mr Mott keeps a store in Red River, and is a man of some importance in the colony); and grasping, comical, close-fisted Mr Macdear; and quiet Mr Sink—all passing onwards to the sea, rendering Norway House quite lively for a time, and then leaving it silent. But not for long, as the Saskatchewan brigade, under the charge of chief trader Harrit and young Mr Polly, suddenly arrived, and filled the whole country with noise and uproar. The Saskatchewan brigade is the largest and most noisy that halts at Norway House. It generally numbers from fifteen to twenty boats, filled with the wildest men in the service. They come from the prairies and Rocky Mountains, and are consequently brimful of stories of the buffalo hunt, attacks upon grizzly bears, and wild Indians—some of them interesting and true enough, but most of them either tremendous exaggerations, or altogether inventions of their own wild fancies. Soon after, the light canoes arrived from Canada, and in them an assortment of raw material for the service in the shape of four or five green young men.

The clerks’ house now became crammed. The quiet, elderly folks, who had continued to fret at its noisy occupants, fled in despair to another house, and thereby left room for the newcomers—or greenhorns, as they were elegantly styled by their more knowing fellow-clerks. Now, indeed, the corner of the fort in which we lived was avoided by all quiet people as if it were smitten with the plague; while the loud laugh, uproarious song, and sounds of the screeching flute or scraping fiddle, issued from the open doors and windows, frightening away the very mosquitoes, and making roof and rafters ring. Suddenly a dead silence would ensue; and then it was conjectured by the knowing ones of the place that Mr Polly was coming out strong for the benefit of the new arrivals. Mr Polly had a pleasant way of getting the green ones round him, and, by detailing some of the wild scenes and incidents of his voyages in the Saskatchewan, of leading them on from truth to exaggeration, and from that to fanciful composition, wherein he would detail, with painful minuteness, all the horrors of Indian warfare, and the improbability of any one who entered those dreadful regions ever returning alive.

Norway House was now indeed in full blow, and many a happy hour did I spend upon one of the clerks’ beds—every inch of which was generally occupied—listening to the story or the song. The young men there assembled had arrived from the distant quarters of America, and some of them even from England. Some were in the prime of manhood, and had spent many years in the Indian country; some were beginning to scrape the down from their still soft chins; while others were boys of fourteen, who had just left home, and were listening for the first time, open-mouthed, to their seniors’ description of life in the wilderness.

Alas, how soon were those happy, careless young fellows to separate, and how little probability was there of their ever meeting again! A sort of friendship had sprung up among three of us. Many a happy hour had we spent in rambling among the groves and woods of Norway House: now ranging about in search of wild pigeons, anon splashing and tumbling in the clear waters of the lake, or rowing over its surface in a light canoe; while our inexperienced voices filled the woods with snatches of the wild yet plaintive songs of the voyageurs, which we had just begun to learn. Often had we lain on our little pallet in Bachelors’ Hall, recounting to each other our adventures in the wild woods, or recalling the days of our childhood, and making promises of keeping up a steady correspondence through all our separations, difficulties, and dangers.

A year passed away, and at last I got a letter from one of my friends, dated from the Arctic regions, near the mouth of Mackenzie River; the other wrote to me from among the snow-clad caps of the Rocky Mountains; while I addressed them from the swampy, ice-begirt shores of Hudson Bay.