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Wild North Land, The Story of a Winter Journey with Dogs across Northern North America

<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII.</h2></div> <div class="blockquot inhead medium"> Still westward.—The dangers of the ice.—We enter the main range.—In the mountains.—A grizzly.—Tho death of the moose.—Peace River Pass.—Pete Toy.—The Ominica.—“Travellers” at home. </div> We held our way up the river, fighting many a battle with the current. Round the points the stream ran strong, and our canoe was a big, lumbering affair, hollowed out of a single cotton-wood tree by Jacques, years before on the Fraser River, and ill-adapted to the ice, which was our most dangerous enemy. Many a near shave we had of being crushed under its heavy floes as we coasted along beneath their impending masses. When the river breaks up, portions of it stronger than the rest remain still frozen. At the back of these the floating ice jams, and the river rises rapidly behind the barrier thus flung across it. Then the pack gives way, and the pent-up waters rapidly lower. But along the shore, on either side, the huge blocks of ice lie stranded, heaped one upon another, and the water, still falling,264 brushes off from beneath the projecting pieces, leaving a steep wall of ice, sometimes twenty and thirty feet, brightly rising above the water. Along these impending masses we had to steer our canoe, and hazardous work it was, for every now and again some huge fragment, many tons in weight, would slide from its high resting-place, and crash into the river with a roar of thunder, driving the billows before it half-way across the wide river, and making our hearts jump half as much again. At one point where the river ran with unusual velocity we battled long beneath a very high ice-wall. Once or twice the current carried us against its sides. We dared not touch it with our poles, for it hung by a thread, so far did its summit project over our heads. Gently we stole our way up from beneath it, and were still within thirty yards of it when the great boulder, looming high, crashed into the river. On the fourth day we got clear of this shore ice, and drew near the main range of the mountains. But there was one important question which experience soon told me there was no cause for anxiety about—it was the question of food. Game was abundant; the lower hills were thickly stocked with blue grouse—a noble bird, weighing between three and four pounds. 265 The bays of the river held beaver, swimming through the driftwood, and ere we had reached the mountain gate a moose had fallen to my trusty smooth-bore, in one of the grassy glens between the river and the snowy range. It was literally a hunter’s paradise. This was the worst time of the year, except for beaver, but necessity knows no game law, and the wilderness at all times must feed its wanderers. We usually camped a couple of hours before sun-down, for in this northern land the daylight was more than long enough to stiffen our shoulders, and make our arms ache from pole or paddle. Then came the time to stretch one’s legs over these great grassy uplands, so steep, yet so free of rock; so full of projecting point and lofty promontory, beneath which the river lay in long silvery reaches, while around on every side the mountains in masses of rock and snow, lay like giant sentinels, guarding the great road which Nature had hewn through their midst. At the entrance to the main range, the valley of the river is about two miles wide. The river itself preserves its general width of 250 to 300 yards with singular uniformity. The reaches are from one to three miles in length, the banks are dry, the lower beaches are level and well wooded, and the current becomes deeper and less rapid. 266 On the 8th of May we reached, early in the morning, the entrance to the main range. A short rapid marks it, a rapid easy to run at all stages of water, and up which we towed our canoe, carrying the more perishable articles to save them from the spray—a precaution which was, however, not necessary, as no water was shipped. We were now in the mountains. From the low terrace along the shore they rose in stupendous masses; their lower ridges clothed in forests of huge spruce, poplar, and birch; their middle heights covered in dense thickets of spruce alone; their summits cut into a thousand varied peaks, bare of all vegetation, but bearing aloft into the sunshine 8000 feet above us the glittering crowns of snow which, when evening stilled the breezes, shone reflected in the quiet waters, vast and motionless. Wonderful things to look at are these white peaks, perched up so high above our world. They belong to us, yet they are not of us. The eagle links them to the earth; the cloud carries to them the message of the sky; the ocean sends them her tempest; the air rolls her thunders beneath their brows, and launches her lightnings from their sides; the sun sends them his first greeting, and leaves them his latest kiss. Yet motionless they keep their crowns of snow, their glacier crests of jewels, and dwell among the stars heedless of time or tempest. <div id="i_266" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 40em;"> <ANTIMG src="images/i_266.jpg" width-obs="2544" height-obs="1582" alt="" /> <div class="caption">MOUNT GARNET WOLSELEY AND THE PEACE RIVER.