The veteran explorers of the Great North had been familiar to his earlier days, and he could speak of Mackenzie and Frazer and Thompson, Harmon and Henry, as men whom he had looked on in his boyhood.
For me these glimpses of the bygone time had a strange charm. This mighty solitude, whose vastness had worn its way into my mind; these leagues and leagues of straight, tall pines, whose gloomy moan seemed the voice of 3000 miles of wilderness; these rivers so hushed and silent, save when the night owl hooted through the twilight; all this sense of immensity was so impressed on the imagination by recent travel, that it heightened the rough colouring of the tale which linked this shadowy land of the present with the still more shadowy region of the past.
Perhaps at another time, when I too shall rest from travel, it will be my task to tell the story of these dauntless men; but now, when many a weary mile lies before me, it is time to hold westward still along the great Unchagah.
The untiring train was once again put into the moose-skin harness, after another night of wild storm and blinding drift; and with crack of whip and call to dog, Vermilion soon lay in the waste behind me.
CHAPTER XVI.
The Buffalo Hills.—A fatal Quarrel.—The exiled Beavers.—“At-tal-loo” deplores his wives.—A Cree Interior.—An attractive Camp.—I camp alone.—Cerf-vola without a Supper.—The Recreants return.—Dunvegan.—A Wolf-hunt.
A long distance, destitute of fort or post, had now to be passed. For fully 300 miles above Vermilion, no sign of life but the wild man and his prey (the former scant enough) are to be found along the shores of the Peace River.
The old fort known as Dunvegan lies twelve long winter days’ travel to the south-west, and to reach it even in that time requires sustained and arduous exertion.
For 200 miles above Vermilion the course of the Peace River is north-west; it winds in long, serpentine curves between banks which gradually become more lofty as the traveller ascends the stream. To cut the long curve to the south by an overland portage now became our work; and for three days we followed a trail through mingled prairie and forest-land, all lying deep in snow. Four trains of dogs now formed our line. An Ojibbeway, named “White Bear,” led the advance, and the trains took in turn the work of breaking the road after him.