The Long Labrador Trail Part 10

CHAPTER XIII

DISASTER IN THE RAPIDS

It was a hunting party--four men and a half-grown boy--with two canoes and armed with rifles. The Indians gave us the hearty welcome of the wilderness and received us like old friends. First, the chief, whose name was Toma, shook our hand, then the others, laughing and all talking at once in their musical Indian tongue. It was a welcome that said: "You are our brothers. You have come far to see us, and we are glad to have you with us."

After the first greetings were over they asked for _stemmo,_ and I gave them each a plug of tobacco, for that is what stemmo means. They had no pipes with them, so I let them have two of mine, and it did my heart good to see the look of supreme satisfaction that crept into each dusky face as its possessor inhaled in long, deep pulls the smoke of the strong tobacco. It was like the food that comes to a half-starved man.

After they had had their smoke, pa.s.sing the pipes from mouth to mouth, I brought forth our kettle. In a jiffy they had a fire, and I made tea for them, which they drank so scalding hot it must have burned their throats. They told us they had had neither tea nor tobacco for a long while, and were very hungry for both. These are the stimulants of the Labrador Indians, and they will make great sacrifices to secure them.

All the time that this was taking place we were jabbering, each in his own tongue, neither we nor they understanding much that the other said.

I did make out from them that we were the first white men that had ever visited them in their hunting grounds and that they were glad to see us.

Accepting an invitation to visit their lodges and escorted by a canoe on either side of ours, we finally turned down stream and, three miles below, came to the main camp of the Indians, which was situated, as most of their hunting camps are, on a slight eminence that commanded a view of the river for several miles in either direction, that watch might be constantly kept for bands of caribou.

We were discovered long before we arrived at the lodges, and were met by the whole population--men, women, children, dogs, and all. Our reception was tumultuous and cordial. It was a picturesque group. The swarthy-faced men, lean, sinewy and well built, with their long, straight black hair reaching to their shoulders, most of them hatless and all wearing a red bandanna handkerchief banded across the forehead, moccasined feet and vari-colored leggings; the women quaint and odd; the eager-faced children; little hunting dogs, and big wolf-like huskies.

All hands turned to and helped us carry our belongings to the camp, pitch our tent and get firewood for our stove. Then the men squatted around until eleven of them were with us in our little seven by nine tent, while all the others crowded as near to the entrance as they could. I treated everybody to hot tea. The men helped themselves first, then pa.s.sed their cups on to the women and children. The used tea leaves from the kettle were carefully preserved by them to do service again. The eagerness with which the men and women drank the tea and smoked the tobacco aroused my sympathies, and I distributed amongst them all of these that I could well spare from our store. In appreciation of my gifts they brought us a considerable quant.i.ty of fresh and jerked venison and smoked fat; and Toma, as a special mark of favor presented me with a deer's tongue which had been cured by some distinctive process unlike anything I had ever eaten before, and it was delicious indeed, together with a bladder of refined fat so clear that it was almost transparent.

The encampment consisted of two deerskin wigwams. One was a large one and oblong in shape, the other of good size but round. The smaller wigwam was heated by a single fire in the center, the larger one by three fires distributed at intervals down its length. Chief Toma occupied, with his family, the smaller lodge, while the others made their home in the larger one.

This was a band of Mountaineer Indians who trade at Davis Inlet Post of the Hudson's Bay Company, on the east coast, visiting the Post once or twice a year to exchange their furs for such necessaries as ammunition, clothing, tobacco and tea. Unlike their brothers on the southern slope, they have not accustomed themselves to the use of flour, sugar and others of the simplest luxuries of civilization, and their food is almost wholly flesh, fish and berries. They live in the crude, primordial fashion of their forefathers. To aid them in their hunt they have adopted the breech-loading rifle and muzzle-loading shotgun, but the bow and arrow has still its place with them and they were depending wholly upon this crude weapon for hunting partridges and other small game now, as they had no shotgun ammunition. The boys were constantly practicing with it while at play and were very expert in its use.

