New rivers of the North : the yarn of two amateur explorers

Contents

CHAPTER VAGt

I. The Start 13

II. On the Tote Road .... 24

II Illustrations

Jack Slavin's outfit on Lesser Slave Lake . . . 25 7 v-^

The Blunderbuss after the storm 272 -y

They couldn't sit down for fear of getting their Sunday clothes wet 273 '■^'

The last stage — Our observation car 273 v

Mr. Footner's journey began and ended at Edmonton. The arrows show the direction he was traveling.

Chapter I

WHEN the North is mentioned it generally evokes a picture in the hearer's mind of the bleak, barren lands, or of the desolate, flat shores of Hudson Bay. There is another North, the smiling parklike land adjacent to the Rocky Mountains, that is warmed and refreshed by the moisture-laden winds from the Pacific. This is the country of our journey. The rivers are not really " new " of course, but almost the oldest things there are ; they have been pursuing their lovely courses since the immemorial nightmare when the mountains were pushed up, and the sea retreated. Calling them " new " is merely man's conceited way of putting it. It is we white men who are new to the rivers. I am conscious of my unfitness to be the first to describe the new parts of them. It needs a geologist, a botanist — and a poet to do them jus-

14 NEJV RIVERS OF THE NORTH

tice. I can only offer to share the delight of two amateurs in descending streams of which no man could say what lay around the next bend. I would like to convey a sense of the pleasure one feels in beholding sights that have not been published to the world at large. No normal transfer of the country for value received, et cetera, could give us half the opulent sense of proprietorship in it that we now enjoy.

Our plan was to start from the end of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway west of Edmonton, and have our outfit transported by wagon or pack pony through the Yellowhead Pass alongside the railway construction. We could not find out for certain if a wagon road had been completed through the pass, and we therefore took a collapsible boat, that could be rolled up and packed on a horse's back.

We expected to launch our craft In the headwaters of the Fraser River beyond the summit of the pass. For several hundred miles the Fraser flows in a northwesterly direction before making its great sweep to the south, and this was the portion of it that we meant to descend. At Giscomb Portage there is a six-mile carry over the height of land to Summit Lake, one of the sources of the Peace. We were then to descend its various tributaries in a northerly direction to the forks of the great river Itself, and come back again through the mountains by the Peace River pass.

After that the grand objective of the trip w^as to reach the Hay River, the longest river in North America, I believe, that remains unexplored and unmapped. When I had been in the country five years before, I had heard vague stories of a great and beautiful cataract on the Hay River that only one or two white men had ever beheld, and I had dreamed of it o' nights ever since.

The Hay River is said to rise in three small lakes near the foothills of the Rockies, about a hundred miles north of the Peace at Fort St. John. It flows, roughly speaking, parallel with the Peace, that is to say, in a northeasterly direction, and empties into Great Slave Lake. It is probably six or seven hundred miles long. The stretch of country between the two river Is likewise written down " unexplored " on the maps.

This trip offered particular attractions. In the first place, by starting at a high altitude on the Fraser we were enabled to travel continuously down-stream for thirteen or fifteen hundred miles. And every day of it promised to be interesting. There was the magnificent Yellowhead pass with Robson Peak, the highest known mountain in Canada, the turbulent Eraser, and the little-known headwaters of the Peace. There was the Peace River pass, where the river forces its way through the main chain of the Rockies, including the famous Rocky- Mountain canyon, and the noble river itself for hundreds of miles beyond. Finally there was the chance of bringing home a river of our own, and one of the great water-falls of the continent for a grand prize.

Though of course we were not by any means the pioneers of the entire route, which is a wellknown one to the Indians and the traders, very little about it has ever been written, and our photographs are to a large extent the first of this country that have reached the outside world.

We left civilization behind us at Edmonton, the last town in this part of the world. I need say very little about it — not that there is nothing to be said; indeed, at present Edmonton is one of the most interesting places in the country; the romance of development is in the air, and no man can tell what the next day will bring forth. But this is a yarn of the woods and the waters, and it naturally begins where the town ends.

In Edmonton they are very keenly interested in the vast untouched country lying to the north and west of them; the future greatness of the town depends on its opening to settlement. They were therefore interested in our journey, and one of the newspapers gave us a long write-up couched in such glowing terms as to bring the blushes to our maiden cheeks.

This story appeared on the morning that we set forth, and we read it on the train. It was written in a high-falutin', boastful vein that made us want to crawl under the car-seats, especially my " intrepid partner," to whom the interview was ascribed. We expected that the story would precede us, queering us all along the line, but to our great relief no one seemed to take the slightest notice of it. I have chosen a quotation from it for the dedication to this book.