</div> </div> For two days we journeyed through this vast valley, along a wide, beautiful river, tranquil as a lake, and bearing on its bosom, at intervals, small isles of green forest. Now and again a beaver rippled the placid surface, or a bear appeared upon a rocky point for a moment, looked at the strange lonely craft, stretched out his long snout to sniff the gale, and then vanished in the forest shore. For the rest all was stillness; forest, isle, river and mountain—all seemed to sleep in unending loneliness; and our poles grating against the rocky shore, or a shot at some quick-diving beaver, alone broke the silence; while the echo, dying away in the vast mountain cañons, made the relapsing silence seem more intense. Thus we journeyed on. On the evening of the 8th of May we emerged from the pass, and saw beyond the extremity of a long reach of river a mountain range running north and south, distant about thirty miles from us. To the right and left the Rocky Mountains opened out, leaving the river to follow its course through a long forest valley of considerable width. We had passed the Rocky Mountains, and the range before us was the central mountain system of North British Columbia. 268 It was a very beautiful evening; the tops of the birch-trees were already showing their light green leaves amidst the dark foliage of the spruce and firs. Along the shore, where we landed, the tracks of a very large grizzly bear were imprinted freshly in the sand. I put a couple of bullets into my gun and started up the river, with Cerf-vola for a companion. I had got about a mile from the camp when, a few hundred yards ahead, a large dark animal emerged from the forest, and made his way through some lower brushwood towards the river. Could it be the grizzly? I lay down on the sand-bank, and pulled the dog down beside me. The large black animal walked out upon the sand-bar two or three hundred yards above me. He proved to be a moose on his way to swim the river to the south shore. I lay still until he had got so far on his way that return to the forest would have been impracticable; then I sprang to my feet and ran towards him. What a spring he gave across the sand and down into the water! Making an allowance for the force of the current, I ran towards the shore. It was a couple of hundred yards from me, and when I gained it the moose was already three-parts across the river, almost abreast where I stood, swimming for his very life, with his huge unshapen head thrust out along the269 surface, the ears thrown forward, while the large ripples rolled from before his chest as he clove his way through the water. It was a long shot for a rifle, doubly so for a smooth-bore; but old experience in many lands, where the smooth-bore holds its own despite all other weapons, had told me that when you do get a gun to throw a bullet well, you may rely upon it for distances supposed to be far beyond the possibilities of such a weapon; so, in a tenth of the time it has taken me to say all this, I gave the moose the right barrel, aiming just about his long ears. There was a single plunge in the water; the giant head went down, and all was quiet. And now to secure the quarry. Away down stream he floated, showing only one small black speck above the surface; he was near the far side, too. Running down shore I came within calling-distance of the camp, from which the smoke of Kalder’s fire was already curling above the tree-tops. Out came Kalder, Jacques, and A——. Of course it was a grizzly, and all the broken flint-guns of the party were suddenly called into requisition. If it had been a grizzly, and that I had been retiring before him in skirmishing order, gods! what a support I was falling back upon! A——‘s gun is already familiar to the reader; Kalder’s beaver-gun went off about one shot in three; and Jacques possessed a weapon270 (it had been discarded by an Indian, and Jacques had resuscitated it out of the store of all trades which he possessed an inkling of) the most extraordinary I had ever seen. Jacques always spoke of it in the feminine gender. “She was a good gun, except that a trifle too much of the powder came out the wrong way. He would back her to shoot ‘plum’ if she would only go off after a reasonable lapse of time, but it was tiring to him to keep her to the shoulder for a couple of minutes after he had pulled her trigger, and then to have her go off when he was thinking of pulling the gun-coat over her again.” When she was put away in the canoe, it was always a matter of some moment to place her so that in the event of any sudden explosion of her pent-up wrath, she might discharge herself harmlessly along the river, and on this account she generally lay like a stern-chaser projecting from behind Jacques, and endangering only his paddle. All these maimed and mutilated weapons were now brought forth, and such a loading and priming and hammering began, that, had it really been a grizzly, he must have been utterly scared out of all semblance of attack. Kalder now mastered the position of affairs, and like an arrow he and Jacques were into the canoe, and out after the dead moose. They soon overhauled271 him, and, slipping a line over the young antlers, towed him to the shore. We were unable to lift him altogether out of the water, so we cut him up as he lay, stranded like a whale. <div id="i_271" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 26em;"> <ANTIMG src="images/i_271.jpg" width-obs="1644" height-obs="2538" alt="" /> <div class="caption">CUTTING UP THE MOOSE.