Here we found the first real butchering camp of the Indians—a camp of the previous spring. Piles of caribou bones that had been cracked to extract the marrow, many pairs of antlers, the bare poles of large lodges and extensive arrangements, such as racks and cross poles for dressing and curing deerskins. In a cache we found two muzzle-loading guns, cooking utensils, steel traps, and other camping and hunting paraphernalia.

On the portage around the last shallow rapid was a winter camp, where among other things was a komatik (dog sledge), showing that some of these Indians at least on the northern barrens used dogs for winter traveling. In the south of Labrador this would be quite out of the question, as there the bush is so thick that it does not permit the snow to drift and harden sufficiently to bear dogs, and the use of the komatik is therefore necessarily confined to the coast or near it. The Indian women there are very timid of the "husky" dogs, and the animals are not permitted near their camps.

The sixteenth of September—the day we passed through this large expansion—was Richards' birthday. When we bade good-by to the other men it was agreed that both parties should celebrate the day, wherever they might be, with the best dinner that could be provided from our respective stores. The meal was to be served at exactly seven o'clock in the evening, that we might feel on this one occasion that we were all sitting down to eat together, and fancy ourselves reunited. In the morning we opened the package that Richards gave us, and found in it a piece of fat pork and a quart of flour, intended for a feast of our favorite "darn goods." With self-sacrificing generosity he had taken these from the scanty rations they had allowed themselves for their return that we might have a pleasant surprise. With the now plentiful game this made it possible to prepare what seemed to us a very elaborate menu for the wild wastes of interior Labrador. First, there was bouillon, made from beef capsules; then an entr'ee of fried ptarmigan and duck giblets; a roast of savory black duck, with spinach (the last of our desiccated vegetables); and for dessert French toast 'a la Labrador (alias darn goods), followed by black coffee. 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.

The marsh and swamp land gradually gave way to hills, which increased in size and ruggedness as we proceeded. We had found the river at its very beginning, and for a short way portages, as has been suggested, had to be made around shallow places, but after a little, as other streams augmented the volume of water, this became unnecessary, and as the river grew in size it became a succession of rapids, and most of them unpleasant ones, that kept us dodging rocks all the while.

Mr. A. P. Low, of the Canadian Geological Survey, in other parts of the Labrador interior found black ducks very scarce. This was not our experience. From the day we entered the George River until we were well down the stream they were plentiful, and we shot what we needed without turning our canoe out of its course to hunt them. This is apparently a breeding ground for them.

Several otter rubs were noted, and we saw some of the animals, but did not disturb them. In places where the river broadened out and the current was slack every rock that stuck above the water held its muskrat house, and large numbers of the rats were seen.

After the snow we had one or two fine, bright days, but they were becoming few now, and the frosty winds and leaden skies, the forerunners of winter, were growing more and more frequent. When the bright days did come they were exceptional ones. I find noted in my diary one morning: "This is a morning for the gods—a morning that could scarcely be had anywhere in the world but in Labrador—a cloudless sky, no breath of wind, the sun rising to light the heavy hoarfrost and make it glint and sparkle till every tree and bush and rock seems made of shimmering silver."

One afternoon as we were passing through an expansion and I was scanning, as was my custom, every bit of shore in the hope of discovering a wigwam smoke, I saw, running down the side of a hill on an island a quarter of a mile away, a string of Indians waving wildly at us and signaling us to come ashore. After twelve weeks, in which not a human being aside from our own party had been seen, we had reached the dwellers of the wilderness, and with what pleasure and alacrity we accepted the invitation to join them can be imagined.



CHAPTER XIII

DISASTER IN THE RAPIDS

It was a hunting party—four men and a half-grown boy—with two canoes and armed with rifles. The Indians gave us the hearty welcome of the wilderness and received us like old friends. First, the chief, whose name was Toma, shook our hand, then the others, laughing and all talking at once in their musical Indian tongue. It was a welcome that said: "You are our brothers. You have come far to see us, and we are glad to have you with us."

After the first greetings were over they asked for stemmo, and I gave them each a plug of tobacco, for that is what stemmo means. They had no pipes with them, so I let them have two of mine, and it did my heart good to see the look of supreme satisfaction that crept into each dusky face as its possessor inhaled in long, deep pulls the smoke of the strong tobacco. It was like the food that comes to a half- starved man. After they had had their smoke, passing the pipes from mouth to mouth, I brought forth our kettle. In a jiffy they had a fire, and I made tea for them, which they drank so scalding hot it must have burned their throats. They told us they had had neither tea nor tobacco for a long while, and were very hungry for both. These are the stimulants of the Labrador Indians, and they will make great sacrifices to secure them.