These Indians are of medium height, well built, sinewy and strong, alert and quick of movement. The women are generally squatty and fat, and the greater a woman's avoirdupois the more beautiful is she considered.

All the Mountaineer Indians of Labrador are nominally Roman Catholics.

Those in the south are quite devoted to their priest, and make an effort to meet him at least once a year and pay their t.i.thes, but here in the north this is not the case. In fact some of these people had seen their priest but once in their life and some of the younger ones had never seen him at all. Therefore they are still living under the influence of the ancient superst.i.tions of their race, though the women are all provided with crucifixes and wear them on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s as ornaments.

They are perfectly honest. Indians, until they become contaminated by contact with whites, always are honest. It is the white man that teaches them to steal, either by actually pilfering from the ignorant savage, or by taking undue advantage of him in trade. Human nature is the same everywhere, and the Indian will, when he finds he is being taken advantage of and robbed, naturally resent it and try to "get even." Our things were left wholly unguarded, and were the object of a great deal of curiosity and admiration, not only our guns and instruments, but nearly everything we had, and were handled and inspected by our hosts, but not the slightest thing was filched. No Labrador Indian north of the Grand River will ever disturb a cache unless driven to it by the direst necessity, and even then will leave something in payment for what he takes.

We told them of the evidences we had seen of the caribou migration having taken place between Michikamau and Michikamats, and they were mightily interested. They had missed it but were, nevertheless, meeting small bands of caribou and making a good killing, as the quant.i.ties of meat hanging everywhere to dry for winter use bore evidence. The previous winter, they told us, was a hard one with them.

Reindeer and ptarmigan disappeared, and before spring they were on the verge of starvation.

Our visit was made the occasion of a holiday and they devoted themselves wholly to our entertainment, and I believe were genuinely sorry when, on the afternoon after our arrival, I announced my decision to break camp and proceed. They helped us get ready, drew a rough sketch of the river so far as they knew it, and warned us to look out for numerous rapids and some high falls around which there was a portage trail. Farther on, they said, the river was joined by another, and then it became a "big, big river," and for two days' journey was good. Beyond that it was reported to be very bad. They had never traveled it, because they heard it was so bad, and they could not tell us, from their own knowledge, what it was like, but repeated the warning, "Shepoo matchi, shepoo matchi" (River bad), and told us to look out.

When we were ready to go, as a particular mark of good feeling, they brought us parting gifts of smoked deer's fat and were manifestly in earnest in their urgent invitations to us to come again. The whole encampment a.s.sembled at the sh.o.r.e to see us off and, as our canoes pushed out into the stream, the men pitched small stones after us as a good luck omen. If the stones. .h.i.t you good luck is a.s.sured. You will have a good hunt and no harm will come to you. None of the stones happened to hit us. We could see the group waving at us until we rounded the point of land upon which the lodges stood; then the men all appeared on the other side of the point, where they had run to watch us until we disappeared around a bend in the river below, as we pa.s.sed on to push our way deeper and deeper into the land of silence and mystery.

The following morning brought us into a lake expansion some twelve miles long and two miles or so in width, with a great many bays and arms which were extremely confusing to us in our search for the place where the river left it. The lower end was blocked with islands, and innumerable rocky bars, partially submerged, extended far out into the water. A strong southwest wind sent heavy rollers down the lake. Low, barren hills skirted the sh.o.r.es.

Early in the afternoon we turned into a bay where I left Easton with the canoe while I climbed one of the barren knolls. I had scarcely reached the summit when I heard a rifle shot, and then, after a pause, three more in quick succession. There were four cartridges in my rifle. I ran down to the canoe where I found Easton in wild excitement, waving the gun and calling for cartridges, and half-way across the bay saw the heads of two caribou swimming toward the opposite sh.o.r.e. I loaded the magazine and sat down to wait for the animals to land.