The railroad ended officially at Edson, one hundred and thirty-five miles west of Edmonton. To the eye it was an unpromising town of the packing-box school of architecture erected in a sad wilderness of oozing clay. It was filled with the unnatural bustle of a temporary terminus, that bustle which passes, leaving a no less unnatural stagnation. At the moment Edson was enjoying its day; we were informed that lots on the boggy main street were held at five thousand dollars each, and transfers had actually been made at twenty-five hundred. To give an idea of our geographical position I will mention that Edson is about two hundred miler northwest of the famous Kicking-Horse pass, where the Canadian Pacific Railway traverses the Rockies ; say three hundred miles due north of the boundary of the State of Washington; or about four hundred miles north of the city of Spokane.

From Edson we were permitted to ride sixtytwo miles further west on a construction train. I use " permitted " advisedly, for the contractors made it clear they considered they were doing us a favor in accepting our four cents a mile. For instance, the construction train waited negligently a quarter of a mile down the track at Edson, and we had to make four hasty, heartbreaking trips over the ties with our outfit on our backs, the train threatening to leave momentarily. We traveled at our own risk, of course, no slight one in a car rocking on the newly laid rails like a vessel in a cross sea ; and we were further advised that it was incumbent on us to look after our own baggage. Part of someone else's stufif was spilled out en route, and it was only owing to the energy of my partner, who pursued the baggage car down the track with the box on his shoulder, that It was not left on the right of way.

We rode on the uncompromising wooden seats of an emigrant car, and the train averaged exactly seven miles an hour for nine hours, but it was impossible to be bored. Never was there a more interesting carfull, pioneers for the most part with their faces turned toward the frontier, and radiating an atmosphere of hopefulness. We were entranced by the scraps of conversation that reached our ears; how So-and-So had succeeded in establishing the old Indian trail to the headwaters of the Big Smoky; how somebody else had made a strike in the valley of the Grand Forks ; how it was rumored that five thousand dollars' worth of marten fur had been brought out of the Cassiar country. I remember only one woman on the train, the wife of the storekeeper at Tete Jaune Cache, who had her baby with her, undoubtedly the youngest white man in the country. She had a drive of a hundred and twenty-five miles through the pass before her.

We were reminded anew of the advantages of rough clothes as a passport on the road. Good clothes cut the wearer off from his fellows like a wall. The more fashionably clad, the more of an outcast he becomes. But let him put on a cheap, ragged habit and go into the streets, and delightful adventures crowd on him. He will then learn what human fellowship is. The world will take him to its heart, initiate him into its mysteries, and provide him with inexhaustible entertainment.

We talked with a youthful sergeant of the mounted police, a splendid physical specimen with a capable air, and a steady eye that upheld the best traditions of the force. We admired his manner with the crowd, particularly toward the end of the day, when one or two passengers mysteriously became intoxicated. He got on smoothly with everybody, without descending from his own level — no easy task with these touchy pioneers. He must have led rather a lonely life, because the only times he could really relax were with his fellow-redcoats. When he met a comrade at one of the way-stations we would see the pair of them go apart, and laugh and joke with each other, as if they needed to let off steam.

There was a comic opera tenderfoot on board. It seemed incredible in these days of free libraries for the circulation of popular literature that anyone could be so green. He was clad in a brand-new canvas " sporting " suit, topped off with a huge hunting knife, that he confided to us was for cutting his ^' bully beef " wItK. We always referred to him thereafter as " Bully Beef." He was anxious and anemic; he had worked In a bank for nine years, and was now on his way to carry the chain for a surveying party In the mountains. His innocence was pathetic; one could not help but foresee the rich, cruel fun in store for that gang of surveyors.

The happiest man on the train was the little news-agent. He was driving a roaring trade In sandwiches at twenty cents each, not to speak of oranges, " pop," and tobacco at corresponding prices. The car was filled with his rollicking repartee, and the chink of the coin pouring In on him. Nature had intended him for a clown ; but no doubt he was doing better as a news-agent. He had not only the train to draw from, for at every camp along the line, some of the laborers swarmed aboard to examine his stock. Loud were the lamentations of the foreigners when his " snooze " gave out, " snooze " being the local familiarity for snuff.

