The Project Gutenberg EBook of Scribner's Magazine, Volume XXVI, September 1899, by Various This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license Title: Scribner's Magazine, Volume XXVI, September 1899 Author: Various Release Date: August 28, 2018 [EBook #57794] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE, SEPTEMBER 1899 *** Produced by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Painted by George Butler. VENETIAN GIRL. 259 T Man in Boat SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE VOL. XXVI SEPTEMBER, 1899 NO. 3 Copyright, 1899, by Charles Scribner's Sons. All rights reserved. WHERE THE WATER RUNS BOTH WAYS By Frederic Irland ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR he greatest glory of Canada is not its modern progress, but its vast and ancient wilderness. If you weary of the sameness and unprofitableness of every thing you know, go where I went last year, to the upper waters of the Ottawa, where the beaver is the master architect and the moose is king of the woods. See for yourself, as I saw, that the Ottawa and the Gatineau, appearing to come from widely distant regions, have their origin close together and are twins. Behold these two children of the lakes, nourished from the same generous breast. Trace their courses, and see that, though journeying far, in widely different directions, they finally arrive at a common destination. Nobody knows all about that head-water country around the sources of the Ottawa. It is a prolific game region, where sportsmen rarely go, for the simple reason that they can get all the hunting they want nearer to the railroad. There are plenty of deer close to almost any Canadian Pacific station west of Pembroke, and it is not much trouble to get a chance at a moose in two days from Deux Rivières, Rockliffe, or Mattawa. Not many hunting parties start from there either, and I suppose the reason is that for thousands of miles to the west the woods, prairies, and mountains lie close to the railroad and afford almost limitless opportunities. The territory enclosed by the Ottawa and the Gatineau has been, from immemorial times, the home of the Algonquin Indians, and they still remain there, in such primitive innocence that they receive no annuity from the Dominion Government. In this they are unlike the Indians of the United States or their brother tribes of Canada. The map which accompanies this article is reproduced from the latest Crown Land Office charts of the Upper Ottawa River. Hundreds of lakes, some of them many miles in extent, are unmarked, because they have never been surveyed. But a glance at the map will give some idea of the flood which is poured out at the feet of Canada's stately capital. As a canoeing country I believe the Ottawa valley to be unequalled anywhere in the world. The dotted line on the map shows the course of a lazy autumn trip which I took around the borders of the great interior island, formed by the streams which fall from a common birthplace in the Kakebonga region and reunite in front of the city of Ottawa. The coureurs du bois of the old régime have passed away, but the song of their beloved wilderness is as sweet to-day as when they found it irresistible. At Mattawa I procured the supplies which are necessary for a canoe trip in the woods, and the branch railroad took me to the shore of Lake Kippewa. Then a lumber company's steamer carried me to Hunter's Point, the farthest settlement, eighty-five miles north of Mattawa. From there it was all canoe and portage. Nowhere was there a carry more than a mile long, and generally the distance was only a few hundred yards from one lake to another, or around a rapid. The rivers form a continuous waterway, but we made many short cuts. In five hundred miles of canoeing there were, perhaps, twenty miles of carrying, all told. Mr. Isaac Hunter, the postmaster at Hunter's Point, has his office in the front room of his house or else in his coat- pocket. He has a large, well-cleared farm, where his father lived before him, and he sells hay to the lumbermen at fifty dollars a ton. Plenty of people in the United States might well want to be in his place. Yet the farm he lives on has no legal status. It has never been surveyed, and the Crown Land Office has no official knowledge of it. So he pays no taxes and he never cast a vote in his life. When I got to Mr. Hunter's I was at the end of civilization. Beyond his house there were no roads except the water-ways, and the journey I wished to make through the wilderness was several hundred miles long. But I felt as sure of the way as though I had been there before. There are no maps which are of any use at all. Not one of them shows more than half of the lakes which form the easy road we travelled. I told Mr. Hunter where I wanted to go. He said: "Well, my brother-in-law, Joe Decountie, knows the way to Ross Lake, about half way to the Grand Lake Victoria. Mr. Christopherson, the Hudson's Bay agent at Grand Lake, will be back here soon. If you want to go with Joe and bring back a moose by Saturday, you'll find Mr. Christopherson here then, and he can tell you how to go the rest of the way. You'll need a canoe. They sell pretty high this year. You can have that one out by the water for six dollars." 