When the first deer got his footing and showed his body above the water three hundred and fifty yards away, I took him behind the shoulder. He dropped where he stood. The other animal stopped to look at his comrade, and a single bullet, also behind his shoulder, brought him down within ten feet of where he had stood when he was. .h.i.t. I mention this to show the high efficiency of the .33 Winchester. At a comparatively long range two bullets had killed two caribou on the spot without the necessity of a chase after wounded animals, and one bullet had pa.s.sed from behind the shoulder, the length of the neck, into the head and glancing downward had broken the jaw.

I desired to make a cache here that we might have something to fall back upon in case our retreat should become necessary, and four days were employed in fixing up the meat and preparing the cache, and this gave us also sufficient time, in spite of continuous heavy wind and rain, to thoroughly explore the lake and its bays. An ample supply of the fresh venison was reserved to carry with us.

We now had on hand, exclusive of the pemmican and other rations still remaining, and the meat cached, eight weeks' provisions, with plenty of ducks and ptarmigans everywhere, and there seemed to be no further danger from lack of food.

One day, while we were here, five caribou tarried for several minutes within two hundred yards of us and then sauntered off without taking alarm, and later the same day another was seen at closer range; but we did not need them and permitted them to go unmolested.

From a hill near this bay, where we killed the deer, on the eastern side of the lake, we discovered a trail leading off toward a string of lakes to the eastward. This is undoubtedly the portage trail which the Indians follow in their journeys to the Post at Davis Inlet. Toma had told me we might see it here, and that, not far in, on one of these lakes was another Indian camp.

An inordinate craving for fat takes possession of every one after a little while in the bush. We had felt it, and now, with plenty, overindulged, with the result that we were attacked with illness, and for a day or two I was almost too sick to move.

The morning we left Atuknipi, or Reindeer Lake, as we shall call the expansion, a blinding snowstorm was raging, with a strong head wind.

Several rapids were run though it was extremely dangerous work, for at times we could scarcely see a dozen yards ahead. At midday the snow ceased, but the wind increased in velocity until finally we found it quite out of the question to paddle against it, and were forced to pitch camp on the sh.o.r.es of a small expansion and under the lee of a hill. For two days the gale blew unceasingly and held us prisoners in our camp. The waves broke on the rocky sh.o.r.es, sending the spray fifty feet in the air and, freezing on the surrounding bowlders, covered them with a glaze of ice. I cannot say what the temperature was, for on the day of our arrival here my last thermometer was broken; but with half a foot of snow on the ground, the freezing spray and the bitter cold wind, we were warned that winter was reaching out her hand toward Labrador and would soon hold us in her merciless grasp. This made me chafe under our imprisonment, for I began to fear that we should not reach the Post before the final freeze-up came, and further travel by canoe would be out of the question. On the morning of September twenty-ninth, the wind, though still blowing half a gale in our faces, had so much abated that we were able to launch our canoe and continue our journey.

It was very cold. The spray froze as it struck our clothing, the canoe was weighted with ice and our paddles became heavy with it. We ran one or two short rapids in safety and then started into another that ended with a narrow strip of white water with a small expansion below. We had just struck the white water, going at a good speed in what seemed like a clear course, when the canoe, at its middle, hit a submerged rock. Before there was time to clear ourselves the little craft swung in the current, and the next moment I found myself in the rushing, seething flood rolling down through the rocks.

When I came to the surface I was in the calm water below the rapid and twenty feet away was the canoe, bottom up, with Easton clinging to it, his clothing fast on a bolt under the canoe. I swam to him and, while he drew his hunting knife and cut himself loose, steadied the canoe. We had neglected--and it was gross carelessness in us--to tie our things fast, and the lighter bags and paddles were floating away while everything that was heavy had sunk beyond hope of recovery. The thwarts, however, held fast in the overturned canoe a bag of pemmican, one other small bag, the tent and tent stove. Treading water to keep ourselves afloat we tried to right the canoe to save these, but our efforts were fruitless. The icy water so benumbed us we could scarcely control our limbs. The tracking line was fast to the stern thwart, and with one end of this in his teeth, Easton swam to a little rocky island just below the rapid and hauled while I swam by the canoe and steadied the things under the thwarts. It took us half an hour to get the canoe ash.o.r.e, and we could hardly stand when he had it righted and the water emptied out.

