Читать книгу The Wild North Land - William Francis Sir Butler - Страница 9

Table of Contents

The Wilderness.—A Sunset-Scene.—A white Savage.—Cerf-vola the Untiring.—Doggerel for a Dog.—The Hill of the Wolverine.—The Indian Paradise.—I plan a Surprise.—Biscuits and Water.

It was the 4th of October, bright with the warmth of the fading summer—that quiet glow which lingers over the face of nature, like the hectic flush upon a dying beauty, ere the wintry storms come to kill.

Small and insignificant, the Musk-Rat Creek flows on towards Lake Manitoba amidst bordering thickets of oak and elm trees. On each side, a prairie just beginning to yellow under the breath of the cold night wind; behind, towards the east, a few far-scattered log-houses smoke, and a trace of husbandry; the advanced works of that army whose rear-guard reaches to the Vistula; before, towards the west, the sun going down over the great silent wilderness. How difficult to realize it! How feeble are our minds to gauge its depths!

He who rides for months through the vast solitudes sees during the hours of his daily travel an unbroken panorama of distance. The seasons come and go; grass grows and flowers die; the fire leaps with tiger bounds along the earth; the snow lies still and quiet over hill and lake; the rivers rise and fall, but the rigid features of the wilderness rest unchanged. Lonely, silent, and impassive; heedless of man, season, or time, the weight of the Infinite seems to brood over it. Once only in the hours of day and night a moment comes when this impassive veil is drawn from its features, and the eye of the wanderer catches a glimpse of the sunken soul of the wilderness; it is the moment which follows the sunset; then a deeper stillness steals over the earth, colours of wondrous hue rise and spread along the western horizon. In a deep sea of emerald and orange of fifty shades, mingled and interwoven together, rose-coloured isles float anchored to great golden threads; while, far away, seemingly beyond and above all, one broad flash of crimson light, the parting sun’s last gift, reddens upwards to the zenith. And then, when every moment brings a change, and the night gathers closer to the earth, and some waveless, nameless lake glimmers in uncertain shore-line and in shadow of inverted hill-top; when a light that seems born of another world (so weirdly distant is it from ours) lingers along the western sky, then hanging like a lamp over the tomb of the sun, the Evening Star gleams out upon the darkening wilderness.

It may be only a fancy, a conceit bred from loneliness and long wandering, but at such times the great solitude has seemed to me to open its soul, and that in its depths I read its secrets.

Ten days dawned and died; the Mauvais Bois, the Sand Ridges, western shore of an older world’s immense lake, the Pine Creek, the far-stretching hills of the Little Saskatchewan rose, drew near, and faded behind us. A wild, cold storm swept down from the north, and, raging a day and a night, tore the yellow leaves from the poplar thickets, and scared the wild fowl far southward to a warmer home.

Late on the 10th of October we reached the Hudson’s Bay Company’s post of Beaver Creek, the western limit to the travels of my friend. Here, after a stay of three days and a feast of roasted beaver, we parted; he to return to Killarney, St. Stephen’s, and Denominational Education—a new name for the old feud between those great patriot armies, the Ins and the Outs; I to seek the lonely lands where, far beyond the distant Saskatchewan, the great Unchagah, parent of a still mightier stream, rolls through remote lakes and whispering pines its waters to the Polar Seas.

With one man, three horses and three dogs, and all those requisites of food, arms, and raiment with which a former journey had familiarized me, I started on the 14th of October bound for the North-west. I was virtually alone; my companion was a half-breed taken at chance from the wigwam at the scene of the dog Pony’s midnight escapade on the Red River. Chance had on this occasion proved a failure, and the man had already shown many symptoms of worthlessness. He had served as a soldier in an American corps raised by a certain Hatch, to hold in check the Sioux after the massacre of Minnesota in 1862. A raid made by nine troopers of this corps, against an Indian tent occupied by some dozen women and children, appears to have been the most noteworthy event in the history of Hatch’s Battalion. Having surrounded the wigwam in the night, these cowards shot the miserable inmates, then scalping and mutilating their bodies they returned to their comrades, bearing the gory scalp-locks as trophies of their prowess.

