Hudson Bay Part 17

"Dinner!" said I, falling back in my throne, and contemplating through the palace window our vast dominions!

On the following day a small party of Indians arrived, and the bustle of trading their furs, and asking questions about their expectations of a good winter hunt, tended to disperse those unpleasant feelings of loneliness that at first a.s.sailed me.

One of these poor Indians had died while travelling, and his relatives brought the body to be interred in our little burying-ground. The poor creatures came in a very melancholy mood to ask me for a few planks to make a coffin for him. They soon constructed a rough wooden box, in which the corpse was placed, and then buried. No ceremony at tended the interment of this poor savage; no prayer was uttered over the grave; and the only mark that the survivors left upon the place was a small wooden cross, which those Indians who have been visited by Roman Catholic priests are in the habit of erecting over their departed relatives.

The almost total absence of religion of any kind among these unhappy natives is truly melancholy. The very name of our blessed Saviour is almost unknown by the hundreds of Indians who inhabit the vast forests of North America. It is strange that, while so many missionaries have been sent to the southern parts of the earth, so few should have been sent to the northward. There are not, I believe, more than a dozen or so of Protestant clergymen over the whole wide northern continent.

For at least a century these North American Indians have hunted for the white men, and poured annually into Britain a copious stream of wealth.

Surely it is the duty of _Christian_ Britain, in return, to send out faithful servants of G.o.d to preach the gospel of our Lord throughout their land.

The Indians, after spending a couple of days at the establishment-- during which time they sold me a great many furs--set out again to return to their distant wigwams. It is strange to contemplate the precision and certainty with which these men travel towards any part of the vast wilderness, even where their route lies across numerous intricate and serpentine rivers. But the strangest thing of all is, the savage's certainty of finding his way in winter through the trackless forest, to a place where, perhaps, he never was before, and of which he has had only a slight description. They have no compa.s.ses, but the means by which they discover the cardinal points is curious. If an Indian happens to become confused with regard to this, he lays down his burden, and, taking his axe, cuts through the bark of a tree; from the thickness or thinness of which he can tell the north point at once, the bark being thicker on that side.

For a couple of weeks after this, I remained at the post with my solitary man, endeavouring by all the means in my power to dispel ennui; but it was a hard task. Sometimes I shouldered my gun and ranged about the forest in search of game, and occasionally took a swim in the sea.

_I_ was ignorant at the time, however, that there were sharks in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, else I should have been more cautious. The Indians afterwards told me that they were often seen, and several gentlemen who had lived long on the coast corroborated their testimony.

Several times Indians have left the sh.o.r.es of the gulf in their canoes, to go hunting, and have never been heard of again, although the weather at the time was calm; so that it was generally believed that shark had upset the canoes and devoured the men. An occurrence that afterwards happened to an Indian renders this supposition highly probable. This man had been travelling along the sh.o.r.es of the gulf with his family--a wife and several children--in a small canoe. Towards evening, as he was crossing a large bay, a shark rose near his canoe, and, after reconnoitring a short time, swam towards it, and endeavoured to upset it. The size of the canoe, however, rendered this impossible; so the ferocious monster actually began to break it to pieces, by rushing forcibly against it. The Indian fired at the shark when he first saw it, but without effect; and, not having time to reload, he seized his paddle and made for the sh.o.r.e. The canoe, however, from the repeated attacks of the fish, soon became leaky, and it was evident that in a few minutes more the whole party would be at the mercy of the infuriated monster. In this extremity the Indian took up his youngest child, an infant of a few months old, and dropped it overboard; and while the shark was devouring it, the rest of the party gained the sh.o.r.e.

