Читать книгу New Rivers of the North: The Yarn of Two Amateur Explorers - Footner Hulbert - Страница 3
ОглавлениеTHE START
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 justice. 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 was 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 rivers 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 Fraser, 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 well-known 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 miles 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 sixty-two 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 stuff 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 Tête 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" with. We always referred to him thereafter as "Bully Beef." He was anxious and anæmic; 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.
