Ernest Thompson Seton

“ The wind gives the paddle a push; it winds up the cord, which then unwinds itself. This goes on without fail and without effort, never still, and the roast is perfect.
Thus we were living on the fat of many lands and on the choicest fat of this.
And what a region it is for pasture. At this place it reminds one of Texas. Open, grassy plains, sparser reaches of sand, long slopes of mesquite, mesas dotted with cedars and stretches of chapparal and soapweed. Only, those vegetations here are willow, dwarf birch, tiny spruce, and ledum, and the country as a whole is far too green and rich. ”

“ On every side was animal life in abundance; the shimmering lake with its Loons and islands would fit exactly the Indian's dream of the heavenly hunting-grounds. These were the happy halcyon days of the trip, and we stayed a week to rest and revel in the joys about us.
In the morning I took a long walk over the familiar hills; the various skeletons we had left were picked bare, evidently by Gulls and Ravens, as no bones were broken and even the sinews were left. There were many fresh tracks of single Caribou going here and there, but no trails of large bands. ”

“ Thus at every step one is wading through lush grass or crushing prairie blossoms and fruits. It is so on and on; in every part of the scene, there are but few square feet that do not bloom with flowers and throb with life; yet this is the region called the Barren Lands of the North.
And the colour is an index of its higher living forms, for this is the chosen home of the Swans and Wild Geese; many of the Ducks, the Ptarmigan, the Laplongspur and Snowbunting. The blue lakes echo with the wailing of the Gulls and the eerie magic calling of the Loons. ”

“ Not trees and flood alone had strenuous power to win our souls; at every point and bank, in every bend, were living creatures of the north, Beaver and Bear, not often seen but abundant; Moose tracks showed from time to time and birds were here in thousands. Rare winter birds, as we had long been taught to think them in our southern homes; here we found them in their native land and heard not a few sweet melodies, of which in faraway Ontario, New Jersey, and Maryland we had been favoured only with promising scraps when wintry clouds were broken by the sun. ”

“ Billy Loutit had shot a Pelican; the skin was carefully preserved and the body guarded for the dogs, thinking that this big thing, weighing 6 or 7 pounds, would furnish a feast for one or two. The dogs knew me, and rushed like a pack of Wolves at sight of coming food. The bigger ones fought back the smaller. I threw the prize, but, famished though they were, they turned away as a man might turn from a roasted human hand. One miserable creature, a mere skeleton, sneaked forward when the stronger ones were gone, pulled out the entrails at last, and devoured them as though he hated them. ”

“ I never before saw such a realm of exquisite flowers so exquisitely displayed, and the effect at every turn throughout the land was colour, colour, colour, to as far outdo the finest autumn tints of New England as the Colorado Canyon outdoes the Hoosac Gorge. What Nature can do only in October, elsewhere, she does here all season through, as though when she set out to paint the world she began on the Barrens with a full palette and when she reached the Tropics had nothing left but green. ”

“ The long, steady, strong pull is unknown to them in every sense.
Their ideas of sailing a boat are childish. Tacking is like washing, merely a dim possibility of their very distant future. It's a sailing wind if behind; otherwise it's a case of furl and row.
By an ancient, unwritten law the whole country is roughly divided among the hunters. Each has his own recognised hunting ground, usually a given river valley, that is his exclusive and hereditary property; another hunter may follow a wounded animal into it, but not begin a hunt there or set a trap upon it. ”

“ The current is about one mile and a half an hour, so that canoes can readily pass up or down; the scenery varies continually and is always beautiful. Everything that I have said of the Little Buffalo applies to the Nyarling with fourfold force, because of its more varied scenery and greater range of bird and other life. Sometimes, like the larger stream, it presents a long, straight vista of a quarter-mile through a solemn aisle in the forest of mighty spruce trees that tower a hundred feet in height, all black with gloom, green with health, and gray with moss. ”

