The wild north land : being the story of a winter journey, with dogs, across northern North America

Front matter

K&mzu by

Dr. Peter Charlebois

THE

Preface

People are supposed to have an object in every journey they undertake in this world. A man goes to Africa to look for the Nile, to Rome to see the Coliseum or St. Peter’s ; and once, I believe, a certain traveller tramped all the way to Jerusalem for the sole purpose of playing ball against the walls of that city.

As this matter of object, then, seems to be a rule with travellers, it may be asked by those who read this book, What object had the writer in undertaking a journey across the snowy wilderness of North America, in winter and alone ? I fear there is no answer to be given to the question, save such as may be found in the motto on the title-page, or in the pages of the book itself.

About eighteen months ago I was desirous of

O O

entering upon African travel. A great explorer had been lost for years in the vast lake-region of Southern Central Africa, and the British Nation —

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PREFACE.

which, by the way, becomes singularly attached to a man when he is dead, or supposed to be dead — grew anxious to go out to look for him.

As the British Nation could not all go out at once, or together, it endeavoured to select one or two individuals to carry out its wishes.

It will be only necessary to state here, that the British Nation did not select the writer of this book, who forthwith turned his attention from African tropic zones to American frigid ones, and started out upon a lonely cruise.

Many tracks lay before me in that immense region I call “ The Wild North Land.” Former wandering had made me familiar with the methods of travel pursued in these countries by the Indian tribes, or far-scattered fur-hunters. Fortunate in recovering possession of an old and long-tried Esquimaux dog — the companion of earlier travel — I started in the autumn of 1872 from the Red River of the North, and, reaching Lake Athabasca, completed half my journey by the first week of March in the following year. From Athabasca I followed the many -wind-

PREFACE.

V ing channel of the frozen Peace River to its great canon in the Rocky Mountains, and, journeying through this pass — for many reasons the most remarkable one in the whole range of the Rocky Mountains — reached the north of British Columbia in the end of May. From thence, following a trail of 350 miles through the dense forests of New Caledonia, I emerged on the 3rd of June at the frontier station of Quesnelle on the Frazer River, still 400 miles north of Victoria.

In the ensuing pages the story of that long tramp — for it was mostly performed on foot — will be duly set forth. Written by camp fire, or in canon, or in the little log-house of a northern fur fort, when dogs and men rested for a day or two in the long icy run, that narrative will be found, I fear, to bear many indications of the rough scenes ’mid which it has been penned; but as, on a former occasion, many critics passed in gentle silence over the faults and failings of another story of travel in the Great Lone Land, so now it may be my fortune to tell to as kindly an audience, this record of a winter’s walk through more distant

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PREFACE.

wilds — for in truth there has been neither time for revision nor correction.

Fortune, which eighteen months ago denied me African adventure, offers it now with liberal hand.

I reached the Atlantic from the Pacific shore to find an expedition starting from England against Ashantee ; and long ere this story finds a reader I hope to be pushing my way through the mangrove swamps which lie between the Gold Coast and Coomassie. To others even must fall the task of correcting proofs, while I assume my part in the correction and revision of King Koffi Kancalli, and the administration to his subjects of that proof of British prowess which it has been deemed desirable to give them.

Meantime, my old friends Chief Kar-ka-konias, Kalder, and Cerf-vola, will be absent from this new field ; but, nevertheless, there will be present many companions of former travel, and one Chief under whose command I first sought the Great Lone Land as the threshold to remoter regions.

W. F. Butler.

London,

September 21 st, 1873.

Strange Visitors — At-tistighat the Philosopher — Indian Converts — A Domestic Scene — The Winter Packet — Adam and his Dogs 70

Chapter X

A tale of Warfare— Dog-sleds — A Missing Link — The North Sea — “ Winterers” — Samuel Hearne . . . , .83

.CHAPTER XI.

A Dog of no Character — The Green Lake — Lac lie a la Crosse —

A Cold Day — Port lie a la Crosse — A long-lost Brother —

Lost upon the Lake — Unwelcome Neighbours — Mr. Roderick Macfarlane — “ A beautiful Morning ” — Marble Features . . 95

A Hudson’s Bay Fort — It comes at last — News from the outside World — Tame and wild Savages — Lac Clair — A treacherous Deed — Harper 143

Chapter XV

The Peace River — Volcanos — M. Jean Batiste St. Cyr — Half a Loaf is better than no Bread — An oasis in the Desert — Tecumseh and Black Hawk f 158

CONTEXTS.

