The Arctic Prairies | Page 4

comprised the Hudson's Bay
Company officials, going to their posts or on tours of inspection. They
were a jolly crowd, like a lot of rollicking schoolboys, full of fun and
good-humour, chaffing and joking all day; but when a question of
business came up, the serious businessman appeared in each, and the
Company's interest was cared for with their best powers. The bottle was
not entirely absent in these scow fraternities, but I saw no one the
worse for liquor on the trip.
The men of mixed blood jabbered in French, Cree, and Chipewyan
chiefly, but when they wanted to swear, they felt the inadequacy of
these mellifluous or lisping tongues, and fell back on virile Saxon,
whose tang, projectivity, and wealth of vile epithet evidently supplied a
long-felt want in the Great Lone Land of the Dog and Canoe.
In the afternoon Preble and I pushed on in our boat, far in advance of
the brigade. As we made early supper I received for the twentieth time
a lesson in photography. A cock Partridge or Ruffed Grouse came and
drummed on a log in open view, full sunlight, fifty feet away. I went
quietly to the place. He walked off, but little alarmed. I set the camera
eight feet from the log, with twenty-five feet of tubing, and retired to a
good hiding-place. But alas! I put the tube on the left-hand pump, not
knowing that that was a dummy. The Grouse came back in three
minutes, drumming in a superb pose squarely in front of the camera. I
used the pump, but saw that it failed to operate; on going forward the
Grouse skimmed away and returned no more. Preble said, "Never mind;
there will be another every hundred yards all the way down the river,
later on." I could only reply, "The chance never comes but once," and
so it proved. We heard Grouse drumming many times afterward, but
the sun was low, or the places densely shaded, or the mosquitoes made
conditions impossible for silent watching; the perfect chance came but
once, as it always does, and I lost it.
About twenty miles below the Landing we found the abandoned winter
hut of a trapper; on the roof were the dried up bodies of 1 Skunk, 2

Foxes, and 30 Lynxes, besides the bones of 2 Moose, showing the
nature of the wild life about.
That night, as the river was brimming and safe, we tied up to the scows
and drifted, making 30 more miles, or 60 since embarking.
In the early morning, I was much struck by the lifelessness of the scene.
The great river stretched away northward, the hills rose abruptly from
the water's edge, everywhere extended the superb spruce forest, here
fortunately unburnt; but there seemed no sign of living creature outside
of our own numerous, noisy, and picturesque party. River, hills, and
woods were calm and silent. It was impressive, if disappointing; and,
when at last the fir stillness was broken by a succession of trumpet
notes from the Great Pileated Woodpecker, the sound went rolling on
and on, in reverberating echoes that might well have alarmed the bird
himself.
The white spruce forest along the banks is most inspiring, magnificent
here. Down the terraced slopes and right to the water's edge on the
alluvial soil it stands in ranks. Each year, of course, the floods undercut
the banks, and more trees fall, to become at last the flotsam of the shore
a thousand miles away.
There is something sad about these stately trees, densely packed, all
a-row, unflinching, hopelessly awaiting the onset of the inexorable,
invincible river. One group, somewhat isolated and formal, was a forest
life parallel to Lady Butler's famous "Roll Call of the Grenadiers."
At night we reached the Indian village of Pelican Portage, and landed
by climbing over huge blocks of ice that were piled along the shore.
The adult male inhabitants came down to our camp, so that the village
was deserted, except for the children and a few women.
As I walked down the crooked trail along which straggle the cabins, I
saw something white in a tree at the far end. Supposing it to be a
White-rabbit in a snare, I went near and found, to my surprise, first that
it was a dead house-cat, a rare species here; second, under it, eyeing it
and me alternately, was a hungry-looking Lynx. I had a camera, for it
was near sundown, and in the woods, so I went back to the boat and
returned with a gun. There was the Lynx still prowling, but now farther
from the village. I do not believe he would have harmed the children,
but a Lynx is game. I fired, and he fell without a quiver or a sound.