I sat one morning ruminating on the pleasures of solitude in the _palace_ of Seven Islands, and gazed through the window at my solitary man, who was just leaving an old boat he had been repairing, for the purpose of preparing dinner. The wide ocean, which rolled its waves almost to the door of the house, was calm and unruffled, and the yellow beach shone again in the sun's rays, while Humbug lay stretched out at full length before the door. After contemplating this scene for some time, I rose, and was just turning away from the window, when I descried a _man_, accompanied by a _boy_, walking along the sea-sh.o.r.e towards the house. This unusual sight created in me almost as strong, though not so unpleasant, a sensation as was awakened in the bosom of Robinson Crusoe when he discovered the footprint in the sand. Hastily putting on my cap, I ran out to meet him, and found, to my joy, that he was a trapper of my acquaintance; and, what added immensely to the novelty of the thing, he was also a _white_ man and a gentleman! He had entered one of the fur companies on the coast at an early age, and, a few years afterwards, fell in love with an Indian girl, whom he married; and, ultimately, he became a trapper. He was a fine, good-natured man, and had been well educated: and to hear philosophical discourse proceeding from the lips of one who was, in outward appearance, a regular Indian, was very strange indeed. He was dressed in the usual capote, leggins, and moccasins of a hunter.

"What have you got for dinner?" was his first question, after shaking hands with me.

"Pork and pancakes," said I.

"Oh!" said the trapper; "the first salt, and the latter made of flour and water?"

"Just so; and, with the exception of some bread, and a few ground pease in lieu of coffee, this has been my diet for three weeks back."

"You might have done better," said the trapper, pointing towards a blue line in the sea; "look, there are fish enough, if you only took the trouble to catch them."

As he said this, I advanced to the edge of the water; and there, to my astonishment, discovered that what I had taken for seaweed was a shoal of kippling, so dense that they seemed scarcely able to move.

Upon beholding this, I recollected having seen a couple of old hand-nets in some of the stores, which we immediately sent the trapper's son (a youth of twelve) to fetch. In a few minutes he returned with them; so, tucking up our trousers, we both went into the water and scooped the fish out by dozens. It required great quickness, however, as they shot into deep water like lightning, and sometimes made us run in so deep that we wet ourselves considerably. Indeed, the sport became so exciting at last, that we gave over attempting to keep our clothes dry; and in an hour we returned home, laden with kippling, and wet to the skin.

The fish, which measured from four to five inches long, were really excellent, and lent an additional relish to the pork, pancakes, and _pease coffee_!

I prevailed upon the trapper to remain with me during the following week; and a very pleasant time we had of it, paddling about in a canoe, or walking through the woods, while my companion told me numerous anecdotes, with which his memory was stored. Some of these were grave, and some comical; especially one, in which he described a bear-hunt that he and his son had on the coast of Labrador.

He had been out on a shooting expedition, and was returning home in his canoe, when, on turning a headland, he discovered a black bear walking leisurely along the beach. Now the place where he discovered him was a very wild, rugged spot. At the bottom of the bay rose a high precipice, so that Bruin could not escape that way: along the beach, in the direction in which he had been walking, a cape, which the rising tide now washed, prevented his retreating; so that the only chance for the brute to escape was by running past the trapper, within a few yards of him. In this dilemma, the bear bethought himself of trying the precipice; so, collecting himself, he made a bolt for it, and actually managed to scramble up thirty or forty feet, when bang went the boy's gun; but the shot missed, and it appeared as if the beast would actually get away, when the trapper took a deliberate aim and fired. The effect of the shot was so comical, that the two hunters could scarcely re-load their guns for laughing. Bruin, upon receiving the shot, covered his head with his fore-paws, and, curling himself up like a ball, came thundering down the precipice head over heels, raising clouds of dust, and hurling showers of stones down in his descent, till he actually rolled at the trapper's feet; and then, getting slowly up, he looked at him with such a bewildered expression, that the man could scarcely refrain from laughter, even while in the act of blowing the beast's brains out.