IX

CHAPTER XYI.

PAGE

The Buffalo Hills — A fatal Quarrel — The exiled Beavers — “ At-tal-loo” deplores his Wives — A Cree Interior — An attractive Camp — I camp alone — Cerf-vola without a Supper — The Recreants return — Dun vegan — A Wolf-hunt . . . .171

Chapter XVII

Alexander Mackenzie — The first Sign of Spring — Spanker the Suspicious — Cerf-vola contemplates Cutlets — An Indian Hunter — “ Encumbrances ” — Furs and Finery — A “ Dead Fall ” —

The Fur Trade at both Ends — An old Fort — A Night Attack — Wife-lifting — Cerf-vola in Difficulties and Boots— The Rocky Mountains at last 191

Chapter XVIII

The wild Animals of the Peace River — Indian Method of hunting the Moose — Twa-poos — The Beaver — The Bear — Bear’s Butter — A Bear’s Hug and how it ended — Fort St. John —

The River awakes — A Rose without a Thorn — Nigger Dan —

A threatening Letter — I issue a Judicial Memorandum — Its Effect is ail that could be desired — Working up the Peace River 206

Chapter XIX

Start from St. John’s — Crossing the Ice — Batiste le Fleur — Chimeroo — The last Wood-buffalo — A dangerous Weapon — Our Raft collapses — Across the Half-way River .... 225

CHAPTER XX. Hudson’s Hope — A Lover of Literature — Crossing the Peace

An unskilful Pilot — We are upset — Our Rescue — A strange Variety of Arms — The Buffalo’s Head — A glorious View . . 236

Chapter XXI

Jacques, the French Miner — A fearful Abyss — The Great Canon of the Peace River — We are off on our Western Way — Unfortunate Indians — A burnt Baby — “ The Moose that walks ” . 247

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CONTENTS.

Chapter XXII. Page

Still Westward — The Dangers of the Ice — We enter the main Range — In the Mountains — A Grizzly — The Death of the Moose — Peace River Pass — Pete Joy — The Ominica — “ Travellers ” at Home • 265

Chapter XXIII

The Black Canon — An ugly Prospect — The vanished Boat — We struggle on — A forlorn Hope — We fail again — An unhoped-for Meeting and a Feast of Joy — The Black Canon conquered . 279

CHAPTER XXIY.

The Untiring over-estimates his Powers — He is not particular as to the Nature of his Dinner — Toil and Temper — Farewell to the Ominica — Germansen — The Mining Camp — Celebrities . 294

CHAPTER XXY.

Mr. Rufus Sylvester — The Untiring developes a new Sphere of Usefulness — Mansen — A last Landmark 304

CHAPTER XXYI.

British Columbia — Boundaries again — Juan de Fu9a — Carver —

The Shining Mountains — Jacob Astor — The Monarch of Salmon — Oregon — “ Riding and Tying ’’—Nation Lake — The Pacific . 310

CHAPTER XXYII.

The Look-out Mountain — A gigantic Tree — The Untiring retires before superior Numbers — Fort St. James — -A strange Sight in the Forest — Lake Noola — Quesnelle — Cerf-vola in civilized Life — Old Dog, good-bye ! 327

ILLUSTRATIONS.

Frontispiece . ta g e

Cerf-Yola, the Esquimaux Dog 16

View from the Spathanaw Watchi 31

“Our Hut at the Forks of the Saskatchewan” . . . .43

Sunset Scene, with Buffalo 57

Tent in the Great Prairie 69

Dog-Train for the North S5

The Valley of the Peace River 158

Alone in the Wilderness . >.181

Night into Day 187

The Wolf-Chase 189

Clinging to the Canoe 239

Mount Garnet Wolseley and the Peace River .... 266

Catting up the Moose 271

Running stern foremost the Black Canon 283

4 4 The Look-out Mountain” 327

THE

WILD NORTH LAND.

