The Long Labrador Trail Part 6

A thick, impenetrable mist, such as is seldom seen in the interior of Labrador, hung over the water and the land when we struck camp and began our advance. For two days we traveled through numerous small lakes, making several short portages, before we came to a lake which we found to be the headwaters of a river flowing to the northwest. This lake was two miles long, and we camped at its lower end, where the river left it. Portage Lake we shall call it, and the river that flowed out of it Babewendigash.

The portage into the lake crossed a sand desert, upon which not a drop of water was seen, and instead of the usual rocks there were uncovered sand and gravel knolls and valleys, where grew only occasional bunches of very stunted brush; the surface of the sand was otherwise quite bare and sustained not even the customary moss and lichens. The heat of the sun reflected from the sand was powerful. The day was one of the most trying ones of the trip, and the men, with faces and hands swollen and bleeding from the attacks of not only the small black flies, which were particularly bad, but also the swarms of "bulldogs," complained bitterly of the hardships. When we halted to eat our luncheon one of the men remarked, "Duncan said once that if there are no flies there, h.e.l.l can't be as bad as this, and he's pretty near right."

The river left the lake in a rapid, and while Pete was making his fire, Richards, Easton and I went down to catch our supper, and in half an hour had secured forty-five good-sized trout--sufficient for supper that night and breakfast and dinner the next day.

Since leaving Otter Lake, caribou signs had been plentiful, fresh trails running in every direction. Pete was anxious to halt a day to hunt, but I decreed otherwise, to his great disappointment.

The scenery at this point was particularly fine, with a rugged, wild beauty that could hardly be surpa.s.sed. Below us the great, bald snow hills loomed very close at hand, with patches of snow glinting against the black rocks of the hills, as the last rays of the setting sun kissed them good-night. Nearer by was the more hospitable wooded valley and the shining river, and above us the lake, placid and beautiful, and beyond it the line of low sand hills of the miniature desert we had crossed. One of the snow hills to the northwest had two k.n.o.bs resembling a camel's back, and was a prominent landmark. We christened it "The Camel's Hump."

Heretofore the streams had been taking a generally southerly direction, but this river flowed to the northwest, which was most encouraging, for running in that direction it could have but one outlet-the Nascaupee River.

A portage in the morning, then a short run on the river, then another portage, around a shallow rapid, and we were afloat again on one of the prettiest little rivers I have ever seen. The current was strong enough to hurry us along. Down we shot past the great white hills, which towered in majestic grandeur high above our heads, in some places rising almost perpendicularly from the water, with immense heaps of debris which the frost had detached from their sides lying at their base. The river was about fifty yards wide, and in its windings in and out among the hills almost doubled upon itself sometimes. The scenery was fascinating. One or two small lake expansions were pa.s.sed, but generally there was a steady current and a good depth of water. "This is glorious!" some one exclaimed, as we shot onward, and we all appreciated the relief from the constant portaging that had been the feature of our journey since leaving the Nascaupee River.

The first camp on this river was pitched upon the site of an old Indian camp, above a shallow rapid. The many wigwam poles, in varying states of decay, together with paddles, old snowshoes, broken sled runners, and other articles of Indian traveling paraphernalia, indicated that it had been a regular stopping place of the Indians, both in winter and in summer, in the days when they had made their pilgrimages to Northwest River Post. Near this point we found some beaver cuttings, the first that we had seen since leaving the Crooked River.

Babewendigash soon carried us into a large lake expansion, and six hours were consumed paddling about the lake before the outlet was discovered. At first we thought it possible we were in Seal Lake, but I soon decided that it was not large enough, and its shape did not agree with the description of Seal Lake that Donald Blake and Duncan McLean had given me.

During the morning I dropped a troll and landed the first namaycush of the trip--a seven-pound fish. The Labrador lakes generally have a great depth of water, and it is in the deeper water that the very large namaycush, which grow to an immense size, are to be caught. Our outfit did not contain the heavy sinkers and larger trolling spoons necessary in trolling for these, and we therefore had to content ourselves with the smaller fish caught in the shallower parts of the lakes. We had two more portages before we shot the first rapid of the trip, and then camped on the sh.o.r.es of a small expansion just above a wide, shallow rapid where the river swung around a ridge of sand hills. This ridge was about two hundred feet in elevation, and followed the river for some distance below. In the morning we climbed it, and walked along its top for a mile or so, to view the rapid, and suddenly, to the westward, beheld Seal Lake. It was a great moment, and we took off our hats and cheered. The first part of our fight up the long trail was almost ended.