260 Valley of the Upper Ottawa. The finest canoeing country in the world. Mr. Irland's route indicated by the dotted line. There are watercourses even in the places where, on the official map, the line seems to cross dry land. View larger image Joe was young and big. He lived across the bay from his brother-in-law. He and the rest of the twenty or thirty other people around Hunter's Point speak Algonquin and French and very fair English, and their names show that those early adventurers from Europe, two hundred years ago and later, had no violent race prejudices. The more I have seen of the half-bloods of Canada, the more I have come to admire them. They are of fearless stock, and have inherited many good traits from both races. They regard with amusement and pity their half-brothers, the full-blood Algonquins of the remote forest, but they understand the arts of wood-lore which make life more than endurable there. They have French, English, Scotch, and Scandinavian family names, and any one who thinks they lead an uncomfortable life is very much mistaken. Lower Chute of the Grand Calumet Fall. A good deal has been written lately about the hardships and dangers of camp life. For years I have spent a considerable time each season in the woods, sometimes depending for days on the resources of the country, and I can truthfully say I never had one uncomfortable hour there. "Where shall we go after a moose, Joe?" I asked. Joe said: "Well, it's bes' to go where we sure to find 'em. Dese fellers aroun' here don't like de place where I go, because it takes most all day to get dere. But I never failed yet to see moose." So we threw our luggage into the canoe, and departed, in a gentle rain-storm. It was nearly a year since I had had a paddle in my hand, but it was only a short distance between portages. I know of no form of severe muscular exertion which is so little irksome as paddling a canoe. Rowing is galley-slavery in comparison. With the paddle there are not less than three variations of position on each side, which bring new muscles into play and relieve the weary ones; and a shift from one hand to the other is a complete rest. So it was not long, during the succeeding month of canoeing, before I came, at daylight, to look forward to a long day's paddling with positive delight. If any one wishes to know just where we went on that little side issue of a moose hunt let him get a good map of the Kippewa region, and locate the space between Lake Ostoboining and Hay Bay. It is a blank space on a Crown Land Office map, but there are at least fifty small lakes in it. It took six hours' canoeing and carrying, from Mr. Hunter's house, till we came to the lake Joe had chosen. That moose hunt was too easy. We got to the lake, put up the tent, chopped some wood, and just at dusk, when Joe was baking biscuits in the frying-pan, suddenly he set the pan down and made a rush for the canoe. At the same moment I saw a big bull moose wading out of his depth, from the opposite shore, into the deep water, about the length of a city block from the tent. He did not see us at all, and went right on, swimming leisurely across. The lake was narrow, and the moose did not hurry. His broad yellow antlers were so heavy that he barely kept his nose above the water. It was a great sight to see the ripple spread in a diagonal behind him, while Joe urged the little canoe right up close astern. What a pity it was too dark for the camera! When he was forty rods from shore and we were close to him, Joe asked, loudly and pleasantly, "Jack, where you goin' to-day?" Jack turned his big head, and the expression in his ox-like eye was that of pained surprise. He began to swim so hard that he half climbed out of the water. On Lake Kippewa. "Let's head him off," said Joe. So we made a respectful circle around the moose, and he ported his helm and turned back toward the place whence he came. "Drive him to the tent," I suggested; and we did the meanest thing I ever saw done on a moose hunt. We kept between him and where he wanted to go, and actually made him carry himself to shore close to the tent, before I turned the express bullet loose. It was all done so quickly that the biscuits did not burn. "Now, we worked ourselves out of business, didn't we?" commented Joe, by the fire-light, after we had completed certain anatomical dismemberments, the result of which would have astonished the moose very greatly if he could have 261 262 seen himself hung up. "My pore leetle cousins ain't got no fresh meat," continued Joe, relapsing from the severely studied English with which he had previously addressed me. "It's 'bout twelve mile straight so, to de house. How you t'ink if I bring my cousins to-morrow to take out de moose?" I thought that was a very good idea, so the next day Joe left me and walked through the woods to Hunter's Point, to bring his relatives. In the afternoon it rained, so Joe and his cousins did not appear, and I had the blankets to myself that night. The Hudson's Bay Company supply a tent which can be closed up tightly. This is good in mosquito time, but in the fall there is nothing so fine as a plain shed tent, open in front. The heat from the fire is reflected down from the slanting roof, and you can keep warm and dry in the coldest rain that ever fell, especially if you have a light fly spread above the tent. I had brought along a tent of this pattern, and was as comfortable as any king that night, though the nearest human being was twelve miles or so away. The rain made the fire burn more brightly than usual, by knocking the film of ashes from the logs. The next morning I was awakened by my old friends, the moose-birds. A pair of them were trying to carry off the moose meat, all at one mouthful, and at the same time fighting away a third bird which sneaked in between their trips to their place of storage. The moose-bird takes life very seriously, and his sole business is stealing everything he can stick his bill into. Unless he is very often disturbed he is without fear, and will readily alight on a stick held in your hand, if you put a piece of meat on the end of the stick. I have often photographed the bird at a distance of three or four feet. About two o'clock that afternoon Joe and his friends appeared on the scene, with another canoe; and they carried the moose home in sections. The next day was so warm and bright that we took the canoe and went on a long observation tour. Joe made a big circuit, from lake to lake and pond to pond. One of the geographical peculiarities of the country is that you can go by water in any direction you choose, with short portages. Between almost any two ridges you will find a lake or two. Cow Moose in Thick Timber. In many places we saw where, earlier in the season, the moose had been eating the water-lilies. The remnants of the roots, as thick as a man's wrist, were floating on the surface by the score. About four o'clock in the afternoon, when we were on the return to our tent, and paddling