Dillon Wallace

“ That evening before we retired the drizzle turned to a downpour, and we were glad to leave our unprotected camp fire for the unwarmed shelter of our tent. While I lay within and listened to the storm, I wrote in my diary: “As I lie here, the rain pours upon the tent over my head and drips—­drips—­drips through small holes in the silk; the wind sweeps through the spruce trees outside and a breath of the fragrance of the great damp forest comes to me. I hear the roar of the rapid across the river as the waters pour down over the rocks in their course to the sea. ”

“ The shores are rocky, sometimes formed of massive bed rock in which is found the beautifully colored labradorite; sometimes strewn with loose bowlders. Our entrance had been made in a bay several miles north of the point where the Nascaupee River, its outlet, leaves the lake and we kept to the east side as we paddled north.
No artist’s imaginative brush ever pictured such gorgeous sunsets and sunrises as Nature painted for us here on the Great Lake of the Indians. Every night the sun went down in a blaze of glory and left behind it all the colors of the spectrum. ”

“ The genial warmth of the fire was so in contrast to the chilly darkness of the tent that we sat long around it and talked of our travels and prospects and the lake and the wilderness before us that no white man had ever before seen, while the brook near by tumbling over its rocky bed roared a constant complaint at our intrusion into this land of solitude. ”

“ In the great unbroken silence of the wilderness a man’s fancy will make him hear strange things. I have answered the shouts of men that my imagination made me hear. But this was not fancy, for I heard it again—­a distinct shout! I jumped to my feet and called to Easton: “They’ve come, boy! Get up, there’s some one coming!” Then I hurried outside and, in the dim light on the white stretch of snow, saw a black patch of men and dogs. ”

“ To the north lay a great rolling country covered with a limitless forest of firs, with here and there a bit of sparkling water. A mile from our camp a creek, now and again losing itself in the green woods, rushed down to join Washkagama, anxious to gain the repose of the lake. To the northeast the rugged white hills, that we were hoping to reach soon, loomed up grand and majestic, with patches of snow, like white sheets, spread over their sides and tops. ”

“ Tighter and tighter grew the grip of winter. Rarely the temperature rose above twenty-five degrees below zero, even at midday, and oftener it crept well down into the thirties. The air was filled with rime, which clung to everything, and the sun, only venturing now a little way above the southern horizon, shone cold and cheerless, weakly penetrating the ever-present frost veil. The tide, still defying the shackles of the mighty power that had bound all the rest of the world, surged up and down, piling ponderous ice cakes in mountainous heaps along the river banks. ”

“ No sound broke the absolute silence save the crunch, crunch, crunch of our feet, the squeak of the komatik runners complaining as they slid reluctantly over the snow, and the “oo-isht-oo-isht, oksuit, oksuit” of the drivers, constantly urging the dogs to greater effort. Shimmering frost flakes, suspended in the air like a veil of thinnest gauze, half hid the sun when very timidly he raised his head above the southeastern horizon, as though afraid to venture into the domain of the indomitable ice king who had wrested the world from his last summer’s power and ruled it now so absolutely. ”

“ When it was finished we spent the evening by the camp fire, smoking and talking of the three men retreating down our old trail, and trying to calculate at which one of the camping places they were bivouacked. Every night since our parting this had been our chief diversion, and I must confess that with each day that took us farther away from them an increased loneliness impressed itself upon us. Solemn and vast was the great silence of the trackless wilderness as more and more we came to realize our utter isolation from all the rest of the world and all mankind. ”

“ In these two days we had covered but eleven miles, but during the whole time the wind had driven the rain in sweeping gusts into our faces and made it impossible for a man, single-handed, to portage a canoe. Thus, with two men to carry each canoe we had been compelled to make three loads of our outfit, and this meant fifty-five miles actual walking, and thirty-three miles of this distance with packs on our backs. The weather conditions had made the work more than hard—­ it was heartrending—­as we toiled over naked hills, across marshes and moraines, or through dripping brush and timber land. ”

“ Numerous are the spirits that people the land and depths of the sea, but the chief of them all is Torngak, the spirit of Death, who from his cavern dwelling in the heights of the mighty Torngaeks (the mountains north of the George River toward Cape Chidley) watches them always and rules their fortunes with an iron hand, dealing out misfortune, or withholding it, at his will. It is only through the medium of the Angakok, or conjurer, that the people can learn what to do to keep Torngak and the lesser spirits of evil, with their varying moods, in good humor. ”

