The Barren Ground of Northern Canada

by Warburton Pike

A spot being chosen where the snow is light and the ground clear of rocks, a ring of the requisite size is marked out. Snow-shoes are taken off and used as shovels for throwing away the snow from the inside of this ring, making a wall varying in height according to the depth of snowfall. Outside this circle the sleighs are turned on edge, the poles planted behind them, and the deer-skin lodge spread round, forming as comfortable a camp as can be expected in such a country. The wood allowed for supper is carefully split and a fire lighted, the kettle hanging over it from three small sticks carried for the purpose; the lumps of meat for dog's food are spread round the fire till sufficiently thawed, when a lively scene commences outside the lodge, every man feeding his own dogs and watching them to see there is no foul play. By the time this is over the melted snow in the kettle is boiling, and every man gets his piece of meat in much the same manner as the dogs. I always had the privilege of first choice, but in the dense clouds of smoke that usually filled the lodge it was by no means easy to take the full advantage of it. We drank tea while it held out, and then fell back on the greasy snow-water that the meat was boiled in. There was always a good proportion of caribou hair in everything we ate or drank, varying afterwards to the coarse black hair of the musk-ox, which was far more objectionable.

As soon as supper was over and our moccasins dry the fire was allowed to go out, to economize wood, and each man rolled himself up in his blanket, lay down on the frozen ground, and slept as well as he might till it was time to travel again. Directly all was quiet the dogs forced their way in and commenced a free fight over us for any scraps or bones they could find lying about; finally they curled themselves up for the night without paying much attention to our comfort. A warm dog is not a bad thing to lie against or to put at your feet, but these hauling dogs seem to prefer to lie right on top of your body, and as most of them are a considerable weight a good night's rest is an impossibility. Any attempt to kick or shove them off produced a general row, and a moving foot was often mistaken in the darkness for a hostile dog and treated as such; Paul received one rather bad bite on his toes, but the rest of us all got off with slight nips. We had to be careful to put everything edible, in the way of moccasins, mittens, and even snow-shoes, under us, as these are things that few dogs can resist, and there is nothing more annoying than to find all the babiche eaten out of your snow-shoes in the morning. When the hungry time came later on the dogs began to eat the lodge, and would soon have left us houseless but for one man always keeping watch at night.

One is accustomed to hear of men sleeping in fluffy woollen bags in the Arctic regions, but I found that a deer-skin coat and one blanket were sufficient to keep me warm except on the very coldest nights. I had told Michel particularly to bring another blanket that I had left behind at Fond du Lac, and abused him roundly when I found he had come without it. It seems that an Indian had arrived at the house with a load of dried meat and grease, and was in want of a blanket; Michel, to use his own expression, took pity on him and gave him my blanket in exchange for the grease. He doubtless considered this a pious act of charity, but had rather spoilt it by consuming the grease himself; and on my asking him why, if he felt so sorry for the Indian, he had not given him one of his own blankets, or at least kept the grease for me, he replied: "I have only two blankets and I have a wife; you have no wife, so one blanket is enough for you; besides, I love grease, and it is hard for me to see it and not eat it."

In the middle of the night Saltatha, always the earliest, got up and drove out the dogs, lit the fire, and prepared another meal, exactly similar to our supper of the evening. Usually we harnessed up many hours before daylight and travelled, with only an occasional ten-minutes' rest, till the sun had been long down and there was just enough daylight left to make camp; dinner was completely cut out of our day as being too heavy a strain on our firewood. There was no attempt at washing made by any of the party during the whole time that we were out, and indeed it would have been an impossibility, as our small fires were only just sufficient to melt the snow for cooking purposes.

In clear weather the nights were of wonderful brilliancy, and after we had been out a couple of weeks the moon was big enough to add a little light, and of course kept steadily improving in this respect; but the starlight alone illumined the waste of snow sufficiently to see landmarks far ahead. Generally the Aurora was flashing in its full glory, and if there was no wind the travelling was pleasant enough. At the first sign of dawn, and thence till the sun rose, the cold always became more severe, and if a light head-wind happened to get up at the same time there were sure to be some frozen noses and chins in the outfit. The hair on our faces, even to the eyebrows and eyelashes, was always coated with rime, giving everybody a peculiarly stupid expression; my beard was usually a mass of ice, and I had great difficulty in thawing it out by our small fires, although it proved a grand protection from frost-bite. I think I was the only one that escaped being bitten in the chin, but my nose, cheeks, and forehead were touched several times.

