Читать книгу Musk-Ox, Bison, Sheep and Goat - Owen Wister - Страница 6

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Except in the summer, when the caribou are running in vast herds, venture into the Barren Grounds entails a struggle with both cold and hunger. It is either a feast or a famine; more frequently the latter than the former. So there was nothing extraordinary in being upon our third day without food at the first musk-ox killing to which I have referred. Yet the lack of nourishment was not perhaps as trying as the wind, which seemed to sweep directly from the frozen seas, so strong that we had to bend low in pushing forward against it, and so bitter as to cut our faces cruelly. Throughout my journey into this silent land of the lone North the wind caused me more real suffering than the semi-starvation state in which we were more or less continuously. Indeed, for the first few weeks I had utmost difficulty in travelling; the wind appeared to take the very breath out of my body and the activity out of my muscles. I was physically in magnificent shape, for I had spent a couple of weeks at Fort Resolution, on Great Slave Lake, and what with plenty of caribou meat and a daily run of from ten to twenty miles on snow-shoes by way of keeping in training, I was about as fit as I have been at any time in my life. Therefore the severe struggle with the wind impressed me the more. But the novelty wore off in a couple of weeks, and though the conditions were always trying, they became more endurable as I grew accustomed to the daily combat.

One of the first lessons I learned was to keep my face free from covering, and also as clean shaven as was possible under such circumstances. It makes me smile now to remember the elaborate hood arrangement which was knitted for me in Canada, and that then seemed to me one of the most important articles of my equipment. It covered the entire head, ears, and neck, with openings only for eyes and mouth, and in town I had viewed it as a great find; but I threw it away before I got within a thousand miles of the Barren Grounds. The reason is obvious: my breath turned the front of the hood into a sheet of ice before I had run three miles; and as there was no fire in the Barren Grounds to thaw it, of course it was an impossible thing to wear in that region and a poor thing in any region of low temperature. After other experiments, I found the simplest and most comfortable head-gear to be my own long hair, which hung even with my jaw, bound about just above the ears by a handkerchief, and the open hood of my caribou-skin capote drawn forward over all.

I learned a great many things about hunting the musk-ox on this first effort, and not the least memorable was the lesson of how very difficult an animal it is to score on without the aid of a dog. This is solely due to the lie of the land. The physical character of the Barren Grounds is of the rolling or prairie type. Standing on the first elevation after passing beyond the last timber, you look north across a great expanse of desert, apparently flat country dotted with lakes innumerable, and broken here and there by rock-topped ridges. When you get actually into the country, you find these ridges, though not high, are yet higher than they look to be, and the travelling in general very rough. In summer there is no travel over the Barren Grounds, except by canoe; for barring the generous deposit of broken rock, it is practically a vast swamp. In the winter, of course, this is frozen over and topped by a foot or a foot and a half of snow. It was a surprise to find no greater depth of snow, but the fall is light in the very far North, and the continuous gales pack and blow it so that what remains on the ground is firm as earth. For that reason the snow-shoes used in the Barren Grounds are of the smallest pattern used anywhere. They are from six to eight inches wide, three feet long, and, because of the dry character of the snow, have rather closer lacing than any other shoe. This is the shoe used also throughout the Athabasca-Slave-Mackenzie River sections. The snow nowhere along this line of travel is over a couple of feet in depth, is light and dry and the “tripping” shoe, so called, is the very best possible for such kind of going. In the spring, when the snow is a little heavier, the lacing is more open, otherwise the shoe is unchanged.

It is well known, I suppose, that the Barren Grounds are devoid absolutely not only of trees but even of brush, except for some scattered, stunted bushes that in summer are to be found in occasional spots at the water’s edge, but may not be depended upon for fuel. From Great Slave Lake north to the timber’s edge is about three hundred miles; beyond that is a stretch of country perhaps of another hundred miles, suggestively called the Land of Little Sticks by the Indians, over which are scattered and widely separated little patches of small pine, sometimes of an acre in extent, sometimes a little less and sometimes a little more. They seem to be a chain of wooded islands in this desert that connect the main timber line (which, by the way, does not end abruptly, but straggles out for many miles, growing thinner and thinner until it ends, and the Land of Little Sticks begins) with the last free growth; and I never found them nearer together than a good day’s journey. About three or four days’ travel takes you through this Land of Little Sticks and brings you to the last wood. The last wood that I found was a patch of about four or five acres with trees two or three inches in diameter at their largest, although one or two isolated ones were perhaps as large as five or six inches. Here you take the fire-wood for your trip into the Barrens.

I have been often asked why the periods of starvation experienced in musk-ox hunting could not be obviated by carrying food. I have been asked, in a word, why I did not haul supplies. The patent answer is that, in the first place, I had none to take; and that, in the second place, if I had had a car-load at Great Slave Lake to draw upon, I would have been unable to carry provisions with me into the Barren Grounds. It is to be remembered that Great Slave Lake, where I outfitted for the Barren Grounds, is nine hundred miles from the railroad, that every pound of provision is freighted by water usually, or by dog sledge on emergency. The Hudson’s Bay Company’s posts, beginning at Athabasca Landing, are located along the great waterways—Athabasca, Slave, Mackenzie rivers—about every two hundred miles. These are small trading posts, having powder and ball, and things to wear, and of ornament, rather than things to eat. Provisions are taken in, but to a limited extent, and there is never a winter which does not see the end of the company’s supplies before the ice breaks up and the first boat of the year arrives. There is never a plenty even for the usual demand, and an unusual demand, if it is to be met, means a trimming all round. In snow-shoeing from the railroad to Great Slave Lake I secured fresh sledge-dogs and men and provisions at every post, which carried me to the next post north, whence men and dogs returned to their own post, while I continued north with a new supply. Although there was comparative plenty at the time of my trip, so carefully are the stores husbanded that I never could get supplies more than just enough to carry me to the next post; and these were invariably skimped, so that for a five days’ journey I habitually started with about four days’ supplies.

