The Arctic Prairies Part 20

A year afterward as I travelled in the fair State of Illinois, famous for its cattle, I was struck by the idea that one sees far more Caribou in the north than cattle, in Illinois. This State has about 56,000 square miles, of land and 3,000,000 cattle; the Arctic Plains have over 1,000,000 square miles of prairie, which, allowing for the fact that I saw the best of the range, would set, the Caribou number at over 30,000,000. There is a, good deal of evidence that this is not far from the truth.

The reader may recollect the original postulate of my plan. Other travellers have gone, relying on the abundant Caribou, yet saw none, so starved. I relied on no Caribou, I took plenty of groceries, and because I was independent, the Caribou walked into camp nearly every day, and we lived largely on their meat, saving our groceries for an emergency, which came in an unexpected form. One morning when we were grown accustomed to this condition I said to Billy:

"How is the meat?"

"Nearly gone. We'll need another Caribou about Thursday."

"You better get one now to be ready Thursday. I do not like it so steaming fresh. See, there's a nice little buck on that hillside."

"No, not him; why he is nearly half a mile off. I'd have to pack him in. Let's wait till one comes in camp."

Which we did, and usually got our meat delivered near the door.'

Caribou meat fresh, and well prepared, has no superior, and the ideal way of cooking it is of course by roasting.

Fried meat is dried meat,

Boiled meat is spoiled meat,

Roast meat is best meat.

How was it to be roasted at an open fire without continued vigilance?

By a very simple contrivance that I invented at the time and now offer for the use of all campers.

A wire held the leg; on the top of the wire was a paddle or shingle of wood; above that, beyond the heat, was a cord.

The wind gives the paddle a push; it winds up the cord, which then unwinds itself. This goes on without fail and without effort, never still, and the roast is perfect.

Thus we were living on the fat of many lands and on the choicest fat of this.

And what a region it is for pasture. At this place it reminds one of Texas. Open, gra.s.sy plains, spa.r.s.er reaches of sand, long slopes of mesquite, mesas dotted with cedars and stretches of chapparal and soapweed. Only, those vegetations here are willow, dwarf birch, tiny spruce, and ledum, and the country as a whole is far too green and rich. The emerald verdure of the sh.o.r.e, in not a few places, carried me back, to the west coast of Ireland.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

THE UNKNOWN

The daily observations of route and landmark I can best leave for record on my maps. I had one great complaint against previous explorers (except Tyrrell); that is, they left no monuments. Aiming to give no ground of complaint against us, we made monuments at all important points. On the, night of August 8 we camped at Cairn Bay on the west side of Casba Lake, so named because of the five remarkable glacial cairns or conical stone-piles about it. On the top of one of these I left a monument, a six-foot pillar of large stones.

On the afternoon of August 9 we pa.s.sed the important headland that I have called "Tyrrell Point." Here we jumped off his map into the unknown. I had, of course, the small chart drawn by Sir George Back in 1834, but it was hastily made under great difficulties, and, with a few exceptions, it seemed impossible to recognize his landscape features. Next day I explored the east arm of Clinton-Colden and discovered the tributary that I have called "Laurier River,"

and near its mouth made a cairn enclosing a Caribou antler with inscription "E. T. Seton, 10 Aug., 1907."

Future travellers on this lake will find, as I did, that the Conical b.u.t.te in the eastern part is an important landmark. It is a glacial dump about 50 feet above the general level, which again is 100 feet above the water, visible and recognizable from nearly all parts of the lake.

Thus we went on day by day, sometimes detained by head or heavy winds, but making great progress in the calm, which nearly always came in the evening; 30 and 35 miles a day we went, led on and stimulated by the thirst to see and know. "I must see what is over that ridge," "I must make sure that this is an island," or "Maybe from that lookout I shall see Lake Aylmer, or a band of Caribou, yes, or even a band of Musk-ox." Always there was some reward, and nearly always it was a surprise.

From time to time we came on s...o...b..rds with their young broods, evidently at home. Ptarmigan abounded. Parry's Groundsquirrel was found at nearly all points, including the large islands. The Laplongspur swarmed everywhere; their loud "chee chups" were the first sounds to greet us each time we neared the land. And out over all the lake were Loons, Loons, Loons. Four species abound here; they caterwaul and yodel all day and all night, each in its own particular speech, From time to time a wild hyena chorus from the tranquil water in the purple sunset haze suggested, that a pack of goblin hounds were chivying a goblin buck, but it turned out always to be a family of Red-throated Loons, yodelling their inspiring marching song.

