The Lure of the Labrador Wild | Page 6

further ascent
seemed unpractical. From this point, with packs on our backs, we made
a difficult foot journey of several days to the Susan River valley.
I shall not attempt to describe my feelings when at last we came into
the valley where Hubbard died and where we had suffered so much.
Man changes with the fleeting years and a civilized world changes, but
the untrod wilderness never changes. Before us lay the same rushing

river I remembered so well, the same starved forest of spruce with its
pungent odor, and there was the clump of spruce trees in which our last
camp was pitched just as I had seen it last. Malone and Blake remained
by the river bank while I approached alone what to me was sacred
ground. Time fell away, and I believe that I expected, when I stepped
beside the boulder before which his tent was pitched when we said our
last farewell on that dismal October morning ten years ago, to hear
Hubbard's voice welcome me as of old. The charred wood of his camp
fire might, from all appearances, have but just grown cold. The boughs,
which I had broken and arranged for his couch, and upon which he
slept and died, were withered but undisturbed, and I could identify
exactly the spot where he lay. There were his worn old moccasins, and
one of the leather mittens, which, in his last entry in his diary he said he
might eat if need be. Near the dead fire were some spoons and other
small articles, as we had left them, and scattered about were remnants
of our tent.
Lovingly we put ourselves to our task. Judge Malone, with a brush
improvised from Blake's stiff hair, and with white lead intended for
canoe repairs, lettered upon the boulder this inscription:
Leonidas Hubbard, Jr., Intrepid Explorer And Practical Christian Died
Here Oct. 18, 1903. "Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know."
John XIV.--4.
Then with hammer and chisel I cut the inscription deep into the rock,
and we filled the letters with white lead to counteract the effect of the
elements.
It was dark when the work was finished, and by candlelight, beneath
the stars, I read, from the same Testament I used in 1903, the fourteenth
of John and the thirteenth of First Corinthians, the chapters which I
read to Hubbard on the morning of our parting. Judge Malone read the
Fiftieth Psalm. We sang some hymns and then knelt about the withered
couch of boughs, each of us three with the feeling that Hubbard was
very close to us.
In early morning we shouldered our packs again, and with a final look
at Hubbard's last camp, turned back to the valley of the Beaver and new
adventures. DILLON WALLACE. Beacon-on-the-Hudson, November
eighteenth, 1913.

CONTENTS

I. The Object of the Expedition II. Off at Last III. On the Edge of the
Wilderness IV. The Plunge into the Wild V. Still in the Awful Valley
VI. Searching for a Trail VII. On a Real River at Last VIII.
"Michikamau or Bust!" IX. And There was Michikamau! X. Prisoners
of the Wind XI. We Give It Up XII. The Beginning of the Retreat XIII.
Hubbard's Grit XIV. Back Through the Ranges XV. George's Dream
XVI. At the Last Camp XVII. The Parting XVIII. Wandering Alone
XIX. The Kindness of the Breeds XX. How Hubbard Went to Sleep
XXI. From Out the Wild XXII. A Strange Funeral Procession XXIII.
Over the Ice XXIV. Hubbard's Message

Acknowledgment is due Mr. Frank Barkley Copley, a personal and
literary friend of Mr. Hubbard, for assistance rendered in the
preparation of this volume.
D. W. New York, January, 1905.

THE LURE OF THE LABRADOR WILD

I. THE OBJECT OF THE EXPEDITION
"How would you like to go to Labrador, Wallace?" It was a snowy
night in late November, 1901, that my friend, Leonidas Hubbard, Jr.,
asked me this question. All day he and I had been tramping through the
snow among the Shawangunk Mountains in southern New York, and
when the shades of evening fell we had built a lean-to of boughs to
shelter us from the storm. Now that we had eaten our supper of bread
and bacon, washed down with tea, we lay before our roaring campfire,
luxuriating in its glow and warmth.
Hubbard's question was put to me so abruptly that it rather startled me.
"Labrador!" I exclaimed. "Now where in the world is Labrador?"
Of course I knew it was somewhere in the north-eastern part of the
continent; but so many years had passed since I laid away my old
school geography that its exact situation had escaped my memory, and
the only other knowledge I had retained of the country was a