We arrived at camp in due time, tired and hungry, but none the worse for our experience, and after a short rest, quite ready for another tramp through the enchanting forest of birch, Cottonwood, and hemlock.
Ptarmigan
On our way through the woods the Indians gathered for snuff-making a great many fungi growing on the birch trees. In preparing the snuff, they first take a birch limb of sufficient size and with a pocket-knife cut out a round hole about two inches in diameter and an inch and a half deep; this is the mortar. The fungi are then placed in the hot coals of a birch-wood fire until they are charred through and through, when they are broken into the mortar with a like amount of tobacco leaves. Then with another piece of birch wood about three feet long for a pestle the mixture is ground in the mortar until it becomes of the color and consistency of a moist snuff. This the Indians continually chew and rub in their teeth. Of the many uses of the noble birch surely this is the most unique.
From the seedling to the giant tree the life history of the birch is one of usefulness to the inhabitants of the wild. The hardwood ridge over yonder looks like the woods in the vicinity of a beaver community, only over a much larger area. Acres and acres of birch trees averaging two inches in diameter are broken off a couple of feet from the ground by the giant moose, which straddle a sapling and bend it down to browse upon the boughs and tender twigs of the top. An old-timer in the country told us that once after a hard winter he came upon several “moose yards” in the spring and found many bodies of moose that had starved to death. He also told us that he had saved the lives of quite a number by cutting down trees where they could feed and thus tide themselves over a severe spell of bad weather. The birch-buds nourish the grouse during the winter. Birch-bark starts the fire and birch-wood furnishes the fuel. Birch-bark supplies the natives raw material from which to manufacture canoes and various utensils and trinkets. Taking it all in all I do not know of any other tree of the forest that is put to so many uses. An interesting instance of its application to the culinary art comes to mind. According to a tradition in our family, some of whom were pioneers in the Huron district of Canada, the Indians taught them to make a very fair substitute for baking powder out of a compound of the ashes of birch and hickory wood. I am sorry I never learned the formula.
Around the camp fire we gathered just before retiring. The night was dark. The doleful cry of the solitary great northern diver (Urinator imperator) came through the stillness of the invigorating atmosphere, and scarcely would the echo die away in the distant hills until the call was repeated. The bird may have been floating on the surface of the lake, or flying in the air, calling, as it frequently does while in flight. The native Indians, like the sailors, do not take kindly to the laughing of the loon, for there is a superstition among them that it forebodes bad weather or some misfortune. The camp-fire was burning brightly, cutting a luminous hemisphere out of the inky darkness. In the north the aurora borealis was throwing its weird light in streamers stretched in a semicircle over the horizon. While I was admiring these the moon pushing up over the black hilltop across the lake, looked cherry-red. It seemed as though I was under a spell. In my fancy I could see a great boat approaching over the dark water, with a huge search-light just rotating into view and sweeping the northern heavens with its rays. But even as I gazed the full moon appeared in all its northern splendor, the vision dissolved, and I realized that the northern lights and Old Luna had played a prank on me.
The next day we packed our belongings and shifted camp some four miles farther south on the same lake. As soon as the bow of our little boat struck the shore we hopped out and began a reconnoiter for a camp site. A well-worn path across the narrow neck of land separating one little fiord from another attracted our attention. A stroll in that direction disclosed a camp which had lately been occupied by some unknown party. On a tree we found the card of our fellow townsman, George Shiras, III., who had recently left the camp for the sheep country. It was like receiving a letter from home. How pleasant the surprise had we been so fortunate as to meet him! The “few days in camp together,” suggested by his invitation of long standing, would have been realized by a strange coincidence. While he left civilization from Seward, we departed by way of Kenai, several hundred miles distant, yet both arrived at the same place, he by way of the upper Kenai and we by the lower.
A hurried pitching of camp in anticipation of rain, which had been incessant for the past four days, with only brief intervals of relief from the downpour, put us in excellent shape, with plenty of spruce boughs for bedding, before the rain began to patter, patter on the stretched canvas. To me a most interesting experience is that of being lulled into dreamland under such conditions. It may be due to the effect of the ozone and to the fact that in the woods one is always tired when night comes.
On the following morning we divided the parties and left camp in different directions. After tramping many miles alone I came to a swamp country. Crossing over one arm of the swamp, wading up to my knees in water, I came upon a path worn almost a foot deep by moose traveling from one place to another. I was unable to figure out why they traveled backward and forward along this particular route. After returning home I learned from Mr. Shiras that not far from this point was a salt lick and the path was the regular route to and from the lick.