Chapter I

The Situation at Home. — The West again. — A Land of Silence.

Thebe had never been so many armies in England. There was a new army, and there was an old army ; there was an army of militia, an army of volunteers, and an army of reserve ; there were armies on horse, on foot, and on paper. There was the army of the future — of which great things were predicted — and far away, lost in a haze of history (but still more substantial than all other armed realities, present or future), there lay the great dead army of the past.

It was a time when everybody had something to do with military matters, everybody on the social ladder, from the Prime Minister on the topmost round to the mob-mover on the lowest.

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THE WILD NORTH LAND.

upon it, Conservatives condemned it, Peers wrote pamphlets upon it, Dukes denounced it, Princes paraded it, and every member of Parliament who could put together half a dozen words with tolerable grammatical fluency had something to say about it.

Surely such a period must have been one in which every soldier would have recognized the grandeur and importance of his profession, and clung with renewed vigour to a life which seemed of moment to the whole British nation. But this glowing picture of the great “ nation of shopkeepers,” suddenly fired by military ardour, had its reverse.

The stream of advancement slowly stagnating under influences devised to accelerate it, the soldier wearied by eternally learning from masters the lesson he could have taught, the camp made a place of garrison routine and not of military manoeuvre, the uniform harness which had galled a Burton, a Palgrave, a Buxton, and a Hayward, from ranks where the spirit of adventurous discovery sickened under chilling regulation — this harness made more unrelaxingly irksome ; a system of promotion regulated by money — the offspring, it is true, of foul corruption, but which had become not a little purified by lapse of time ; this system, supplanted by one of selection theoretically pure, but

THE SITUATION AT HOME. — THE WEST AGAIN. 3 destined to fall into that lowest of all corruptions, the influence of political jobbery: all this formed the leading features in that order of things, old and new, which the spectacle of a neighbouring nation, struck suddenly to the ground by a mighty army, had caused the panic-stricken British people to overhaul and to reconstruct.

Taken any way one can, an army on paper is not a satisfactory profession. It is subject to sudden and unlooked-for bursts of military zeal ; it is so bent upon nervously asserting itself fit for anything ; it is from its nature so much akin to pen, ink, and envelope of a common-place type ; it has such disagreeable methods of garrisoning the most pestilential spots upon the earth, and abandoning to republican bluster whole continents called colonies ; those who shape its destinies are so ready to direct it against matchlock monarchs and speared soldiery; while arms are folded before those conflicts which change the past and future of the centuries ; all these considerations go a great way towards making the profession of arms, on paper, at any time an anomaly.

But when there was also present to the memory of one who thus regarded the new order of military life, the great solitudes, the inland oceans, the desolate wilds, the gloomy forests of a far-away land, through which his former wanderings

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THE WILD NORTH LAND.

had carried him ; when thought re-sought again those vast regions of the earth where Nature has graven her image in characters so colossal, that man seems to move slowly amidst an ocean frozen rigid by lapse of time, frozen into those things we name mountains, rivers, prairies, forests ; man a mere speck, powerless so far to mark his presence, in blur of smoke, in noise of city, in clash of crank, or whirl of wheel: when these things came back in pictures touched by the soft colours Memory loves to limn with, there were not wanting dull professional outlooks and dearth of service to turn the footsteps gladly into the old regions again, there to trace new paths through the almost exhaustless waste which lies between the lonely prairies of the Saskatchewan and the icy oceans of the North.

What shall we call this land to those who follow us into its depths ?

It has prairies, forests, mountains, barren wastes, and rivers ; rivers whose single lengths roll through twice a thousand miles of shoreland ; prairies over which a rider can steer for months without resting his gaze on aught save the dim verge of the ever-shifting horizon ; mountains rent by rivers, ice-topped, glacier-seared, impassable ; forests whose sombre pines darken a region half as large as Europe ; sterile, treeless

A LAND OP SILENCE.

wilds whose 400,000 square miles lie spread in awful desolation. How shall it all be called ?

