MOUNT GARNET WOLSELEY AND THE PEACE RIVER.
For two days we journeyed through this vast valley, along a wide, beautiful river, tranquil as a lake, and bearing on its bosom, at intervals, small isles of green forest. Now and again a beaver rippled the placid surface, or a bear appeared upon a rocky point for a moment, looked at the strange lonely craft, stretched out his long snout to sniff the gale, and then vanished in the forest shore. For the rest all was stillness; forest, isle, river and mountain—all seemed to sleep in unending loneliness; and our poles grating against the rocky shore, or a shot at some quick-diving beaver, alone broke the silence; while the echo, dying away in the vast mountain cañons, made the relapsing silence seem more intense.
Thus we journeyed on. On the evening of the 8th of May we emerged from the pass, and saw beyond the extremity of a long reach of river a mountain range running north and south, distant about thirty miles from us. To the right and left the Rocky Mountains opened out, leaving the river to follow its course through a long forest valley of considerable width.
We had passed the Rocky Mountains, and the range before us was the central mountain system of North British Columbia.
It was a very beautiful evening; the tops of the birch-trees were already showing their light green leaves amidst the dark foliage of the spruce and firs.
Along the shore, where we landed, the tracks of a very large grizzly bear were imprinted freshly in the sand. I put a couple of bullets into my gun and started up the river, with Cerf-vola for a companion. I had got about a mile from the camp when, a few hundred yards ahead, a large dark animal emerged from the forest, and made his way through some lower brushwood towards the river. Could it be the grizzly? I lay down on the sand-bank, and pulled the dog down beside me. The large black animal walked out upon the sand-bar two or three hundred yards above me. He proved to be a moose on his way to swim the river to the south shore. I lay still until he had got so far on his way that return to the forest would have been impracticable; then I sprang to my feet and ran towards him. What a spring he gave across the sand and down into the water! Making an allowance for the force of the current, I ran towards the shore. It was a couple of hundred yards from me, and when I gained it the moose was already three-parts across the river, almost abreast where I stood, swimming for his very life, with his huge unshapen head thrust out along the surface, the ears thrown forward, while the large ripples rolled from before his chest as he clove his way through the water.
It was a long shot for a rifle, doubly so for a smooth-bore; but old experience in many lands, where the smooth-bore holds its own despite all other weapons, had told me that when you do get a gun to throw a bullet well, you may rely upon it for distances supposed to be far beyond the possibilities of such a weapon; so, in a tenth of the time it has taken me to say all this, I gave the moose the right barrel, aiming just about his long ears. There was a single plunge in the water; the giant head went down, and all was quiet. And now to secure the quarry. Away down stream he floated, showing only one small black speck above the surface; he was near the far side, too. Running down shore I came within calling-distance of the camp, from which the smoke of Kalder’s fire was already curling above the tree-tops. Out came Kalder, Jacques, and A——. Of course it was a grizzly, and all the broken flint-guns of the party were suddenly called into requisition. If it had been a grizzly, and that I had been retiring before him in skirmishing order, gods! what a support I was falling back upon! A——‘s gun is already familiar to the reader; Kalder’s beaver-gun went off about one shot in three; and Jacques possessed a weapon (it had been discarded by an Indian, and Jacques had resuscitated it out of the store of all trades which he possessed an inkling of) the most extraordinary I had ever seen. Jacques always spoke of it in the feminine gender. “She was a good gun, except that a trifle too much of the powder came out the wrong way. He would back her to shoot ‘plum’ if she would only go off after a reasonable lapse of time, but it was tiring to him to keep her to the shoulder for a couple of minutes after he had pulled her trigger, and then to have her go off when he was thinking of pulling the gun-coat over her again.” When she was put away in the canoe, it was always a matter of some moment to place her so that in the event of any sudden explosion of her pent-up wrath, she might discharge herself harmlessly along the river, and on this account she generally lay like a stern-chaser projecting from behind Jacques, and endangering only his paddle.
All these maimed and mutilated weapons were now brought forth, and such a loading and priming and hammering began, that, had it really been a grizzly, he must have been utterly scared out of all semblance of attack.
Kalder now mastered the position of affairs, and like an arrow he and Jacques were into the canoe, and out after the dead moose. They soon overhauled him, and, slipping a line over the young antlers, towed him to the shore. We were unable to lift him altogether out of the water, so we cut him up as he lay, stranded like a whale.