“ Every pool of water on the island was congealed into a solid mass. A gale of terrific fury nearly carried our tent away, and only the big bowlders to which it was anchored saved it. Once we had to shift it farther back upon the rock fields, out of reach of an exceptionally high tide. For three days the wind raged, and in those three days the great blocks of northern pack ice were swept down upon us, and we knew that the Explorer could serve us no longer. There was no alternative now but to cross the barrens to Whale River on foot. With deep snow and no snowshoes it was not a pleasant prospect. ”

“ From Nipishish to Washkagama we had passed through a burned and rocky country where no new growth save scant underbrush and a few scattering spruce, balsam and tamarack trees had taken the place of the old destroyed forest. The dead, naked tree trunks which, gaunt and weather-beaten, still stood upright or lay in promiscuous confusion on the ground, gave this part of the country from our hilltop view an appearance of solitary desolation that we had not noticed when we were traveling through it. ”

“ The swarthy-faced men, lean, sinewy and well built, with their long, straight black hair reaching to their shoulders, most of them hatless and all wearing a red bandanna handkerchief banded across the forehead, moccasined feet and vari-colored leggings; the women quaint and odd; the eager-faced children; little hunting dogs, and big wolf-like huskies.
All hands turned to and helped us carry our belongings to the camp, pitch our tent and get firewood for our stove. ”

“ It seems but yesterday that Hubbard uttered those prophetic words as he and I lay before our blazing camp fire in the snow-covered Shawangunk Mountains on that November night in the year 1901, and planned that fateful trip into the unexplored Labrador wilderness which was to cost my dear friend his life, and both of us indescribable sufferings and hardships. And how true a prophecy it was! You who have smelled the camp fire smoke; who have drunk in the pure forest air, laden with the smell of the fir tree ”

“ In Ungava Bay and the straits it has a record of sixty-two feet rise at flood, with the spring or high tides, and this makes navigation precarious where hidden reefs and rocks are everywhere; and there are long stretches of coast with no friendly bay or harbor or lee shore where one can run for cover when unheralded gales and sudden squalls catch one in the open. The Atlantic coast of Labrador is dangerous indeed, but there Nature has providentially distributed innumerable safe harbor retreats, and the tide is insignificant compared with that of Ungava Bay. ”

“ They saw no more game, and finally became so weak and exhausted they could carry their rifles no farther and left them on the trail. Each night they built a snow house. With increasing weakness their progress was very slow; still they kept going, staggering on and on through the snow. It was only their lifelong habit of facing great odds and enduring great hardships that kept them up. Men less inured to cold and privation would surely have succumbed. They were making their final fight when at last they stumbled into Emuk’s tupek. Kumuk sat down and cried like a child. ”

“ Words cannot express the feeling of exhilaration that comes to one at such a time.
We did not have to go so far up Whale River to find a crossing as on our trip to Fort Chimo, and reached the eastern side before dark. Sometimes the ice hills are piled so high here by the tide that it takes a day or even two to cut a komatik path through them and cross the river, but fortunately we had very little cutting to do. Not long after dark we coasted down the hill above the Post, and the cheerful lights of Edmunds’ cabin were at hand. ”

“ Now, two years later, I realized that from Windbound Lake we could have reached Michikamau in five or six days at the very outside, and less than two weeks, allowing for delays through bad weather and our weakened condition, would have brought us to the George River, where, at that time of the year, ducks and ptarmigans are always plentiful. All these things I pondered as I sat by this camp fire, and I asked myself, “Why is it that when Fate closes our eyes she does not lead us aright?” ”

“ With every mile the spruce on the river banks became thinner and thinner, and the hills grew higher and higher, until finally there was scarcely a stick to be seen and the lower eminences had given way to lofty mountains which raised their jagged, irregular peaks from two to four thousand feet in solemn and majestic grandeur above our heads. ”