The upper part of the rapid was too shallow to risk a full load in the canoes, so we carried a part of our outfit over the ridge to a point where the river narrowed and deepened, then ran the rapid and picked up our stuff below. Not far from here we pa.s.sed a hill whose head took the form of a sphinx and we noted it as a remarkable landmark. Stopping but once to climb a mountain for specimens, at twelve o'clock we landed on a sandy beach where Babewendigash River emptied its waters into Seal Lake. We could hardly believe our good fortune, and while Pete cooked dinner I climbed a hill to satisfy myself that it was really Seal Lake.

There was no doubt of it. It had been very minutely described and sketched for me by Donald and Duncan. We had halted at what they called on their maps "The Narrows," where the lake narrowed down to a mere strait, and that portion of it below the canoes was hidden from my view. It stretched out far to the northwest, with some distance up a long arm reaching to the west. A point which I recognized from Duncan's description as the place where the winter tilt used by him and Donald was situated extended for some distance out into the water. The entire length of Seal Lake is about forty miles, but only about thirty miles of it could be seen from the elevation upon which I stood. Its sh.o.r.es are generally well wooded with a growth of young spruce. High hills surround it.

We visited the tilt as we pa.s.sed the point and, in accordance with an arrangement made with Duncan, added to our stores about twenty-five pounds of flour that he had left there during the previous winter. Five miles above the point where Babewendigash River empties into Seal Lake we entered the Nascaupee, up which we paddled two miles to the first short rapid. This we tracked, and then made camp on an island where the river lay placid and the wind blew cool and refreshing.

Long we sat about our camp fire watching the glories of the northern sunset, and the new moon drop behind the spruce-clad hills, and the aurora in all its magnificence light our silent world with its wondrous fire. Finally the others left me to go to their blankets.

When I was alone I pushed in the ends of the burning logs and sat down to watch the blaze as it took on new life. Gradually, as I gazed into its depths, fantasy brought before my eyes the picture of another camp fire. Hubbard was sitting by it. It was one of those nights in the hated Susan Valley. We had been toiling up the trail for days, and were ill and almost disheartened; but our camp fire and the relaxation from the day's work were giving us the renewed hope and cheer that they always brought, and rekindled the fire of our half-lost enthusiasm.

"Seal Lake can't be far off now," Hubbard was saying. "We're sure to reach it in a day or two. Then it'll be easy work to Michikamau, and we 'll soon be with the Indians after that, and forget all about this hard work. We'll be glad of it all when we get home, for we're going to have a bully trip." How much lighter my pack felt the next day, when I recalled his words of encouragement! How we looked and looked for Seal Lake, but never found it. It lay hidden among those hills that were away to the northward of us, with its waters as placid and beautiful as they were to-day when we pa.s.sed through it. I had never seen Michikamau. Was I destined to see it now?

The fire burned low. Only a few glowing coals remained, and as they blackened my picture dissolved. The aurora, like a hundred searchlights, was whipping across the sky. The forest with its hidden mysteries lay dark beneath. A deep, impenetrable silence brooded over all. The vast, indescribable loneliness of the wilderness possessed my soul. I tried to shake off the feeling of desolation as I went to my bed of boughs.

To-morrow a new stage of our journey would begin. It was ho for Michikamau!

CHAPTER IX

WE LOSE THE TRAIL

Sat.u.r.day morning, August fifth, broke with a radiance and a glory seldom equaled even in that land of glorious sunrises and sunsets. A flame of red and orange in the east ushered in the rising sun, not a cloud marred the azure of the heavens, the moss was white with frost, and the crisp, clear atmosphere sweet with the scent of the new day.

Labrador was in her most amiable mood, displaying to the best advantage her peculiar charms and beauties.

While we ate a hurried breakfast of corn-meal mush, boiled fat pork and tea, and broke camp, Michikamau was the subject of our conversation, for now it was ho for the big lake! A rapid advance was expected upon the river, and the trail above, where it left the Nascaupee to avoid the rapids which the Indians had told us about, would probably be found without trouble. So this new stage of our journey was begun with something of the enthusiasm that we had felt the day we left Tom Blake's cabin and started up Grand Lake.

