The Long Labrador Trail Part 18

Every one was so cordial and hospitable that I almost regretted the necessity of leaving on Monday morning. The day was excessively cold and a head wind froze cheeks and noses and required an almost constant application of the hand to thaw them out and prevent them from freezing permanently. Easton even frosted his elbow through his heavy clothing of reindeer skin.

During the second day from Nain we met Missionary Christian Schmitt returning from a visit to the natives farther south, and on the ice had a half hour's chat.

That evening we reached Davis Inlet Post of the Hudson's Bay Company, and spent the night with Mr. Guy, the agent, and the following morning headed southward again, pa.s.sed Cape Harrigan, and in another two days reached Hopedale Mission, where we arrived just ahead of one of the fierce storms* so frequent here at this season of the year, which held us prisoners from Thursday night until Monday morning. Two days later we pulled in at Makkovik, the last station of the Moravians on our southern trail.

* Since writing the above I have learned that a half-breed whom I met at Davis Inlet, his wife and a young native left that point for Hopedale just after us, were overtaken by this storm, lost their way, and were probably overcome by the elements. Their dogs ate the bodies and a week later returned, well fed, to Davis Inlet. Dr. Grenfell found the bones in the spring.

CHAPTER XXIII

BACK TO NORTHWEST RIVER

We had now reached an English-speaking country; that is, a section where every one talked understandable English, though at the same time nearly every one was conversant with the Eskimo language.

All down the coast we had been fortunate in securing dogs and drivers with little trouble through the intervention of the missionaries; but at Makkovik dogs were scarce, and it seemed for a time as though we were stranded here, but finally, with missionary Townley's aid I engaged an old Eskimo named Martin Tuktusini to go with us to Rigolet.

When I looked at Martin's dogs, however, I saw at once that they were not equal to the journey, unaided. Neither had I much faith in Martin, for he was an old man who had nearly reached the end of his usefulness.

A day was lost in vainly looking around for additional dogs, and then Mr. Townley generously loaned us his team and driver to help us on to Big Bight, fifteen miles away, where he thought we might get dogs to supplement Martin's.

At Big Bight we found a miserable hut, where the people were indescribably poor and dirty. A team was engaged after some delay to carry us to Tishialuk, thirty miles farther on our journey, which place we reached the following day at eleven o'clock.

There is a single hovel at Tishialuk, occupied by two brothers--John and Sam Cove--and their sister. Their only food was flour, and a limited quant.i.ty of that. Even tea and mola.s.ses, usually found amongst the "livyeres" (live-heres) of the coast, were lacking. Sam was only too glad of the opportunity to earn a few dollars, and was engaged with his team to join forces with Martin as far as Rigolet.

There are two routes from Tishialuk to Rigolet. One is the "Big Neck"

route over the hills, and much shorter than the other, which is known as the outside route, though it also crosses a wide neck of land inside of Cape Harrison, ending at Pottle's Bay on Hamilton Inlet. It was my intention to take the Big Neck trail, but Martin strenuously opposed it on the ground that it pa.s.sed over high hills, was much more difficult, and the probabilities of getting lost should a storm occur were much greater by that route than by the other. His objections prevailed, and upon the afternoon of the day after our arrival Sam was ready, and in a gale of wind we ran down on the ice to Tom Bromfield's cabin at Tilt Cove, that we might be ready to make an early start for Pottle's Bay the following morning, as the whole day would be needed to cross the neck of land to Pottle's Bay and the neatest shelter beyond.

Tom is a prosperous and ambitious hunter, and is fairly well-to-do as it goes on the Labrador. His one-room cabin was very comfortable, and he treated us to unwonted luxuries, such as b.u.t.ter, marmalade, and sugar for our tea.

During the evening he displayed to me the skin of a large wolf which he had killed a few days before, and told us the story of the killing.

"I were away, sir," related he, "wi' th' dogs, savin' one which I leaves to home, 'tendin' my fox traps. The woman (meaning his wife) were alone wi' the young ones. In the evenin' (afternoon) her hears a fightin' of dogs outside, an' thinkin' one of the team was broke loose an' run home, she starts to go out to beat the beasts an' put a stop to the fightin'. But lookin' out first before she goes, what does she see but the wolf that owned that skin, and right handy to the door he were, too. He were a big divil, as you sees, sir. She were scared. Her tries to take down the rifle--the one as is there on the pegs, sir.