All the time that this was taking place we were jabbering, each in his own tongue, neither we nor they understanding much that the other said. I did make out from them that we were the first white men that had ever visited them in their hunting grounds and that they were glad to see us.

Accepting an invitation to visit their lodges and escorted by a canoe on either side of ours, we finally turned down stream and, three miles below, came to the main camp of the Indians, which was situated, as most of their hunting camps are, on a slight eminence that commanded a view of the river for several miles in either direction, that watch might be constantly kept for bands of caribou.

We were discovered long before we arrived at the lodges, and were met by the whole population—men, women, children, dogs, and all. Our reception was tumultuous and cordial. It was a picturesque group. 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. Then the men squatted around until eleven of them were with us in our little seven by nine tent, while all the others crowded as near to the entrance as they could. I treated everybody to hot tea. The men helped themselves first, then passed their cups on to the women and children. The used tea leaves from the kettle were carefully preserved by them to do service again. The eagerness with which the men and women drank the tea and smoked the tobacco aroused my sympathies, and I distributed amongst them all of these that I could well spare from our store. In appreciation of my gifts they brought us a considerable quantity of fresh and jerked venison and smoked fat; and Toma, as a special mark of favor presented me with a deer's tongue which had been cured by some distinctive process unlike anything I had ever eaten before, and it was delicious indeed, together with a bladder of refined fat so clear that it was almost transparent.

The encampment consisted of two deerskin wigwams. One was a large one and oblong in shape, the other of good size but round. The smaller wigwam was heated by a single fire in the center, the larger one by three fires distributed at intervals down its length. Chief Toma occupied, with his family, the smaller lodge, while the others made their home in the larger one.

This was a band of Mountaineer Indians who trade at Davis Inlet Post of the Hudson's Bay Company, on the east coast, visiting the Post once or twice a year to exchange their furs for such necessaries as ammunition, clothing, tobacco and tea. Unlike their brothers on the southern slope, they have not accustomed themselves to the use of flour, sugar and others of the simplest luxuries of civilization, and their food is almost wholly flesh, fish and berries. They live in the crude, primordial fashion of their forefathers. To aid them in their hunt they have adopted the breech-loading rifle and muzzle-loading shotgun, but the bow and arrow has still its place with them and they were depending wholly upon this crude weapon for hunting partridges and other small game now, as they had no shotgun ammunition. The boys were constantly practicing with it while at play and were very expert in its use.

These Indians are of medium height, well built, sinewy and strong, alert and quick of movement. The women are generally squatty and fat, and the greater a woman's avoirdupois the more beautiful is she considered.

All the Mountaineer Indians of Labrador are nominally Roman Catholics. Those in the south are quite devoted to their priest, and make an effort to meet him at least once a year and pay their tithes, but here in the north this is not the case. In fact some of these people had seen their priest but once in their life and some of the younger ones had never seen him at all. Therefore they are still living under the influence of the ancient superstitions of their race, though the women are all provided with crucifixes and wear them on their breasts as ornaments.

They are perfectly honest. Indians, until they become contaminated by contact with whites, always are honest. It is the white man that teaches them to steal, either by actually pilfering from the ignorant savage, or by taking undue advantage of him in trade. Human nature is the same everywhere, and the Indian will, when he finds he is being taken advantage of and robbed, naturally resent it and try to "get even." Our things were left wholly unguarded, and were the object of a great deal of curiosity and admiration, not only our guns and instruments, but nearly everything we had, and were handled and inspected by our hosts, but not the slightest thing was filched. No Labrador Indian north of the Grand River will ever disturb a cache unless driven to it by the direst necessity, and even then will leave something in payment for what he takes.

We told them of the evidences we had seen of the caribou migration having taken place between Michikamau and Michikamats, and they were mightily interested. They had missed it but were, nevertheless, meeting small bands of caribou and making a good killing, as the quantities of meat hanging everywhere to dry for winter use bore evidence. The previous winter, they told us, was a hard one with them. Reindeer and ptarmigan disappeared, and before spring they were on the verge of starvation.

