The Lure of the Labrador Wild | Page 6

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 confused sense of its being a sort of Arctic wilderness. Hubbard proceeded to enlighten me, by tracing with his pencil, on the fly- leaf of his notebook, an outline map of the peninsula.
"Very interesting," I commented. "But why do you wish to go there?"
"Man," he replied, "don't you realise it's about the only part of the continent that hasn't been explored? As a matter of fact, there isn't much more known of the interior of Labrador now than when Cabot discovered the coast more than four hundred years ago." He jumped up to throw more wood on the fire. "Think of it, Wallace!" he went on, "A great unknown land right near home, as wild and primitive to-day as it has always been! I want to see it. I want to get into a really wild country and have some of