BIckerdike, or Mile 17, was the principal stop en route. Above the track stretched a row of log shacks calked with clay, and hanging out over the doors such rakish, home-made signs as: " Dad's Stopping-house "; " Short Order Resterant"; "Pool-room"; "The Old

Man's Place," etc. Between the shacks and the train lounged a various and colorful crowd, every unit of which had character. It is the most striking feature of a new country that every man has a strong individuality — or affects one. Blanks are out of fashion. There were some ladies, too, at Bickerdike. Never will we forget the haughtiness of certain dames who, clad in sweaters reaching to the ground, and with innumerable puffs in their back hair, came languidly down to the cars to inquire if there were any packages.

Between stations the country for the most part showed the same dreary, scrubby waste, from which the timber had long ago been burned. This is not one of the famous agricultural districts of Alberta. Now and then a pretty lake relieved the monotony, and the occasional rivers were interesting, rushing down through the vast troughs they had cut for themselves in the clay. Toward the end of the afternoon the Rocky Mountains appeared off to the west, with Roche Miette, a splendid bold cliff marking the gateway for which we were bound.

At half-past ten in the gathering dusk we were put off at Mile 62. The day was June 26th. Why they wouldn't carry us three miles further to Hinton, where the stopping-houses were, is another mystery clear only to the railway contractors. As it was we had to stage it at ruinous rates. We slept at the Mountain View Hotel, the last bed we were to have for many a day to come.

CHAPTER ir

NEXT morning we found that Hinton, or, as it was more generally called, Mile 65, was rapidly taking on the air of a deserted village. The construction trains were now hauling the contractors' freight through to Mile 88, consequently everyone was moving on. We had seen several such abandoned towns en route, one of which, Wolf Creek, extended for upwards of a mile beside the track. The population had fallen from hundreds of souls to three. The " tote road," I need hardly explain, is built by the contractors for the purpose of hauling supplies to the various camps along the line of construction. We learned that it had been completed through the pass except for a ten-mile break at Moose Lake.

At Mile 65 the only wagon ready to start west was drawn by a double team of oxen. We looked askance at the slavering, heavy-footed

beasts, which promised anything but rapid transit, but at least the driver was hitching them up, and there was nothing else in sight; it was a start. At ten o'clock we set our faces west on the tote road, snow-capped peaks beckoning us ahead. Our folding boat, and our grub outfit followed on top of the load.

The driver's name was Everitt. He was a mild young man with rosy cheeks and large, lusterless eyes like his oxen. We had not traveled far in his company before we discovered that an exclusive association with his slow beasts had sapped the springs of his energy. Men who spoke to us about him later would shake their heads and say: " Everitt, he used to be one of the smartest young fellers on the trail. But 'pears he must have slipped a cog somewheres. He can't get through no more! "

We could supply the explanation. Everitt was an impressionable youth, and he had taken the color of his " bulls." Like them he was slow almost to the point of paralysis, also timid and self-distrustful to a degree. Once stopped he required a goad to set him in motion again. We would see Everitt standing motionless for minutes at a time with a piece of harness in his hands, and his eyes fixed in a vacant stare. At such a moment all that he lacked to complete the resemblance was a cud to chew,

We traveled at about a mile and a half an hour, with frequent pauses to breathe the oxen — and Everitt. My partner and I walking ahead could stop for a swim, or an hour's fishing, or to climb a mountain without any danger of being left too far behind. Everitt had assured us he was in the habit of making fifteen or twenty miles a day, but we had not gone three before he sat down for a two-hour spell in a mosquitoridden meadow. He made ten miles the first day, and he was greatly pleased with himself. Fortunately we were overtaken by a pedestrian philosopher called Jim Waters, who threw in his lot with us. He was an old acquaintance of Everitt's and his energy supplied a kind of goad.

We camped within the confines of Jasper Park, one of the Canadian national reservations, pitching our tent in a magnificent grove of spruce trees. There we lay for two whole days. It rained, and Everitt insisted with tears in his voice, that he would never, never be able to get his load through the four miles of timber that lay beyond. We pointed out that the more it rained, the worse the road would become, but without avail. On the third morning word was brought along the road that the mounted police were coming, and that they were " frisking " every load they overtook. I do not know if

Everltt carried any contraband ; but any rate he started.

It was in truth a very bad piece of road that followed, but nothing to what we had expected from Everitt's harrowing forecast. We got through without capsizing. It was amusing to hear the mild young driver bellowing to his steeds in an awful voice that issued from his boots.