“ Reader, take a map of North America, a large one, and mark off the vast area bounded by the Saskatchewan, the Rockies, the Hudson Bay, and the Arctic circle, and realise that in this region, as large as continental Europe outside of Russia and Spain, one simple, earnest man, inspired by the love of Him who alone is perfect love, invented and popularised a method of writing that in a few years—in less than a generation, indeed—has turned the whole native population from ignorant illiterates to a people who are proud to read and write their own language. ”

“ The next afternoon we made the exit rapids of Casba Lake. Preble was preparing to portage them, but asked Weeso, "Can we run them?"
Weeso landed, walked to a view-point, took a squinting look and said, "Ugh!" (Yes) . Preble rejoined, "All right! If he says he can, he surely can. That's the Indian of it. A white man takes risks; an Indian will not; if it is risky he'll go around." So we ran the rapids in safety.
Lighter each day, as the food was consumed, our elegant canoe went faster. When not detained by heavy seas 30 or 40 miles a day was our journey. ”

“ A steamer could ply on its placid, unobstructed flood, a child could navigate it anywhere. The heavenly beauty of the shores, with virgin forest of fresh, green spruces towering a hundred feet on every side, or varied in open places with long rows and thick-set hedges of the gorgeous, wild, red, Athabaska rose, made a stream that most canoemen, woodmen, and naturalists would think without a fault or flaw, and with every river beauty in its highest possible degree. ”

“ Moose-hunting by fair stalking is the pinnacle of woodcraft. The Crees alone, as a tribe, are supposed to be masters of the art; but many of the Chipewyans are highly successful. One must be a consummate trailer, a good shot, have tireless limbs and wind and a complete knowledge of the animal's habits and ways of moving and thinking. One must watch the wind, without ceasing, for no hunter has the slightest chance of success if once the Moose should scent him. ”

“ In the less exposed places these come forth, seeking the shade, searching for moisture, they form like small sponges on a coral reef; but growing, spread and change to meet the changing contours of the land they win, and with every victory or upward move, adopt some new refined intensive tint that is the outward and visible sign of their diverse inner excellences and their triumph. Ever evolving they spread, until there are great living rugs of strange textures and oriental tones ”

“ These exploits I had to find out for myself later on, but much more important to me at the time was the fact that he was a first-class cook, a steady, cheerful worker, and a capable guide as far as Great Slave Lake.
The Athabaska below Fort MacMurray is a noble stream, one-third of a mile wide, deep, steady, unmarred; the banks are covered with unbroken virginal forests of tall white poplar, balsam poplar, spruce, and birch. The fire has done no damage here as yet, the axe has left no trace, there are no houses, no sign of man except occasional teepee poles. ”

“ Now on the top of that windy ridge I sat with this copper-coloured child of the spruce woods, to watch these cattle of the plains.
The Caribou is a travelsome beast, always in a hurry, going against the wind. When the wind is west, all travel west; when it veers, they veer. Now the wind was northerly, and all were going north, not walking, not galloping—the Caribou rarely gallops, and then only for a moment or two; his fast gait is a steady trot a 10-mile gait, making with stops about 6 miles an hour. But they are ever on the move ”

“ The process climbs the hill-slopes; every little earthy foothold for a plant is claimed by some new settler, until each low hill is covered to the top with vegetation graded to its soil, and where the flowering kinds cannot establish themselves, the lichen pioneers still maintain their hold. Rarely, in the landscape, now, is any of the primitive colour of the rocks; even the tall, straight cliffs of Aylmer are painted and frescoed with lichens that flame and glitter with purple and orange, silver and gold. ”

“ It is very beautiful in colour, red granite, spotted with orange and black lichen on its face, and carpeted with caribou moss and species of cetraria, great patches of tripe-de-roche, beds of saxifrage, long trailers, and masses of bearberry, empetrum, ground cedar, juniper, cryptograma, and many others; while the trees, willow, birch, and spruce are full of character and drawing. Sky and lake are in colour worthy of these rich details, the bird life is well represented and beautiful; there is beauty everywhere, and 'only man is vile.'
"I am more and more disgusted with my Indian crew ”