In summer, a land of sound, a land echoing with the voices of birds, the ripple of running water, the mournful music of the waving pinebranch ; in winter, a land of silence, a land hushed to its inmost depths by the weight of ice, the thick-falling snow, the intense rigour of a merciless cold — its great rivers glimmering in the moonlight, wrapped in their shrouds of ice ; its still forests rising weird and spectral against the Aurora-lighted horizon ; its notes of bird or brook hushed as if in death ; its nights so still that the moving streamers across the northern skies seem to carry to the ear a sense of sound, so motionless around, above, below, lies all other visible nature.

If then we call this region tlie land of stillness, that name will convey more justly than any other the impress most strongly stamped upon the winter’s scene.

THE WILD NORTH LAND.

Chapter II

Powder versus Primroses. — The American Lounger. — “ Home, Sweet Home.”

It was just time to leave London. The elm-trees in the parks were beginning to put forth their earliest and greenest leaves; innumerable people were flocking into town because custom ordained that the country must be quitted when the spring is at its finest ; as though the odour of primroses had something pestilential about it, and anything in the shape of violets except violet powder was terribly injurious to feminine beauty.

Youthful cosmopolites with waxed moustaches had apparently decided to compromise with the spring, and to atone for their abandonment of the country by making a miniature flower-garden of their button-holes. It was the last day of April, and ere the summer leaves had yellowed along the edge of the great sub- Arctic forest, my winter hut had to be hewn and built from the pine-logs of the far-distant Saskatchewan.

In the saloon or on the after-deck of a Cunard steamship steering west, one sees perhaps more of

THE AMERICAN LOUNGER.

America’s lounging class than can be met with on any other spot in the world ; the class is a limited one, in fact it may be a matter of dispute, whether the pure and simple lounger, as we know him in Piccadilly or Pall Mall, is to be found in the New World ; but a three, or six, or twelve months’ visit to Europe has sufficiently developed the dormant instincts of the class in the New York or Boston man of business, to give colour to the assumption that Columbia possesses a lounger.

It is possible that he is a lounger only for the moment. That one glimpse of Bunker, one echo of Wall Street, will utterly banish for ever the semblance of lounging; but for the present the Great Pyramid minus Bunker’s Hill, the Corso minus Wall Street, have done something towards stamping him with the air and manner of the idler. For the moment he sips his coffee, or throws his cigar-end overboard, with a halfthoughtful, hali-blase air ; for the moment he has discovered that the sun does not rise and set exclusively in the United States, and that there were just a few shreds and patches of history in the world prior to the declaration of American independence : still, when the big ship has steamed on into the shallow waters which narrow into Sandy Hook or Plymouth Sound, and the broad panorama twixt Long Island and Staten, or

THE WILD NORTH LAND.

Plymouth and Nahant opens on the view, the old feeling comes back with the old scenes again.

“ Sir, the Bay of New York closely resembles the Bay of Naples.” There is not the slightest use in telling him that it is quite as like the Bey of Tunis, or the Hospodar of Bulgaria — so we let it be.

“ There, sir, is Bunker’s Hill.”

“ Ah, indeed ! ” drawled a genuine British lounger, with that superb ignorance only to be attained after generations of study, as he quietly scanned the ridge through his lazily-arranged eye-glass. “ Bunker — who was Bunker ? and what did he do on his hill ? ”

Yet, ere we hasten away to the North, another word anent our cousin. These things are, after all, the exception; the temptation to tell a good story, or what we may deem such, must not blind us to the truth; the other side of the question must not be forgotten. An English traveller in America will have so much to thank American travel for that he can well afford to smile at such things.

It was an American who painted for us the last scenes of Moorish history, with a colouring as brilliant as that which the Hall of the Lions could boast of in the old days of Grenada’s glory. To-day an American dwelling in Rome recalls for us in

“ HOME, SWEET HOME.” 9

marble the fierce voluptuous beauty of tbe Egyptian Queen. Another catches the colouring of Claude, in his “ Twilight in the Wilderness.” And if, as I have somewhere heard, it is to the ■writer of the ballad-song that true poetic fame belongs, that song which is heard at lonely camp-fires, which is sung by sailors at the wheel as the canvas- clouded ship reels on under the midnight gloom through the tumbling seas, — the song which has reached the heart of a nation, and lives for ever in the memory of a people, — then let us remember, when we listen to those wondrous notes on whose wings float the simple words, “ Be it ever so humble, there is no place like home;” let us remember the land whose memory called them forth from the heart of an American exile.

