The Long Labrador Trail | Page 9

There was little or no wind and we
had to go slowly to permit Duncan, in his rowboat, to keep pace with us.
Darkness was not far off when we reached Duncan's tilt (a small log
hut), three miles up the Nascaupee River, where we stopped for the
night.
This is the tilt in which Allen Goudy and Duncan lived at the time they
came to my rescue in 1903, and where I spent three days getting

strength for my trip down Grand Lake to the Post. It is Duncan's sup-
ply base in the winter months when he hunts along the Nascaupee
River, one hundred and twenty miles inland to Seal Lake. On this
hunting "path" Duncan has two hundred and fifty marten and forty fox
traps, and, in the spring, a few bear traps besides.
The country has been burned here. Just below Duncan's tilt is a
spruce-covered island, but the mainland has a stunted new growth of
spruce, with a few white birch, covering the wreck of the primeval
forest that was flame swept thirty odd years ago. Over some
considerable areas no new growth to speak of has appeared, and the
charred remains of the dead trees stand stark and gray, or lie about in
confusion upon the ground, giving the country a particularly dreary and
desolate appearance.
The morning of June twenty-ninth was overcast and threatened rain, but
toward evening the sky cleared.
Progress was slow, for the current in the river here was very strong, and
paddling or rowing against it was not easy. We had to stop several
times and wait for Duncan to overtake us with his boat. Once he halted
to look at a trap where he told us he had caught six black bears. It was
nearly sunset when we reached the mouth of the Red River, nineteen
miles above Grand Lake, where it flows into the Nascaupee from the
west. This is a wide, shallow stream whose red- brown waters were
quite in contrast to the clear waters of the Nas- caupee.
Opposite the mouth of the Red River, and on the eastern shore of the
Nascaupee, is the point where the old Indian trail was said to begin, and
on a knoll some fifty feet above the river we saw the wigwam poles of
an old Indian camp, and a solitary grave with a rough fence around it.
Here we landed and awaited Duncan, who had stopped at another of his
trapping tilts three or four hundred yards below. When he joined us a
little later, in answer to my inquiry as to whether this was the beginning
of the old trail, he answered, "'Tis where they says the Indians came out,
and some of the Indians has told me so. I supposes it's the place, sir."
"But have you never hunted here yourself?" I asked.

"No, sir, I've never been in here at all. I travels right past up the
Nascaupee. All I knows about it, sir, is what they tells me. I always
follows the Nascaupee, sir."
Above us rose a high, steep hill covered for two-thirds of the way from
its base with a thick growth of underbrush, but quite barren on top save
for a few bunches of spruce brush.
The old trail, unused for eight or ten years, headed toward the hill and
was quite easily traced for some fifty yards from the old camp. Then it
disappeared completely in a dense undergrowth of willows, alders and
spruce.
While Pete made preparation for our supper and Duncan unloaded his
boat and hauled it up preparatory to leaving it until his return from the
interior, the rest of us tried to follow the trail through the brush. But
beyond where the thick undergrowth began there was nothing at all that,
to us, resembled a trail. Finally, I instructed Pete to go with Richards
and see what he could do while the rest of us made camp. Pete started
ahead, forging his way through the thick growth. In ten minutes I heard
him shout from the hillside, "He here--I find him," and saw Pete
hurrying up the steep incline.
When Richards and Pete returned an hour later we had camp pitched
and supper cooking. They reported the trail, as far as they had gone,
very rough and hard to find. For some distance it would have to be cut
out with an ax, and nowhere was it bigger than a rabbit run. Duncan
rather favored going as far, as Seal Lake by the trail that he knew and
which followed the Nascaupee. This trail he believed to be much easier
than the long unused Indian trail, which was undoubtedly in many
places entirely obscured and in any case extremely difficult to follow. I
dismissed his suggestion, however,