Then I looked for wood to build a fire, for I knew that unless we could get artificial heat immediately we would perish with the cold, for the very blood in our veins was freezing. Not a stick was there nearer than an eighth of a mile across the bay. Our paddles were gone, but we got into the canoe and used our hands for paddles. By the time we landed Easton had grown very pale. He began picking and clutching aimlessly at the trees. The blood had congealed in my hands until they were so stiff as to be almost useless. I could not guide them to the trousers pocket at first where I kept my waterproof match-box. Finally I loosened my belt and found the matches, and with the greatest difficulty managed to get one between my benumbed fingers, and scratched it on the bottom of the box. The box was wet and the match head flew off. Everything was wet. Not a dry stone even stuck above the snow. I tried another match on the box, but, like the first, the head flew off, and then another and another with the same result.

Under ordinary circ.u.mstances I could have secured a light somehow and quickly, but now my hands and fingers were stiff as sticks and refused to grip the matches firmly. I worked with desperation, but it seemed hopeless. Easton's face by this time had taken on the waxen shade that comes with death, and he appeared to be looking through a haze. His senses were leaving him. I saw something must be done at once, and I shouted to him: "Run! run! Easton, run!" Articulation was difficult, and I did not know my own voice. It seemed very strange and far away to me. We tried to run but had lost control of our legs and both fell down. With an effort I regained my feet but fell again when I tried to go forward. My legs refused to carry me. I crawled on my hands and knees in the snow for a short distance, and it was all I could do to recover my feet. Easton had now lost all understanding of his surroundings. He was looking into s.p.a.ce but saw nothing. He was groping blindly with his hands. He did not even know that he was cold.

I saw that only a fire could save his life, and perhaps mine, and that we must have it quickly, and made one more superhuman effort with the matches. One after another I tried them with the same result as before until but three remained. All depended upon those three matches. The first one flickered for a moment and my hopes rose, but my poor benumbed fingers refused to hold it and it fell into the snow and went out. The wind was drying the box bottom. I tried another--an old sulphur match, I remember. It burned! I applied it with the greatest care to a handful of the hairy moss that is found under the branches next the trunk of spruce trees, and this ignited. Then I put on small sticks, nursing the blaze with the greatest care, adding larger sticks as the smaller ones took fire. I had dropped on my knees and could reach the sticks from where I knelt, for there was plenty of dead wood lying about. As the blaze grew I rose to my feet and, dragging larger wood, piled it on. A sort of joyful mania took possession of me as I watched the great tongues of flames shooting skyward and listened to the crackling of the burning wood, and I stood back and laughed. I had triumphed over fate and the elements. Our arms, our clothing, nearly all our food, our axes and our paddles, and even the means of making new paddles were gone, but for the present we were safe. Life, no matter how uncertain, is sweet, and I laughed with the very joy of living.

CHAPTER XIV

TIDE WATER AND THE POST

When Easton came to his senses, he found himself warming by the fire.

It is wonderful how quickly a half-frozen man will revive. As soon as we were thoroughly thawed out we stripped to our underclothing and hung our things up to dry, permitting our underclothing to dry on us as we stood near the blaze. We were little the worse for our dip, escaping with slightly frosted fingers and toes. I discovered in my pockets a half plug of black tobacco such as we use in the North, put it on the end of a stick and dried it out, and then we had a smoke. We agreed that we had never in our life before had so satisfactory a smoke as that. The stimulant was needed and it put new life into us.