along very quietly, we heard a stick break close by the edge of the water. Looking sharply into the thick brush I caught sight of a cow moose, with two calves, in the woods about twenty feet back from the shore. We kept very quiet, hoping they would come out where they could be photographed. But soon the cow's great ears straightened out in our direction, the calves backed around behind their mamma, and in an instant they had begun a noiseless flight. Hudson's Bay Post at the Grand Lake Victoria. It was dusk by the time we reached our own lake, and there was a faint moon. All through the day we had traversed about as fine a moose country as one could find. Every lake had its well-defined path around the shore, just along the edge of the bushes. A Portage. At the head of our lake, about a mile from the tent, we stopped and ran the canoe ashore. Joe grunted hoarsely, and splashed the water with his paddle, and, sooner than it takes to tell this, we heard, not two hundred yards away, the most impressive sound that ever comes to a sportsman's ears, the ripping, tearing noise made by a bull moose, hooking the trees right and left out of sheer joy and pride in his strength. He tore down a few cords of saplings, judging by the racket, and then came out, "oofing" at every step, circling around us. In the gathering dusk we saw his great black shape for a moment as he crossed the little stream in which the canoe was hidden. That was the time to have fired, if I had wanted him very badly, but Joe, whose wealth of luck had made him over-bold, whispered, "I bring him close," and emitted a loud roar, very like the squeal of a horse, and the moose never stopped to take one more look. He simply wheeled around behind the fir thicket where he was concealed, and, with a few characteristic remarks in his own 263 264 265 language, expressive of disdain and opprobrium, made a hasty departure for a distant section of the country. He acted as though he recognized Joe's voice. "Well, we fright him good, anyway," said Joe. There was only one other place on our whole subsequent trip where the moose seemed to be so plentiful as right here, close to Lake Kippewa. We had one moose, and had seen that there were plenty more. The Quebec law allows only two in a season, to one man. I wished to see more of the Kippewa country before going north; so we went back to Mr. Hunter's the next morning, and there met Mr. Christopherson, on his way back to the Grand Lake Victoria, and with him an Indian named Jocko, one of the "Grand Lakers," as Joe called them. Jocko was a thick-set, open-faced barbarian who smiled at the slightest excuse, and who was so pleasant and bright that I am going hunting with him some day if I can. Mr. Christopherson said there would be no trouble in finding our way to the Grand Lake Victoria, as there was a plain trail from Ross Lake, where Joe had been, to Trout Lake, and that on this latter sheet of water were two or three families of Indians who traded at the Grand Lake Victoria, any one of whom could be induced, for a dollar a day, to show us the way. Joe and I spent another week camping about Kippewa Lake, getting used to each other's paddling, before we started on our northern journey. It was at this stage of the proceedings that Joe modestly suggested that he had a little nephew, Billy Paulson, thirteen years old, who could do a good deal around camp, and that he would like to take him with us. So Billy went and was happy. He was a versatile little boy. He could read, which Joe could not do, and he spoke English without much accent. I shall not soon forget my amazement when he began, soon after our introduction, to whistle, in good tune, Sousa's "Washington Post" march. How it had reached that far corner of the earth I do not know, and neither did he; but he had it, and with "Her Golden Hair was Hanging down Her Back," as an occasional interlude, he made distant lakes melodious during the succeeding days. The Old Dam at Barrière Lake. The next day we took another side trip, to the east end of Lake Kippewa. Joe had been telling of a wonderful trout lake, away up the mountain, and we went to see it. There we found one of Billy's relatives, Johnnie Puryea, and two squaws, catching a winter's supply of trout. They had been there about a week, and had more than three hundred beautiful fish hung up on a frame over a slow, smoky fire. While we partook of Johnnie's trout, such a violent thunder- shower came up, with heavy wind, that we stayed late. It was almost as dark as it could be when we started back over the mile portage to the big lake. There was no good trail, only a few trees being "spotted," and the side of the mountain was furrowed with countless ravines, at the bottom of some one of which lay our canoe. We could not see the trail at all, but kept going down hill, and feeling of every tree we came to for the axe-spots. I suppose we were about two hours making that mile, and I vividly appreciated the force of the expression "feeling one's way." When we finally found the canoe, and the moon came out from under the clouds, the smooth lake seemed, after the storm, to be an old friend. Heavy Swells. The next morning we paddled along the shores of the deep indenting bays for miles, looking for moose tracks. At one place a whole family, big and little, had left fresh hoof-prints in the mud, and Joe followed them to see where they went, while Billy and I trolled, and caught as many walleyed pike and pickerel as we pleased. All along the shores of the lake, at conspicuous points, the bush-rangers, or fire police, had posted printed warnings against leaving fires in the woods. It is a misdemeanor there to leave a smouldering fire. He who starts a blaze must see that it is extinguished. "Jocko"—a Typical Algonquin. Joe showed us a place where he and a companion were watching for moose last year. "De moose come out. I shoot. De ca'tridge bu'st, and mos' blind me. I listen for my chum to shoot, but he no shoot. I look 'round, and my chum run away. So we no get dat moose." 