In her days of glory, the Beaver was a smart little war-ship trading with the savages, or bombarding their villages, all the way from Puget Sound to Alaska. In her middle age she was a survey vessel exploring Wonderland. In her old age the boiler leaked, so that the engineer had to plug the holes with a rag on a pointed stick. She was a grimy tug at the last, her story forgotten; and after fifty-two years of gallant service, was allowed to lie a weed-grown wreck within a mile of the new City of Vancouver, until a kindly storm gave her the honor of sea burial.
It was in 1851 that the Beaver brought to the factor at Fort Simpson some nuggets of the newly discovered Californian gold. At first he refused to take the stuff in trade, next bought it in at half its value, and finally showed it to Edenshaw, head chief of the Haida nation. As each little yellow pebble was worth a big pile of blankets, the chief borrowed a specimen and showed it to his tribe in the Queen Charlotte Islands.
There is a legend that in earlier days a trader found the Haidas using golden bullets with their trade guns, which they gladly exchanged for lead. Anyway an old woman told Edenshaw that she knew where to find the stuff, so next day she took him in a small dugout canoe to the outer coast. There she showed him a streak seven inches wide, and eighty feet in length, of quartz and shining gold, which crossed the neck of a headland. They filled a bushel basket with loose bits, and left them in the canoe while they went back for more. But in the stern of the canoe sat Edenshaw’s little son watching the dog fish at play down in the deeps. When the elders came back Charlie had thrown their first load of gold at the dog fish, and later on in life he well remembered the hands of blessing laid on by way of reward.
Still, enough gold was saved to buy many bales of blankets. Edenshaw claimed afterward that, had he only known the value of his find, he would have gone to England and married the queen’s daughter.
News spread along the coast and soon a ship appeared, the H. B. C. brigantine Una. Her people blasted the rocks, while the Indians, naked and well oiled, grabbed the plunder. The sailors wrestled, but could not hold those oily rogues. In time the Una sailed with a load of gold, but was cast away with her cargo in the Straits of Fuca.
Next year Gold Harbor was full of little ships, with a gunboat to keep them in order while they reaped a total harvest of two hundred eighty-nine thousand dollars. H. M. S. Thetis had gone away when the schooner Susan Sturgis came back for a second load, the only vessel to brave the winter storms. One day while all hands were in the cabin at dinner the Indians stole on board, clapped on the hatches and made them prisoners. They were marched ashore and stripped in the deep snow, pleading for their drawers, but only Captain Rooney and the mate were allowed that luxury. The seamen were sold to the H. B. Company at Fort Simpson, but the two officers remained in slavery. By day they chopped fire-wood under a guard, at night crouched in a dark corner of a big Indian house, out of sight of the fire in the middle, fed on such scraps of offal as their masters deigned to throw them.
Only one poor old woman pitied the slaves, hiding many a dried clam under the matting within their reach. Also they made a friend of Chief Bearskin’s son; and Bearskin himself was a good-hearted man, though Edenshaw proved a brute. Rooney was an able-bodied Irishman, Lang a tall broad-shouldered Scot, though this business turned his hair gray. For after the schooner was plundered and broken up, a dispute arose between Bearskin and Edenshaw as to their share of the captives. Edenshaw would kill Lang rather than surrender him to Bearskin, and twice the Scotchman had his head on the block to be chopped off before Bearskin gave in to save his life. At last both slaves were sold to Captain McNeill, who gave them each a striped shirt, corduroy trousers and shoes, then shipped them aboard the Beaver. Now it so happened that on the passage southward the Beaver met with the only accident in her long life, for during a storm the steering gear was carried away. Lang was a ship’s carpenter, and his craftsmanship saved the little heroine from being lost with all hands that night. This rescued slave became the pioneer ship-builder of Western Canada.
XLVII
A. D. 1911 THE CONQUEST OF THE POLES
The North Pole is only a point on the earth’s surface, a point which in itself has no length, breadth or height, neither has it weight nor any substance, being invisible, impalpable, immovable and entirely useless. The continents of men swing at a thousand miles an hour round that point, which has no motion. Beneath it an eternal ice-field slowly drifts across the unfathomed depths of a sea that knows no light.
Above, for a night of six months, the pole star marks the zenith round which the constellations swing their endless race; then for six months the low sun rolls along the sky-line on his level rounds; and each day and night are one year.