We had gone but a mile when Pete drew his paddle from the water and pointed with it at a narrow, sandy beach ahead, above which rose a steep bank. Almost at the same instant I saw the object of his interests--a buck caribou asleep on the sand. The wind was blowing toward the river, and maintaining absolute silence, we landed below a bend that hid us from the caribou. Fresh meat was in sight and we must have it, for we were hungry now for venison. To cover the retreat of the animal should it take alarm, Pete was to go on the top of the bank above it, Easton to take a stand opposite it and I a little below it.

We crawled to our positions with the greatest care; but the caribou was alert. The sh.o.r.e breeze carried to it the scent of danger, and almost before we knew, that we were discovered it was on its feet and away.

For a fraction of a second I had one glimpse of the animal through the brush. Pete did not see it when it started, but heard it running up the sh.o.r.e, and away be started in that direction, running and leaping recklessly over the fallen tree trunks. Presently the caribou turned from the river and showed itself on the burned plateau above, two hundred yards from Pete. The Indian halted for a moment and fired--then fired again. I hastened up and came upon Pete standing by the prostrate caribou and grinning from ear to ear.

The carca.s.s was quickly skinned and the meat stripped from the bones and carried to the canoe. Here on the sh.o.r.e we made a fire, broiled some thick luscious steaks, roasted some marrow bones and made tea. All the bones except the marrow bones of the legs were abandoned as an unnecessary weight. Pete broke a hole through one of the shoulder blades and stuck it on a limb of a tree above the reach of animals.

That, you know, insures further good luck in hunting. It is a sort of offering to the Manitou. We took the skin with us. "Maybe we need him for something," said Pete. "Clean and smoke him nice, me; maybe mend clothes with him."

The larger pieces of our venison were to be roasted when we halted in the evening. We could not dally now, and I chose this method of preserving the meat, rather than "jerk" it (that is, dry it in the open air over a smoky fire), which would have necessitated a halt of three or four days.

Within three hours after we had first seen the caribou we were on our way again. The river up which we were pa.s.sing was from two to four hundred yards in width, and with the exception of an occasional rock, had a gravelly bottom, and the banks were generally low and gravelly. A little distance back ridges of low hills paralleled the stream, and on the south side behind the lower ridge was a higher one of rough hills; but none of them with an elevation above the valley of more than three hundred feet. The country had been burned on both sides of the river and there was little new growth to hide the dead trees.

Twenty-five miles above Seal Lake we encountered a rapid which necessitated a mile and a half portage around it. Where we landed to make the portage I noticed along the edge of the sandy beach a black band about two feet in width. I thought at first that the water had discolored the sand, but upon a closer examination discovered that it was nothing more nor less than myriads of our black fly pests that had lost their lives in the water and been washed ash.o.r.e.

We had much rain and progress was slow and difficult in the face of a strong wind and current. Seven or eight miles above the rapid around which we had portaged we pa.s.sed into a large expansion of the river which the Indians at Northwest River Post had told us to look for, and which they called Wuchusknipi (Big Muskrat) Lake.

High gravelly banks, rising in terraces sometimes fully fifty feet above the water's edge, had now become the feature of the stream. The current increased in strength, and only for short distances above Wuchusknipi, where the river occasionally broadened, were we able to paddle. The tracking lines were brought into service, one man hauling each canoe, while the others, wading in the water, or walking on the bank with poles where the stream was too deep to wade, kept the canoes straight in the current and clear of the sh.o.r.e. Once when it became necessary to cross a wide place in the river a squall struck us, and Richards and Stanton in the smaller canoe were nearly swamped. The strong head wind precluded paddling, even when the current would otherwise have permitted it.

Finally the sky cleared and the wind ceased to blow; but with the calm came a cause for disquietude. A light smoke had settled in the valley and the air held the odor of it, suggesting a forest fire somewhere above. This would mean retreat, if not disaster, for when these fires once start rivers and lakes prove small obstacles in their path. From a view-point on the hills no dense smoke could be discovered, only the light haze that we had seen and smelled in the valley, and we therefore decided that the gale that had blown for several days from the northwest may have carried it for a long distance, even from the district far west of Michikamau, and that at any rate there was no cause for immediate alarm.

The ridges with an increasing alt.i.tude were crowding in upon us more closely. Once when we stopped to portage around a low fall we climbed some of the hills that were near at hand that we might obtain a better knowledge of the topography of the country than could be had from the confined river valley. Away to the northwest we found the country to be much more rugged than the district we had recently pa.s.sed through.