Beyond the timber, the hills that hemmed us in became mountains. Roche Miette was now rearing its crude, bold steeple of rock close ahead. The first mountain on our left had no name that we could discover, and we christened it Mount Primus. We climbed it while our cavalcade crawled up the valley. The summit was perhaps twenty-five hundred feet above the river. We endured frequent cold squalls of rain, and hordes of mosquitoes for the sake of the view. The Athabasca issued from between the great mountains on our left in innumerable channels among spruce-clad islands. At our feet it spread out in a vast muddy lake. The effects of rain and mist among the heights were magnificent. We came down on the run in the track of a mountain goat, who considerately pointed out the easiest way, but the goat himself escaped our view.

The next day we came to an obstruction that almost broke Everitt's heart all over again. The bridge over Fiddle Creek had been undermined by heavy rains, and there was no way to cross but by fording. Everitt swore he would never be able to do it, and had it not been for Jim Waters I have no doubt he would be there yet. We ourselves crawled across the broken bridge through a roaring cataract, at the imminent danger of being carried down. We desired to get pictures of the oxen fording. I lost my best pipe.

Everitt finally made a start, but the oxen went in up to their bellies, and he was seized with panic. For perhaps ten minutes he kept the hapless creatures standing there in the icy, rushing water while he debated what to do. Finally he unhitched them, and attaching them to the back of the wagon, pulled it back from the water's edge.

Then there was a long wait. From our side of the stream we could see Jim Waters vainly expostulating. Finally a half-breed driver came along with a load, and without so much as a glance at the torrent, nonchalantly drove through. Everitt followed in his wake. To hear him crow at the other side one would have thought he had dared the Rubicon unaided.

Unfortunately the pictures we took of these operations are a trifle over-exposed. We made heavy allowances for the dazzling brilliance of the Alberta sunshine, but not sufficient, it appears.

At Mile 88 we decided we had had enough of Everitt and his bulls. In five days we had made twenty-three miles. At any rate Everitt was going but twenty miles farther, and Mile 88 offered the best chance of engaging a through passage. Unluckily the railroad bridge over Fiddle Creek was likewise down, and the freighters were standing about idle. For five more days we waited in camp. It was a comfortable camp in a grove of trees beside the Athabasca, with Roche Miette towering over our shoulder. They were delightful days of loafing, and quaffing deep of the champagne of the mountain tops, but we chafed at the delay.

Every day one of us walked into the " cache," as they call any place where goods are stored, for news of the freighters. One friend, Jim Waters, had his team there. On the way was a camp of Indians and breeds, a sadly mixed lot, the first natives we had seen on the journey. There was nothing of story-book Indian about them. Imagine the noble red-man with a patent washing machine at the door of his tent and a universal bread-mixer inside! They did not even live in tepees, but in dirty wall-tents with a rusty stove-pipe sticking out of one end. Nevertheless, dirty and degenerate as they were, the rags of romance still clung to them. They are so mysterious! They keep themselves to themselves and it is impossible for a white man to tell what is going on behind their smooth, dark, sullen faces.

On the sixth day my partner returned to inform me with a rather dubious joy that he had found a freighter going up light, who would carry our stufif to the summit of the pass. When the wagon presently hove in view, I understood his doubts. I never saw a more criminal-looking outfit. The driver was a little, one-armed man with a wicked, merry eye, and clad in deplorable rags. As he said himself: he "hadn't enough clothes to flag a freight with." His companion was a hulking young Irishman with an alcoholic flush, and a furtive glance, but one cannot be too particular on the trail; we cast in our lot with them.

We soon found that we were in the company of an honest enough pair. They were desperately hard up. They had scarcely any food, and their cooking outfit was limited to a battered lard pail for boiling their tea, and an axlegrease tin to drink it from. Yet the team that " Wingy " drove so cleverly was one of the best on the tote road, and we heard of other horses that he owned. We gathered later that he had been cleaned out in a poker game down the line.

Wingy was an Irishman too, a witty one, and madly improvident. He had an infinite command of picturesque metaphor, and I am sorry that owing to reasons of propriety I may not quote him more. He let fall many hints of strange adventures on the seven seas. As for the hulking Pat, he proved to be the soul of simplicity and good-nature. Wingy drew him out endlessly for our benefit.

We now made good time, and would have done better still had we not fallen in with a blacksmith emigrating westward with all his worldly goods. His horses were played out, and Wingy helped him up the hills, and even changed teams with him, when his own beasts could pull no farther. Wingy did all this largely out of pure good will (he had never seen the man before) but partly, we guessed, out of respect for the blacksmith's well-furnished grub-box. At any rate Wingy and Pat feasted upon tinned salmon and jam at every meal. Two passengers rode on top of the blacksmith's load ;

a middle-aged man nursing a broken leg, and his daughter, a pretty little girl who, poor child, had had no chance to take off her clothes or brush her hair since leaving Edmonton. We pitied them, frightfully jolted and thrown about as they were on their insecure perch.

