One night’s delay, and again we were on the endless trail; on along the great silent river, between the rigid bordering pines, amidst the diamond-shaped islands where the snow lay deep and soft in “shnay” and “batture,” on out into the long reaches where the wild March winds swept the river bed, and wrapt isle and shore in clouds of drift.
On the evening of the 19th of March our party drew near a lonely post, which, from the colour of the waters in the neighbouring stream, bears the name of Fort Vermilion. The stormy weather had sunk to calm; the blue sky lay over mingled forest and prairie; far off to the north and south rose the dark outlines of the Reindeer and Buffalo Mountains; while coming from the sunset and vanishing into the east, the great silent river lay prone amidst the wilderness of snow.
A gladsome sight was the little fort, with smoke curling from its snow-laden roof, its cattle standing deep in comfortable straw-yard, and its master at the open gateway, waiting to welcome me to his home: pleasant to any traveller in the wilderness, but doubly so to me, whose every step was now taken in the dull toil of unremitting pain.
Physicians have termed that fellow-feeling which the hand sometimes evinces for the hand, and the eye for the eye, by the name of “sympathy.” It is unfortunate that these ebullitions of affection which the dual members of our bodies manifest towards each other, should always result in doubling the amount of pain and inconvenience suffered by the remainder of the human frame. For a day or two past my right foot had shown symptoms of sharing the sorrows of its fellow-labourer; and however gratifying this proof of good feeling should have been, it was nevertheless accompanied by such an increase of torture that one could not help wishing for more callous conduct in the presence of Mal de Raquette.
A day’s journey north of the Peace River at Fort Vermilion, a long line of hills approaching the altitude of a mountain range stretches from east to west. At the same distance south lies another range of similar elevation. The northern range bears the name of the Reindeer; the southern one that of the Buffalo Mountains. These names nearly mark the two great divisions of the animal kingdom of Northern America.
It is singular how closely the habits of those two widely differing animals, the reindeer and the buffalo, approximate to each other. Each have their treeless prairie, but seek the woods in winter; each have their woodland species; each separate when the time comes to bring forth their young; each mass together in their annual migrations. Upon both the wild man preys in unending hostility. When the long days of the Arctic summer begin to shine over the wild region of the Barren Grounds, the reindeer set forth for the low shores of the Northern Ocean; in the lonely wilds whose shores look out on the Archipelago where once the ships of England’s explorers struggled midst floe and pack, and hopeless iceberg, the herds spend the fleeting summer season, subsisting on the short grass, which for a few weeks changes these cold, grey shores to softer green.
With the approach of autumn the bands turn south again, and uniting upon the borders of the barren grounds, spend the winter in the forests which fringe the shores of the Bear, Great Slave, and Athabascan Lakes. Thousands are killed by the Indians on this homeward journey; waylaid in the passes which they usually follow, they fall easy prey to Dog-rib and Yellow-knife and Chipewyan hunter; and in years of plenty the forts of the extreme north count by thousands the fat sides of Cariboo, piled high in their provision stores.
But although the hills to the north and south of Vermilion bore the names of Reindeer and Buffalo, upon neither of these animals did the fort depend for its subsistence. The Peace River is the land of the moose; here this ungainly and most wary animal has made his home, and winter and summer, hunter and trader, along the whole length of 900 miles, between the Peace and Athabasca, live upon his delicious venison.
Two days passed away at Fort Vermilion; outside the March wind blew in bitter storm, and drift piled high around wall and palisade. But within there was rest and quiet, and many an anecdote of time long passed in the Wild North Land.
Here, at this post of Vermilion, an old veteran spent the winter of his life; and from his memory the scenes of earlier days came forth to interest the chance wanderer, whose footsteps had led him to this lonely post. Few could tell the story of these solitudes better than this veteran pensioner. He had come to these wilds while the century was yet in its teens. He had seen Tecumseh in his glory, and Black Hawk marshal his Sauk warriors, where now the river shores of Illinois wave in long lines of yellow corn. He had spoken with men who had seen the gallant La Perouse in Hudson’s Bay, when, for the last time in History, France flew the fleur-de-lis above the ramparts of an English fort in this northern land.