A Womans Way Through Unknown Labrador | Page 9

in the beautiful
Mamakating valley. Here he hunted and fished and worked, February
found him on a snowshoe trip in Northern Quebec with the Montagnais
Indian trappers, the outcome of which was his "Children of the Bush."
On April 1st, 1902, he entered the office as assistant editor of Outing.
Here was a new field and another opportunity for testing his fitness. He
threw himself into the work with characteristic energy and enthusiasm,
and his influence on the magazine was marked from the first. He soon

succeeded in projecting into it something of his own passionately
human personality. In the fall of that year a noted angler commented to
him on the change in it and his responsibility.
"When a big salmon comes to the top, there is a great swirl on the
water. You don't see the salmon, but you know he is there," he said.
Office work left little time for writing; but in the early autumn of that
year a vacation trip to the north shore of Lake Superior gave him two
articles, "Where Romance Lingers," and "Off Days on Superior's North
Shore."
In January 1903 the trip to Labrador was decided on, and his
preparation for it begun. Before the winter was over his plans were
made. On May 13th it was arranged with the magazine that it should
go as an Outing expedition. The preparation held for him the many
difficulties and trials common to such undertakings, but also, perhaps,
more than the usual pleasures.
The big map of Labrador looked back from the wall of the little study in
Congers. We stood before it a long time discussing plans and
possibilities. Then an eager, happy face was turned to me as he told
how he would write the story and how he would have grown when he
came home again.
On June 20th he sailed from New York with his little party.
In January following came that short message, "Mr. Hubbard died
October 18th in the interior of Labrador."
In March were received the letters containing that final record of his
life, which took from the hearts of those who loved him best the
intolerable bitterness, because it told that he had not only dreamed his
dream--he had attained his Vision.
It was a short, full life journey, and a joyous, undaunted heart that
traversed it. Almost the most beautiful of its attributes was the
joyousness.

He was "glad of Life because it gave him a chance to love and to work
and to play."
He never failed to "look up at the stars."
He thought "every day of Christ."
Sometimes towards evening in dreary November, when the clouds hang
heavy and low, covering all the sky, and the hills are solemn and
sombre, and the wind is cold, and the lake black and sullen, a break in
the dark veil lets through a splash of glorious sunshine. It is so very
beautiful as it falls into the gloom that your breath draws in quick and
you watch it with a thrill. Then you see that it moves towards you. All
at once you are in the midst of it, it is falling round you and seems to
have paused as if it meant to stay with you and go no farther.
While you revel in this wonderful light that has stopped to enfold you,
suddenly it is not falling round you any more, and you see it moving
steadily on again, out over the marsh with its bordering evergreens,
touching with beauty every place it falls upon, forward up the valley,
unwavering, without pause, till you are holding your breath as it begins
to climb the hills away yonder.
It is gone.
The smoke blue clouds hang lower and heavier, the hills stand more
grimly solemn and sombre, the wind is cold, the lake darker and more
sullen, and the beauty has gone out of the marsh.
Then--then it is night.
But you do not forget the Light.
You know it still shines--somewhere.
CHAPTER II
SLIPPING AWAY INTO THE WILDERNESS

It was on the 15th of July, 1903, that Leonidas Hubbard, Jr., my
husband, with two companions, set out from Northwest River Post,
near the head of Lake Melville, for a canoe trip into the interior of
Labrador, which be hoped would not only afford him an interesting
wilderness experience but also an opportunity to explore and map one,
and perhaps both, of these rivers, the Northwest River draining Lake
Michikamau to Lake Melville, and the George River draining the
northern slope of the plateau to Ungava Bay.
Misled by information obtained at the post, which corresponded with
the indications of the map he carried, that of the Geological Survey of
Canada, Mr. Hubbard took the Susan River, which enters Grand Lake
at the head of