Hatch is said to have at once forwarded to Washington a despatch, announcing “a decisive victory over the Sioux by the troops under his command.” But a darker sequel to the tale must remain in shadow, for, if the story told to a Breton missionary rests on a base of truth, the history of human guilt may be searched in vain for a parallel of atrocity.

I had other companions besides this ci-devant trooper, of a far more congenial nature, to share my spare time with. A good dog is so much a nobler beast than an indifferent man that one sometimes gladly exchanges the society of one for that of the other.

A great French writer has told us that animals were put on earth to show us the evil effects of passions run riot and unchecked. But it seems to me that the reverse would be closer to the truth. The humanity which Napoleon deemed a dog taught to man on Bassano’s battle-field is not the only virtue we can learn from that lower world which is bound to us by such close ties, and yet lies so strangely apart from us. Be that as it may, a man can seldom feel alone if he has a dog to share his supper, to stretch near him under the starlight, to answer him with tail-wag, or glance of eye, or prick of ear.

Day after day Cerf-vola and his comrades trotted on in all the freedom which summer and autumn give to the great dog family in the north. Now chasing a badger, who invariably popped into his burrow in time to save his skin; now sending a pack of prairie grouse flying from the long grass; now wading breast-deep into a lake where a few wild ducks still lingered, loath to quit their summer nesting-haunts.

Of all the dogs I have known Cerf-vola possessed the largest share of tact. He never fought a pitched battle, yet no dog dared dispute his supremacy. Other dogs had to maintain their leadership by many a deadly conflict, but he quietly assumed it, and invariably his assumption was left unchallenged; nay, even upon his arrival at some Hudson Bay fort, some place wherein he had never before set foot, he was wont to instantly appoint himself director-general of all the Company’s dogs, whose days from earliest puppyhood had been passed within the palisades. I have often watched him at this work, and marvelled by what mysterious power he held his sway. I have seen two or three large dogs flee before a couple of bounds merely made by him in their direction, while a certain will-some-one-hold-me-back? kind of look pervaded his face, as though he was only prevented from rending his enemy into small pieces by the restraining influence which the surface of the ground exercised upon his legs.

His great weight no doubt carried respect with it. At the lazy time of the year he weighed nearly 100 pounds, and his size was in no way diminished by the immense coat of hair and fine fur which enveloped him. Had Sir Boyle Roche known this dog he would not have given to a bird alone the faculty of being in two places at once, for no mortal eye could measure the interval between Cerf-vola’s demolishment of two pieces of dog-meat, or Pemmican, flung in different directions at the same moment.

Thus we journeyed on. Sometimes when the sheen of a lake suggested the evening camp, while yet the sun was above the horizon, my three friends would accompany me on a ramble through the thicket-lined hills. At such times, had any Indian watched from sedgy shore or bordering willow copse the solitary wanderer who, with dogs following close, treaded the lonely lake shore, he would have probably carried to his brethren a strange story of the “white man’s medicine.” He would have averred that he had heard a white man talking to a big, bushy-tailed dog, somewhere amidst the Touchwood Hills, and singing to him a “great medicine song” when the sun went down.

And if now we reproduce for the reader the medicine song which the white man strung together for his bushy-tailed dog, we may perhaps forestall some critic’s verdict by prefixing to it the singularly appropriate title of

DOGGEREL.

And so, old friend, we are met again, companions still to be,

Across the waves of drifted snow, across the prairie sea.

