Читать книгу The Incomplete Anglers - John Daniel Robins - Страница 4

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The nominal leadership of our expedition was mine. Tom, while not a stranger to the bush, had never been on a canoe trip. I had taken quite a number, but I had learned little. I owed my rank chiefly to a man named Jim, for, while Jim did not initiate me into camping, he did take me to the Park, and he did introduce me to the Fly, and my superiority really depends on these two advantages. I know that a self-respecting fly would cut me dead, but it could not deny that we have met. Jim, moreover, taught me to regard the Grub List as a sacred scripture. He made me acquainted with the Tump, which I had always reverenced afar. I may say that nowadays I sometimes take a tump-line with me, but it is solely for effect. I have used it for as long as eight to ten minutes, to impress Tom. I doubt if he has even noticed it. Other debts I owe to Jim, who is a practised canoeist and fisherman, an incurable romantic, and knows the President of the Toronto Anglers’ Club quite well. He explains my dignity, therefore, because he is the third factor in our proportion. I was to Tom, poor wretch, as Jim is to me. Had I written of some earlier trip with Jim, I should have been cast in my proper rôle of duffer-narrator. This account is, of course, merely a variation on that popular theme, with two duffers instead of the customary one.

A bit of winter correspondence had begun the arrangements. Tom was to arrive in Toronto in the early morning of the twelfth of June. I was to have the shopping all done. By this means we should be able to start out by nine o’clock at the latest, drive merrily to North Bay, store the car, and catch the night transcontinental for Radiant, in the Park itself.

This plan miscarried on account of Tom’s instincts, which are usually dependable, and which were in this case supremely sound. They told him, or perhaps preliminary reading of sports literature told him, that a canoe trip begins when you buy for it. Now both Tom and I have the ordinary man’s dislike of household or personal buying, but shopping for the bush is very different. (The standard term, I suppose, is outfitting, but our expenditure was so modest that I scarcely feel justified in using the more resplendent expression.) Not only is it a joy to buy, but there is also a pleasant reminiscent thrill each time the gradually tattering brown paper is wrapped once more around the bacon in the bush. Therefore I sighed but sympathized when a last-minute note from Tom suggested that I should postpone the buying until he arrived. I sighed because I realized that we should not be able to set out before half-past eleven, possibly twelve o’clock. Actually, of course, it was after three when we turned out of the driveway.

You will be spared the full account of our buying, chiefly because the anticipatory joys and the fragrant glamour of camp shopping would be communicated only to those familiar with it, and will be communicated to them just as well by the Grub List itself. To others it would seem as insipid, as lacking in bouquet, as yesterday’s newspaper.

Our important purchases were made in two stores, the first a mighty giant whose stride takes in a continent and the islands thereof, from which we bought our groceries and meats. I say meats because, as will appear, we took chipped beef, half a pound, in addition to bacon. The second store snuggles for companionship in a row of little shops. It can be recognized afar by the curious crowd of men and boys perpetually changing places in front of one window, where turtles and lizards and mice and snakes display their charms.

There is a most tactful young man in this little hive, a hive whose bait-boxes dot the camp-sites and the fishing spots of half the North. When I say “the North” I really mean the southern part of Northern Ontario. It deceives no one, and allows me quite cheaply and quite harmlessly some of the thrill of traversing Great Bear Lake with Mackenzie or Kelsey or somebody. For aught I know, the hive’s bait-boxes do dot the remote camp-sites of this farther North. I cannot say, for I myself have never dotted them nor crossed the Great Bear Lake, except in daydreams. But I was speaking of this salesman’s tact. I have gone into sporting-goods establishments to buy a nickel’s worth of sinkers, and so obviously to buy a nickel’s worth of sinkers that the haughty dukes of the emporium have left me standing timidly for twenty minutes, until my courage oozed, and I walked seven blocks to buy them happily and proudly from the young man in the hive—and in addition, half a hundred flies I didn’t need.