Observations showed us that the highest of the hills we were on had an elevation of six hundred feet above the river. We had but a single day of fine weather and then a fog came so thick that we could not see the opposite banks of the Nascaupee, and after it a cold rain set in which made our work in the icy current doubly hard. One morning I slipped on a bowlder in the river and strained my side, and for me the remainder of the day was very trying. That evening we reached a little group of three or four islands, where the Nascaupee was wide and shallow, but just above the islands it narrowed down again and a low fall occurred.

Not far from the fall a small river tumbled down over the rocks a sheer thirty feet, and emptied into the Nascaupee. Since leaving Seal Lake we had pa.s.sed two rivers flowing in from the north, and this was the second one coming from the south, marking the point on the Indian map where we were to look for the portage trail leading to the northward.

Therefore a halt was made and camp was pitched.

During the night the weather cleared, and Pete, Richards and Easton were dispatched in the morning to scout the country to the northward in search of the trail and signs of Indians. The ligaments of my side were very stiff and sore from the strain they received the previous day, and I remained in camp with Stanton to write up my records, take an inventory of our food supply, and consider plans for the future.

It was August twelfth. How far we had still to go before reaching Michikamau was uncertain, but, in view of our experiences below Seal Lake and the difficulties met with in finding and following the old Indian trail there, our progress would now, for a time at least, if we traveled the portage route, be slower than on the river where we had done fairly well. True, our outfit was much lighter than it had been in the beginning, and we were in better shape for packing and were able to carry heavier loads. Still we must make two trips over every portage, and that meant, for every five miles of advance, fifteen miles of walking and ten of those miles with packs on our backs. Had we not better, therefore, abandon the further attempt to locate the trail and, instead, follow the river which was beyond doubt the quicker and the easier route? My inclinations rebelled against this course. One of the objects of the expedition, for it was one of the things that Hubbard had planned to do, was to locate the old trail, if possible.

To abandon the search for it now, and to follow the easier route, seemed to me a surrender.

On the other hand, should we not find game or fish and have delays scouting for the trail, it would be necessary to go on short rations before reaching Michikamau, for enough food must be held back to take us out of the country in safety.

In my present consideration of the situation it seemed to me highly improbable that we could reach George River Post in season to connect with the Hudson's Bay Company's steamer _Pelican_, which touches there to land supplies about the middle of September, and that is the only steamer that ever visits that Post. Not to connect with the _Pelican_ would, therefore, mean imprisonment in the north for an entire year, or a return around the coast by dog train in winter. The former of these alternatives was out of the question; the latter would be impossible with an enc.u.mbrance of four men, for dog teams and drivers in the early winter are usually all away to the hunting grounds and hard to engage.

I therefore concluded that but one course was open to me. Three of the men must be sent back and with a single companion I would push on to Ungava. This, then, was the line of action I decided upon.

Toward evening gathering clouds augured an early renewal of the storm, and Stanton and I had just put up the stove in the tent in antic.i.p.ation of it when Pete and Easton, the latter thoroughly f.a.gged out, came into camp.

"Well, Pete," I asked, "what luck?"

"Find trail all right," he answered. "Can't follow him easy. Long carry. First lake far, maybe eleven, twelve mile. Little ponds not much good for canoe. Trail old. Not used long time. All time go up hill."

"Where's Richards?" I inquired, noticing his absence.

"Left us about four miles back to take a short cut to the river and follow it down to camp," said Easton. "He thought you might want to know how it looked above, and perhaps keep on that way instead of tackling the portage, for the trail's going to be mighty hard. It looks as though the river would be better."

We waited until near dark for Richards, but he did not come. Then we ate our supper without him.

The rain grew into a downpour and darkness came, but no Richards, and at length I became alarmed for his safety. I pushed back the tent flaps and peered out into the pitchy darkness and pouring rain.

"He'll never get in to-night," I remarked. "No," said some one, "and he'll have a hard time of it out there in the rain." There was nothing to do but wait. Pete rummaged in his bag and produced a candle (we had a dozen in our outfit), sharpened one end of a stick, split the other end for two or three inches down, forced open the split end and set the candle in it and stuck the sharpened end in the ground, all the while working in the dark. Then he lit the candle.

I do not know how long we had been sitting by the candle light and putting forth all sorts of conjectures about Richards and his uncomfortable position in the bush without cover and the probable reasons for his failure to return, when the tent front opened and in he came, as wet as though he had been in the river.

"Well, Richards," I asked, when he was comfortably settled at his meal, "what do you think of the river?"