“ The people arose and welcomed us as Eskimos always do, most cordially. Our two drivers, who followed me with the wood we had brought, made a fire in a small sheet-iron tent stove kept in the shack by the missionaries for their use when traveling, and on it we placed our kettle full of ice for tea, and our sandwiches to thaw, for they were frozen as hard as bullets. One of the old women was half dead with consumption, and constantly spitting, and when we saw her turning our sandwiches on the stove our appetite appreciably diminished. ”

“ The women row the umiaks while the men sit idle. It is beneath the dignity of the latter to handle the oars when women are present to do it.
There are no better Eskimo dogs to be found anywhere in the far north than the husky dogs of Ungava. Wonderful tales are told of long distances covered by them in a single day, the record trip of which I heard being one hundred and twelve miles. But this was in the spring, when the days were long and the snow hard and firm. The farthest I ever traveled myself in a single day with dogs and komatik was sixty miles. ”

“ At sunset we landed at Watty’s Brook, a small stream flowing into Grand Lake from the north, and some twenty miles above the rapid. Our progress during the day had been slow, as the wind had died away and we had, several times, to wait for Duncan to overtake us in his slower rowboat.
While the rest of us “made camp” Duncan cut wood for a rousing fire, as the evening was cool, and Pete put a porcupine to boil for supper. We were a hungry crowd when we sat down to eat. I had told the boys how good porcupine was, how it resembled lamb and what a treat we were to have. ”

“ We came upon a large creek in the forenoon and had to ascend its east bank for a long distance to cross it, as the tide had broken the ice below. Some distance up the stream its valley was wooded by just enough scattered spruce trees to hold the snow, and wallowing and floundering through this was most exhausting.
During the day Kumuk proposed to the other Eskimos that they take all the food and leave the white men to their fate. They had rifles while we had none, and we could not resist. Potokomik would not hear of it. He remained our friend. ”

“ On the frontier, in spite of the rough exterior of the people, you find real men and women. That is one reason why I like the North so well.
We left Whale River on Saturday, the sixth of January, with one hundred and twenty miles of barrens to cross before reaching George River Post, the nearest human habitation to the eastward. Our fresh team of nine dogs was in splendid trim and worked well, but a three or four inch covering of light snow upon the harder under crust made the going hard and wearisome for the animals. The frost flakes that filled the air covered everything. ”

“ On October fifteenth we portaged around a series of low falls, below which was a small lake expansion with a river flowing into it from the east. Here we found the first evidence of human life that we had seen in a long while—­a wide portage trail that had been cut through now burned and dead trees on the eastern side of the river. It was fully six feet in width and had been used for the passage of larger boats than canoes. The moss was still unrenewed where the tramp of many moccasins had worn it off. ”

“ What constitutes beauty is of course largely a question of individual taste. My own judgment of the Eskimos is that they are very ugly, although I have seen young women among them whom I thought actually handsome. This was when they first arrived at the Post with dogs and komatik and they were dressed in their native costume of deerskin trousers and Koolutuk, their cheeks red and glowing with the exercise of travel and the keen, frosty atmosphere. ”

“ The Eskimo knows better how to husband his food than the Indian; and give him a snow bank and he can make himself comfortable anywhere. The most gluttonous Indian would turn green with envy to see the quantities of meat the Eskimo can stow away within his inner self at a single sitting; but on the other hand he can live, and work hard too, on a single scant meal a day, just as his dogs do. ”

“ The men are the hunters, the women the slaves. No one finds fault with this, not even the women, for it is an Indian custom immemorial for the woman to do all the hard, physical work.
The Mountaineer Indians that we met on the George River, and one Indian who visited Fort Chimo while we were there, are the only ones of the Labrador that I have ever seen drive dogs. This Fort Chimo Indian, unlike the other hunters of his people, has spent much time at the Post, and mingled much with the white traders and the Eskimos, and, for an Indian, entertains very progressive and broad views. ”

“ A steaming venison potpie, broiled venison steaks, hot fried bread dough, stewed prunes for dessert and a kettle of hot tea! All experienced campers in the north woods are familiar with the fried bread dough. It is dough mixed as you would mix it for squaw bread, but not quite so stiff, pulled out to the size of your frying pan, very thin, and fried in swimming pork grease. In taste it resembles doughnuts. Hubbard used to call it “French toast.” Our young men had never eaten it before, and Richards, taking one of the cakes, asked Pete:
“What do you call this?” ”