266 267 There are many men who do not seem to be able to face a moose, but the animal cannot do anything to a man with a heavy rifle, who uses it. My note-book is full of Joe's moose stories. Here is one that shows how common the animals are at Kippewa. "Las' year anoder lad and me, we took a big head out to de station to sell. A man offer us five dollar for it. At las' we sell it for six. De trouble was, 'noder feller sell a moose, de head, skin, meat, and all, de week before, for five dollar. I swore I never help take out no more heads twenty-five mile for t'ree dollar my share, and me kill de moose, too!" The shores of Lake Kippewa are high hard-wood ridges, and one can see a long way through the trees, as there is not much undergrowth. It is an ideal place to hunt. As late as October 14th it was rather warm for a night fire in front of the tent. Every red and golden leaf as it fell at our feet bore to us the same message. The Indian summer was upon us, and it was time to be going northward. So we gathered our simple belongings together, and started on our swing around the wilderness circle, to find where the two rivers run from the same lake, to behold the mountain home of the twins. There is joy in the mere fact of following unmapped water-ways. No matter if you mistake your course, you can, at least, come back by the same way you go. The river will run just as it has run during all the centuries while you were neglecting it, and the lake will stay where it has waited for you these countless years. The land-marks will not fade away. Few, indeed, have been the kings of earth who ever felt as jaunty and independent as the one white man and two half-breeds who left Hunter's Point for the far Upper Ottawa, on the 16th of October, last year. No matter what happened to other people, we were secure; and the farther away we got, the better pleased we were. Half a day of steady paddling through the Birch Lakes took us past shores where the standing pine has never been disturbed by the lumbermen. There are in these vast forests thousands of miles of country which have never yet been decimated. Against the Current. The farther end of Big Birch Lake was the best we could do the first day, and we camped at the foot of a portage as well cleared as a country road, which has been in use by the Indians for a hundred years, and probably much longer. Joe here rebelled against any elaborate tenting arrangements for travellers. He cut three long poles, stuck them in the ground slanting, and threw the tent over them. In truth this did just as well, when the wind did not blow, as anything else. A half-mile climb the next morning brought us to the top of a long hill; and right at the very top, where a hundred dollars' worth of blasting would let it run down into Birch Lake, stretched away Lake Sissaginega, or "Island Lake," appropriately named, for there are about five hundred islands in it. Beaver-house. Joe produced a couple of short oars from the bottom of the canoe, and nailed a pair of rude rowlocks onto the gunwales. He explained that on the long, wind-swept lakes which we should have to traverse, a pair of oars were superior to two paddles against a head wind. It was a wonderful thing, but during hundreds of miles of lake travel after that we never once had a serious delay from weather. Nearly every morning the wind rose briskly with the sun, blew during the middle of the day, and moderated toward evening; so we pursued the ancient Indian custom of starting very early in the morning, before the wind came up; took a good rest in the middle of the day, and continued as late as we could in the evening. But not once on all our prosperous journey were we really wind-bound, though this is one of the most common of occurrences on these lakes, where the wind often piles the swells up so high that not even a birch- bark can weather them. The height of the wave which this marvellous little evolution of the ages can stand is not conceivable till you have witnessed it. Running with a heavy, fair wind, the swells rise behind you and seem about to engulf you. But in some way the canoe rises with the wave, and the boiling, foaming mass rushes harmlessly by, while you sit on the dry, clean bottom, and your pride increases with each successive triumph. A very long lake next north of Sissaginega is Cacaskanan, not shown at all on the maps. On this lake, about eleven o'clock the second day out, while Joe was rowing, and merely casting an occasional perfunctory glance over his left shoulder, he suddenly hissed, "See de moose!" We were at least a mile from shore, and though I have seldom met any one, civilized or savage, who could beat me at seeing game, I took off my hat to Joe from then on. Sure enough, over Joe's left shoulder he had seen a cow moose in the edge of the timber on shore. A projecting point allowed us to get pretty close to the animal. The wind was partly off shore, and all the time we were approaching we could see her watching the shore, starting at every sound made by the wind among the dead tree-trunks, but paying no attention to the 268 water side at all. This enabled us, considering the difficulty of navigating among fallen tree-trunks, to make one of the most remarkable photographs I have ever taken. We got to the very shore, and crept within thirty-five feet of that moose. I made my exposure of the negative before she saw us at all. This photograph will give a better idea than could ever be conveyed in words, of the tremendous difficulty of still-hunting the moose in thick, dry timber, where the crackling of a twig will spoil the best-made stalk. That photograph was more satisfactory to me than the shooting of fifty moose would have been. The moose does not show to the best advantage in the picture, but that was her fault, and not ours. At the click of the shutter she went to find the rest of her folks. Late that afternoon we came to a place where Lake Cacaskanan narrows to about one hundred yards wide, and here there were many moose tracks. Just beyond, we met a family of the Indians who had killed two moose that very day, and had more than a hundred musquash freshly skinned. Billy was wonderfully impressed by the dirty, unkempt appearance