A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador Part 1

A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador.

by Mina Benson Hubbard.

PREFACE

This book is the result of a determination on my part to complete Mr. Hubbard's unfinished work, and having done this to set before the public a plain statement, not only of my own journey, but of his as well. For this reason I have included the greater part of Mr. Hubbard's diary, which he kept during the trip, and which it will be seen is published exactly as he wrote it, and also George Elson's account of the last few days together, and his own subsequent efforts.

I hope that this may go some way towards correcting misleading accounts of Mr. Hubbard's expedition, which have appeared elsewhere. It is due also to the memory of my husband that I should here put on record the fact that my journey with its results--geographical and otherwise--is the only one over this region recognised by the geographical authorities of America and Europe.

The map which is found accompanying this account of the two journeys sets forth the work I was able to accomplish. It does not claim to be other than purely pioneer work. I took no observations for longitude, but obtained a few for lat.i.tude, which served as guiding points in making my map. The controlling points of my journey [Northwest River post, Lake Michikamau and its outlet, and the mouth of the George River] were already astronomically fixed.

The route map of the first Hubbard Expedition is from one drawn for me by George Elson, with the few observations for lat.i.tude recorded by Mr. Hubbard in his diary as guiding points. My husband's maps, together with other field notes and records, I have not had access to, as these have never been handed over to me.

Grateful acknowledgment is here made of my indebtedness to Mr.

Herbert L. Bridgman and Mr. Harold T. Ellis for their help and counsel in my work.

Here, too, I would express my sincere appreciation of the contribution to the book from Mr. Cabot, who, descendent of the ancient explorers, is peculiarly well fitted to speak of Labrador.

The great peninsula has been, as he terms it, his "playground," and by canoe in summer or on snowshoes in winter he has travelled thousands of miles in the interior, thus placing himself in closest touch with it.

To Dr. Cluny Macpherson for his generous service I am deeply grateful.

To George Elson for his loyal devotion to Mr. Hubbard and myself my debt of grat.i.tude must ever remain unpaid.

To Dr. James E. C. Sawyer, my beloved pastor, I am indebted for the t.i.tle of my book.

MINA BENSON HUBBARD

A WOMAN'S WAY THROUGH UNKOWN LABRADOR

CHAPTER I

LEONIDAS HUBBARD, JR.

There was an unusual excitement and interest in Mr. Hubbard's face when he came home one evening in January of 1903.

We had just seated ourselves at the dinner-table, when leaning forward he handed me a letter to read. It contained the very pleasing information that we were shortly to receive a, for us, rather large sum of money. It was good news, but it did not quite account for Mr. Hubbard's present state of mind, and I looked up enquiringly.

"You see, Wife, it means that I can take my Labrador trip whether anyone sends me or not," he said triumphantly.

His eyes glowed and darkened and in his voice was the ring of a great enthusiasm, for he had seen a Vision, and this trip was a vital part of his dream.

The dream had begun years ago, when a boy lay out under the apple trees of a quiet farm in Southern Michigan with elbows resting on the pages of an old school geography, chin in palms and feet in air. The book was open at the map of Canada, and there on the other page were pictures of Indians dressed in skins with war bonnets on their heads; pictures of white hunters also dressed in skins, paddling bark canoes; winter pictures of dog-teams and sledges, the driver on his snow-shoes, his long whip in hand. The boy would have given all the arrow-heads he had for just one look at what he saw pictured there.

He was born, this boy, of generations of pioneer ancestors, the line of his mother's side running back to Flanders of three hundred years ago, through Michael Paulus Van Der Voort, who came to America from Dendermonde, East Flanders, and whose marriage on 18th November, 1640, to Marie Rappelyea, was the fifth recorded marriage in New Amsterdam, now New York. A branch runs back in England to John Rogers the martyr. It is the boast of this family that none of the blood has ever been known to "show the white feather."

Among those ancestors of recent date of whose deeds he was specially proud, were the great-grandfather, Samuel Rogers, a pioneer preacher of the Church of Christ among the early settlers of Kentucky and Missouri, and the Grandfather Hubbard who took his part in the Indian fights of Ohio's early history. On both mother's and father's side is a record of brave, high-hearted, clean-living men and women, strong in Christian faith, lovers of nature, all of them, and thus partakers in rich measure of that which enn.o.bles life.

The father, Leonidas Hubbard, had come "'cross country" from Deerfield, Ohio, with gun on shoulder, when Michigan was still a wilderness, and had chosen this site for his future home. He had taught in a school for a time in his young manhood; but the call of the out-of-doors was too strong, and forth he went again. When the responsibilities of life made it necessary for him to limit his wanderings he had halted here; and here on July 12th, 1872, the son Leonidas Hubbard, Jr., was born.

He began by taking things very much to heart, joys and sorrows alike. In his play he was always setting himself some unaccomplishable task, and then flying into a rage because he could not do it. The first great trouble came with the advent of a baby sister who, some foolish one told him, would steal from him his mother's heart. Pa.s.sionately he implored a big cousin to "take that little baby out and chop its head off."

Later he found it all a mistake, that his mother's heart was still his own, and so he was reconciled.

From earliest recollection he had listened with wide eyes through winter evenings, while over a pan of baldwin apples his father talked with some neighbour who had dropped in, of the early days when they had hunted deer and wolves and wild turkeys over this country where were now the thrifty Michigan farms. There were, too, his father's stories of his own adventures as hunter and miner in the mountains of the West.

It seemed to him the time would never come when he would be big enough to hunt and trap and travel through the forests as his father had done. He grew so slowly; but the years did pa.s.s, and at last one day the boy almost died of gladness when his father told him he was big enough now to learn to trap, and that he should have a lesson tomorrow. It was the first great overwhelming joy.

