Part 1 (1/2)
The Barren Ground of Northern Canada.
by Warburton Mayer Pike.
PREFACE.
In many of the outlying districts of Canada an idea is prevalent, fostered by former travellers, that somewhere in London there exists a benevolent society whose object is to send men incapable of making any useful scientific observations to the uttermost parts of the earth, in order to indulge their taste for sport or travel. Several times before I had fairly started for the North, and again on my return, I was asked if I had been sent out under the auspices of this society, and, I am afraid, rather fell in the estimation of the interviewers when I was obliged to confess that my journey was only an ordinary shooting expedition, such as one might make to the Rocky Mountains or the interior of Africa, and that no great political reformation depended upon my report as to what I had seen.
In talking with officers of the Hudson's Bay Company, many of whom had been stationed for long periods in the Athabasca and Mackenzie River districts, I had often heard of a strange animal, a relic of an earlier age, that was still to be found roaming the Barren Ground, the vast desert that lies between Hudson's Bay, the eastern ends of the three great lakes of the North, and the Arctic Sea. This animal was the Musk-ox, but my informants could tell me nothing from personal experience, and all that was known on the subject had been gathered from Indian report. Once or twice some enthusiastic sportsman had made the attempt to reach the land of the Musk-ox, but had never succeeded in carrying out his object; specimens had been secured by the officers of the various Arctic expeditions, but no one had ever seen much of these animals or of the methods of hunting them employed by the Northern Indians.
This, then, was the sole object of my journey; to try and penetrate this unknown land, to see the Musk-ox, and find out as much as I could about their habits, and the habits of the Indians who go in pursuit of them every year. But the only white men who had succeeded in getting far out into the Barren Ground were the early explorers,--Hearne, Sir John Franklin, Sir George Back, and Dr. Richardson, while long afterwards Dr.
Rae and Stewart and Anderson went in search of the missing Franklin expedition. With the exception of Hearne, who threw in his lot with the Indians, these leaders were all accompanied by the most capable men that could be procured, and no expense was spared in order to make success as certain as possible; yet in spite of every precaution the story of Sir John Franklin's first overland journey and the death of Hood are among the saddest episodes in the history of the Arctic exploration.
My best chance seemed to be to follow Hearne's example, and trust to the local knowledge of Indians to help me; and I think, as the sequel showed, that I was right in not taking a crew from Winnipeg. The Indians and half-breeds of the Great Slave Lake, although very hard to manage, are certainly well up in Barren Ground travel; they are possessed of a thorough knowledge of the movements of the various animals at different seasons, and thus run less danger of starvation than strangers, however proficient the latter may be in driving dogs and handling canoes.
In following out this plan I naturally pa.s.sed through a great deal of new country, and discovered, as we white men say when we are pointed out some geographical feature by an Indian who has been familiar with it since childhood, many lakes and small streams never before visited except by the red man. I have attempted in a rough map to mark the chains of lakes by which we reached the Barren Ground, but their position is only approximate, and perhaps not even that, as I had no instruments with which to make correct observations, and in any case should have had little time to use them. Let no eminent geographer waste his time in pointing out the inaccuracies in this map; I admit all the errors before he discovers them. All that I wish to show is that these chains of lakes do exist and can be used as convenient routes, doing away with the often-tried method of forcing canoes up the swift and dangerous streams that fall into the Great Slave Lake from the northern tableland.
The success of my expedition is to be attributed entirely to the a.s.sistance which was given me by the Hudson's Bay Company, and I take this opportunity of thanking them for all the hospitality that was shown to me throughout my journey; I was never refused a single request that I made, and, although a total stranger, was treated with the greatest kindness by everybody, from the Commissioner at Winnipeg to the engaged servant in the Far North. My thanks are especially due to Lord Anson, one of the directors in London, to Messrs. Wrigley and William Clark at Winnipeg, Mr. Roderick MacFarlane, lately of Stuart's Lake, British Columbia, a well-known northern explorer who put me in the way of making a fair start, Dr. Mackay of Athabasca, Mr. Camsell of Mackenzie River, Mr. Ewen Macdonald of Peace River, and most of all to Mr. Mackinlay of Fort Resolution on the Great Slave Lake, who was my companion during a long summer journey in the Barren Ground.
My only excuse for publis.h.i.+ng this account of my travels is that the subject is a reasonably new one, and deals with a branch of sport that has never been described. I have spared the reader statistics, and I have kept my story as short as possible. I hope that in return anyone who may be interested in these pages will spare his comments on faulty style, and the various errors into which a man who has spent much time among the big game is sure to fall when he is rash enough to lay down his rifle and take up the pen.
I have also cut out the chapter with which these books usually begin,--a description of the monotonous voyage by Atlantic steamer and Canadian Pacific Railway, and start at once from Calgary, a thriving cattle-town close under the eastern foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains.
LONDON, 1891.
CHAPTER I
In the middle of June, 1889, I left Calgary for a drive of two hundred miles to Edmonton, the real starting-point for the great northern country controlled by the Hudson's Bay Company, and, with the exception of their scattered trading-posts, and an occasional Protestant or Roman Catholic Mission, entirely given up to what it was evidently intended for, a hunting-ground for the Indian.
My conveyance was a light buckboard, containing my whole outfit, which was as small as possible, consisting almost entirely of ammunition for a 12-bore Paradox and a 50-95 Winchester Express, besides a pair of large blankets and a little necessary clothing.