of the little children, whose shocks of matted hair he unconsciously Kiplingized by referring to them afterward as "haystacks." The Indian who was the head of this family, on being told by Joe where we were going, said that we would walk on the ice before we got back. I fear he was a sluggard, who saw lions or bears in the path of every enterprise. He was burning logs twenty feet long, to save the trouble of cutting them in two, and so he had fire enough for four tents, instead of one. The Moose-bird. Monday morning, October 18th, we had breakfast by starlight. Venus and Jupiter were two particularly bright morning stars. Billy looked long at the waning planets and remarked, in an awe-struck tone, "My, but they must be high up!" A Beaver Dam. That day we reached Ross Lake, where there is a lumberman's supply depot for operations over on the main Ottawa, in the direction of Lake Expanse. We had no occasion to stop there, and all the afternoon followed the directions we had received from Mr. Christopherson, pursuing the Hudson's Bay Company trail through some small beaver ponds, till we reached Trout Lake, a beautiful sheet of water about fifteen miles long, where we expected to find an Indian to guide us to the Grand Lake Victoria. We found the summer camp all right, where the Indians had a potato-patch, which they had not dug, so Joe said they had not left for the winter; but not a smoke or sign of life could we find. We explored the lake, finding abundant moose signs and trolled for salmon trout, which at this time were up near the surface. One we caught was the largest I ever saw. We had no means of determining its weight, but when placed in the centre of the canoe, crosswise, on the bottom, its nose protruded over one gunwale and its tail above the other. On the morning of our third day on the lake we heard a dog bark, and found the Indians encamped on a secluded island. The wretches had seen us the first day, but, fearing we were game wardens or other evil-disposed persons, had kept out of our way. Joe said the Indians up there had a reputation for hiding from passers-by. After we had met them and given evidence of good intentions, they were sociable enough. While we were inviting the Indians to pass judgment on the contents of a certain jug, an extremely large domestic cat belonging to them ate much of the moose meat in our canoe. Nearly every Indian camp in these woods has at least one cat, to keep the moose-birds and wood-mice in subjugation, and the cats, being hard to get, are highly prized. On Lake Kakebonga. We soon made a bargain with Kakwanee, a young Indian just married and needing money, to show us the way to the Hudson's Bay post on the Grand Lake Victoria. Without knowing it, all the time we had been on Trout Lake we were quite near a crew of lumbermen who were building a dam at the outlet, to raise the water for a reserve supply, to be used, when needed, to drive logs down the Ottawa, the water running out through Lake Expanse. The intention was to raise the water six feet; and as there are at least seventy-five square miles of water in Trout Lake, it will be seen that a large reservoir would be produced by closing the outlet, perhaps fifty feet wide. The Indians were doing a good deal 269 270 of laughing among themselves, as they said there was a marsh on the other side of the lake, where, unless another very long dam was built, the water would run off in the direction of Lake Kippewa as soon as it was raised a foot or so; and the lumbermen did not know this. In the evening while we were camped, waiting for Kakwanee to bid farewell to his bride, Billy heard a trout splash the water. He at once got some birch-bark and placed it in the cleft of a split stick, warming it by the fire to make it curl up, and then lighting it on the edge. In this way he made a torch which burned brightly for a long time. Getting into the canoe he pushed silently out, standing up. Letting the light shine into the clear water, he soon located the big trout, which lay quietly on the bottom in the full blaze of light. Then he made the motions of spearing, though he had no spear; and there was no doubt, from the realism of the pantomime, that Billy, child as he was, well knew a very unsportsmanlike way to kill fish. It was a beautiful sight to see Billy stand up in a very tottlish birch-bark canoe, as confident as a bare- back rider on a circus horse. The "Mountain Chute," Gatineau River. Joe had done some work as a "shanty-man," and the sight of the crew who were building the dam made him reminiscent. "One time," said he, "I do de chainin' for a gang; dat is, fasten de logs wid de chain, and bind em fas'. My chum, he was French, and he drive de sled. He was goin' for git marry so soon it was time for de camp to break up, an' he was sing an' smile to hisself de whole time. De ver' las' day, de las' load, he say, 'Now, Joe, dis load be de las' I ever drive fore I go home to my Julie.' So he start de sled, an' de sled hit a dead birch. When I come 'long behine him, dere he was dead. A limb break off de birch when de sled strike it. It was all rotten, an' de piece of de limb not so big as your arm. But de limb was freeze, an' it hit him on de head, an' he never move. He go home to Julie, sure, but not de way he expec'." "My," said Billy, solemnly, "it must be awful for a man's peoples when he go 'way from home feelin' good, and laugh and sing, and, the next thing his peoples know, he come home dead!" The next morning Kakwanee appeared and we resumed our interrupted journey, running all day through two lakes, neither of which has ever appeared on any map of Quebec. It seems wonderful that after white men have used watercourses for canoe routes for a century or two, and when lumbermen have investigated the country, there are stretches of many miles together which are not indicated on official maps except by white spots. But this is true of over half a million square miles of British-American territory. The two lakes we traversed are called by Indian names which mean "Crosswise Lake" and "Old Man Lake." Out of the latter runs a river which falls into the