And now we must away.

THE WILD NORTH LAND.

Chapter III

Civilization and Savagery. — Fort Garry under new aspects. — Social Societies. — An Old Friend. — “ Pony ” the perverse.

The long, hot, dusty American summer was drawing to a close. The sand-fly had had his time, the blaclc-fly had run his round, the mosquito had nearly bitten himself to death, and during that operation had rendered existence unbearable to several millions of the human race. The quiet tranquil fall-time had followed the fierce wasting summer, and all nature seemed to rest and bask in the mellow radiance of September.

In old tales, written I know not by whom, but read chiefly by youthful eyes, we are told of those who seek through lands infested by goblins and demons, by monstrous and uncouth forms of man and beast, for some fair realm of rest and happiness. He who to-day would seek the great solitudes of North America must pass through a somewhat similar ordeal.

Civilization, or what we term such, rolls with

CIVILIZATION AND SAVAGERY.

queer strides across tlie American continent. Far in advance of the last real city lies a land of terrible savagery, a desolate realm in which ruffianism and rowdyism hold sway. Here, in an expansion which is ever shifting, ever movingwest and north-west, stand congregated the civilizers of the Hew World, — the navvy, the gambler, the rowdy, the saloon-keeper, the tramster, the murderer.

To civilize a new land is the easiest of tasks if we but set about it after the American model. Here is the recipe. Given a realm from which the red man has been banished, tricked, shot, or hunted out; from which the bison and elk have been chased ; a lonely, tenantless land, with some great river flowing in long winding reaches silently through its vast plains and mountain gorges : here, then, is what you have to do : — •

Place on the river a steamboat of the rudest construction. Wherever the banks are easy of ascent, or where a smaller stream seeks the main river, build a drinking-house of rough-hewn logs ; let the name of God be used only in blasphemy, and language be a medium for the conveyance of curses. Call a hill a “ bluff,” a valley a “ gulch,” a fire-fly a “ lighting bug,” a man a “ cuss,” three shanties a “ city.” Let every man chew when he

THE WILD NORTH LAND.

isn’t smoking, and spit when he isn’t asleep ; and then — when half a dozen persons have come to violent ends — when killing has literally become “ no murder” — your new land will be thoroughly .civilized.

Poor, wild man of the West ! scalper, warraider, savage dweller in woods and on prairies ; believer in manitous and dream-omens, painted and eagle-feathered ; crafty, stealthy, and treacherous to foe, utterly hopeless to the man-tamer : this is the state of things which supplants thy savagery. This is civilization as it comes to thee from the Bast. Whenever thy wandering bands roam in from the great West, this is the sight they see in lands but lately their own.

I know not how it is, but in wild glen or lonely prairie, amidst races whose very names are supposed to be synonymous with all that is wild, lawless, or barbarous, I have known many a bond of sympathy, many a link ’twixt their lives and mine own. Nay, when man has been far distant, and nought but the lone spaces lay around me, and the gaunt pine-tree stretched its arms athwart the icy sky, I have felt companionship and friendship for the very dogs that drew my load ; but for this band of civilizers, for these brutal pioneers of Anglo-American freedom, in their many stages between unblackened boots and diamond breast-

FORT GARRY UNDER NEW ASPECTS.

pins, I have felt nothing but loathing and disgust.

It was late in the month of September, 1872, when, after a summer of travel in Canada and the United States, I drew near the banks of the Red River of the North. Two years had worked many changes in scene and society ; a railroad had reached the river; a “city” stood on the spot where, during a former visit, a midnight storm had burst upon me in the then un tenanted prairie. Three steamboats rolled the muddy tide of the winding river before their bluff, ill-shapen bows. Gambling-houses and drinking-saloons, made of boards and brown paper, crowded the black, mudsoaked streets. A stage-coach ran north to Fort Garry 250 miles, and along the track rowdyism was rampant. Horse-stealing was prevalent, and in the “ city ” just alluded to two murderers walked quietly at large. In fine, the land which borders the Red River, Minnesota, and Dakota, had been thoroughly civilized.