“ Then, for some unknown reason, that Musk-ox took it into his head to travel fast away from us, not even stopping to graze; he would soon have been over a rocky ridge. I nodded to Preble. His rifle rang; the bull wheeled sharp about with an angry snort and came toward us. His head was up, his eye blazing, and he looked like a South African Buffalo and a Prairie Bison combined, and seemed to get bigger at every moment. ”

“ And out over all the lake were Loons, Loons, Loons. Four species abound here; they caterwaul and yodel all day and all night, each in its own particular speech, From time to time a wild hyena chorus from the tranquil water in the purple sunset haze suggested, that a pack of goblin hounds were chivying a goblin buck, but it turned out always to be a family of Red-throated Loons, yodelling their inspiring marching song.
One day when at Gravel Mountain, old Weeso came to camp in evident fear—"far off he had seen a man." In this country a man must mean an Eskimo ”

“ There is something inspiring about the profundity of transparency in these lakes, where they are 15 feet deep their bottoms are no more obscured than in an ordinary eastern brook at 6 inches. On looking down into the far-below world, one gets the sensation of flight as one skims overhead in the swift canoe. ”

“ When there is no wind, the instinctive habit of migration doubtless directs the general movement.
How are we to form an idea of their numbers? The only way seems to be by watching the great migration to its winter range. For the reasons already given this was impossible in my case, therefore, I array some of the known facts that will evidence the size of the herd.
Warburton Pike, who saw them at Mackay Lake, October 20, 1889, says: "I cannot believe that the herds [of Buffalo] on the prairie ever surpassed in size La Foule (the throng) of the Caribou. ”

“ For another age all is below water, dammed by the northern ice, and icebergs breaking from the parent sheet carry bedded in them countless boulders, with which they go travelling south on the open waters. As they melt the boulders are dropped; hill and hollow share equally in this age-long shower of erratics. Nor does it cease till the progress of the warmer day removes the northern ice-dam, sets free the flood, and the region of archaean rocks stands bare and dry. ”

“ It is hard, indeed, for words to do it justice. The charm of a stream is always within three feet of the surface and ten feet of the bank. The broad Slave, then, by its size wins in majesty but must lose most all its charm; the Buffalo, being fifty feet wide, has some waste water; but the Nyarling, half the size, has its birthright compounded and intensified in manifold degree. The water is clear, two or three feet deep at the edge of the grassy banks, seven to ten feet in mid-channel, without bars or obstructions except the two log-jambs noted, and these might easily be removed. ”

“ They have their own troubles, with the white man's maladies thrown in. I saw numberless other cases of dreadful, hopeless, devastating diseases, mostly of the white man's importation. It is heart-rending to see so much human misery and be able to do nothing at all for it, not even bring a gleam of hope. It made me feel like a murderer to tell one after another, who came to me covered with cankerous bone-eating sores, "I can do nothing"; and I was deeply touched by the simple statement of the Chief Pierre Squirrel, after a round of visits: "You see how unhappy we are, how miserable and sick. ”

“ We arrived at the south end of Artillery Lake that night, and were now again in the continuous woods what spindly little stuff it looked when we left it; what superb forest it looked now—and here we bade good-bye to the prairies and their Caribou.
Now, therefore, I shall briefly summarise the information I gained about this notable creature. The species ranges over all the treeless plains and islands of Arctic America. While the great body is migratory, there are scattered individuals in all parts at all seasons. ”

“ At noon we camped above the Boiler Rapids. In the evening I climbed the 400- or 500-foot hill behind camp and sketched the canyon looking northward. The spring birds were now beginning to arrive, but were said to be a month late this year. The ground was everywhere marked with moose sign; prospects, were brightening.
The mania for killing that is seen in many white men is evidently a relic of savagery, for all of these Indians and half-breeds are full of it. ”