Our visit was made the occasion of a holiday and they devoted themselves wholly to our entertainment, and I believe were genuinely sorry when, on the afternoon after our arrival, I announced my decision to break camp and proceed. They helped us get ready, drew a rough sketch of the river so far as they knew it, and warned us to look out for numerous rapids and some high falls around which there was a portage trail. Farther on, they said, the river was joined by another, and then it became a "big, big river," and for two days' journey was good. Beyond that it was reported to be very bad. They had never traveled it, because they heard it was so bad, and they could not tell us, from their own knowledge, what it was like, but repeated the warning, "Shepoo matchi, shepoo matchi" (River bad), and told us to look out.

When we were ready to go, as a particular mark of good feeling, they brought us parting gifts of smoked deer's fat and were manifestly in earnest in their urgent invitations to us to come again. The whole encampment assembled at the shore to see us off and, as our canoes pushed out into the stream, the men pitched small stones after us as a good luck omen. If the stones hit you good luck is assured. You will have a good hunt and no harm will come to you. None of the stones happened to hit us. We could see the group waving at us until we rounded the point of land upon which the lodges stood; then the men all appeared on the other side of the point, where they had run to watch us until we disappeared around a bend in the river below, as we passed on to push our way deeper and deeper into the land of silence and mystery.

The following morning brought us into a lake expansion some twelve miles long and two miles or so in width, with a great many bays and arms which were extremely confusing to us in our search for the place where the river left it. The lower end was blocked with islands, and innumerable rocky bars, partially submerged, extended far out into the water. A strong southwest wind sent heavy rollers down the lake. Low, barren hills skirted the shores.

Early in the afternoon we turned into a bay where I left Easton with the canoe while I climbed one of the barren knolls. I had scarcely reached the summit when I heard a rifle shot, and then, after a pause, three more in quick succession. There were four cartridges in my rifle. I ran down to the canoe where I found Easton in wild excitement, waving the gun and calling for cartridges, and half-way across the bay saw the heads of two caribou swimming toward the opposite shore. I loaded the magazine and sat down to wait for the animals to land.

When the first deer got his footing and showed his body above the water three hundred and fifty yards away, I took him behind the shoulder. He dropped where he stood. The other animal stopped to look at his comrade, and a single bullet, also behind his shoulder, brought him down within ten feet of where he had stood when he was hit. I mention this to show the high efficiency of the .33 Winchester. At a comparatively long range two bullets had killed two caribou on the spot without the necessity of a chase after wounded animals, and one bullet had passed from behind the shoulder, the length of the neck, into the head and glancing downward had broken the jaw.

I desired to make a cache here that we might have something to fall back upon in case our retreat should become necessary, and four days were employed in fixing up the meat and preparing the cache, and this gave us also sufficient time, in spite of continuous heavy wind and rain, to thoroughly explore the lake and its bays. An ample supply of the fresh venison was reserved to carry with us.

We now had on hand, exclusive of the pemmican and other rations still remaining, and the meat cached, eight weeks' provisions, with plenty of ducks and ptarmigans everywhere, and there seemed to be no further danger from lack of food.

One day, while we were here, five caribou tarried for several minutes within two hundred yards of us and then sauntered off without taking alarm, and later the same day another was seen at closer range; but we did not need them and permitted them to go unmolested.

From a hill near this bay, where we killed the deer, on the eastern side of the lake, we discovered a trail leading off toward a string of lakes to the eastward. This is undoubtedly the portage trail which the Indians follow in their journeys to the Post at Davis Inlet. Toma had told me we might see it here, and that, not far in, on one of these lakes was another Indian camp.

An inordinate craving for fat takes possession of every one after a little while in the bush. We had felt it, and now, with plenty, overindulged, with the result that we were attacked with illness, and for a day or two I was almost too sick to move.

The morning we left Atuknipi, or Reindeer Lake, as we shall call the expansion, a blinding snowstorm was raging, with a strong head wind. Several rapids were run though it was extremely dangerous work, for at times we could scarcely see a dozen yards ahead. At midday the snow ceased, but the wind increased in velocity until finally we found it quite out of the question to paddle against it, and were forced to pitch camp on the shores of a small expansion and under the lee of a hill. For two days the gale blew unceasingly and held us prisoners in our camp. The waves broke on the rocky shores, sending the spray fifty feet in the air and, freezing on the surrounding bowlders, covered them with a glaze of ice. I cannot say what the temperature was, for on the day of our arrival here my last thermometer was broken; but with half a foot of snow on the ground, the freezing spray and the bitter cold wind, we were warned that winter was reaching out her hand toward Labrador and would soon hold us in her merciless grasp. This made me chafe under our imprisonment, for I began to fear that we should not reach the Post before the final freeze-up came, and further travel by canoe would be out of the question. On the morning of September twenty-ninth, the wind, though still blowing half a gale in our faces, had so much abated that we were able to launch our canoe and continue our journey.