But civilization had worked its way even deeper into the North-west. The place formerly known as Fort Garry had civilized into the shorter denomination of “ Garry;” the prairie round the Fort had corner lots which sold for more hundreds of dollars than they possessed frontage-feet; and society was divided in opinion as to whether the sale which called forth these prices was a “bogus” one or not.

Representative institutions had been established in the new province of Manitoba, and an election for members of Parliament had just been concluded. Of this triumph of modern liberty over primeval savagery, it is sufficient to say, that the great principle of freedom of election had been fully vindicated by a large body of upright citizens, who, in the freest and most independent manner, had forcibly possessed themselves of the poll-books, and then fired a volley from revolvers, or, in the language of the land, “ emptied their shooting-irons ” into another body of equally upright citizens, who had the temerity to differ with them as to the choice of a political representative.

It was gently rumoured that some person or persons were to be arrested for this outburst of constitutional patriotism, but any proceeding so calculated to repress the individual independence of the citizen would have been utterly subversive of all representative institutions.

Civilization had also developed itself in other ways. Several national societies had been founded, and were doing prosperously. There was a St. George’s Society and a St. Andrew’s Society, and, I think, also a St. Patrick’s Society. Indeed the memory of these saints appears to

SOCIAL SOCIETIES.

be held in considerable reputation in the New World. According to the prospectus and programme of these societies, charity appears to be the vital principle of each association : sick Scotchmen, emigrating English, and indigent Irish, were all requested to come forward and claim relief at the hands of the wealthier sons of St. Andrew, St. George, and St. Patrick. Charity, which is said to begin at home, and which, alas ! too frequently ends there also, having thus had its commencement in the home circle, seemed determined to observe all home-like institutions; and the annual dinner was of necessity a very important item in the transactions of each society. Indeed it would be difficult to find a place where, in the present day, one could witness “ ficliting for Chairlie,” “ Scots wha haeing,” “ Manning for a’ that,” and those other peculiar customs of the Celtic race, carried out with better effect than in the meeting which annually gathers to do justice to the memory of the Apostle of the Piets in the New World.

Amidst all these changes of scene and society there was one thing still unchanged on the confines of the Red River. Close to the stream, at the place known as the Point of Progs, an old friend met me with many tokens of recognition. A tried companion was he through many long days of

THE WILD NORTH LAND.

wintry travel. There, as fresh and hearty as when I had parted from him two years before, stood Cerf-vola, the Esquimaux dog who had led my train from Cumberland, on the Lower Saskatchewan, across the ice of the great Lakes. Of the four dogs he alone remained. Two years is a long time in the life of any dog, but still a longer period in that of a hauling-dog ; and Cerf-vola’ s comrades of that date, Muskeymote, Cariboo, and Tigre had gone the way of all earthly things.

To become the owner of this old friend again, and of his new companions Spanker and Pony, was a work of necessity; and I quitted the Point of Progs by the steamboat “ Selkirk” with three hauling-dogs in my possession. Strong and stout as of yore ; clean-limbed, long-woolled, deep-chested ; with ears pointed forward and tail close curled over his broad back, Cerf-vola still stood the picture of an Esquimaux.

Of the other two dogs, Pony was a half-breed, and Spanker, sharp, keen, and restless, was like his leader, a pure Husky; but, unlike the older dog, his nature was wild and fierce : some malignant guardian of his youth had despoiled him of the greater part of his tail, and by doing so had not a little detracted from his personal appearance.

CERF-VOLA, THE ESQUIMAUX DOG.

AN OLD FRIEND.

As these three animals will be my constant companions during many months, through many long leagues of ice and snow, I have here sketched their outward semblance with some care. Civilization and a steamboat appeared to agree but poorly with my new friends. Spanker, failing in making his teeth emancipate his own neck, turned all his attention towards freeing his companion, and * after a deal of toil he succeeded in gnawing Pony loose. This notable instance of canine abnegation (in which supporters of the Darwinian theory will easily recognize the connecting link between the Algerine captives assisting each other to freedom, &c., &c., after the manner of the Middle Ages), resulted in the absconding of the dog Pony, who took advantage of the momentary grounding of the steamer to jump on shore and disappear into the neighbouring forest.