The Barren Ground of Northern Canada

by Warburton Pike

On September 13th we reached the Lac du Rocher, a large irregular sheet of water, so broken up with bays and promontories that it is hard to estimate its size. Camp was made on the south side of the lake, and we set our nets and lines, baited with carefully preserved pieces of whitefish, while others explored the surrounding hills for caribou tracks, but without success. The half-breeds were all much put out by this failure, as they have always found the Lac du Rocher a certainty for caribou at this time of year, and were unable to account for it, except by the theory that the animals had altered the usual course of their autumn migration and were passing to the east of us. There was not a fish in the net when we turned in; but a good trout was caught in the middle of the night, and we all got up and finished the last mouthful. Again we had no breakfast, and the early morning found us discussing various plans in rather a serious manner. The final decision was that Paul and François should push ahead to try and find the caribou, while the rest of us moved the camp to the north end of the lake and worked the fishing till their return; six days were allowed them for their trip, after which each party was to act independently, and we were all to get out of the awkward situation in the best way we could.

Accordingly we took the canoes across the lake as soon as our hunters had started, and put up our deerskin lodge in the shelter of a clump of well-grown pine trees; we tried the hand-lines for hours without any better result than completely numbing our fingers, and towards evening set the net, also without any luck. I took my rifle and walked two or three miles back from the lake, but beyond an Arctic fox, which I missed at long range, saw nothing edible.

There is no better camp than a well-set-up lodge with a good fire crackling in the middle, and in this respect we were comfortable enough, but the shortness of food was telling rapidly. We had made no pretence at eating all day, and since leaving Fond du Lac had subsisted almost entirely on tea and tobacco, while even on the Great Slave Lake provisions had been none too plentiful. We passed the evening smoking, and, as I have found usual in these cases, talking of all the good things we had ever eaten, while eyes shone in the firelight with the brilliancy peculiar to the early stages of starvation. Outside the lodge the wind was moderated; the northern lights, though it was still early in the year, were flashing brightly across the sky, and far away in the distance we could hear the ominous howling of wolves. Late in the night I awoke, and, on lighting my pipe, was greeted by King with the remark: "Ah! Monsieur, une fois j'ai goûté le pain avec le beurre; le bon Dieu a fait ces deux choses là exprès pour manger ensemble."

Long before daylight we put off in the canoe to visit the net, and to our great joy found five fair-sized trout, quite enough to relieve all anxiety for the day; the weather also had improved, turning much warmer, with the snow rapidly thawing. The half-breeds, who are all Catholics, held a short service, as it was Sunday morning and they are very particular in this respect. Afterwards we all went out hunting, but only two or three ptarmigan, the first we had seen, were killed, and there were still no signs of the caribou. The country here is much less rugged than on first leaving the Great Slave Lake, and the rolling hills are covered with a small plant, halfway between heather and moss, bearing a small black berry, and growing in thick bunches wherever the soil is capable of producing it. This plant, and a wiry black moss which grows in patches on the flat rocks, are much used as fuel in dry weather, if no wood is available; in wet weather they are of course useless. The hollows between the ridges are generally muskegs, thawed out to the depth of a foot, producing a long coarse grass, and in many places a plentiful growth of a dwarf variety of the Labrador tea, an excellent substitute for the product of China. Huge glacial boulders lie scattered in every direction, many of them balanced in an extraordinary manner on the points of smaller stones, which seem to have been of softer substance and gradually worn away. In other spots are patches of broken rocks, covering a large extent of ground and very difficult to travel on, especially when a light coating of snow makes them slippery, and conceals the deep holes in which a leg might easily be snapped; even the caribou, sure-footed as they are, will often make a long detour in preference to taking the risk of a fall among these rocks. Lakes of all sizes and shapes abound on every side, connected by small streams that find their way into the Slave Lake one hundred miles to the southward. Pine timber is now very scarce and mostly small, growing in sheltered spots with long stretches where not a tree is visible. A fairly thick stem starts from the ground and immediately spreads out into a bush with the branches growing downwards, and the top of the tree seldom reaching a height of ten feet. Sometimes, however, even as far out as this, a bunch of really well-grown trees is to be found, probably having the advantages of better soil to spring from. A very few birch sticks, invaluable to the Indian for making snow-shoes, still manage to exist, and patches of scrub willow are frequent. The general appearance of the country and the vegetation, with the exception of the timber, reminded me strongly of the desert of Arnavatn in the interior of Iceland.