Thus it is easy to see why there were no provisions at Great Slave Lake for me to draw on; and, as I have said, had there been an abundance, it would have been impossible for me to carry them (and would be equally so for any one else venturing into the Barren Grounds at the same season of the year) simply for lack of transportation, which, after all, is the great problem of this North Country. One would think that in a land where the only means of travel for most of the year, where almost the very existence of the people depends so largely on sledge-dogs, there would be an abundance of them and of the best breed; yet the truth is that sledge-dogs of any kind are scarce even on the river thoroughfares. At the company’s posts there is not more than one, or at the most two, spare trains; among the Indians, upon whom, of course, I had to rely when I outfitted for the Barren Grounds, dogs are even scarcer. Fort Resolution is one of the most important posts of the Hudson’s Bay Company in all that great country, and yet the settlement itself is very small, numbering perhaps fifty; the Indians—Dog Ribs and Yellow Knives—living in the woods from six to ten days’ travel from the post. I found it not only extremely difficult to get Indians to go with me, but secured seven dog teams only after widest search. This reads strange, I am sure, yet it was all but impossible for me to secure the number of dogs and sledges required for my trip.

But, some of my friends have asked, with seven sledges and twenty-eight dogs, surely there was room to carry enough provision to insure against starvation in the Barren Grounds? Not at all. There was not room to carry more than tea, tobacco, our sleeping-furs, and moccasins and duffel socks. Moccasins and duffel and tobacco and tea are the highly essential articles in the Barren Ground outfit. The duffel is a light kind of blanket which is made into leggings and also into socks. You wear three pairs inside your moccasins, and at night, if you have been well advised, you put next to your feet a slipper moccasin of the unborn musk-ox, hair inside. It must be remembered that in the Barren Grounds you have no fire to thaw out or dry frozen and wet clothing. The tiny fire you do have is only enough to make tea. Therefore abundant duffel and moccasins are necessary, first, to have a dry, fresh change, and second, to replenish them as they wear out, as they do more than elsewhere, because of the rocky going. As for tea and tobacco, no human being could stand the cold and the hardship of a winter Barren Ground trip without putting something hot into his stomach every day, while the tobacco is at once a stimulant and a solace. The space left on the sledge after the tea and tobacco and moccasins and duffel have been stowed must be filled with the sticks that you cut into pieces (just the width of the sledge) at the last wood on the edge of the Barren Grounds proper. The sledge is a toboggan about nine feet in length and a foot and a half in width, made of two or three birch slats held together by crosspieces lashed on to them with caribou thongs, turned over and back at the front into a dasher, which is covered by a caribou apron (sometimes decorated in crude painting), and held in its curved position by strings of babiche,—as the thongs of caribou skin are called,—the same material which furnishes the snow-shoe lacing. On this sledge is fitted a caribou-skin body, about seven feet in length, the full width of the sledge, and a foot and a half deep. Into this is stowed the load. Then the top sides are drawn together, and the whole lashed firmly to the sledge by side lines. This must be done with the care and security bestowed upon the diamond hitch used on pack-animals; for the sledge in the course of a day’s travel is roughly knocked about.

It requires no further explanation, I fancy, to show why it is not possible to carry provisions.

One of my friends on my return from this trip suggested the possibility of shipping dogs into the country; of doing, in a word, somewhat as do the pole-hunting expeditions. That might be possible to a wealthy adventurer, but, even so, I should consider it an experiment of very doubtful results, simply because of the impossibility of feeding the dogs after they had arrived in the country, or of providing for them after you had started into the Barren Grounds. There is a period in the summer at Great Slave Lake when any number of dogs could be sufficiently fed on the quantities of fish that are then to be caught in the lake; and no doubt enough fish could be stored to feed them in the season when the lakes are frozen, if the dogs remained at the post. Even so, that would keep busy a number of especially engaged fishermen. But when you started for the Barren Grounds with all these dogs, your feeding problem would be an overwhelming one indeed, for only in the midsummer, when the caribou are to be found in large herds, would it be possible to kill meat for a great many dogs; and in midsummer you would not, could not, use dogs at all; at that season the Barren Grounds are invaded by means of the chain of lakes and short portages which begin at the northeastern end of the Great Slave Lake. Even travelling along the river the question of dog feed is a serious one, and you are obliged to carry the fish which have been caught the previous summer and stored at the posts in great frozen heaps. It is obvious, therefore, that there is no easy or comfortable way of getting into the Barren Grounds. It would be impracticable to do other than rely on the resources at hand and go into the silent land just as do the Indians. It is simply impracticable to do other than to depend on the caribou and the musk-oxen for food for both men and dogs.