The Wild North Land / The Story of a Winter Journey with Dogs across Northern North America

by Sir William Francis Butler

To me the chief excitement lay in the question, Will this trail lead to aught? Will we save daylight to the shore? But to the reader the fact is already patent that the trail did lead to something, and that the night did not find the travellers still lost on the frozen lake.

Neither could the reader enter into the joy with which, after such a day of toil and hardships, the traveller sees in the gloom the haven he has sought so long; it may be only a rude cabin with windows cut from the snow-drift or the moose-skin, it may be only a camp-fire in a pine clump, but nevertheless the lost wanderer hails with a feeling of intense joy the gleam which tells him of a resting-place; and as he stretches his weary limbs on the hut floor or the pine-bush, he laughs and jests over the misfortunes, fatigues, and fears, which but a short hour before were heartsickening enough.

It was with feelings such as this that I beheld the lights of Rivière la Loche station on the night of the 22nd of February; for, through an afternoon of intense cold and blinding drift, we had struggled in vain to keep the track across the Buffalo Lake. The guide had vanished in the drift, and it was only through the exertions of my companion after hours of toil that we were able to regain the track, and reach, late on Saturday evening, the warm shelter of the little post; a small, clean room, a bright fire, a good supper, an entire twenty-four hours of sleep, and rest in prospect. Is it any wonder that with such surroundings the hut at Rivière la Loche seemed a palace?

And now each succeeding day carried us further into the great wilderness of the north, over lakes whose dim shores loomed through the driving snow, and the ragged pines tossed wildly in the wind; through marsh and muskeg and tangled wood, and all the long monotony of dreary savagery which lies on that dim ridge, from whose sides the waters roll east to the Bay of Hudson, north to the Frozen Ocean.

We reached the Methy Portage, and turned north-west through a long region of worthless forest. Now and again a wood Cariboo crossed the track; a marten showed upon a frozen lake; but no other sign of life was visible. The whole earth seemed to sleep in savage desolation; the snow lay deep upon the ground, and slowly we plodded on.

To rise at half-past two o’clock a.m., start at four, and plod on until sunset, halting twice for an hour during the day, this was the history of each day’s toil. Yet, with this long day of work, we could only travel about twenty-five miles. In front, along the track, went a young Chipewyan Indian; then came a train of dogs floundering deep in the soft snow; then the other trains wound along upon firmer footing. Camp-making in the evening in this deep snow was tedious work. It was hard, too, to hunt up the various dogs in the small hours of the morning, from their lairs in snow-drift or beneath root of tree; but some dogs kept uncomfortably close to camp, and I well remember waking one night out of a deep sleep, to find two huge beasts tearing each other to pieces on the top of the buffalo bag in which I lay.

After three days of wearisome labour on this summit ridge of the northern continent we reached the edge of a deep glen, 700 feet below the plateau. At the bottom of this valley a small river ran in many curves between high-wooded shores. The sleds bounded rapidly down the steep descent, dogs and loads rolling frequently in a confused heap together. Night had fallen when we gained the lower valley, and made a camp in the darkness near the winding river; the height of land was passed, and the river in the glen was the Clearwater of the Athabasca.

I have before spoken of the life of hardship to which the wintering agents of the Hudson’s Bay Company are habituated, nor was I without some practical knowledge of the subject to which I have alluded. I had now, however, full opportunity of judging the measure of toil contained in the simple encomium one often utters in the north. “He is a good traveller.”

Few men have led, even in the hard regions of the north, a life of greater toil than Mr. Roderick Macfarlane. He had left his island home when almost a boy, and in earliest manhood had entered the remote wilds of the Mackenzie River. For seventeen years he had remained cut off from the outer world; yet his mind had never permitted itself to sink amidst the oppressive solitudes by which he was surrounded: it rose rather to the level of the vastness and grandeur which Nature wears even in her extreme of desolation.

He entered with vigour into the life of toil before him. By no means of a strong constitution or frame of body, he nevertheless fought his way to hardiness; midst cold and darkness and scant living, the natural accompaniments of remote travel, he traversed the country between the Peel, Mackenzie, and Liard rivers, and pushed his explorations to the hitherto unknown River Anderson. Here, on the borders of the Barren Ground, and far within the Arctic Circle, he founded the most northern and remote of all the trading stations of the Fur Company. In mid-winter he visited the shores of the Frozen Ocean, and dwelt with the Esquimaux along the desolate coasts of that bay which bears the name of England’s most hapless explorer.