</div> </div> Directly opposite a huge cone mountain rose up some eight or nine thousand feet above us, and just ere evening fell over the scene, his topmost peak, glowing white in the sunlight, became mirror’d in most faithful semblance in the clear quiet river, while the life-stream of the moose flowed out over the tranquil surface, dyeing the nearer waters into brilliant crimson. If some painter in the exuberance of his genius had put upon canvas such a strange contrast of colours, people would have said it is not true to nature; but nature has many truths, and it takes many a long day, and not a few years’ toil, to catch a tenth of them. And, my dear friend with the eye-glass—you who know all about nature in a gallery and with a catalogue—you may take my word for it. And now, ere quitting, probably for ever, this grand Peace River Pass—this immense valley which receives in its bosom so many other valleys, into whose depths I only caught a moment’s glimpse as we floated by their outlets—let me say one other word about it. Since I left the Wild North Land, it has been272 my lot to visit the chief points of interest in Oregon, California, the Vale of Shasta, and the Yosemite. Shasta is a loftier mountain than any that frown above the Peace River Pass. Yosemite can boast its half-dozen waterfalls, trickling down their thousand feet of rock; but for wild beauty, for the singular spectacle of a great river flowing tranquilly through a stupendous mountain range,—these mountains presenting at every reach a hundred varied aspects,—not the dizzy glory of Shasta nor the rampart precipices of Yosemite can vie with that lonely gorge far away on the great Unchagah. On the 9th of May we reached the Forks of the river, where the two main streams of the Parsnip and the Findlay came together. A couple of miles from their junction a second small rapid occurs; but, like the first one, it can be run without difficulty. Around the point of junction the country is low and marshy, and when we turned into the Findlay, it was easy to perceive from the colour of the water that the river was rising rapidly. Some miles above the Forks there is a solitary hut on the south bank of the river. In this hut dwelt Pete Toy, a miner of vast repute in the northern mining country. Some ten years ago Pete had paddled his canoe273 into these lonely waters. As he went, he prospected the various bars. Suddenly he struck one of surpassing richness. It yielded one dollar to the bucket, or one hundred dollars a day to a man’s work. Pete was astonished; he laid up his canoe, built this hut, and claimed the bar as his property. For a long time it yielded a steady return; but even gold has a limit—the bar became exhausted. Where had all his gold come from? Ah, that is the question! Even to-day, though the bank has been washed year after year, “it is still rich in colour;” but the “pay-dirt” lies too far from the water’s edge, hence the labour is too great. Well, Pete, the Cornish miner, built his hut and took out his gold; but that did not satisfy him. What miner ever yet was satisfied? Pete went in for fifty things; he traded with the Indians, he trapped, he took an Indian wife; yet, through all, he maintained a character for being as honest and as straightforward a miner as ever found “a colour” from Mexico to Cariboo. My little friend Jacques expected to meet his old brother miner Pete at his hut; but, as we came within five miles of it, a beaver swam across the river. We all fired at him, and when the smoke had vanished, I heard Jacques mutter, “Pete’s not hereabouts, or that fellow wouldn’t274 be there.” He was right, for, when we reached the hut an hour later, we found a notice on the door, saying that Pete and two friends had departed for the Ominica just six days earlier, being totally out of all food, and having only their guns to rely upon. Now this fact of Pete’s absence rendered necessary new arrangements, for here the two courses I have already alluded to lay open—either to turn south, along the Parsnip; or north and west, along the Findlay and Ominica. The current of the Parsnip is regular; that of the Ominica is wild and rapid. But the Parsnip was already rising, and at its spring level it is almost an impossibility to ascend it, owing to its great depth; while the Ominica, though difficult and dangerous in its cañons, is nevertheless possible of ascent, even in its worst stage of water. I talked the matter over with Jacques, as we sat camped on the gold-bar opposite Pete Toy’s house. Fortunately we had ample supplies of meat; but some luxuries, such as tea and sugar, were getting dangerously low, and flour was almost exhausted. I decided upon trying the Ominica. About noon, on the 10th of May, we set out for the Ominica, with high hopes of finding