Grand Lake Victoria. This lake is really an expansion of the Ottawa. In many places its shores are covered with medium-sized pines, and in others bare rocks are the only things to be seen. The greatest enemy to these forests is fire, and in all parts of the country are vast tracts which have been so devastated. It was a long day's paddle from the lower end of the Grand Lake Victoria to the old Hudson's Bay agency near its northern extremity. Here Mr. Christopherson received us with great hospitality. He said I was the fourth white man who had visited the post that year. The Indians who came there to get their annual supplies, material and spiritual, had long since left their little summer cabins for winter hunting-grounds. Though the sun shone warm and bright, it might turn cold any night now, and so Mr. Christopherson sent Jocko to show us the portages as far as an Indian village, twenty-seven miles up the river. There we could get a guide to see us through to the place where the water runs the other way. Jocko, himself, wanted to go away hunting, so he only accompanied us as far as the Indian settlement. A "Chute" on the Gatineau. This procuring of guides through an unknown country, on the instalment plan, was very fascinating to me, and it illustrated a characteristic of the northern forest Indian which is universal. The red man of the prairies was a nomad, but the son of the woods does not make very long pilgrimages, or know much about the world beyond his own hunting- ground. Before he is old enough to remember any thing he makes his first journey to the trading-post where his ancestors have for generations been regular customers and perpetual debtors. He does not remember how or when he learned the way. On his own stream and its tributaries he is an infallible guide, for he learned all the landmarks before he could pronounce their names. But every forest traveller has found the Indians in one locality reluctant to go far from home. When Alexander Mackenzie felt his way, by stream and portage, to the great river which bears his name, and thence down to the Frozen Ocean, he found that the Indians on one reach of the river always believed that below their own country there were impassable rapids and insurmountable rocks, ferocious beasts and hidden perils. If you will journey toward the head of the Ottawa, in the fall of this year, you will find precisely the same state of aboriginal mind. The Indians around the Grand Lake Victoria are within a few miles of the sources of rivers flowing toward the four 271 272 quarters of the American continent. Ten days' steady canoeing in any direction would take them to Hudson's Bay or Lake Huron or Lake Ontario or Montreal. But they never travel for the sake of seeing the country, or get far from home. It was on the last day Jocko was with us, October 26th, that I made the photograph of him which is one of the illustrations of this article. He was in his shirt-sleeves and wore an old straw hat. While we were eating our lunch at noon, the black flies were a little attentive and it was uncomfortably warm. That was the climate of the far Upper Ottawa in the last days of October. There was not yet a suggestion of snow. For all the atmospheric indications told us, we might have been in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. The Ottawa above Grand Lake House comes down out of the rocky hills, and is full of rapids. In many smooth places the current is very swift, and it was worth coming a long way to see Joe and Jocko paddle up places where Billy and I could not go. Fighting inch by inch against a rapid current is one of the most trying tests of endurance I know. It is unlike anything else in the world. You pull and pull, and realize that an instant's relaxation will cost you all you have gained. If the water only would stop for an instant! But it is so easy for the current to rush on and on. How futile are human energy and perseverance against a power which has never for one second faltered in uncounted years! Jocko told Joe—he could not say it in English—that he enjoyed travelling with us more than he did with the Hudson's Bay Company people, because they travelled for dear life, making fifty or sixty miles a day, and nearly paralyzed his arms. When he had gone from Hunter's Point to Grand Lake House a few weeks before, he and Mr. Christopherson had made the trip in less than three days, but his arms were numb all the next night. He liked to find a white man who travelled "like an Indian," and said if I would come up this fall he would show me some moose and deer hunting around the head of the Coulonge and Dumoine, the like of which white men did not often see. We reached the camp of the old chief, Jocko's objective point, just at purple twilight, when the smoke was rising straight toward the sky, and we witnessed one of the most peaceful and beautiful bits of wilderness comfort I have ever beheld. It seemed more like approaching a white man's farm than an Indian camp. There were two or three log-houses, a few acres of cleared land, and two or three horses and cows. A tame horned owl scolded us from the roof of a barn. The Indian girls were singing and calling to each other across the wide river. A score of children and grandchildren of the fat old chief turned out to welcome us, and we slept in one of the log-barns, on the hay. Jocko sat up and visited with his Indian girl friends, and I heard them laughing and chatting until long after midnight. As I lay looking out at the shining surface of the Ottawa, from my cosey nest in the sweet, wild hay, it was bewildering to remember that so much of Canada lay south of us. Only a rifle-shot away, at the end of a forest path, were the bubbling springs which form the sources of the Coulonge, that pine-embowered stream which, for two hundred miles, straight away to the south, traverses the centre of the great interior island whose borders we were encircling. I thought of the long reaches of moonlit river, where the timid deer were drinking, and the moose, in all the ardor of their courtship, roared hoarse contempt for impertinent rivals. And this was