The provisions we laid in were supposed to last three men for twenty days, and I was assured we would be helped out with game, an occasional deer, ruffled grouse and plenty of fish once we got into the forest.
A man cannot carry a pack weighing more than eighty pounds in the country we had to traverse, and, having cut down everything to the absolute necessaries of life, we still had to make double trips to get our stuff into camp, wasting a day each time.
We got away in the afternoon and crossed the Straits to the mouth of the Nimquish River in an Indian canoe. About a mile up the river was the comfortable log house of B. Lansdown, a settler. We were lucky enough to find him at home and he agreed to be the third man of our party. At first the idea was that he should help to pack in about three marches to where we proposed to make a permanent camp, and then return; but subsequent events compelled us to keep him the whole time. He was a fourth mouth to feed and at all times had a most excellent appetite.
Having arranged with two Siwash Indians to take us up to the lake, a distance of about seven miles, the following morning, we accepted Lansdown's invitation to put up at his house, where we were most hospitably entertained.
After some food at 5 o'clock I had my first experience of a Vancouver forest. A cougar had been killing cattle in the immediate neighbourhood, and Smith's and Dick's services were requisitioned to bring him to book.
Crossing the river, we were soon in the densest and most impenetrable undergrowth I ever attempted to crawl through. We were shown the spot where the last kill had taken place, and though we spent till dusk scrambling over and under fallen trees and through a tangle of undergrowth, unable to see five yards ahead, Dick could find no trace of the cougar. It had been raining in the morning, so we were all wet to the skin, as forcing our way through the undergrowth was like taking a shower bath. Hunting the cougar is, in my opinion, unworthy of the name of sport. Success depends on having a good dog to follow up the cougar by scent and to drive him up a tree, when the hunter comes up and pots him. Why such a powerful animal—for he is as big as a panther—should be such a coward, I cannot understand. I never heard while on the coast of a single case where the cougar attacked a man. The dog he sometimes goes for, and Dick had been once severely mauled.
I confess my first attempt at hunting in the Vancouver forest was most disappointing, as I had formed no idea of the nature of the forest we were to hunt in. Several people at the Campbell River Hotel had asked me if I knew what I was "up against" in deciding to try for a wapiti. Some, including my men, took a brighter view, and assured me that the dense undergrowth was only on the coast, and that as one got inland the forest became more open. Had I known what I was really "up against," I think I would have turned back, for never have I endured greater discomfort.