At this present time of writing I have some idea of the flies I wish to buy. I know that for our pet stream the Silver Doctor is my own reliable. I know that for us the Montreal is good, and the Professor useful, and the McGinty and the Cow Dung, and sometimes the Caddis Dark. But this first year of independent fly purchase, this year of our chronicle, I bought by the books. That is to say, I bought flies for the aesthetic appeal of their names, or because of some half-forgotten association with certain fishing essays of my youth, when fly-fishing smacked of pious elegance and literary dilettantism, of Dr. Henry Van Dyke, who by an unpardonable anachronism always has for me a pointed beard. For instance, I have a perfectly useless supply of Parmcheenee Belles. I have never caught anything on a Parmcheenee Belle, except an overhanging bough, but to this day, under that ancient spell, I add a few each time I buy. Latterly, the name had been shortened, perhaps under the influence of golf, to the uneuphonious Par Belle. Had it been called by that name always, I should never have bought one. Hackles, too, have had a glamour for me, especially the Red Hackle. Until I looked it up, five minutes ago, I did not know what a hackle was, but it suggested wild Scottish moors and streams to me. The Royal Coachman, though self-explanatory, and therefore without mystery, was tempting. So that day I took any whose names I happened to remember, a few because they looked as if they should be attractive to fishes, and some half-dozen on the recommendation of the young man.

We bought one hundred dew-worms, neatly housed in a moss-filled, burlap-covered box, a plague to carry on the trails in those early, anxious, conscientious days. I was prepared to worship fly-fishing with a pure, exclusive devotion and leave the worms behind. I supposed that true angling aristocrats would be puzzled by the mention of worms in connection with fishing. But Tom swore that he would have nothing to do with flies. He had been brought up on worms; he had always had worms; he regarded flies as immoral and probably ineffective. Why should a trout bite at a bit of tinfoil and rag? He had as a boy caught scores of trout on a fishhook—there seemed to be some sturdy republican virtue about calling a hook a fishhook—on a fishhook baited with starved little wormlets dug up in barren lands. With these leviathans, daintily and boastfully labelled “Cultivated Dew-Worms,” as if to hint at some sort of Academy for selected worms of good family, he made no doubt of being followed by the fishes up the trees. In fact, his frugal soul suggested fifty worms, each of which could be partitioned into four, giving him two hundred potential baits, since I should be sticking to flies. However, as I said, we took one hundred.

Naturally, Tom had no comments on the flies, though he seemed fascinated by the brilliant plumage of some, and would, I believe, have risen to a Montreal. When I bought wet flies, he did ask me, I think quite innocently, what had determined me to choose them instead of dry ones. The question was as awkward as the choice had been. I could not remember that Jim had ever said anything about moisture or the lack of it in connection with flies, and I had never before bought any of my own. I had used Jim’s old ones—and worms. Off-hand, I should have ignorantly sworn that Jim’s flies were dry when bought, but when I saw both kinds before me in the show-case, I realized that my basis of judgment was worthless, for both wet and dry flies seemed equally dry. Consequently, when I perceived that there were at least these two kinds of flies, and that I should have to choose between them, I was embarrassed. If there is anything I do hate to appear to be, it is new. A new fly-fisherman! I felt like a bridegroom. Somehow or other, I am not sure how, for the confusion of that moment is blurred now, but by some means short of honest asking, I found out which I was supposed to buy, and bought. Sometimes I have doubts as to how far I deceived the salesman, who is very tactful; sometimes I have no doubts at all. I did not answer Tom’s question for a moment, until a helpful clamour of sound arose at the door. Then I mumbled the first two lines of The Burial of Sir John Moore, which must have satisfied his curiosity, for he said nothing further. I have always since then intended to learn the difference between dry and wet flies, partly to satisfy an avid thirst for general knowledge, partly because Tom might some day remember that he did not hear the answer to his question.

In reels, lines and hooks—we selected hooks far too large of course, No. 6—and a cheap casting-rod, and a landing-net, and swivels and things, Tom showed a much more lively interest. We bought the troll lure that was reported by returning anglers to make the only sure appeal to trout in the northern lakes that summer, a fancy new contraption the name of which I have forgotten.

As for our grocery and meat shopping, I shall content myself with that simple summary, the Grub List, and let its eloquence suffice. It is as follows, as I copy it from the original, still tenderly preserved among the archives, together with the comments appended after the trip:

Bacon, 7 lbs. (None too much, even with good fishing.)

Chipped Beef, ½ lb.

Klim, 2 pound cans.

Evaporated Milk, 6 small cans. (Used only two.)

Sugar, 4 lbs. (More than enough.)

Onions, 12 large Spanish.

Cheese, 1 lb.

Oranges, 6.

Salt, 1 lb. (Plenty.)

Rolled Oats, 6 lbs. (5 would have been plenty.)

Butter, 4 lbs.

Tea, 1 lb.