The wolf and the dog be now fightin' agin' the door, and she thinks they's handy to breakin' in, and it makes her a bit shaky in the hands, and she makes a slip and the rifle he goes off bang! makin' that hole there marrin' the timber above the windy. Then the wolf he goes off too; he be scared at the shootin'. When I comes home she tells me, and I lays fur the beast. 'Twere the next day and I were in the house when I hears the dogs fightin' and I peers out the windy, and there I sees the wolf fightin' wi' the dogs, quite handy by the house. Well, sir, I just gits the rifle down and goes out, and when the dogs sees me they runs and leaves the wolf, and I up and knocks he over wi' a bullet, and there's his skin, worth a good four dollars, for he be an extra fine one, sir."

We sat up late that night listening to Tom's stories.

The next morning was leaden gray, and promised snow. With the hope of reaching Pottle's Bay before dark we started forward early, and at one o'clock in the afternoon were in the soft snow of the spruce-covered neck. Traveling was very bad and progress so slow that darkness found us still amongst the scrubby firs. Martin and I walked ahead of the dogs, making a path and cutting away the growth where it was too thick to permit the pa.s.sage of the teams.

Martin was guiding us by so circuitous a path that finally I began to suspect he had lost his way, and, calling a halt, suggested that we had better make a shelter and stop until daylight, particularly as the snow was now falling. When you are lost in the bush it is a good rule to stop where you are until you make certain of your course. Martin in this instance, however, seemed very positive that we were going in the right direction, though off the usual trail, and he said that in another hour or so we would certainly come out and find the salt-water ice of Hamilton Inlet. So after an argument I agreed to proceed and trust in his a.s.surances.

Easton, who was driving the rear team, was completely tired out with the exertion of steering the komatik through the brush and untangling the dogs, which seemed to take a delight in spreading out and getting their traces fast around the numerous small trees, and I went to the rear to relieve him for a time from the exhausting work.

It was nearly two o'clock in the morning when we at length came upon the ice of a brook which Martin admitted he had never seen before and confessed that he was completely lost. I ordered a halt at once until daylight. We drank some cold water, ate some hard-tack and then stretched our sleeping bags upon the snow and, all of us weary, lay down to let the drift cover us while we slept.

At dawn we were up, and with a bit of jerked venison in my hand to serve for breakfast, I left the others to lash the load on the komatiks and follow me and started on ahead. I had walked but half a mile when I came upon the rough hummocks of the Inlet ice. Before noon we found shelter from the now heavily driving snowstorm in a livyere's hut and here remained until the following morning.

Just beyond this point, in crossing a neck of land, we came upon a small hut and, as is usual on the Labrador, stopped for a moment. The people of the coast always expect travelers to stop and have a cup of tea with them, and feel that they have been slighted if this is not done. Here I found a widow named Newell, whom I knew, and her two or three small children. It was a miserable hut, without even the ordinary comforts of the poorer coast cabins, only one side of the earthen floor partially covered with rough boards, and the people dest.i.tute of food. Mrs. Newell told me that the other livyeres were giving her what little they had to eat, and had saved them during the winter from actual starvation. I had some hardtack and tea in my "grub bag," and these I left with her.

Two days later we pulled in at Rigolet and were greeted by my friend Fraser. It was almost like getting home again, for now I was on old, familiar ground. A good budget of letters that had come during the previous summer awaited us and how eagerly we read them! This was the first communication we had received from our home folks since the previous June and it was now February twenty-first.

We rested with Fraser until the twenty-third, and then with Mark Pallesser, a Groswater Bay Eskimo, turned in to Northwest River where Stanton, upon coming from the interior, had remained to wait for our return that he might join us for the balance of the journey out. The going was fearful and snowshoeing in the heavy snow tiresome. It required two days to reach Mulligan, where we spent the night with skipper Tom Blake, one of my good old friends, and at Tom's we feasted on the first fresh venison we had had since leaving the Ungava district. In the whole distance from Whale River not a caribou had been killed during the winter by any one, while in the previous winter a single hunter at Davis Inlet shot in one day a hundred and fifty, and only ceased then because he had no more ammunition. Tom had killed three or four, and south of this point I learned of a hunter now and then getting one.

Northwest River was reached on Monday, February twenty-sixth, and we took Cotter by complete surprise, for he had not expected us for another month.

The day after our arrival Stanton came to the Post from a cabin three miles above, where he had been living alone, and he was delighted to see us.

The lumbermen at Muddy Lake, twenty miles away, heard of our arrival and sent down a special messenger with a large addition to the mail which I was carrying out and which had been growing steadily in bulk with its acc.u.mulations at every station.

