So they suddenly announced their intention of “bideing a wee.” I endeavoured to expostulate, I spoke of the lateness of the season, the distance I had yet to travel, the necessity of bringing to Dunvegan the train of dogs destined for that post at the earliest period; all was of no avail. Their snow-shoes were broken and they must wait. Very good; put my four dogs into harness, and I will go on alone. So the dogs were put in harness, and taking with me my most lootable effects, I set out alone into the wilderness.
It still wanted some four hours of sunset when I left the Indian lodges on the south shore, and held my way along the far-reaching river.
My poor old dog, after a few glances back to see why he should be alone, settled himself to work, and despite a lameness, the result of long travel, he led the advance so gamely that when night fell some dozen miles lay between us and the Cree lodges.
ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS.
At the foot of a high ridge whose summit still caught the glow from the low-set sun, while the river valley grew dark in the twilight, I turned the dogs towards the south shore, and looked about for a camping-place. The lower bank sloped down to the ice abruptly, but dogs going to camp will drag a load up, over, or through anything, and the prospect of rest above is even a greater incentive to exertion than the fluent imprecations of the half-breed below. So by dint of hauling we reached the top, and then I made my camp in a pine-clump on the brink. When the dogs had been unharnessed, and the snow dug away, the pine brush laid upon the ground, and the wood cut, when the fire was made, the kettle filled with snow and boiled, the dogs fed with a good hearty meal of dry moose meat, and my own hunger satisfied; then, it was time to think, while the fire lit up the pine stems, and the last glint of daylight gleamed in the western sky. A jagged pine-top laid its black cone against what had been the sunset. An owl from the opposite shore sounded at intervals his lonely call; now and again a passing breeze bent the fir trees until they whispered forth that mournful song which seems to echo from the abyss of the past.
The fir-tree is the oldest of the trees of the earth, and its look and its voice tell the story of its age. If it were possible to have left my worthless half-breeds altogether and to traverse the solitudes alone, how gladly would I have done so!
I felt at last at home. The great silent river, the lofty ridge darkening against the twilight, yon star burning like a beacon above the precipice—all these were friends, and midst them one could rest in peace.
And now, as I run back in thought along that winter journey, and see again the many camp-fires glimmering through the waste of wilderness, there comes not to my memory a calmer scene than that which closed around my lonely fire by the distant Unchagah. I was there almost in the centre of the vast wilderness of North America, around, stretched in silence, that mystery we term Nature, that thing which we see in pictures, in landscapes, in memory; which we hear in the voice of wind-swept forests and the long sob of seas against ocean rocks. This mother, ever present, ever mysterious, sometimes terrible, often tender—always beautiful—stood there with nought to come between us save loneliness and twilight. I awoke with the dawn. Soft snow was falling on river and ridge, and the opposite shore lay hid in mist and gloom. A breakfast, which consists of pemmican, tea, and biscuit, takes but a short time to prepare or to discuss, and by sunrise I was on the river.
Until mid-day I held on, but before that time the sun glowed brightly on the dazzling surface of the snow; and the dogs panted as they hauled their loads, biting frequent mouthfuls of the soft snow through which they toiled.