Читать книгу The Drama of the Forests - Arthur Heming - Страница 20

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I was up early next morning and as I wished to see how Oo-koo-hoo and his party would pack up and board their canoes, I walked round the bay to the Indian village. After a hasty breakfast, the women pulled down the lodge coverings of sheets of birch bark and rolling them up placed them upon the star-chi-gan—the stage—along with other things which they intended leaving behind. The lodge poles were left standing in readiness for their return next summer, and it wasn't long before all their worldly goods—save their skin tepees and most of their traps, which had been left on their last winter's hunting grounds—were placed aboard their three canoes, and off they paddled to the Post, to say good-bye, while Amik secured his advances.

Just think of it, all you housekeepers—no gold plate or silverware to send to the vault, no bric-a-brac to pack, no furniture to cover, no bedding to put away, no rugs or furs or clothes to send to cold storage, no servants to wrangle with or discharge, no plumbers to swear over, no janitors to cuss at, no, not even any housecleaning to do before you depart—just move and nothing more. Just dump a little outfit into a canoe and then paddle away from all your tiresome environment, and travel wherever your heart dictates, and then settle down where not even an exasperating neighbour could find you. What would you give to live such a peaceful life?

"As I understand it," says Thoreau, "that was a valid objection urged by Momus against the house which Minerva made, that she had not made it movable, by which means a bad neighbourhood might be avoided; and it may still be urged, for our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them; and the bad neighbourhood to be avoided is our own scurvy selves."

On their arrival, Amik at once set about getting his advances. He was a stalwart, athletic-looking man of about thirty-five, but not the equal of his father-in-law in character. Oo-koo-hoo now told the Factor just where he intended to hunt, what fur he expected to get, and how the fur runners could best find his camp. As the price of fur had risen, the Factor told him what price he expected to pay. If, however, the price had dropped, the Factor would not have informed the hunter until his return next year. During the course of the conversation, the old hunter begged the loan of a second-hand gun and some traps for the use of his grandsons; and the Factor granted his request.

In the meantime, the women called upon the clergyman and the priest and the nuns to wish them farewell, and incidentally to do a little more begging. As they were not ready to go by noon, the Factor's wife spread a cloth upon the kitchen floor, and placed upon it some food for the party. After lunch they actually made ready to depart, and everybody came down to the landing to see us off. As the children and dogs scrambled aboard the canoes, the older woman remembered that she had not been paid for her gift of moccasins, and so another delay took place while the Factor selected a suitable present. It is always thus. Then, at last, the canoes push off. Amid the waving of hands, the shouting of farewells, and the shedding of a few tears even, the simple natives of the wilderness paddled away over the silent lake en route for their distant hunting grounds.

Thither the reader must follow, and there, amid the fastnesses of the Great Northern Forest, he must spend the winter if he would see the Indian at his best. There he is a beggar no longer. There, escaped from the civilization which the white man is ever forcing upon the red—a civilization which rarely fails to make a degenerate of him—he proves his manhood. There, contrary to the popular idea, he will be found to be a diligent and skilful worker and an affectionate husband and father. There, given health and game, no toil and no hardship will hinder him from procuring fur enough to pay off his indebtedness, and to lay up in store twice as much again with which to engage next spring in the delightful battle of wits between white man and red in the Great Company's trading room.