This man had also a narrow escape of having a _boxing_ match with a moose-deer or elk. The moose had a strange method of fighting with its fore feet, getting up on its hind legs, and boxing, as it were, with great energy and deadly force. The trapper, upon the occasion referred to, was travelling with an Indian, who, having discovered the track of a moose in the snow, set off in chase of it, while the trapper pursued his way with the Indian's pack of furs and provisions on his shoulders. He had not gone far when he heard a shot, and the next moment a moose-deer, as large as a horse, sprang through the bushes and stood in front of him. The animal came so suddenly on the trapper that it could not turn; so, rising up with a savage look, it prepared to strike him, when another shot was fired from among the bushes by the Indian, and the moose, springing nearly its own height into the air, fell dead upon the snow.

In chasing the moose during winter in some parts of these countries, where the ground is broken and rugged, the hunters are not unfrequently exposed to the danger of falling over the precipices which the deceptive glare of the snow conceals from view, until, too late, he finds the treacherous snow giving way beneath his feet. On one occasion a young man in the service of the Company received intelligence from an Indian that he had seen fresh tracks of a moose, and being an eager sportsman, he sallied forth, accompanied by the Indian, in chase of it. A long fatiguing walk on the Chipewyan snow-shoes, which are six feet long, brought them within sight of the deer. The young man fired, wounded the animal, and then dashed forward in pursuit. For a long way the deer kept well ahead of them. At length they began to overtake it; but when they were about to fire again, it stumbled and disappeared, sending up a cloud of snow in its fall. Supposing that it had sunk exhausted into one of the many hollows which were formed by the undulations of the ground, the young man rushed headlong towards it, followed at a slower pace by the Indian. Suddenly he stopped and cast a wild glance around him as he observed that he stood on the very brink of a precipice, at the foot of which the mangled carca.s.s of the deer lay. Thick ma.s.ses of snow had drifted over its edge until a solid wreath was formed, projecting several feet beyond it. On this wreath the young man stood with the points of his long snow-shoes overhanging the yawning abyss; to turn round was impossible, as the exertion requisite to wield such huge snow-shoes would, in all probability, have broken off the ma.s.s. To step gently backwards was equally impossible, in consequence of the heels of the shoes being sunk into the snow. In this awful position he stood until the Indian came up, and taking off his long sash, threw the end of it towards him; catching hold of this, he collected all his energies, and giving a desperate bound threw himself backwards at full length.

The Indian pulled with all his force on the belt, and succeeded in drawing him out of danger, just as the ma.s.s on which he had stood a moment before gave way, and thundered down the cliff, where it was dashed into clouds against the projecting crags long before it reached the foot.

About a week after his arrival the trapper departed, and left me again in solitude.

_The last voyage_.--There is something very sad and melancholy in these words--the last! The last look, the last word, the last smile, even the last shilling, have all a peculiarly melancholy import; but the last _voltage_, to one who has lived, as it were, on travelling--who has slept for weeks and months under the shadow of the forest trees, and dwelt among the wild romantic scenes of the wilderness--has a peculiar and thrilling interest. Each tree I pa.s.sed on leaving shook its boughs mournfully, as if it felt hurt at being thus forsaken. The very rocks seemed to frown reproachfully, while I stood up and gazed wistfully after each well-known object for the last time. Even the wind seemed to sympathise with the rest; for, while it urged the boat swiftly away from my late home, like a faithful friend holding steadfastly on its favouring course, still it fell occasionally, and rose again in gusts and sighs, as if it wished to woo me back again to solitude. I started on this, the last voyage, shortly after the departure of my friend the trapper, leaving the palace in charge of an unfortunate gentleman who brought a wife and five children with him, which rendered Seven Islands a little less gloomy than heretofore. Five men accompanied me in an open boat; and on the morning of the 25th August we took our departure for Tadousac. And, truly, Nature appeared to be aware that it was my _last_ voyage, for she gave us the most unkind and hara.s.sing treatment that I ever experienced at her hands.

The first few miles were accomplished pleasantly enough. We had a fair breeze, and not too much of it; but towards the afternoon it shifted, and blew directly against us, so that the men were obliged to take to the oars; and, as the boat was large, it required them all to pull, while I steered.