Easton was very pessimistic. He was generally inclined to look upon the dark side of things anyway, and now he believed our fate was sealed, especially if we could not find our paddles, and he began to talk about returning to our cache and thence to the Indians. But I had been in much worse predicaments than this, and paddles or no paddles, determined to go on, for we could work our way down the river somehow with poles and the bag of pemmican would keep us alive until we reached the Post--unless the freeze-up caught us.

When we had dried ourselves we went to the canoe to make an inventory of our remaining goods and chattels, and with a vague hope that a paddle might be found on the sh.o.r.e. What, then, was our surprise and our joy to find not only the paddles but our dunnage bags and my instrument bag amongst the rocks, where an eddy below the rapid swirled the water in. Thus our blankets and clothing were safe, we had fifty pounds of pemmican, our tent and tent stove, and in the small bag that I have mentioned as having remained in the canoe with the other things was all our tea and five or six pounds of caribou tallow. Our matches--and this was a great piece of good fortune--were uninjured, and we had a good stock of them. The tent stove seemed useless without the pipe, but we determined to cling to it, as our luggage now was light. Our guns, axes, the balance of our provisions, including salt, the tea kettle and all our other cooking utensils, were gone, and worst of all, three hundred and fifty unexposed photographic films. Only twenty or thirty unexposed films were saved, but fortunately, only one roll of ten exposed films, which was in one of the cameras, was injured, and none of the exposed films was lost. One camera was damaged beyond use, as were also my aneroid barometer and binoculars. However, we were fortunate to get off so easily as we did, and the accident taught us the lesson to take no chances in rapids and to tie everything fast at all times. Carelessness is pretty sure to demand its penalty, and the wilderness is constantly springing surprises upon those who submit themselves to its care.

A pretty dreary camp we pitched that evening near the place of our mishap. Fortunately there was plenty of dead wood loose on the ground, and we did very well for our camp fire without the axes. A pemmican can with the end cut off about an inch from the top, with a piece of copper wire that I found in my dunnage bag fashioned into a bale, made a very serviceable tea pail, from which we drank in turn, as our cups were lost. The top of the can answered for a frying pan in which to melt our caribou tallow and pemmican when we wanted our ration hot, and as a plate. Tent pegs were cut with our jackknives and the tent stretched between two trees, which avoided the necessity of tent poles.

Thus, with our cooking and living outfit reduced to the simplest and crudest form, and with a limited and unvaried diet of pemmican, tallow and tea, we were on the whole able, so long as loose wood could be found for our night camps, to keep comparatively comfortable and free from any severe hardships.

We certainly had great reason to be thankful, and that night before we rolled into our blankets I read aloud by the light of our camp fire from my little Bible the one hundred and seventh Psalm, in thanksgiving.

The next morning before starting forward we paddled out to the rapid, in the vain hope that we might be able to recover some of the lost articles from the bottom of the river, but at the place where the spill had occurred the water was too swift and deep for us to do anything, and we were forced to abandon the attempt and reluctantly resume our journey without the things.

That night we felt sorely the loss of the axes. Our camp was pitched in a spot where no loose wood was to be found save very small sticks, insufficient in quant.i.ty for an adequate fire in the open, for the evening was cold. We could not pitch our tent wigwam fashion with an opening at the top for the smoke to escape, as to do that several poles were necessary, and we had no means of cutting them. However, with the expectation that enough smoke would find its way out of the stovepipe hole to permit us to remain inside, we built a small round Indian fire in the center of the tent. We managed to endure the smoke and warm ourselves while tea was making, but the experiment proved a failure and was not to be resorted to again, for I feared it might result in an attack of smoke-blindness. This is an affliction almost identical in effect to snow-blindness. I had suffered from it in the first days of my wandering alone in the Susan Valley in the winter of 1903, and knew what it meant, and that an attack of it would preclude traveling while it lasted, to say nothing of the pain that it would inflict.