It was very cold. The spray froze as it struck our clothing, the, canoe was weighted with ice and our paddles became heavy with it. We ran one or two short rapids in safety and then started into another that ended with a narrow strip of white water with a small expansion below. We had just struck the white water, going at a good speed in what seemed like a clear course, when the canoe, at its middle, hit a submerged rock. Before there was time to clear ourselves the little craft swung in the current, and the next moment I found myself in the rushing, seething flood rolling down through the rocks.

When I came to the surface I was in the calm water below the rapid and twenty feet away was the canoe, bottom up, with Easton clinging to it, his clothing fast on a bolt under the canoe. I swam to him and, while he drew his hunting knife and cut himself loose, steadied the canoe. We had neglected—and it was gross carelessness in us—to tie our things fast, and the lighter bags and paddles were floating away while everything that was heavy had sunk beyond hope of recovery. The thwarts, however, held fast in the overturned canoe a bag of pemmican, one other small bag, the tent and tent stove. Treading water to keep ourselves afloat we tried to right the canoe to save these, but our efforts were fruitless. The icy water so benumbed us we could scarcely control our limbs. The tracking line was fast to the stern thwart, and with one end of this in his teeth, Easton swam to a little rocky island just below the rapid and hauled while I swam by the canoe and steadied the things under the thwarts. It took us half an hour to get the canoe ashore, and we could hardly stand when he had it righted and the water emptied out.

Then I looked for wood to build a fire, for I knew that unless we could get artificial heat immediately we would perish with the cold, for the very blood in our veins was freezing. Not a stick was there nearer than an eighth of a mile across the bay. Our paddles were gone, but we got into the canoe and used our hands for paddles. By the time we landed Easton had grown very pale. He began picking and clutching aimlessly at the trees. The blood had congealed in my hands until they were so stiff as to be almost useless. I could not guide them to the trousers pocket at first where I kept my waterproof match- box. Finally I loosened my belt and found the matches, and with the greatest difficulty managed to get one between my benumbed fingers, and scratched it on the bottom of the box. The box was wet and the match head flew off. Everything was wet. Not a dry stone even stuck above the snow. I tried another match on the box, but, like the first, the head flew off, and then another and another with the same result. Under ordinary circumstances I could have secured a light somehow and quickly, but now my hands and fingers were stiff as sticks and refused to grip the matches firmly. I worked with desperation, but it seemed hopeless. Easton's face by this time had taken on the waxen shade that comes with death, and he appeared to be looking through a haze. His senses were leaving him. I saw something must be done at once, and I shouted to him: "Run! run! Easton, run!" Articulation was difficult, and I did not know my own voice. It seemed very strange and far away to me. We tried to run but had lost control of our legs and both fell down. With an effort I regained my feet but fell again when I tried to go forward. My legs refused to carry me. I crawled on my hands and knees in the snow for a short distance, and it was all I could do to recover my feet. Easton had now lost all understanding of his surroundings. He was looking into space but saw nothing. He was groping blindly with his hands. He did not even know that he was cold. I saw that only a fire could save his life, and perhaps mine, and that we must have it quickly, and made one more superhuman effort with the matches. One after another I tried them with the same result as before until but three remained. All depended upon those three matches. The first one flickered for a moment and my hopes rose, but my poor benumbed fingers refused to hold it and it fell into the snow and went out. The wind was drying the box bottom. I tried another—an old sulphur match, I remember. It burned! I applied it with the greatest care to a handful of the hairy moss that is found under the branches next the trunk of spruce trees, and this ignited. Then I put on small sticks, nursing the blaze with the greatest care, adding larger sticks as the smaller ones took fire. I had dropped on my knees and could reach the sticks from where I knelt, for there was plenty of dead wood lying about. As the blaze grew I rose to my feet and, dragging larger wood, piled it on. A sort of joyful mania took possession of me as I watched the great tongues of flames shooting skyward and listened to the crackling of the burning wood, and I stood back and laughed. I had triumphed over fate and the elements. Our arms, our clothing, nearly all our food, our axes and our paddles, and even the means of making new paddles were gone, but for the present we were safe. Life, no matter how uncertain, is sweet, and I laughed with the very joy of living.