Again we’ll tread the silent lake, the frozen swamp, the fen,

Beneath the snow-crown’d sombre pine we’ll build our camp again:

And long before the icy dawn, while hush’d all nature lies,

And weird and wan the white lights flash across the northern skies;

Thy place, as in past days thou’lt take, the leader of the train,

To steer until the stars die out above the dusky plain;

Then on, thro’ space by wood and hill, until the wintry day

In pale gleams o’er the snow-capped ridge has worn itself away,

And twilight bids us seek the brake, where midst the pines once more

The fire will gleam before us, the stars will glimmer o’er.

There stretch’d upon the snow-drift, before the pine log’s glare,

Thy master’s couch and supper with welcome thou wilt share,

To rest, unless some prowling wolf should keep thee watchful still,

While lonely through the midnight sounds his wail upon the hill.

And when the storm raves around, and thick and blinding snow

Comes whirling in wild eddies around, above, below;

Still all unmoved thou’lt keep thy pace as manfully as when

Thy matchless mettle first I tried in lone Pasquia’s glen.

Thus day by day we’ll pierce the wilds where rolls the Arctic stream,

Where Athabasca’s silent lakes, through whispering pine-trees gleam.

Until, where far Unchagah’s flood by giant cliffs is crown’d,

Thy bells will feed the echoes, long hungering for a sound.

Old dog, they say thou hast no life beyond this earth of ours,

That toil and truth give thee no place amidst Elysian bowers.

Ah well, e’en so, I look for thee when all our danger’s past,

That on some hearth-rug, far at home, thou’lt rest thy limbs at last.

A long distance of rolling plain, of hills fringed with thickets, of treeless waste, and lakes spreading into unseen declivities, stretches out between the Qu’Appelle and Saskatchewan rivers. Roamed over by but few bands of Indians, and almost bereft of the larger kind of game, whose bleached bones cover it thickly, this expanse lies in unbroken solitude for more than three hundred miles. Through it the great trail to the north lays its long, winding course; but no other trace of man is to be found; and over lake and thicket, hill and waste, broods the loneliness of the untenanted.

Once it was a famous field of Indian fight, in the old days when Crees and Assineboine strove for mastery. Now it has almost lost the tradition of battle, but now and again a hill-top or a river-course, whose French or English name faintly echoes the Indian meaning, tells to the traveller who cares to look below the surface some story of fight in bygone times.

The hill of the Wolverine and the lonely Spathanaw Watchi have witnessed many a deed of Indian daring and Indian perfidy in days not long passed away, but these deeds are now forgotten, for the trader as he unyokes his horses at their base, and kindles his evening fire, little recks of such things, and hails the hill-top only as a landmark on his solitary road.

Alone in a vast waste the Spathanaw Watchi lifts his head, thickets and lakes are at his base, a lonely grave at top, around four hundred miles of horizon; a view so vast that endless space seems for once to find embodiment, and at a single glance the eye is satiated with immensity. There is no mountain range to come up across the sky-line, no river to lay its glistening folds along the middle distance, no dark forest to give shade to foreground or to fringe perspective, no speck of life, no track of man, nothing but the wilderness. Reduced thus to its own nakedness, space stands forth with almost terrible grandeur. One is suddenly brought face to face with that enigma which we try to comprehend by giving to it the names of endless, interminable, measureless; that dark inanity which broods upon a waste of moorland at dusk, and in which fancy sees the spectral and the shadowy.

VIEW FROM THE SPATHANAW WATCHI.

Yet in this view from the Spathanaw there is nothing dimly seen; the eye travels to the farthest distance without one effort of vision, and, reaching there, rests untired by its long gaze. As the traveller looks at this wonderful view he stands by the grave of an Indian, and he sees around him for four hundred miles the Indian Paradise. It was from scenes such as this, when the spring had covered them with greensward, and the wild herds darkened them by their myriads, that the shadowy sense of a life beyond the tomb took shape and form in the Red man’s mind.

It was the 25th of October when I once more drew near to the South Saskatchewan.

