The camp was very prettily situated on a small flat a few feet above the edge of a frozen lake; and when the sun rose over the hill, lighting up the brown deer-skin lodges with their columns of blue smoke rising straight up in the frosty air, the snow-laden pine-trees, and the silver-barked birches, the whole scene seemed a realization of one of Fenimore Cooper's descriptions of an Indian camp in winter.
Much talking had to be got through, and the story of our musk-ox hunt was told many times over. I was the object of great interest, and was closely questioned as to my experiences in the Barren Ground and the contrast between life there and in my own country. After Zinto had satisfied himself on these points he broached more abstruse subjects, insisting on knowing my opinion with regard to the differences of the Protestant and Roman Catholic faiths, and seeming pleased to hear that he was by no means the first man who had found this point hard to fully understand. Many other things there were about which he desired information; but I am afraid some of my answers conveyed little meaning to him, as I was myself rather hazy about many of the topics of conversation, and had only Michel, who was the worst Frenchman of all, for interpreter, Paul having gone off to see his wife who was camped a few miles to the east. But when Zinto got on to trading he was quite at home, and before leaving I had to give him an order for many beaver-skins (the medium of trade in the North), to be paid at Fort Resolution. He was very good in providing me with everything I wanted for my journey, and gave me a new pair of snow-shoes and a sleigh, besides lending a dog to replace one that had fallen lame; meat he was short of, but he had heard that the Beaulieus had been killing caribou, so that I was likely to find caches by the way; a track was broken to Fond du Lac, and we ought to get there easily in three days. Zinto thought the Great Slave Lake would be entirely frozen over and fit to travel on by this time, as lately the sky had been clear in the south; when there is any open water a perpetual mist rises from it and lies like a huge fog-bank over the lake.
A happy indolent life the Yellow Knives lead when the caribou are thick on their pleasant hunting-ground round the shores of the Great Slave Lake, and most of the hard times that they have to put up with are due to their own improvidence. This is their great failing; they will not look ahead or make preparation for the time when the caribou are scarce, preferring to live from hand to mouth, and too lazy to bother their heads about the future. They are rather a fine race of men, above the average of the Canadian Indian, and, as they have had little chance of mixing with the Whites, have maintained their characteristic manners till this day; they are probably little changed since the time when the Hudson's Bay Company first established a trading-post on the Big Lake a hundred years ago. When the priests came into the country the Yellow Knives readily embraced the Roman Catholic religion, and are very particular in observing all the outward signs of that faith, but I doubt if their profession of Christianity has done much to improve their character. They are a curious mixture of good and bad, simplicity and cunning; with no very great knowledge of common honesty, thoroughly untrustworthy, and possessed with an insatiable greed for anything that takes their fancy, but with no word in their language to express thanks or gratitude. To a white man they are humility itself, looking upon him, by their own account, as their father, and so considering him bound to provide them with everything they want, even to his last pair of trowsers or pipeful of tobacco; refuse them anything when you are dependent upon their services on a journey, and they will leave you in the woods; for their own part, if they have ammunition they are always at home. In another way they are generous enough, and take great pride in showing hospitality. Go into one of their lodges, and a blanket is spread for you in the seat of honour farthest away from the flap that does duty for a door; a meal is instantly provided, no matter if it takes the last piece of meat in the camp, and the precious tea and tobacco are offered you in lavish quantities. The Yellow Knives are a timid, peaceable race, shrinking from bloodshed and deeds of violence, and it is seldom that quarrels between the men got beyond wrestling and hair-pulling. The women are, as a rule, not quite so hideous as the squaws of the Blackfeet and Crees; they are lax in morals, and accustomed to being treated more as slaves than wives in the civilized interpretation of the word. They do all the hard work of the camp, besides carrying the heaviest loads on the march; and in too many cases are rewarded with the worst of the meat and the blows of an over-exacting husband. Early marriages are fashionable, as a man is useless without a wife to dry his meat and make moccasins for him. The great object of a Yellow Knife beauty is to secure a good hunter for a husband; the man who can shoot straight, and is known to be skilful in approaching the caribou, is always a prize in the matrimonial market and need have little fear of a refusal, especially as the husband is supposed to hunt for his father-in-law after marriage, and the old man will use all his influence to arrange the match. Superstition still reigns supreme among these people; any mischance is put down to "bad medicine," and reasons are always forthcoming to account for its presence. There are several miracle-workers and foreseers of the future in the tribe, who are said to perform very wonderful things, but I found them extremely shy of showing off their accomplishments when I asked for an exhibition. Like all other Indians who live the wild life that they were intended to live, the Yellow Knives are dirty to the last degree. They are careful about combing and greasing their hair, and are lavish in the use of soap, if they can get it, for face and hands, but their bodies are a sanctuary for the disgusting vermin that always infest them; they seem to have no idea of getting rid of these objectionable insects, but talk about its being a good or bad season for them in the same way that they speak of mosquitos.