CHAPTER XIV

TIDE WATER AND THE POST

When Easton came to his senses, he found himself warming by the fire. It is wonderful how quickly a half-frozen man will revive. As soon as we were thoroughly thawed out we stripped to our underclothing and hung our things up to dry, permitting our underclothing to dry on us as we stood near the blaze. We were little the worse for our dip, escaping with slightly frosted fingers and toes. I discovered in my pockets a half plug of black tobacco such as we use in the North, put it on the end of a stick and dried it out, and then we had a smoke. We agreed that we had never in our life before had so satisfactory a smoke as that. The stimulant was needed and it put new life into us.

Easton was very pessimistic. He was generally inclined to look upon the dark side of things anyway, and now he believed our fate was sealed, especially if we could not find our paddles, and he began to talk about returning to our cache and thence to the Indians. But I had been in much worse predicaments than this, and paddles or no paddles, determined to go on, for we could work our way down the river somehow with poles and the bag of pemmican would keep us alive until we reached the Post—unless the freeze-up caught us.

When we had dried ourselves we went to the canoe to make an inventory of our remaining goods and chattels, and with a vague hope that a paddle might be found on the shore. What, then, was our surprise and our joy to find not only the paddles but our dunnage bags and my instrument bag amongst the rocks, where an eddy below the rapid swirled the water in. Thus our blankets and clothing were safe, we had fifty pounds of pemmican, our tent and tent stove, and in the small bag that I have mentioned as having remained in the canoe with the other things was all our tea and five or six pounds of caribou tallow. Our matches—and this was a great piece of good fortune—were uninjured, and we had a good stock of them. The tent stove seemed useless without the pipe, but we determined to cling to it, as our luggage now was light. Our guns, axes, the balance of our provisions, including salt, the tea kettle and all our other cooking utensils, were gone, and worst of all, three hundred and fifty unexposed photographic films. Only twenty or thirty unexposed films were saved, but fortunately, only one roll of ten exposed films, which was in one of the cameras, was injured, and none of the exposed films was lost. One camera was damaged beyond use, as were also my aneroid barometer and binoculars. However, we were fortunate to get off so easily as we did, and the accident taught us the lesson to take no chances in rapids and to tie everything fast at all times. Carelessness is pretty sure to demand its penalty, and the wilderness is constantly springing surprises upon those who submit themselves to its care.

A pretty dreary camp we pitched that evening near the place of our mishap. Fortunately there was plenty of dead wood loose on the ground, and we did very well for our camp fire without the axes. A pemmican can with the end cut off about an inch from the top, with a piece of copper wire that I found in my dunnage bag fashioned into a bale, made a very serviceable tea pail, from which we drank in turn, as our cups were lost. The top of the can answered for a frying pan in which to melt our caribou tallow and pemmican when we wanted our ration hot, and as a plate. Tent pegs were cut with our jackknives and the tent stretched between two trees, which avoided the necessity of tent poles. Thus, with our cooking and living outfit reduced to the simplest and crudest form, and with a limited and unvaried diet of pemmican, tallow and tea, we were on the whole able, so long as loose wood could be found for our night camps, to keep comparatively comfortable and free from any severe hardships.

We certainly had great reason to be thankful, and that night before we rolled into our blankets I read aloud by the light of our camp fire from my little Bible the one hundred and seventh Psalm, in thanksgiving.

The next morning before starting forward we paddled out to the rapid, in the vain hope that we might be able to recover some of the lost articles from the bottom of the river, but at the place where the spill had occurred the water was too swift and deep for us to do anything, and we were forced to abandon the attempt and reluctantly resume our journey without the things.

That night we felt sorely the loss of the axes. Our camp was pitched in a spot where no loose wood was to be found save very small sticks, insufficient in quantity for an adequate fire in the open, for the evening was cold. We could not pitch our tent wigwam fashion with an opening at the top for the smoke to escape, as to do that several poles were necessary, and we had no means of cutting them. However, with the expectation that enough smoke would find its way out of the stovepipe hole to permit us to remain inside, we built a small round Indian fire in the center of the tent. We managed to endure the smoke and warm ourselves while tea was making, but the experiment proved a failure and was not to be resorted to again, for I feared it might result in an attack of smoke-blindness. This is an affliction almost identical in effect to snow-blindness. I had suffered from it in the first days of my wandering alone in the Susan Valley in the winter of 1903, and knew what it meant, and that an attack of it would preclude traveling while it lasted, to say nothing of the pain that it would inflict.

