There were some open glades at the end of the lake and the country looked more gamelike. I went out in the afternoon to have a look round. The country was more open and I found a two-day-old track of a big bull, so game was in the neighbourhood—there were also fresh bear tracks and bear droppings close to camp.
I returned to try for a dish of trout while Thomson went out to lie in wait for deer coming out to feed at sunset—a form of sport I did not appreciate.
The question of food was now becoming serious, as the men had calculated on plenty of deer and grouse, and we had had no fresh meat since the deer I shot the day we started up the Nimquish River. Fishing from the shore and from our raft I caught six cut-throat trout, the largest about half-a-pound, with the fly. The lake was very deep and peaty—no doubt there were bigger fish in it, but they would not rise freely; it was late in the season and possibly my flies were not big enough.
Thomson returned, having wounded a deer—I don't think he was a crack shot, but like all the men I met on the coast, very fond of loosing off. He also reported having met a bear which he missed clean, but doubt was expressed in camp as to the bear.
September 7th. The rain was coming down in torrents and the camp most uncomfortable, while to move on was impossible, as Smith was feverish and in considerable pain, quite unfit to carry a pack. I had, therefore, most reluctantly to decide to remain where we were.
Thomson took "Nigger" out to find the wounded deer and returned in the evening successful. The deer was a young doe. There was great joy in camp at the prospect of a meat meal at last, for we had had no fresh meat since August 29th.
During the night we had an alarm. The men had pitched their fly under a very old cedar-tree and the camp fire was lit against the tree, which was hollow. About midnight there was a sound of an explosion and a roar of flames. Jumping out of bed, a most extraordinary sight presented itself; the entire tree was in flames from the base to the summit. The fire had evidently crept up the hollow trunk till the whole tree was ablaze.
Pulling down the fly, the men saved everything from being burnt, but morning found the tree still a roaring pillar of fire.
In Eastern Canada in the fall of the year such an occurrence might have set the whole country ablaze and resulted in one of those tracts of burnt country called "brulés" so common through that country. While on the Campbell River we heard of great forest fires taking place on the Mainland, but in the north of Vancouver Island I saw no sign of a burnt forest, for it was too saturated to burn.