The men were all French Canadians: a merry, careless, but persevering set of fellows, just cut out for the work they had to do, and, moreover, accustomed to it. The boat was a clumsy affair, with two spritsails and a jigger or mizzen; but, notwithstanding, she looked well at a distance, and though incapable of progressing very fast through the water, she could stand a pretty heavy sea. We were badly off, how ever, with regard to camp gear, having neither tent nor oilcloth to protect us should it rain--indeed, all we had to guard us from the inclemency of the weather at night was one blanket each man; but as the weather had been fine and settled for some time back, we hoped to get along pretty well.

As for provisions, we had pork and flour, besides a small quant.i.ty of burnt-pease coffee, which I treasured up as a great delicacy.

Our first encampment was a good one. The night, though dark, was fine and calm, so that we slept very comfortably upon the beach, every man with his feet towards the fire, from which we all radiated like the spokes of a wheel. But our next bivouac was not so good. The day had been very boisterous and wet, so that we lay down to rest in damp clothes, with the pleasant reflection that we had scarcely advanced ten miles. The miseries of our fifth day, however, were so numerous and complicated that it at last became absurd! It was a drizzly damp morning to begin with; soon this gave way to a gale of contrary wind, so that we could scarcely proceed at the rate of half a mile an hour; and in the evening we were under the necessity either of running _back_ five miles to reach a harbour, or of anchoring off an exposed lee-sh.o.r.e.

Preferring the latter course, even at the risk of losing our boat altogether, we cast anchor, and leaving a man in the boat, waded ash.o.r.e.

Here things looked very wretched indeed. Everything was wet and clammy. Very little firewood was to be found; and when it was found, we had the greatest difficulty in getting it to light. At last, however, the fire blazed up; and though it still rained, we began to feel, _comparatively speaking_, comfortable.

Now, it must have been about midnight when I awoke, wheezing and sniffling with a bad cold, and feeling uncommonly wretched--the fire having gone out, and the drizzly rain having increased--and while I was endeavouring to cover myself a little better with a wet blanket, the man who had been left to watch the boat rushed in among us, and said that it had been driven ash.o.r.e, and would infallibly go to pieces if not shoved out to sea immediately. Up we all got, and rushing down to the beach, were speedily groping about _in_ the dark, up to our waists in water, while the roaring breakers heaved the boat violently against our b.r.e.a.s.t.s. After at least an hour of this work, we got it afloat again, and returned to our beds, where we lay shivering in wet clothes till morning.

We had several other nights nearly as bad as this one; and once or twice narrowly escaped being smashed to pieces among rocks and shoals, while travelling in foggy weather.

Even the last day of the voyage had something unpleasant in store for us. As we neared the mouth of the river Saguenay the tide began to recede, and ere long the current became so strong that we could not make headway against it; we had no alternative, therefore, but to try to run ash.o.r.e, there to remain until the tide should rise again. Now it so happened that a sand-bank caught our keel just as we turned broadside to the current, and the water, rushing against the boat with the force of a mill-race, turned it up on one side, till it stood quivering, as if undecided whether or not to roll over on top of us. A simultaneous rush of the men to the elevated side decided the question, and caused it to fall squash down on its keel again, where it lay for the next four or five hours, being left quite dry by the tide. As this happened within a few miles of our journey's end, I left the men to take care of the boat, and walked along the beach to Tadousac.

Here I remained some time, and then travelled through the beautiful lakes of Canada and the United States to New York. But here I must pause. As I said before, I write not of civilised but of savage life; and having now o'ershot the boundary, it is time to close.

On the 25th of May 1847 I bade adieu to the Western hemisphere, and sailed for England in the good ship _New York_. The air was light and warm, and the sun unclouded, as we floated slowly out to sea, and ere long the vessel bathed her swelling bows in the broad Atlantic.

Gradually, as if loath to part, the wood-clad sh.o.r.es of America grew faint and dim; I turned my eyes, for the last time, upon the distant sh.o.r.e: the blue hills quivered for a moment on the horizon, as if to bid us all a long farewell, and then sank into the liquid bosom of the ocean.

THE END.