A great variety of mosses and lichens flourish here and in the true Barren Ground outside the tree limit, the tripe des roches which has played such a conspicuous part in the story of Arctic exploration being particularly abundant at this spot. The formation of the rocks is still red granite, with a good deal of mica showing in the boulders.

Late in the evening we heard a gun, and, on our replying, four or five shots were fired in rapid succession, the signal of good news; soon afterwards Paul and François came in, each carrying a small load of meat, which we finished promptly. They had fallen in with the caribou about thirty miles on, and reported them to be moving south in great numbers; we had now no hesitation in pushing on to meet them, and were all jubilant at the thought of good times coming. The next day was warm again with south-west wind, and, after passing through the Lac du Corbeau (named from our little Indian, who had acquired the title of Chasseur du Corbeau from an unsuccessful hunt he had made after a raven at one of our hungry camps), we portaged into Lake Camsell, a fine sheet of water over twenty miles in length, running more to the east than the other lakes we had passed, full of small islands, and with rather more timber than usual on its shores.

For the first time we could put down our paddles, and, hoisting a large red blanket for a sail, ran in front of the steady fair wind; the water was blue, the sun pleasantly warm, and the snow had almost disappeared. In the afternoon there was a cry of Et-then, Et-then! (the caribou), and we saw a solitary bull standing against the sky-line on the top of an island close to the east shore of the lake. As soon as we were out of sight we landed and quickly surrounded him; he made a break for the water, but one of the half-breeds, in hiding behind a rock, dropped him before he put to sea. It was a full-grown bull in prime condition, the velvet not yet shed, but the horns quite hard underneath.

A scene of great activity now commenced. There was no more thought of travelling that night, and, while two men were skinning and cutting up the caribou, the others unloaded and carried ashore the canoe, lit a fire, and got ready the kettles for a feast that was to make up for all the hard times just gone through. There was plenty of meat for everybody to gorge themselves, and we certainly made a night of it, boiling and roasting till we had very nearly finished the whole animal. I could not quite keep up with the others at this first trial of eating powers, but after a couple of weeks among the caribou I was fully able to hold my own. We seemed at length to have found the land of plenty, as ptarmigan were very numerous, just losing the last of their pretty brown plumage and putting on their white dresses to match the snow, which would soon drive them for food and shelter into the thick pine woods round the shores of the Great Slave Lake.

We had to sleep off the effects of over-eating, and it was late in the day before we started down the lake. After two or three hours' sailing at a slow pace we spied a band of caribou, again on an island. With unnecessary haste we made for the land, and, through watching the deer instead of the water, ran the canoe on a sharp submerged rock, tearing an ugly hole in the birch-bark. We all stepped overboard up to the waist, carried the cargo ashore, and, leaving the women to stitch up the canoe with the bark and fibre that is always kept handy when away from the birch woods, started in pursuit of the caribou. The result was that after a great deal of bad shooting we killed sixteen on the island, while the canoe, hastily patched up, with a kettle going steadily to bale out and the women paddling and shouting lustily, succeeded in picking up two more that tried to escape by swimming.

The evening was passed in skinning and cutting up the meat, which was stowed away in rough caches of rocks to keep it safe from the wolves and wolverines. These animals are always very plentiful in attendance on the big herds of caribou, and are often the cause of much annoyance to the hunter through stealing meat that he is relying upon for subsistence; in many places where the rocks are small it is impossible to build a cache strong enough to keep out the wolverines, which are possessed of wonderful strength for their size.