From every point of view, then, the Indian of the Great Slave Lake is not a pleasant companion, nor a man to be relied upon in case of emergency. Nobody has yet discovered the right way to manage him. His mind runs on different principles from that of a white man, and till the science of thought-reading is much more fully developed, the working of his brain will always be a mystery to the fur-trader and traveller.
At sunrise the following morning I left Zinto's camp, with Michel and Marlo, bound for Fond du Lac, all the other musk-ox hunters going back to domestic happiness. The weather was still bright and cold, and the days perceptibly longer as we travelled south. We were again short of meat, as all the Indians were in the same plight, and although we saw a band of caribou shortly after starting, we were unable to get a shot at them. Towards evening we found a small cache of meat hung in a tree, and knowing that it must belong to some of the Beaulieus I had no compunction in taking it. Here we left our canoe-route, and passing to the westward of the Lac de Mort headed straight for the house at Fond du Lac. The woods were well grown and signs of life abundant; the tracks of wolves, wolverines, foxes, and an occasional marten, frequently crossed the road, and ptarmigan were continually flying up under the leader's feet. Here, too, I saw again my old friend the Whisky Jack, as he is called throughout the North, a grey and white bird the size of a thrush, with a most confiding disposition and an inordinate love of fat meat; he sits on the nearest tree while the camp is being made, comes in boldly, inspects the larder, and helps himself with very little fear of man. If it is a starving camp he chortles in contempt and flies away, having a very low opinion of people who travel without provisions; but if meat be plentiful he spends the night there, and comes in for rich pickings in the morning when the camp is struck. This bird is common throughout the wilder parts of Canada, and has acquired many names in different places; in the mountains of British Columbia he is the Hudson's Bay bird or grease bird, and far away to the East the moose bird, caribou bird, Rupert's bird, and camp-robber.
On the afternoon of the second day we met the Indian Etitchula, who had left the fort with us in August and had been hanging on more or less to our party ever since. He was on his way back to King Beaulieu's Camp, two days' travel to the north-east, having made a trip to Fond du Lac to make a raid on my tea and tobacco, and see if there was any news of us, as King was greatly alarmed at our prolonged absence. We relieved him of a little tea, but he had not been able to get any tobacco out of François, who had roundly asserted that it all belonged to him; he also gave us a couple of whitefish, which proved a very acceptable change from our long course of straight meat. Late the same evening we made our last camp on the high land close to the edge of the mountains within five miles of the house; we could easily have got in that night, but I much preferred a quiet camp under the stars to the company of the gang of Beaulieus who were sure to be at Fond du Lac.
One word of caution against using the compressed tea imported by the Hudson's Bay Company into the North as a substitute for tobacco; it is very good to drink, but if you smoke it you pay the penalty by a most painful irritation in the throat, which is made worse by breathing the intensely cold air. We all tried it that night, and all swore never to do so again, although I have often smoked the ordinary uncompressed tea without disastrous results and with a certain amount of satisfaction.
We were off in good time on the morning of December 10th, and were soon sitting on the sleighs, rushing down the steep incline, with frequent spills from bumping against trees; this was the only piece of riding I had during the whole five weeks' travel. The first signs of the petit jour were just showing as we pulled up at the house, and François quickly produced the tobacco he had refused Etitchula. I think for a few minutes they were really glad to see us back safe, but soon the old complaints began. Times had been hard, although the women and children all looked fat enough to belie this statement; José had been catching whitefish, but had refused to give any to François; while the latter, according to José, had been very mean in distribution of my effects, eating flour every day himself but giving none away. They had gone through nearly everything between them, and moreover did not seem the least bit ashamed of their conduct. As my dogs were all used up, I decided to leave them here, and made arrangements with François to bring his own train on to the fort with me. It seemed that notwithstanding the hard times he had sufficient meat and fish stored away for our trip, and there were still a few pounds of flour left, so that we should live in luxury all the way in.
I spent the day shooting a few ptarmigan, indulging in much tobacco, and listening to the petitions of the various ill-used members of the family. José was particularly amusing; he had been the most useless man of the lot, never even venturing into the Barren Ground, but spending most of his time at Fond du Lac, shooting away my ammunition and playing havoc with tea and tobacco, besides robbing the cache at the Lac du Rocher. Now he was full of love for me, and gave me a list of things that he wanted in addition to his wages, as a reward for all that he had done and was ready to do for me. Among other items, he wanted my rifle and hunting-glasses, and remarked that my Paradox gun, which had been lying here all the time, would be very useful for him at the goose-hunt in the following spring. Fortunately none of the Beaulieus know how to put together a breech-loading gun, so the Paradox and its ammunition had been left in peace to do me good service in the summer. I think the Paradox is the most useful gun yet invented for purposes of exploration, as it does away with the necessity of carrying a separate weapon for shot and ball, and shoots very true with either; but there seems no reason why the patent should not be applied to a 20-bore. For procuring food in a really rough country, where a man has to carry his own ammunition, the ball-cartridges for a 12-bore are needlessly heavy, and the charge of shot is too great for the close range shooting which is usually done on these occasions.