only one of the streams whose sources we were circumnavigating: the Maganasipi, the Bear, the swamp-fed Black, the Dumoine, the Tomasine, the Desert—all these rivers and a thousand lakes, gathered all at last in the generous arms of the twin rivers, and borne away to join the grand chorus, the voice of many waters. In the morning there was a pow-wow, as the result of which a son and grandson of the chief agreed to see us out to the Gatineau, the boy going along to help his father if a freeze-up should make it necessary to carry their canoe back over the ice. For many miles through devious channels and short cuts, we ran past natural meadows where the unsown grass had grown high and dried up for the lack of something to feed upon it—ancient beaver meadows, from which all trace of the original forest had long ago disappeared. Joe and the Indian discussed the beaver question earnestly. It appears that the most interesting issue in Algonquin politics is what to do about the beavers. There are plenty of them all through the back country, and the Indians regard them as their personal property. They only kill a certain proportion of the little animals, and carefully preserve the supply. The beaver's habit of building for himself and family a comfortable and conspicuous residence enables the hunters to take a pretty accurate census of the population, and to tell just where the animals are to be found. On our way we turned aside and photographed a beaver-dam and a house. The natural history books generally picture these constructions as quite symmetrical affairs, but all I have ever seen have been rough piles of sticks and mud, and the photographs show typical beaver construction. A few years ago a sportsman's club in Quebec induced the legislature to pass a law entirely prohibiting the killing of beaver until the year 1900. Two hundred years ago, when the Iroquois made raids on the Ottawa country, and prevented the annual catch of beaver skins from coming down to Montreal and Quebec, hard times fell upon Canada. Precisely the same condition has confronted the Indians and the Hudson's Bay Company recently. It is almost as bad a situation as it would be in Illinois if the farmers were forbidden by law to kill hogs. The Hudson's Bay Company's agents at Grand Lake Victoria and the Barriere lake have not dared to buy the skins. The Indians have had no other reliable way to pay for their supplies. Ruin for the traders and starvation for the Indians would inevitably follow the continued enforcement of the law. Some relief has been afforded by the fact that the post at Abittibi ships all its furs by way of Hudson's Bay, so they cannot be seized by the Quebec authorities; and thousands of skins, worth $10 apiece, were diverted to that market last year. The Indians have been very much disturbed over the matter, for they find the law of necessity more urgent than a statute whose logic they cannot understand. "Some families up here starve to death last winter," interpreted Joe, after listening for awhile to Jonas, our new guide. "I t'ink I no starve, w'en de beaver build his house close by my water-hole." 273 274 Our newly acquired pilot had no idea of losing any business opportunities. His canoe was ahead of the one in which Joe, Billy, and I travelled, and he had his muzzle-loading, cylinder-bore double shot-gun, a handy little weapon, lying in front of him, both hammers at full cock, hour after hour as he paddled, the muzzle pointing squarely at the back of his boy in the bow. It was trying to unaccustomed nerves, but the boy seemed to be used to the idea of sudden death. Jonas had a curious habit of holding a bullet in his mouth, ready to drop it in an instant down the gun-barrel, on top of the shot. The utility of keeping his decks cleared for action appeared when, toward evening, he cleverly snapped up a reckless mink which darted along the bank, where the stream was narrow and crooked. The report startled a caribou, which crashed out of the alders, not fifty feet away. Jonas spat his bullet down the left barrel and fired again, neatly missing both his boy's head and the reindeer. Joe derided Jonas in choice Algonquin, and said to me, confidentially, "I t'ink we better go in front in de mornin'." All the same, the Indian's idea of a gun which will do for partridges one minute and moose the next is a sound one, in a country where one's breakfast flies or runs away. At noon the next day, we reached the head of that branch of the Ottawa rising in the Barriere lake. Long ago forgotten Gatineau timber-cutters built a dam, to divert this water to the Jean de Terre, but now the dam has fallen into disuse, and the stream seeks its ancient bed. Just beyond the dam is the Hudson's Bay post, a branch of the one on the Grand Lake Victoria. Mr. Edwards, the agent, was delighted to see strangers, especially when I produced a letter which Mr. Christopherson had sent by me, enclosing his three months' salary. Mrs. Edwards soon discovered that our Billy was her nephew, and that much-related young person was at once honored with a seat at the family dinner-table with the twelve little Edwardses, fraternizing with them in the three-ply language which is the natural speech of these mixed races. Mr. Edwards told me he had that season refused hundreds of beaver-skins from Indians, every one of whom was on his books for a year's supplies, and now he did not quite see what the post was going to do, with beavers demonetized. Jonas, our most recent guide, did not wish to linger, being haunted by the fear of coming frost which the warm air belied. So that same afternoon we hastened on, regretfully declining Mr. Edwards's invitation to go on a caribou hunt. These reindeer abound in the Barrière lake country. We camped perhaps fifteen miles from the post that night, and the next morning, soon after starting up the lake, came to a narrow place where the water, instead of coming toward us as it had been doing all the time for days, formed a little rapid, running the same way we were going. The day before we had seen the water pouring into the Ottawa through the lumbermen's worn-out dam, and