But the day was rapidly coming when unscrupulous persons could no longer defraud the savages; writing only ten years later, an English traveller deplores the extortionate charges made by the redskins for even the most trifling service, and points out that he could have bought furs in Regent Street as cheaply as they would sell them to any private individual.
The two travellers paid their money, of course prepared to add liberally to it at the journey’s end, and their boat was pointed out to them. The canoes were most of them very large, and capable of seating a crew and a family. The one assigned to the white strangers was manned by a chief and five braves; the other men, with their wives and children, distributing themselves pretty equally between the remaining canoes.
“How will they get these down? Or are they going to leave them?” asked Colton, pointing to the huts, or lodges, as Barnes called them.
“Get them down? You might as well talk about taking home empty wine-bottles and lobster claws after a picnic. They may take the matting, but I doubt it. They can make and erect a hut in less than an hour.”
Hitherto the only Indian dwellings they had passed had been huts, or else the well-known wigwams made of grass-cloth, or coarse linen; but these “lodges” were very different. They were nearly dome-shaped; more strictly, they were octagonal with a convex roof, and were constructed by eight long, slender rods of some flexible wood being stuck in the ground at equal distances; the tops were bent down till they met or overlapped, and then bound securely together with vegetable fibre. Lengths of bark, cut from the paper birch, were tied over these to form a roof; and the sides were made, in some cases by hanging strips of matting from pole to pole, but more commonly by erecting thatch walls, speedily improvised with fibre and bundles of wild rice stalks, which grew like rushes in the shallows. No attempt was made to remove them, and they were left to the next comer—an altruistic practice which had its reward; for other wandering Indians had done the same thing higher up the lake, and more often than not, when the flotilla stopped for the night, there was a camp of ready-made tents awaiting the travellers.
All that week the two adventurers lived, like the proverbial fighting-cock, on the fat of the land: sturgeon, salmon, woodcock, wild-duck, venison, eggs, and sometimes fruit, were all to be had for the asking; for, though the Chippewyans had no guns, they had spears and arrows and quick sight. The boat’s crew were decent fellows, who soon lost their taciturnity and suspicion when they found the passengers kindly and conversationally disposed; and they made no demur at being asked, from time to time, to turn out of their 310 way a little, that Colton might explore one or other of the channels, side-creeks, and rivulets that form part of the complicated water-way between Minnesota and the Saskatchewan.
On one of these experimental cruises, the explorers found themselves in an adventure which missed little of ending tragically. Barnes suggested following a little stream that appeared to run parallel to the main channel, and the Indians, who, of course, knew almost as little about the byways of the vicinity as their passengers, were not unready to indulge their own curiosity; if the stream did not bring them into the open water again, they could soon turn back. The banks were low and sparsely wooded, and suggested little in the shape of either game or human habitation; but these features did but add to the romance of the scene, and the two travellers were well content to go on; more particularly when they saw that ahead of them the banks promised to rise mountains high.
“We are coming to a cañon,” murmured an Indian lazily. All the better; Mr. Colton had never seen a cañon worth the name.
Gradually the speed of the canoe quickened, and the rowers’ labours became proportionately lighter; so much so that the chief looked grave.