On the afternoon of the 20th of June 1845, I sat in my room at York Fort, musing on the probability of my being dispatched to some other part of the Company’s wide dominions.
The season approached when changes from one part of the country to another might be expected, and boats began to arrive from the interior. Two years of fun and frolic had I spent on the coast, and I was beginning to wish to be sent once more upon my travels, particularly as the busy season was about to commence, and the hot weather to set in.
As I sat cogitating, my brother scribblers called me to join them in a short promenade upon the wharf, preparatory to resuming our pens. Just as we reached it, a small Indian canoe from the interior swept round the point above the factory, and came rapidly forward, the sparkling water foaming past her sharp bow as she made towards the landing.
At almost any time an arrival causes a great deal of interest in this out-of-the-way place; but an arrival of this sort—for the canoe was evidently an express—threw us into a fever of excitement, which was greatly increased when we found that it contained dispatches from headquarters; and many speculative remarks passed among us as we hurried up to our hall, there to wait in anxious expectation for a letter or an order to appear instanter before Mr Grave. Our patience was severely tried, however, and we began to think there was no news at all, when Gibeault, the butler, turned the corner, and came towards our door. We immediately rushed towards it in breathless expectation, and a row of eager faces appeared as he walked slowly up and said, “Mr Grave wishes to see Mr Ballantyne immediately.” On hearing this I assumed an appearance of calm indifference I was far from feeling, put on my cap, and obeyed the order.
Upon entering Mr Grave’s presence, he received me with a benign, patronising air, and requested me to be seated. He then went on to inform me that letters had just arrived, requesting that I might be sent off immediately to Norway House, where I should be enlightened as to my ultimate destination. This piece of news I received with mingled surprise and delight, at the same time exclaiming “Indeed!” with peculiar emphasis; and then, becoming suddenly aware of the impropriety of the expression, I endeavoured to follow it up with a look of sorrow at the prospect of leaving my friends, combined with resignation to the will of the Honourable Hudson Bay Company, in which attempt I failed most signally. After receiving orders to prepare for an immediate start, I rushed out in a state of high excitement, to acquaint my comrades with my good fortune. On entering the hall, I found them as anxious to know where I was destined to vegetate next winter, as they before had been to learn who was going off. Having satisfied them on this point, or rather told them as much as I knew myself regarding it, I proceeded to pack up.
It happened just at this time that a brigade of inland boats was on the eve of starting for the distant regions of the interior; and as the little canoe, destined to carry myself, was much too small to take such an unwieldy article as my “cassette,” I gladly availed myself of the opportunity to forward it by the boats, as they would have to pass Norway House en route. It would be endless to detail how I spent the next three days: how I never appeared in public without walking very fast, as if pressed with a superhuman amount of business; how I rummaged about here and there, seeing that everything was prepared; looking vastly important, and thinking I was immensely busy, when in reality I was doing next to nothing. I shall, therefore, without further preface, proceed to describe my travelling equipments.
The canoe in which I and two Indians were to travel from York Factory to Norway House, a distance of nearly three hundred miles, measured between five and six yards long, by two feet and a half broad in the middle, tapering from thence to nothing at each end. It was made of birch bark, and could with great ease be carried by one man. In this we were to embark, with ten days’ provisions for three men, three blankets, three small bundles, and a little travelling-case belonging to myself; besides three paddles wherewith to propel us forward, a tin kettle for cooking, and an iron one for boiling water. Our craft being too small to permit my taking the usual allowance of what are called luxuries, I determined to take pot-luck with my men, so that our existence for the next eight or ten days was to depend upon the nutritive properties contained in a few pounds of pemmican, a little biscuit, one pound of butter, and a very small quantity of tea and sugar. With all this, in addition to ourselves, we calculated upon being pretty deeply laden.
My men were of the tribe called Swampy Crees—and truly, to judge merely from appearance, they would have been the very last I should have picked out to travel with; for one was old, apparently upwards of fifty, and the other, though young, was a cripple. Nevertheless, they were good, hard-working men, as I afterwards experienced. I did not take a tent with me, our craft requiring to be as light as possible, but I rolled up a mosquito-net in my blanket, that being a light affair of gauze, capable of compression into very small compass. Such were our equipments; and on the 23rd of June we started for the interior.
A melancholy feeling came over me as I turned and looked for the last time upon York Factory, where I had spent so many happy days with the young men who now stood waving their handkerchiefs from the wharf. Mr Grave, too, stood among them, and as I looked on his benevolent, manly countenance, I felt that I should ever remember with gratitude his kindness to me while we resided together on the shores of Hudson Bay. A few minutes more, and the fort was hid from my sight for ever.
My disposition is not a sorrowful one; I never did and never could remain long in a melancholy mood, which will account for the state of feeling I enjoyed half an hour after losing sight of my late home. The day was fine, and I began to anticipate a pleasant journey, and to speculate as to what part of the country I might be sent to. The whole wide continent of North America was now open to the excursive flights of my imagination, as there was a possibility of my being sent to any one of the numerous stations in the extensive territories of the Hudson Bay Company. Sometimes I fancied myself ranging through the wild district of Mackenzie River, admiring the scenery described by Franklin and Back in their travels of discovery; and anon, as the tales of my companions occurred to me, I was bounding over the prairies of the Saskatchewan in chase of the buffalo, or descending the rapid waters of the Columbia to the Pacific Ocean. Again my fancy wandered, and I imagined myself hunting the grizzly bear in the woods of Athabasca—when a heavy lurch of the canoe awakened me to the fact that I was only ascending the sluggish waters of Hayes River.