here, twenty-four hours afterward, continuing up the same lake, we found the current was with us instead of against us, down instead of up, and we were drifting out toward the Gatineau, in the other direction. If we had not known about the two outlets to the lake we should have thought the water was bewitched. All that day we ran through Lake Kakebonga, which the Hudson's Bay people consider the most bewildering sheet of water in the Gatineau Valley. There are dozens of deep bays, which look about alike, and if you start into the wrong one, you get wholly astray. Once during the day it became a little foggy, and Jonas at once went ashore and waited for the veil to lift, as he said no one could find his way there in thick weather. These large lakes are all long and narrow, and very crooked. Like Kippewa and Victoria, Lake Kakebonga is nowhere wide, but its shore-line is very long, and the canoe route often cuts across a portage to save miles of travelling. East of Lake Kakebonga there is a very rough bit of country which we crossed by what are locally known as the Sixteen Portages, or "the Sixteen," where we clambered into and out of the canoe on an average about once in half a mile. At last we came to a long, wide path over a level plain. "I know dis portage so well I know my own house," said Joe. "I was up here from de Gatineau fourteen year ago." And there our forest friends turned back, and left Joe and Billy and me to make our way by the smooth current of the Jean de Terre out to the Gatineau. I suppose we ran twenty miles after three o'clock that afternoon. Then, when it was so dark we could see no longer, we camped on a dry sand- bar, cooked our supper by a little fire, turned the canoe on edge, spread our blankets, threw the tent over all, and were lost in dreamless oblivion. "De wolf was howl pretty good las' night, wasn't he?" commented Joe, as he waked Billy and me in the smoky dawn. "I tink I hear em close by onetime." And in the sand, about one hundred feet from our resting-place, were plenty of tracks, where the deer-killing brutes had prowled around while we slept; perfectly harmless creatures, but unable to resist the temptation to come near the fat and juicy Billy. Of all northern wilderness streams, the most interesting I have ever seen is the Gatineau, into which we were soon carried by the current of the Jean de Terre. The descent which the devious Ottawa makes in seven hundred miles or so, is accomplished by the Gatineau in its straight course of less than two hundred, and there are few places where you cannot hear the roar of the next rapid. In the spring every bend is a maelstrom. On the banks and overhanging cedars we could see the marks made by the spring freshets, fifteen feet above the fall level of the water. And even then, as we approached a rapid, it was necessary to know on which side the portage was, because generally the opposite bank was a vertical wall, and once in the sweep of the current, there could be no return. "You see dat rapid?" said Joe, after an early camp on the portage, as we went down to look at the boiling cauldron below, "I tink I always remember him. One time I work in a shanty back on dat leetle stream we pass dis afternoon. De shanty was mos' ready to break up, and good many de men was go down on de drive. Dere was only one foreman for all de gangs, 'cause so many men been laid off. Dat mornin' de foreman tell dis man 'I want you for do dis,' an' dose men 'I want you for do dat,' sen' dis man here and dat man dere, an' he pick six men an' he say 'I want you for take de batteau—dat's de big row-boat—'wid forty-five chains, to de gang for fix de boom in de pond down below,' and he 275 276 say 'Dat rapid dere, don' none you dam fools try for run him. I tell you dat batteau ain't like de canoe, an' de chains won't help you swim; so I want you for portage de whole t'ing.' So de men take de batteau, and de foreman say, 'You, Joe, you an' your chum an' Big Jule, you take de big canoe, an' you go down for help on de boom.' "So we start an' follow de batteau, an' of course you can't see ver' far in de river, he is so crooked. I was in de bow, an' I see dem men in de batteau, 'bout two acres ahead, 'fore we get to de bend. Well, we come to de head dis portage and we see nobody dere. I take out my pack an' put de tump-line on my head, an' my chum say 'Dem fellers make de portage pretty quick.' I go down wid my pack, and start up de portage once more, for bring de canoe, me an' Big Jule. W'en I get to de head of de portage, my chum, he come run up all out of breat', an' he say 'I see a hat an' a oar in de water down by de foot de rapid!' "Den I know w'at's de matter. Me an' Big Jule we have de canoe on our heads for carry it down de portage, but we don't say one word. We jus' turn de canoe down and I jump in de bow, an' my chum in the middle, an' Big Jule for steer, an' we run de rapid. We t'ink maybe somebody hang on de rock; but fore we know it we strike jus' where dey strike, on a side jam w'ere de logs pile up. I jump out, an' my chum he jump out, an' we catch de canoe an' let her swing, an we holler to Jule to jump, an he jump jus' in time I tell you, for the canoe go under de jam an' smash, cr-r-ack all to piece. I never so near de en' of my life till I die, sure. Well, we go back an' tell de foreman, and he sen' some men for shut down de dam, up in de lac, an' we look for dem feller four days. We look way down below, but we no fine 'em, an' de mornin' de fift' day, I was stan' up in de bow, an' I see black spot come up an' bob up an down in de eddy right down dere, an' in fifteen minute we have dem six feller out on dis san' bar. Dey was all in a bunch. It was hot, and dey look awful. "Well, sir, after dat you not hear one word in de shanty at night. De mens come in, an' dey jus' sit an' say not one word, an' good many de young lads git fright, an' leave de drive an go home. O, I t'ink I remember dis rapid pretty sure." Joe's boyhood experience of the Gatineau stood us in good stead all the way down. He remembered perfectly all the rapids, knew which could be run and which could not. "W'en yo...