G. Washington coffee, 1 can. (We were staunchly British, and coffee was almost all brought back.)

Prunes, 3 lbs.

Beans, 2 lbs.

Jam, Strawberry, 1 lb.

Pancake flour, 4 packages.

Chocolate bars, 7 ten-cent ones.

Bread, 9 loaves.

I may say that the total cost of the grub proper was eleven dollars and sixty-three cents, and that it was expected to last for about sixteen days.

Blankets we had, two pairs. One was warm, adequately long, grey, made by some decent nondescript firm of common people. The other had been shortened and narrowed by many washings, some non-professional; to eke out its scantiness, a piece of discarded blanket of muddy white colour and totally unrelated fabric had been sewn on one end of it. Tom is smaller than I. Obviously, this second blanket should have been his, but the thought of letting him sleep in it did not even require to be dismissed, because it never came to me. For this blanket is a red one, with three—alas! not four—significant black lines on one edge, lines which, with magnificent contempt for lexicographers, are called points. Know all men that my red blanket has been woven for me these three hundred years and more by the Company of Gentlemen Adventurers Trading into Hudson’s Bay. When I roll myself into it, I am a bearded factor, pulling that blanket out of a bale at York Factory, and selling it dourly to my feathered, silent, stately Cree self for too many beaver skins, trapped along the bitter reaches of the North Saskatchewan.

Our tent calls for little comment. It shows traces of mildew, and leaks quite a while at one of the seams, even though at the time of this trip it was fairly new. It would be despised by the heroic as too commodious, for it is seven by seven, with a two-foot wall. The heroic tent must have no wall, and does not completely close. On the other hand ours is not a sybaritic tent. This latter has a canvas floor and an outer tent and a portico. I have dreamt that I dwelt in silken tents, but awakened always to canvas.

The Canoe! Ah! herein I am more affluent than the Sportsman of vast equipment. He does not own his canoe, for a canoe is an integral part of a guide, and is indentured with him. My canoe, over twenty years old, is mine own. During fifty weeks of the year it takes up room begrudged in our small cellar, and accumulates dust. It interferes with every possible cellar activity by reason of its sixteen feet of length, and its general intractability of shape. It is slung from the ceiling along the only roomy compartment, and makes of that a menace to life and a guarantee of deep damnation. In short, it is a nuisance to society.

At present it is green. Originally it was grey, and when the proper time came to paint it again—or rather three years after that time—I flirted with red. It seemed to me that all painted canoes in poetry were red. You know.... The slim red shape vanished noiselessly into the mist, or round the bend or over the falls. I do not remember why my canoe was not painted red at that time. Possibly the Sale did not include red paint. I shall always regret that lost opportunity. Now I am too old and fat for red, and am condemned to green for ever, unless perhaps there should some day be an irresistible Sale of Red Canoe Paint.

It is canvas-covered. The Hero has of course his Birch-bark. I have several times paddled a birch-bark canoe. Once I paddled one alone across a fair-sized lake, and back again. The back again was because there was no road by which to walk back and carry the thing. I am glad I did paddle that canoe. Now, when a Hero speaks, I sometimes venture to remark that a birch-bark is fine for the portage, but a bit cranky, especially if one is alone. The Hero must naturally express surprise that anybody should find it cranky. He uses it constantly himself, likes the feel of it somehow. But he always treats me for a time with new respect. My own canoe, however, is solid burgess type, broad-bottomed, wide-waisted, with a mighty keel. It has most of the vulgar, prosaic safeness of a scow. It weighs about seventy pounds. It is not graceless. No canoe, not even the most painstakingly family one, can be anything but enchantingly beautiful. It bears honourable scars. There are certain historic scratches. On the left side, bow-wards, is its pride, a clumsy, irregular, extensive lump, like part of a relief-map of Palestine or Sparta. That is a patch. On one golden autumn day, while the canoe was still young, as we paddled gaily along to the pace of En roulant ma boule roulant, a rasp-like rock rose up and tore a deathly strip of canvas from the frame of my hitherto unmarred treasure. I mended it thoroughly, but not neatly. On one of the thwarts is the piece of rope knotted to receive the blades of the paddles on the portage. When the canoe was making ready for her maiden voyage, that rope was knotted by as true a son of the Canadian woods as ever trod them, albeit his youth was spent in Derbyshire. It has never been removed. Then there is an extra thwart which Tom put in, for greater ease in portaging. As for paddles, we had two, tried and therefore trusted. We were advised to take three, but we had an infantile confidence in our ability to avoid accidents, and declined the extra weight.

