About noon I camped on the south shore. I had still two meals for myself, but none remained for the dogs; the men had, however, assured me that they would not fail to make an early start, and I determined to await their coming in this camp. The day passed and night closed again, but no figure darkened the long stretch of river, and my poor dogs went supperless to sleep. Cerf-vola, it is true, had some scraps of sweet pemmican, but they were mere drops in the ocean of his appetite. The hauling-dog of the North is a queer animal about food; when it is there he likes to have it, but when it isn’t there, like his Indian master, he can do without it.
About supper-hour he looks wistfully at his master, and seeing no sign of pemmican-chopping or dry meat-slicing, he rolls himself up into a ball and goes quietly to sleep in his snow bed.
Again the night came softly down, the grey owl hooted his lonely cry, the breeze stirred the forest tops, and the pine-tree murmured softly and low, singing its song of the past to the melody of its myriad years. At such times the mind of the wanderer sings its own song too. It is the song of home; and as memory rings the cadence, time and distance disappear, and the old land brightens forth amidst the embers of the forest-fire.
These islands which we call “home” are far away; afar off we idealize them, in the forest depths we dream bright visions of their firesides of welcome; in the snow-sheeted lake, and the icy stretch of river, and the motionless muskeg, how sweetly sound the notes of brook and bird; how brightly rise the glimpses of summer eves when the white mists float over the scented meadows, and the corn-craik sounds from his lair in the meadow-sweet!
It is there, away in the east, far off, where the moon is rising above the forked pines, or the upcoming stars edge the ice piles on the dim eastern shores of yon sheeted lake. Far away, a speck amidst the waves of distance, bright, happy, and peaceful; holding out its welcome, and following with its anxious thoughts the wanderer who sails away over the ocean, and roams the expanses of the earth.
Well, some fine day we come back again; the great steamship touches the long idealized shore. Gods, how the scene changes! We feel bursting with joy to see it all again, to say, “Oh! how glad I am to see you all!”
We say it with our eyes to the young lady behind the refreshment buffet at the railroad station. Alas! she mistakes our exuberance for impertinence, and endeavours to annihilate us with a glance, enough to freeze even her high-spirited sherry. We pass the bobby on his beat with a smile of recognition, but that ferocious functionary, not a whit softened, regards us as a “party” likely to afford him transient employment in the matter of “running in.” The railway porter alone seems to enter into our feelings of joy, but alas! it is only with a view to that donation with which we are sure to present him. We have enlisted his sympathies as her Majesty enlists her recruits, by the aid of a shilling. Ere an hour has passed, the vision seen so frequently through the mist of weary miles has vanished, and we have taken our place in the vast humming crowd of England’s hive, to wish ourselves back into the dreamy solitudes again.
I had been asleep some hours, and midnight had come, when the sound of voices roused me, and my recreant band approached the dying camp-fire. They had at length torn themselves away from the abode of bliss and moose meat, but either the memory of its vanished pleasures, or a stray feeling of shame, kept them still sullen and morose. They, however, announced their readiness to go on at once, as the crust upon the snow was now hard. I rose from my robe, gave the dogs a late supper, and once more we set out.
Daylight found us still upon the track; the men seemed disposed to make amends for former dilatoriness, the ice-crust was hard, and the dogs went well. When the sun had become warm enough to soften the surface we camped, had supper, and lay down to sleep for the day.
With sunset came the hour of starting, and thus turning night into day, breakfasting at sunset, dining at midnight, supping at sunrise, travelling all night, and sleeping all day, we held our way up the Unchagah. Three nights of travel passed, and the morning of the 1st of April broke upon the silent river. We had travelled well; full one hundred miles of these lonely, lofty shores had vanished behind us in the grey dusky light of twilight, night, and early morning.