There was also a first great crime.

While waiting for this happy time to come he had learned to do other things, among them to throw stones. It was necessary, however, to be careful what was aimed at. The birds made tempting marks; but song-birds were sacred things, and temptation had to be resisted.

One day while he played in the yard with his little sister, resentment having turned to devotion, a wren flew down to the wood pile and began its song. It happened at that very moment he had a stone in his hand. He didn't quite have time to think before the stone was gone and the bird dropped dead. Dumb with horror the two gazed at each other. Beyond doubt all he could now expect was to go straight to torment. After one long look they turned and walked silently away in opposite directions. Never afterwards did they mention the incident to each other.

A new life began for him with his trapping. He learned to fish as well, for besides being a hunter, his father was an angler of State-wide reputation. The days on which his father accompanied him along the banks of the St. Joe, or to some more distant stream, were very specially happy ones. His cup was quite filled full when, on the day he was twelve years old, a rifle all his own was placed in his hands. Father and son then hunted together.

While thus growing intimate with the living things of the woods and streams, his question was not so much "What?" as "Why?" As reading came to take a larger part in life and interest to reach out to human beings, again his question was "Why?" So when other heroes took their places beside his father for their share of homage, they were loved and honoured for that which prompted their achievements more than for the deeds themselves.

Pa.s.sionately fond of history, with its natural accompaniment geography, he revelled, as does every normal boy, in stories of the wars, Indian stories and tales of travel and adventure. His imagination kindled by what he had read, and the oft-repeated tales of frontier life in which the courage, endurance, and high honour of his own pioneer forefathers stood out strong and clear, it was but natural that the boy under the apple trees should feel romance in every bit of forest, every stream; that his thoughts should be reaching towards the out-of-the-way places of the earth where life was still that of the pioneer with the untamed wilderness lying across his path, and on into the wilderness itself.

Though born with all the instincts of the hunter, he was born also with an exquisitely tender and sympathetic nature, which made him do strange things for a boy.

One day a toad hopped into the beeyard and his father was about to kill it. The boy pet.i.tioned for its life and carried it away. It came back. Again it was carried away. Again it returned and this time was taken clear to the river.

Once a much loved aunt came to visit at his home bringing the little sister a beautiful, new doll. That night she trotted off to bed hugging the new treasure close. The boy did not love dolls; but when he saw the old, rag baby left lonely and forsaken be quietly picked it up and carried it to bed with him.

Years afterwards, when on a canoe trip on the Moose River, a disconsolate looking little Indian dog came and sat shyly watching us while we broke camp. We learned that the Indian owners had gone to the bush leaving him to fare as he might through the coming winter. When our canoe pushed out into the river there was an extra pa.s.senger. We brought him home to Congers, where he immediately carried consternation into the neighbouring chicken yards, convinced that he had found the finest partridge country on earth.

When sixteen the boy went to attend the Angola (Indiana) Normal School. Here his decision for Christ was made. He was baptized and united with the Church of Christ. Three years later his teaching took him to Northern Michigan where be found a wider range than he had yet known, and in the great pine forests of that country he did his first real exploring. Here were clear, cold streams with their trout and grayling, and here, when his work admitted, he hunted and fished and dreamed out his plans, his thoughts turning ever more insistently to the big, outside world where his heroes did their work.

He entered the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1893. High strung and sensitive, with a driving energy and ambition to have part in the larger work of the world, be suffered during the early part of his course all the agonies that come to those of such a nature while they grope in the dark for that which they are fitted to do. He reached out in many directions in his effort to provide the needful money to enable him to take his course, but without a sense of special fitness in any. It came however with his earliest attempts in journalistic work. The discovery with its measure of self-recognition brought a thrill that compensated for all the dark hours. He now felt a.s.sured of success.

His life in the University was one of varied and unceasing activity. In his studies history, literature, psychology claimed his special interest. He was an enthusiast in athletics, and found his field in running and boxing. The contest was as the wine of life to him. He was active in the literary and debating societies, and prominent in the Student's Christian a.s.sociation, attending and taking part in the work of the local branch of the Church of Christ. His first newspaper work was done as an amateur on the college press. Then came a.s.signments from the local dailies and correspondence for the Detroit papers.

He possessed the "news sense" to an unusual degree, delighting to take "beats" from under the very feet of his brother reporters.

In 1897 while he was still in Ann Arbor, just before Dr. James B.

Angell, President of the University, left on his mission to Turkey, a telegram came from a Detroit evening paper directing him to see Dr. Angell and ask why he had changed his date of sailing.

Dr. Angell was not in the habit of telling reporters what he did not wish them to know, and when asked the question replied: "Haven't a word to say. I really don't know anything new at all."

Then with a smile which he fondly believed to be inscrutable, he remarked: "Why, I don't even know whether I'll go to Turkey or not."

A few minutes later those last words of the President were reported over the wires, without the sarcasm and without the smile. That very evening, in big headlines on the first page, it was announced that there was some hitch, and that President Angell might not go as Minister to the Court of the Sultan.

The correspondents of the morning papers hastened to see President Angell, who insisted that if he had made such a remark it was in fun. But it was unavailing. The despatch had stirred up the officials in Washington, and the morning papers that printed the President's explanation printed over it the official statement, that the Porte was objecting to Dr. Angell, on account of his close relationship with the Congregational Missionary Board.

After his graduation in 1897, he took a position on the staff of a Detroit evening paper. Much of the two years of his newspaper work there was spent in Lansing covering State politics. In this line of work lay his chief interest, though he by no means confined himself to it.