the river still low enough to allow us to ascend it. Ten miles above Toy’s hut the Ominica enters the Peace River from the south-west. We275 reached its mouth on the morning of the 11th, and found it high and rapid. There was hard work in store for us, and the difficulties of passing the Great Cañon loomed ominously big. We pushed on, however, and that night reached a spot where the river issued from a large gap in a high wall of dark rock. Above, on the summit of this rock, pine-trees projected over the river. We were at the door of the Ominica cañon. The warm weather of last week had done its work, and the water rushed from the gate of the cañon in a wild and impetuous torrent. We looked a moment at the grim gate which we had to storm on the morrow, and then put in to the north shore, where, under broad and lofty pines, we made our beds for the night. The Findlay River, as it is called, after the fur-trader, who first ascended it, has many large tributaries. It is something like a huge right hand spread out over the country, of which the middle finger would be the main river, and the thumb the Ominica. There is the North Fork, which closely hugs the main Rocky Mountain range. There is the Findlay itself, a magnificent river, flowing from a vast labyrinth of mountains, and being unchanged in size or apparent volume, 120 miles above the Forks we had lately left. At that distance it issues from a cañon similar to276 that at whose mouth we are now camped; and there is the second South Fork, a river something smaller than the Ominica, from whose mouth it is distant about a hundred miles. Of these rivers nothing is known. These few items are the result of chance information picked up from the solitary miner who penetrated to this cañon’s mouth, and from the reports which a wandering band of Sickanies give of the vast unknown interior of the region of the Stickeen. And yet it is all British territory. It abounds with game; its scenery is as wild as mountain peak and gloomy cañon can make it; it is free from fever or malaria. In it Nature has locked up some of her richest treasures—treasures which are open to any strong, stout heart who will venture to grasp them. I know not how it is, but sometimes it seems to me that this England of ours is living on a bygone reputation; the sinew is there without the soul! It is so easy to be a traveller in an easy chair—to lay out a map and run one’s finger over it and say, “This river is the true source of the Hunky-dorum, and that lake finds its outlet in the Rumtifoozle;” and it is equally easy, particularly after our comfortable dinner at the club, to stroll over to the meeting of the Society for the Preservation277 of Sticklebacks in Tahitian Seas, and to prove to the fashionable audience there assembled, that a stickleback was the original progenitor of the human race. Our modern Briton can be a traveller without any trouble. He is a member of “the Club,” and on the strength of his membership he can criticize “that fellow Burton,” or “that queer fish Palgrave,” and prove to you how, if that “poor devil” Hayward had tried the Chittral Pass instead of the Palmirsteppe, “he would never have come to grief, you know.” I know one or two excellent idiots, who fancy they are wits because they belong to the Garrick. It is quite as easy to be a traveller by simply belonging to a Travellers’ Club. Now all this would be a very harmless pastime, if something more serious did not lie behind it; just as the mania to dress ourselves in uniform and carry a rifle through the streets, would also be a very harmless, if a very useless, pastime, if a graver question did not again lie hidden beneath “our noble Volunteers;” but the club traveller and the club soldier are not content with the rôle of lounging mediocrity for which nature destined them. They must needs stand between the spirit of England’s better genius, and England’s real toilers of the wilds. They must supervise and criticize278 and catechize, and generally play the part of Fuz-buz to the detriment of everything which redounds to the true spirit of England’s honour in the fair field of travel and discovery. Let there be no mistake in this matter. To those veterans who still stand above the waves of time, living monuments of England’s heroism, in Arctic ice or Africa’s sun, we owe all honour and love and veneration. They are the old soldiers of an army, passed from the world, and when Time sums up the record of their service here below, it will be but to hand up the roll to the Tribunal of the Future. But it is of the younger race of whom we would speak—that race who buy with gold the right to determine what England shall do, and shall not do, in the wide field of geographical research; who are responsible for the wretched exploratory failures of the past few years; who have allowed the palm of discovery and enterprise to pass away to other nations, or to alien sons. But if we were to say all we think about this matter, we might only tire the reader, and stop until doomsday at the mouth of this Black Cañon of the Ominica. <hr /> <div id="toclink_279" class="chapter"> 279 <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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