Another delay was caused by Pop Hopper. Pop Hopper was the Jonah of the tote road. The other freighters hated to get behind him, knowing if they did they would be obliged to stop and help him out of all his troubles. He was a blustering old infant who, in the parlance of the road, " had money," and only freighted for the fun of it. Certainly he could not have made anything. Wingy opined that Pop Hopper " would make better time if he let one of the horses drive, and put his own neck in the collar."

We were unlucky enough to fall behind him one morning. We occupied ourselves picking up pails of jam, tins of corn, and so on, that had spilled off his load. After lunch we came upon him with his hind wheels locked to the hubs in the affectionate embrace of a muskeg. It was his custom when anything like this befell him to sit down and have a lunch while waiting for someone to come along. By the time we arrived he had already collected quite a crowd from the nearest construction camp. He was in his ele-

Claude and his Bulls

Tlie down biid^c over Fiddle Creek

For ten minutes he left the helpless beasts standing in the icy water'

Pop Hopper locked in the affectionate embrace of a muskeg ment, ordering his volunteer helpers about like the foreman of a gang of navvies.

We pitched in too, tearing up the corduroy of a neighboring bridge, and cheerfully miring ourselves to the hips in the endeavor to " prize " her up. Pop Hopper stood by yelling and cursing at us in his own way. At one time we had five horses and four mules straining at the chains, but all to no avail ; she stuck. Finally we had to unload, and then we discovered that Pop Hopper had his own way of loading too. He was taking a load of " fancy stuff " to one of the stores at the summit. He had carefully put in all the lighter things first, such as boxes of macaroni, crates of cocoanuts, oranges, onions and eggs. On this he had piled bags of sugar, bales of hay, and great chests of tea. Consequently we uncovered a horrid scramble in the bottom of the wagon box; long strings of yellow egg ceaselessly dripped through the cracks.

We finally put him on his way, taking care, however, to gain the road ahead of him. The next day we heard the sequel. A few miles beyond where we left him he drove off the side of a steep bank, and his wagon capsized, "with all four wheels turning in the air." Our informant added that he had come across Pop Hopper after the accident comfortably lunching under a tree.

The whole landscape was littered with fancy groceries, and the old man was eating pickles out of a bucket that had burst against a stump beside him.

As soon as we left Mile 88 we entered among the real mountains, gigantic, naked sweeps of rock that took our breath away afresh every time we lifted our eyes. The pass is an easy one, and for the most part the valley was flat all the way through. Soon we were winding around the bases of the snow-capped mountains. Of all the works of nature surely no one could ever come to take snowy peaks for granted. To see them in the sunlight, flung up against an ocean of blue, is at once the most beautiful and the most disquieting sight of earth. For an entire day Pyramid Mountain dazzled and delighted our eyes with its regular snowy plains.

Meanwhile the tote road was as animated as a city street. All day the freighters came and went, and this is not to speak of other travelers, mounted or in wagons, and a small army afoot. It is a saying up there that there are always three construction gangs in the country, one coming, one going, and one at work on the grade. In addition, the tote road had this year for the first made the mountains accessible for prospecting, and we were continually meeting gold-hunters, those harmless madmen with their little hammers.

We walked into the camp at the Summit one Monday morning, Wingy and the blacksmith following soon after. Pat had mysteriously disappeared the day before. Wingy, with his wicked smile said we would find him at the Summit, but he was not there, nor did we ever learn what had become of him. I desire to give a plain unvarnished account of what we saw in this place. At first it seemed to us no different from the other camps we had passed through, but little by little the difference became apparent, and in the end we found ourselves looking on a little dazed, and scarcely comprehending what was happening.

I should explain that under the Canadian laws no liquor may be kept or sold along the line of construction of a railroad. East of the Summit the law was pretty well enforced by the mounted police. There were some " boot-leggers," but no " speak-easies." The province of British Columbia, however, administers its own internal affairs much the same as one of the sovereign states across the border. Consequently the mounted police had no jurisdiction, and the camp at the Summit had sprung up in their faces, not more than a hundred yards from the border of Alberta. It is true, protection by the province of British Columbia had been promised the law-abiding element, but the police had not materialized. I hope they are there by this time.