Forest fires were raging in the Rocky Mountains close at hand, and the thick smoke obscuring the sun, the heat was not nearly so fierce as usual at this time of the year; the road was good for a prairie road, and comfortable stopping-places each night made the journey quite easy.
About sixty miles out the country loses the appearance of what is known among cattlemen as the bald-headed prairie, and is dotted with clumps of poplar, and occasionally pines; half way to Edmonton the road crosses the broad stream of the Red Deer, and pa.s.ses through the most attractive country that I have seen in the north-west territories. It is being rapidly settled, and, with the convenience of a railway now building between Calgary and Edmonton, cannot fail to be an important farming and stock-raising district within a few years.
On the morning of the fifth day I reached Edmonton, a pleasant little town scattered along the far bank of the North Saskatchewan, and historical in the annals of the Hudson's Bay Company, by whom it was established as a fur trading-post many years ago; it is fated shortly to lose its individuality in the stream of advancing civilization, and will probably develop into an ordinary prairie-town of some importance.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Old Hudson Bay Post at Edmonton]
Finding that I had no time to spare if I wished to catch the steamer down the Athabasca river, I left again the same evening, after buying a small supply of flour and bacon. I changed the buckboard for a wagon, having for driver a French half-breed who had spent his early life on the prairie in buffalo-hunting, but, on the extinction of the game, had been earning a living by freighting for the Hudson's Bay Company, and farming on a small scale. He was a much pleasanter companion than the smartly dressed young man, ”come of good folks in the East,” who had been my driver from Calgary, and many an interesting tale he told me on our three-days' journey to the banks of the Athabasca; tales of the good old times when the buffalo were thick, and the Crees waged perpetual war against the Blackfeet, and whisky formed the staple article of trade for the Indian's fur. At the present day the Prohibition Act orders that even the white men of the north-west territories must be temperate, thereby causing whisky to be dear and bad, but plentiful withal, and it is surprising how such a law exists in a country where nine men out of ten not only want to drink, but do drink in open defiance of the commands of a motherly Government.
A fair road some hundred miles in length has been made by the Hudson's Bay Company through a rolling sandy country, crossing several large streams and pa.s.sing through a good deal of thick pine timber where some heavy chopping must have been necessary. The flies bothered us greatly; the large bulldogs, looking like a cross between a bee and a blue-bottle, drove the horses almost to madness, and after our mid-day halt it was no easy matter to put the harness on; fortunately we had netting, or the poor beasts would have fared much worse: as it was the blood was streaming from their flanks during the heat of the day. The mosquitos appeared towards evening, but as the nights were usually chilly they only annoyed us for a few hours. There were no houses along the road, but plenty of firewood and feed for the horses; we had a good camp every night, sleeping in the open air, starting very early and resting long in the middle of the day.
Two days took us over the divide between the Saskatchewan and Athabasca rivers, and now the water in the little streams that we crossed eventually reached the sea far away in the frozen Arctic Ocean at the mouth of the great Mackenzie. Early on the fourth day we came in sight of the Athabasca running between high pine-clad banks, and, dropping down a steep hill, found the Company's steamer loading up with freight for the far north. This spot is known as the Athabasca landing, and consists of a large depot for goods, trading-store, and several workmen's houses, while the house of the officer in charge stands on the hillside a little way back from the river. From the landing there is water communication down stream, broken of course by portages, to the Arctic sea, while the Lesser Slave Lake lies within a few days' travel up stream, from the north end of which a road seventy-five miles in length has been cut to the bank of Peace River. I spent a pleasant enough day loafing about, Mr. Wood, who was in charge, showing me great kindness and giving me much useful information about my route, and at twelve o'clock the following day we started down stream. The only other pa.s.sengers were a Mr. Flett and his wife and daughter, who were on their way to take charge of Fort Smith during the coming winter. Mr. Flett was just returning from a visit to his native country, the Orkney Islands, after an absence of forty-four years in the service of the Company, all of which time was spent in the wildest part of the North. He was full of the wonderful changes that had taken place since he was a boy, but finding himself completely lost in civilization, had hurried back to the land of snow. Unfortunately Mrs. Flett had been unable to stand the climate of the old country, and was quite broken down in her health. I was sorry to hear during the winter that she died a few days after we left her at Fort Chipeweyan.
Owing to the very light snowfall in the mountains in the winter of 1888-89, the water in the river was unusually low, and, as we expected, on the third day the steamer, a large light-draught stern-wheeler, after striking several times on shallow bars, had to abandon the attempt to reach the Grand Rapids. We accordingly tied up to the bank, and, sending a skiff down to take the news, awaited the arrival of boats from below to take our cargo. For ten days we lay at the junction of Pelican River, a small stream coming in on the north side of the Athabasca. There was absolutely nothing to do; the low gravelly banks on each side were fringed with thick willows backed by a narrow belt of poplars, and behind these the gloomy pine woods, with here and there a solitary birch, stretched away in an unbroken ma.s.s as far as the eye could see.
The forest was alive with mosquitos, although owing to the low water in the river they were said to be much less numerous than usual; they were sufficiently thick however to make any exploration in the woods a misery. Fis.h.i.+ng we tried without much result, and everybody was pleased when at last Mr. Scott Simpson, who was in charge of the river transport that summer, arrived with two boats. The steamer's cargo was unloaded, partly into the boats and partly on to the bank, and early in the morning she started back for the landing while we proceeded on our journey down stream.