Amidst its high wooded banks the broad river rippled brightly along, as yet showing no trace of that winter now so close at hand. Two years before, all but a few days, I had reached this same river, then shored by dense masses of ice; and now, as I looked from the southern shore, the eye had no little difficulty in tracing through the lingering foliage of the summer the former point of passage, where on the cold November morning my favourite horse had gone down beneath the ice-locked river.

Crossing to the southern shore I turned eastward through a rich undulating land, and riding hard for one day reached the little mission station of Prince Albert, midway between the Red River and the Rocky Mountains.

Those who have followed me through former wanderings may remember a spot where two large rivers unite after many hundred miles of prairie wandering, and form one majestic current on the edge of the Great Northern Forest. To this spot, known as the “Grand Forks of the Saskatchewan,” I was now journeying, for there, while the autumn was yet younger, two friends had preceded me to build at the point of confluence a hut for our residence during the early winter.

The evening of the 28th of October found me pushing hastily through a broad belt of firs and pines which crosses the tongue of land between the rivers some ten miles from their junction; beyond this belt of trees the country opened out, but, as it finally narrowed to the point of confluence, the dark pine-clumps, outliers of the dense Northern Forest, again rose into view. With these features a previous visit had made me acquainted; but the night had now closed in ere yet the fir forest had been passed, and the rain, which all day had been ceaseless, settled down with darkness into a still heavier torrent. As we emerged from the pines my baggage-cart suddenly broke down, and there only remained the alternative of camping by the scene of the disaster, or pushing on for the river junction on foot.

Unfortunately the prospect of unexpectedly walking in upon my friends, housed in the depths of the wilderness, amidst the wild rain-storm of the night, proved too strong a temptation; and having secured the cart as best we could against weather and wolves, we set out into the darkness. For more than an hour we walked hard through undulating ground intermixed with swamps and beaver dams, until at length the land began to decline perceptibly.

Descending thus for nearly a mile we came suddenly upon a large, quick-running river, whose waters chafed with sullen noise against boulder-lined shores, and hissed under the wild beating of the rain. With cautious steps we groped our way to the edge and cast a dry branch into the flood; it floated towards the left; the river, then, must be the South Saskatchewan. Was the junction of this river with the northern branch yet distant? or was it close at hand? for if it was near, then my home was near too.

Making our way along the shore we held on for some time, until suddenly there rose before us a steep bank, at the base of which the current ran in whirling eddies. To climb up a high bank on our left, and thus flank this obstacle, next became our toil; soon we found ourselves in a dense wood where innumerable fallen trees lay in endless confusion. For another hour we groped our way through this labyrinth in a vain attempt to reach the upper level, until at last, exhausted by hours of useless toil, wet, hungry, and bruised, I gave the reluctant word to camp.

To camp, what a mockery it seemed without blankets or covering save our rain-soaked clothes, without food save a few biscuits. The cold rain poured down through leafless aspens, and shelter there was none. It was no easy matter to find a dry match, but at length a fire was made, and from the surrounding wood we dragged dead trees to feed the flames. There is no necessity to dwell upon the miserable hours which ensued! All night long the rain hissed down, and the fire was powerless against its drenching torrents. Towards morning we sunk into a deep sleep, lying stretched upon the soaking ground.

At last a streak of dawn broke over the high eastern shore, the light struggled for mastery with the surrounding darkness and finally prevailed, and descending to the river showed the broad current sweeping on to the north-east. Quitting without regret our cheerless bivouac, we climbed with stiff limbs the high overhanging bank, and gained the upper level. Far away the river still held its course to the north-east, deep sunken 300 feet below the prairie level: we were still distant from the Forks.

Retracing our steps through miles of fallen timber we reached the cart, but the morning had worn on to mid-day before our long-wished-for breakfast smoked in the kettle. Three hours later on, during an evening which had cleared sufficiently to allow the sun to glint through cloud rifts on pine forest and prairie, I reached the lofty ridge which overlooks the Forks of the Saskatchewan.