The Perils and Adventures of Harry Skipwith by Land and Sea

by William Henry Giles Kingston

When daylight came, it was, I confess, rather provoking to find that the camp was only three or four hundred yards off, where we had our supply of blankets and other creature comforts. As we had now our sleighs loaded to the utmost, and three buffaloes besides en cache, or hidden, that is from the wolves, we turned our faces homewards. The ground was hilly, and as the sun had still considerable power the surface of the snow had been melted, and when frozen again was exceedingly slippery. The consequence of this was that, one of the horses slipping on the side of a hill, the sleigh broke away and rolled over and over to the bottom. We ran down, expecting to see the horse killed or seriously injured, and the sleigh broken to pieces, but neither was the worse for the occurrence, and the horse being set on his legs, trotted on as bravely as before. We were not sorry to get back to our winter quarters, which appeared absolutely luxurious after the nights we had spent out in the snow without shelter. How we did sleep, and how we did eat! Hunter’s fare, indeed, is not to be despised. We had for breakfast fried fish, buffalo tongues, tea, sugar, dampers, and galettes—cakes of simple water and flour, baked under the ashes, and which are very light and nice. For dinner we had, say a dish of boiled buffalo hump, a smoked and boiled buffalo calf whole, a mouffle or dry moose nose, fish, browned in buffalo marrow, loons or other wild ducks, and goose, potatoes, turnips, and abundance of bread.

We had no necessity to dry the meat we had brought, as it would keep frozen through the winter. Near the forts the flesh of the buffaloes killed in winter is preserved through the summer in the following way:—An ice-pit is made, capable of containing the carcasses of six or seven hundred buffaloes. Ice, from a neighbouring river, is cut into square blocks of a uniform size with saws, like the blocks sent over to England from Wenham Lake. With these the floor and sides of the pit are lined, and cemented together with water thrown on them, which freezes hard. Each carcass, without being skinned, is divided into four quarters, and they are piled in layers in the pit till it is filled up. It is then covered with a thick coating of straw, which is again protected from the sun and rain by a shed. In this way the meat is kept perfectly good through the summer, and is more tender and of better flavour than when fresh.

We entered into friendly relations with a tribe of Indians, who had taken up their winter quarters in a wood five or six miles off, and from them we learned many devices for catching game, which our own people were not accustomed to practise. We had won their hearts by supplying them with meat, and as they discovered that we could kill buffalo with our rifles with more certainty than they could with their old firearms, or bows and arrows, they were anxious to get us to accompany them in any hunting expedition, knowing that their share of game would be larger than any amount they could catch alone.

The three chief men were called by us, Eagle-eye, Quick-ear, and Wide-awake. Eagle-eye came to us one day to say that some buffalo had been seen very near the station, and invited us to go out and shoot them. The Indians undertook to shoot too, if we would go to a distance and kill the rest as they ran off. Our party was quickly ready, and off we set—the Indians carrying some skins, the object of which we did not understand. After walking eight or ten miles, Eagle-eye called a halt. Quick-ear produced the skin of a buffalo calf, and Wide-awake that of a wolf, into which they respectively got; while Eagle-eye, telling us to imitate him, led away to the right.

“There, you see, we make one big snake,” he observed, as we prepared to follow his footsteps. “The buffalo see us long way off; think we snake among grass.”

What the buffalo thought I do not know, but certainly they took no notice of us—indeed we were a long way off, and perhaps they were engaged in watching the proceedings of Quick-ear, who was representing the antics of an innocent little buffalo calf. Nearer and nearer the little calf they drew; now they stopped, rather doubtful; then they advanced a little and stopped again. Suddenly a wolf, represented by Wide-awake, appeared on the scene, and the calf bellowed piteously; the wolf sprang savagely on him; the kind-hearted buffaloes could stand it no longer, but rushed forward to rescue their young fellow-creature, when Quick-ear and Wide-awake, jumping up with their rifles, which had been lying by their sides, in their hands, let fly, and brought down two of them. The rest scampered off towards where we were posted, nor did they appear to notice us till four more of their number had fallen, when the survivors turned, and were soon out of reach of our rifles.