Here a portage was necessary around a half-mile canyon through which the river, a rushing torrent, tumbled in the interval over a series of small falls, and all the way the perpendicular walls of basaltic rock that confined it rose on either side to a height of fifty to seventy-five feet above the seething water. Just below this canyon another river joined us from the east, increasing the volume of water very materially. Our tumplines were gone, but with the tracking line and pieces of deer skin we improvised new ones that answered our purpose very well.

The hills, barren almost to their base, and growing in alt.i.tude with every mile we traveled, were now closely hugging the river valley, which was almost dest.i.tute of trees. Rapids were practically continuous and always strewn with dangerous rocks that kept us constantly on the alert and our nerves strung to the highest tension.

The general course of the river for several days was north, thirty degrees east, but later a.s.sumed an almost due northerly course. It made some wide sweeps as it worked its tortuous way through the ranges, sometimes almost doubling on itself. At intervals small streams joined it and it was constantly growing in width and depth. Once we came to a place where it dropped over ma.s.sive bed rock in a series of falls, some of which were thirty or more feet in height. Few portages, however, were necessary. We took our chances on everything that there was any prospect of the canoe living through--rapids that under ordinary circ.u.mstances we should never have trusted--for the grip of the cold weather was tightening with each October day. The small lakes away from the river, where the water was still, must even now have been frozen, but the river current was so big and strong that it had as yet warded off the frost shackles. When the real winter came, however, it would be upon us in a night, and then even this mighty torrent must submit to its power.

At one point the valley suddenly widened and the hills receded, and here the river broke up into many small streams--no less than five--but some four or five miles farther on these various channels came together again, and then the growing hills closed in until they pinched the river banks more closely than ever.

On the morning of October sixth we swung around a big bend in the river, ran a short but precipitous rapid and suddenly came upon another large river flowing in from the west. This stream came through a sandy valley, and below the junction of the rivers the sand banks rose on the east side a hundred feet or so above the water. The increase here in the size of the stream was marked--it was wide and deep. A terrific gale was blowing and caught us directly in our faces as we turned the bend and lost the cover of the lee share above the curve, and paddling ahead was impossible. The waves were so strong, in fact, that we barely escaped swamping before we effected a landing.

We here found ourselves in an exceedingly unpleasant position. We were only fitted with summer clothing, which was now insufficient protection. There was not enough loose wood to make an open fire to keep us warm for more than an hour or so, and we could not go on to look for a better camping place. In a notch between the sand ridges we found a small cl.u.s.ter of trees, between two of which our tent was stretched, but it was mighty uncomfortable with no means of warming.

"If we only had our stovepipe now we'd be able to break enough small stuff to keep the stove going," said Easton. With nothing else to do we climbed a knoll to look at the river below, and there on the knoll what should we find but several lengths of nearly worn-out but still serviceable pipe that some Indian had abandoned. "It's like Robinson Crusoe," said Easton. "Just as soon as we need something that we can't get on very well without we find it. A special Providence is surely caring for us." We appropriated that pipe, all right, and it did not take us long to get a fire in the stove, which we had clung to, useless as it had seemed to be.

A ma.s.s of ripe cranberries, so thick that we crushed them with every step, grew on the hills, and we picked our pailful and stewed them, using crystallose (a small phial of which I had in my dunnage bag) as sweetening. A pound of pemmican a day with a bit of tallow is sustaining, but not filling, and left us with a constant, gnawing hunger. These berries were a G.o.dsend, and sour as they were we filled up on them and for once gratified our appet.i.tes. We had a great desire, too, for something sweet, and always pounced upon the stray raisins in the pemmican. When either of us found one in his ration it was divided between us. Our great longing was for bread and mola.s.ses, just as it had been with Hubbard and me when we were short of food, and we were constantly talking of the feasts we would have of these delicacies when we reached the Post--wheat bread and common black mola.s.ses.