My chief difficulty with the Canoe has been a name. When it was new, it seemed to need no name. The Canoe or She was amply thrilling. Later on, during the years when the duty of re-painting weighed heavily upon me, though not heavily enough, I pondered over a name. This name, once found, was to be painted upon it, in plain white characters. But when I finally decided upon Goulais, rather than Algoma, the name froze on my brush. A name on a canoe, however severely painted, was too unheroic, smacked too much of cushion-burdened, gramophone-bearing, lovey-dovey craft that lolled up and down the swooning lagoons of towns and cities. Nevertheless, in the privacy of camp or lake or river, I would sometimes call her the Goulais. But even to this day a shyness comes over me when I try to give the Canoe a name. I thought that I might use the name in the comparative remoteness of this narrative, like a bashful lover who can wax bold by way of the postal service, though he be stricken dumb in the presence. It’s no use: it can’t be helped; she can only be the Canoe. A third name has been suggested by two friends, but it lacks respect, romance, bushiness, appropriateness, and even intelligibility to any but the college songsters of a generation or two ago and a few girl guides. I give it out of a burdensome necessity laid upon me for completeness. It is The Walloping Window-Blind.

There were various other sundries in our outfit, but for the moment, and indeed until they come into the story, they will be dismissed as the Etceteras. They included two cans of soup. By this time I had learned the folly of liquid supplies, which merely add weight of water. Two pounds of white beans will supply a dozen meals, whereas two pounds of canned beans contribute only to two meals, and bush water, boiled, is quite as nourishing, and fully as healthful, as canning-factory water. But there are usually one or two meals before the portaging begins; hence, before the need of economy in weight requires consideration. The soup was for these. Even portability can be so completely disregarded for the first meal that we set out with a large, juicy blueberry pie.

One superfluity is regularly taken along with us. I have a modest camera. At one time I bought a book on the rudiments of amateur photography, and a technical manual with a fancy dial to show the actinic values of the several hours, weeks and months of the year, together with instructions as to proper exposures. These aids to perfection must still be somewhere about the place. At an indefinitely future time I shall resume the study of photography, but not so long as I can continue to find delight on stormy February evenings in poring over my botched camera records of bygone fishing joys. Until then I expose my lens one twenty-fifth of a second, and restrict my experiments to deciding between eleven and sixteen for aperture. This should convey enough information as to my standing in the subject of photography.

As I say, I have a camera. Now I maintain that one camera for every two inhabitants is adequate for Canada. It is a silly idea for Tom to carry a camera into the bush when I have one. His does take better pictures than mine, but why have two? Tom’s camera has served one useful purpose, I must admit. He is an enthusiastic trail man, and at that time was an inexperienced one. Now it seemed at times advisable to husband my strength—naturally for the good of the expedition as a whole, including Tom. Unfortunately, the only way of husbanding one’s strength in such a case is by unhusbanding the other man’s. Sometimes, as I watched with solicitude the piling up of Tom’s load on his bowed shoulders, and hunched my own appraisingly, conscience awoke and tapped me timidly. Then I would mutter very low, “Well, you would bring that kodak of yours along. It’s your own fault if you have to carry an extra twenty pounds!” Thereupon conscience would mumble drowsily, turn over once, and slumber dreamlessly again. On the whole, I am glad that Tom brings his camera.

Probably there are items which I have not mentioned, and which occur to the mind of the reader. More likely there are many items which the reader did not require to have mentioned. In compensation, I shall omit all further description of our preparations, shall load the canoe silently on top of the car, shall say nothing of adventures between Toronto and North Bay, nothing of the irksome wait for the Transcontinental Limited which took our disreputable but clean persons and belongings on board at eleven o’clock that night, before plunging into the wilderness of northern Algonquin Park. I shall say even less of the miserable efforts to sleep, and shall resume the narrative only at the point where a facetious trainman shook us awake and shouted, “Next town, Radiant!” We gathered our stuff, and when the train came to a stop in the inky blackness of two o’clock on a moonless, cloudy summer night, we tumbled into the opaqueness. We followed the trainman’s lantern up to the baggage-coach, from which our canoe was being unloaded.

“Good night! Good luck!”

The lantern swung its signal, the trainman climbed aboard; in another minute the rear lights of the Limited had disappeared round the bend; and the blackness settled upon us. We were in the bush.