This is the stormiest season of the year in Labrador, and weather conditions were such that it was not until March sixth that we were permitted to resume our journey homeward.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE END OF THE LONG TRAIL

The storm left the ice covered with a depth of soft snow into which the dogs sank deep and hauled the komatik with difficulty. Snowshoeing, too, was unusually hard. The day we left Northwest River (Tuesday, March sixth) the temperature rose above the freezing point, and when it froze that night a thin crust formed, through which our snowshoes broke, adding very materially to the labor of walking--and of course it was all walking.

As the days lengthened and the sun a.s.serting his power, pushed higher and higher above the horizon, the glare upon the white expanse of snow dazzled our eyes, and we had to put on smoked gla.s.ses to protect ourselves from snow-blindness. Even with the gla.s.ses our driver, Mark, became partially snow-blind, and when, on the evening of the third day after leaving Northwest River, we reached his home at Karwalla, an Eskimo settlement a few miles west of Rigolet, it became necessary for us to halt until he was sufficiently recovered to enable him to travel again.

Here we met some of the Eskimos that had been connected with the Eskimo village at the World's Fair at Chicago, in 1893. Mary, Mark's wife, was one of the number. She told me of having been exhibited as far west as Portland, Oregon, and I asked:

"Mary, aren't you discontented here, after seeing so much of the world?

Wouldn't you like to go back?"

"No, sir," she answered. "'Tis fine here, where I has plenty of company. 'Tis too lonesome in the States, sir."

"But you can't get the good things to eat here--the fruits and other things," I insisted.

"I likes the oranges and apples fine, sir--but they has no seal meat or deer's meat in the States."

It was not until Tuesday, March thirteenth, three days after our arrival at Karwalla, that Mark thought himself quite able to proceed.

The brief "mild" gave place to intense cold and bl.u.s.tery, snowy weather. We pushed on toward West Bay, on the outer coast again, by the "Backway," an arm of Hamilton Inlet that extends almost due east from Karwalla.

At West Bay I secured fresh dogs to carry us on to Cartwright, which I hoped to reach in one day more. But the going was fearfully poor, soft snow was drifted deep in the trail over Cape Porcupine, the ice in Traymore was broken up by the gales, and this necessitated a long detour, so it was nearly dark and snowing hard when we at last reached the house of James Williams, at North River, just across Sandwich Bay from Cartwright Post. The greeting I received was so kindly that I was not altogether disappointed at having to spend the night here.

"We've been expectin' you all winter, sir," said Mrs. Williams. "When you stopped two years ago you said you'd come some other time, and we knew you would. 'Tis fine to see you again, sir."

On the afternoon of March seventeenth we reached Cartwright Post of the Hudson's Bay Company, and my friend Mr. Ernest Swaffield, the agent, and Mrs. Swaffield, who had been so kind to me on my former trip, gave us a cordial welcome. Here also I met Dr. Mumford, the resident physician at Dr. Grenfell's mission hospital at Battle Harbor, who was on a trip along the coast visiting the sick.

Another four days' delay was necessary at Cartwright before dogs could be found to carry us on, but with Swaffield's aid I finally secured teams and we resumed our journey, stopping at night at the native cabins along the route. Much bad weather was encountered to r.e.t.a.r.d us and I had difficulty now and again in securing dogs and drivers. Many of the men that I had on my previous trip, when I brought Hubbard's body out to Battle Harbor, were absent hunting, but whenever I could find them they invariably engaged with me again to help me a stage upon the journey.

From Long Pond, near Seal Islands, neither I nor the men I had knew the way (when I traveled down the coast on the former occasion my drivers took a route outside of Long Pond), and that afternoon we went astray, and with no one to set us right wandered about upon the ice until long after dark, looking for a hut at Whale Bight, which was finally located by the dogs smelling smoke and going to it.

A little beyond Whale Bight we came upon a bay that I recognized, and from that point I knew the trail and headed directly to Williams'

Harbor, where I found John and James Russell, two of my old drivers, ready to take us on to Battle Harbor.

At last, on the afternoon of March twenty-sixth we reached the hospital, and how good it seemed to be back almost within touch of civilization. It was here that I ended that long and dreary sledge journey with the last remains of dear old Hubbard, in the spring of 1904, and what a flood of recollections came to me as I stood in front of the hospital and looked again across the ice of St. Lewis Inlet! How well I remembered those weary days over there at Fox Harbor, watching the broken, heaving ice that separated me from Battle Island; the little boat that one day came into the ice and worked its way slowly through it until it reached us and took us to the hospital and the ship; and how thankful I felt that I had reached here with my precious burden safe.