The Indians, on seeing the success of their stratagem, sprang forward, shouting and leaping with joy, and soon had the animals cut up and ready for transportation to their lodges and our huts. Our horse-sleighs soon after appeared, followed by theirs, dragged by dogs, and guided by their squaws. Before moving, a feast was held by our Red friends; the men eating first, and enjoying the tit bits, then the hard-worked women were fed, and lastly the dogs came in for their share. When the variety of ways employed to kill buffalo is remembered, it will not appear surprising that their numbers are rapidly decreasing.

The winter seemed to pass far more speedily away than we could have expected, with a very limited supply of books, and with no society except such as our savage visitors afforded us. The fact was, however, that we were never idle, though it must be confessed that we took a very large share of sleep, and ate large amounts of meat and fat, for the sake of generating heat in our system. Day after day we were out in the woods trapping, and soon became very expert trappers. We caught the fox, the wolverine, the pokan or fisher, marten, otter, and other animals, for the sake of their skins, and occasionally fell in with the loon and other wild fowl. Our equipment was very simple. Doubling up our blankets, and uniting the four corners, we formed a pack to contain our pemmican, frying-pan, tin kettle and cup, tea, sugar, and salt, pepper, garlic, and any other small luxury. We had also brought with us from Red River some steel traps; a rifle, ammunition, axe, knife, fire bag and lucifer matches, completed the equipment of each man. Indeed, these last should never be overlooked by those who have to traverse wild countries; a single tin box is easily stowed away handy, and will last a long while. We carried our blankets—as an Irish woman or a gipsy does her child and other worldly goods, at our backs, with a strap across the breast. Well secured from cold, with snow shoes on our feet, we sallied forth into the pathless forest, trusting to our faithful pocket-compass to find our way back again, or to the guidance of our Indians.

The plan was to set our traps as we went out, and to visit them on our return. The steel traps made to catch wolves are of necessity heavy and strong, so that we could only carry a few of them, and had therefore to make others on a more primitive plan. When the beaver was less scarce than now, the beaver-trap was the usual mode of taking the creature; but beavers are now all but extinct, so we spared the few which got into the traps, and let them loose again. The steel traps are like our rat traps, but have no teeth, and require a strong man to set them. They are secured by a chain to a long stick laid on the ground, and are covered over with snow, pieces of meat being scattered about to tempt the animals to the neighbourhood. The wolf, as he goes prowling about, is nearly certain to get a foot into the trap. Off he goes with it, but is soon brought up by the chain and log, and they seldom had got far when we found them. The wooden trap is formed by driving a number of stakes, so as to form a palisade, in the shape of a half oval. The enclosure is large enough to allow an animal to push in half its body, but not to turn round. A heavy log is supported by a perpendicular stick, with another horizontal, having the bait at the end of it, much as the brick is in a boy’s bird-trap at home. The animal, if he touches the bait—a piece of tough meat or a bird—brings the log down on his shoulder and is crushed to death. We could, after a time, construct thirty or forty of these in a morning, so there was ample interest and excitement in ascertaining, as we walked back, whether our traps had caught anything. Our greatest enemy was the glutton, or wolverine, or as Garoupe called him, the carcajou. He is rather larger than an English fox, with a shaggy coat and very broad feet, armed with sharp claws. He is the most cunning and inquisitive of animals. Nothing escapes his notice as he ranges his native wilds, and he can climb a tree or dig a hole with his claws. He used to take the baits out of our traps by digging through the back, and so getting at it. He was not to be caught by poison, and he could select pieces without it, and bite in two those he suspected contained any. Now and then, though, he is caught by poison, but only when very severely pressed by hunger. When he gets his foot in a steel trap he drags it off, though heavy enough to catch a wolf, and instead of biting off the limb, as the mink and fox will do, he retires to some secluded spot and there endeavours to withdraw it, in which he often succeeds.