One day when at Gravel Mountain, old Weeso came to camp in evident fear--"far off he had seen a man." In this country a man must mean an Eskimo; with them the Indian has a long feud; of them he is in terror. We never learned the truth; I think he was mistaken.

Once or twice the long howl of the White Wolf sounded from the sh.o.r.e, and every day we saw a few Caribou.

A great many of the single Caribou were on the small islands. In six cases that came under close observation the animal in question had a broken leg. A broken leg generally evidences recent inroads by hunters, but the nearest Indians were 200 miles to the south, and the nearest Eskimo 300 miles to the north. There was every reason to believe that we were the only human beings in that vast region, and certainly we had broken no legs. Every Caribou fired at (8) had been secured and used. There is only one dangerous large enemy common in this country; that is the White Wolf. And the more I pondered it, the more it seemed sure that the Wolves had broken the Caribous'

legs.

How! This is the history of each case: The Caribou is so much swifter than the Wolves that the latter have no chance in open chase; they therefore adopt the stratagem of a sneaking surround and a drive over the rocks or a precipice, where the Caribou, if not actually killed, is more or less disabled. In some cases only a leg is broken, and then the Caribou knows his only chance is to reach the water. Here his wonderful powers of swimming make him easily safe, so much so that the Wolves make no attempt to follow. The crippled deer makes for some island sanctuary, where he rests in peace till his leg is healed, or it may be, in some cases, till the freezing of the lake brings him again into the power of his floe.

These six, then, were the cripples in hospital, and I hope our respectful behaviour did not inspire them with a dangerously false notion of humanity.

On the island that I have called Owl-and-Hare, we saw the first White Owl and the first Arctic Hare.

In this country when you see a tree, you know perfectly well it is not a tree; it's the horns of a Caribou. An unusually large affair of branches appeared on an island in the channel to Aylmer. I landed, camera in hand; the Caribou was lying down in the open, but there was a tuft of herbage 30 yards from him, another at 20 yards.

I crawled to the first and made a snapshot, then, flat as a rug, sneaked my way to the one estimated at 20 yards. The click of the camera, alarmed the buck; he rose, tried the wind, then lay down again, giving me another chance. Having used all the films, I now stood up. The Caribou dashed away and by a slight limp showed that he was in sanctuary. The 20-yard estimate proved too long; it was only 16 yards, which put my picture a little out of focus.

There never was a day, and rarely an hour of each day, that we did not see several Caribou. And yet I never failed to get a thrill at each fresh one. "There's a Caribou," one says with perennial intensity that is evidence of perennial pleasure in the sight.

There never was one sighted that did not give us a happy sense of satisfaction--the thought "This is what we came for."

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

AYLMER LAKE

One of my objects was to complete the ambiguous sh.o.r.e line of Aylmer Lake. The first task was to find the lake. So we left the narrows and pushed on and on, studying the Back map, vainly trying to identify points, etc. Once or twice we saw gaps ahead that seemed to open into the great inland sea of Aylmer. But each in turn proved a mere bay.--On August 12 we left the narrows; on the 13th and 14th we journeyed westward seeking the open sea. On the morning of the 15th we ran into the final end of the farthest bay we could discover and camped at the mouth of a large river entering in.

As usual, we landed--Preble, Billy, and I--to study topography, Weeso to get firewood, and curiously enough, there was more firewood here than we had seen since leaving Artillery Lake. The reason of this appeared later.

I was utterly puzzled. We had not yet found Aylmer Lake, and had discovered an important river that did not seem to be down on any map.

We went a mile or two independently and studied the land from all the high hills; evidently we had crossed the only great sheet of water in the region. About noon, when all had a.s.sembled at camp, I said: "Preble, why, isn't this Lockhart's River, at the western extremity of Aylmer Lake?" The truth was dawning on me.

He also had been getting light and slowly replied: "I have forty-nine reasons why it is, and none at all why it isn't."

There could be no doubt of it now. The great open sea of Aylmer was a myth. Back never saw it; he pa.s.sed in a fog, and put down with a query the vague information given him by the Indians. This little irregular lake, much like Clinton-Colden, was Aylmer. We had covered its length and were now at its farthest western end, at the mouth of Lockhart's River.

How I did wish that explorers would post up the names of the streets; it is almost as bad as in New York City. What a lot of time we might have saved had we known that Sandy Bay was in Back's three-fingered peninsula! Resolving to set a good example I left a monument at the mouth of the river. The kind of stone made it easy to form a cross on top. This will protect it from wandering Indians; I do not know of anything that will protect it from wandering white men.

CHAPTER x.x.xV