The sunrise was often very beautiful, and the effects of long duration, as the sun is close to the horizon a considerable time before he shows above it, while the dense blue blackness in the north and west gives the impression that the night is still lingering there. Often a sun-dog is the first thing to appear, and more or less of these attendants accompany the sun during his short stay above the horizon. The driving snow, which obliterates everything in blowing weather, often spoils the evening effects; but once or twice I saw the sun set over a frozen lake, tinting the snow with various shades of red, and throwing a beauty over the wilderness that it is useless for me to attempt to describe.

A thick fog hung over everything during the whole of the second day out from the woods, and of course made it extremely difficult to find the meat cache in Lake Mackay; at dark we camped on the first land that we came to, but had no very accurate idea of our position. Luckily the weather cleared towards morning, and we made out the island on which we had stored the carcasses of the caribou killed on September 22nd. We had some trouble in punching a hole with our only ice-chisel and hauling out a solid lump of meat and ice some five feet thick and many feet in circumference; but the Indians were much cheered at the sight of so much provision, and declared themselves ready to go out to the sea-coast if necessary. The short day was nearly over by the time we had got the meat, so we camped for the night on the island; but before daylight we were off again, and when the sun set had nearly reached the end of the lake and made a wood cache on a conspicuous point for our return journey. The next day was thick again, and we were lucky in finding the bay in which we had left the big canoe during our last expedition. A very curious thing, illustrating the difficulty of recognising objects in these fogs, happened just as we were leaving the ice. We saw an animal, apparently at some distance, bounding along the horizon at a most remarkable pace; all down the line there were cries of Erjerer (musk-ox), Et-then, Le loup! guns were snatched from the sleighs, and even the dogs charged at a gallop in pursuit of the strange animal. After a rush of ten yards the quarry disappeared; the first man had put his foot on it, and it turned out to be one of the small mice so common in the Barren Ground. What it was doing out on the lake at this time of year, instead of being comfortably curled up under ground, I cannot say; but it certainly gave me the impression that if these fogs continued we should run a good chance of coming to grief through losing our way.

At sunrise the weather cleared, and we found a small band of caribou at the beginning of the twenty-mile portage to the Lac de Gras. After we had killed three and fed the dogs, we began our overland work. The snow was much softer here, with many large rocks showing through, and some steep hills made travelling hard for the dogs. Night caught us about half-way between the two lakes, and the north wind freshened up into a tempest such as I have never seen surpassed by the blizzards of the western prairies. Fortunately we found a fairly sheltered place for the lodge or it must have been swept away; as it was the deer-skin flapped with a noise like that of a sail blown to pieces at sea; two of our lodge-poles were carried away, and we were in momentary expectation of being left without shelter to the mercy of the storm; the driving snow forced itself in, and men and dogs were only recognisable by the white mounds which marked their position. For thirty hours we lay like this till the wind abated at midnight, when we started again towards the north, and continued walking till we had crossed the big bay of the Lac de Gras into which the Coppermine River runs. We camped a little short of our second meat cache on the Point de Misère, and on the following day, although the fog had settled down again, Paul, by a very good piece of piloting, discovered the small lake in which we had cached the meat. We were getting pretty hard up again by this time, and the Indians, with the exception of Saltatha whose good spirits never failed, were showing signs of sulkiness. This new supply, however, gave them fresh courage, and we were all confident of finding the musk-ox before we got to the end of the six caribou that we picked up here. We experienced the same difficulty in breaking the ice, and as we spent much valuable time in getting out the meat, made but a poor day's journey. On the following day we passed the most northerly point that we had reached in the autumn, and were now pushing on into a country that none of us had ever seen before.

At the spot where we had left the Lac de Gras we had noticed a few small willow sticks showing above the snow, which afterwards proved very useful. Following a small stream we reached another large lake, stretching in a north-easterly direction, and camped at the far end of it in a heavy snowstorm that had been going on all day. During this time we were keeping a sharp look-out for musk-ox; but we could find no tracks, and as the weather continued thick had no opportunity of seeing animals at a distance. Two more days we travelled on in this manner, making long journeys with our meat nearly finished and our wood-supply growing rapidly less; for there had been more delay, from various reasons, than we had anticipated, and we had been careful to avoid caching wood for our return journey as we might be unable to follow the same course. The shape of the hills here changes in a most distinct manner. The usual undulations give way to sharp scattered buttes, composed of sand and taking very remarkable forms, a solitary conical mound being a common feature in the scenery. Small lakes were still numerous, and for a considerable distance we followed a large stream, evidently one of the head waters of the Coppermine, here running in a south-east direction.