Here a portage was necessary around a half-mile canyon through which the river, a rushing torrent, tumbled in the interval over a series of small falls, and all the way the perpendicular walls of basaltic rock that confined it rose on either side to a height of fifty to seventy- five feet above the seething water. Just below this canyon another river joined us from the east, increasing the volume of water very materially. Our tumplines were gone, but with the tracking line and pieces of deer skin we improvised new ones that answered our purpose very well.

The hills, barren almost to their base, and growing in altitude with every mile we traveled, were now closely hugging the river valley, which was almost destitute of trees. Rapids were practically continuous and always strewn with dangerous rocks that kept us constantly on the alert and our nerves strung to the highest tension.

The general course of the river for several days was north, thirty degrees east, but later assumed an almost due northerly course. It made some wide sweeps as it worked its tortuous way through the ranges, sometimes almost doubling on itself. At intervals small streams joined it and it was constantly growing in width and depth. Once we came to a place where it dropped over massive bed rock in a series of falls, some of which were thirty or more feet in height. Few portages, however, were necessary. We took our chances on everything that there was any prospect of the canoe living through— rapids that under ordinary circumstances we should never have trusted —for the grip of the cold weather was tightening with each October day. The small lakes away from the river, where the water was still, must even now have been frozen, but the river current was so big and strong that it had as yet warded off the frost shackles. When the real winter came, however, it would be upon us in a night, and then even this mighty torrent must submit to its power.

At one point the valley suddenly widened and the hills receded, and here the river broke up into many small streams—no less than five— but some four or five miles farther on these various channels came together again, and then the growing hills closed in until they pinched the river banks more closely than ever.

On the morning of October sixth we swung around a big bend in the river, ran a short but precipitous rapid and suddenly came upon another large river flowing in from the west. This stream came through a sandy valley, and below the junction of the rivers the sand banks rose on the east side a hundred feet or so above the water. The increase here in the size of the stream was marked—it was wide and deep. A terrific gale was blowing and caught us directly in our faces as we turned the bend and lost the cover of the lee share above the curve, and paddling ahead was impossible. The waves were so strong, in fact, that we barely escaped swamping before we effected a landing.

We here found ourselves in an exceedingly unpleasant position. We were only fitted with summer clothing, which was now insufficient protection. There was not enough loose wood to make an open fire to keep us warm for more than an hour or so, and we could not go on to look for a better camping place. In a notch between the sand ridges we found a small cluster of trees, between two of which our tent was stretched, but it was mighty uncomfortable with no means of warming. "If we only had our stovepipe now we'd be able to break enough small stuff to keep the stove going," said Easton. With nothing else to do we climbed a knoll to look at the river below, and there on the knoll what should we find but several lengths of nearly worn-out but still serviceable pipe that some Indian had abandoned. "It's like Robinson Crusoe," said Easton. "Just as soon as we need something that we can't get on very well without we find it. A special Providence is surely caring for us." We appropriated that pipe, all right, and it did not take us long to get a fire in the stove, which we had clung to, useless as it had seemed to be.

A mass of ripe cranberries, so thick that we crushed them with every step, grew on the hills, and we picked our pailful and stewed them, using crystallose (a small phial of which I had in my dunnage bag) as sweetening. A pound of pemmican a day with a bit of tallow is sustaining, but not filling, and left us with a constant, gnawing hunger. These berries were a godsend, and sour as they were we filled up on them and for once gratified our appetites. We had a great desire, too, for something sweet, and always pounced upon the stray raisins in the pemmican. When either of us found one in his ration it was divided between us. Our great longing was for bread and molasses, just as it had been with Hubbard and me when we were short of food, and we were constantly talking of the feasts we would have of these delicacies when we reached the Post—wheat bread and common black molasses.

The George River all the way down to this point had been in past years a veritable slaughter house. There were great piles of caribou antlers (the barren-ground caribou or reindeer), sometimes as many as two or three hundred pairs in a single pile, where the Indians had speared the animals in the river, and everywhere along the banks were scattered dry bones. Abandoned camps, and some of them large ones and not very old, were distributed at frequent intervals, though we saw no more of the Indians themselves until we reached Ungava Bay.

Wolves were numerous. We saw their tracks in the sand and fresh signs of them were common. They always abound where there are caribou, which form their main living. Ptarmigans in the early morning clucked on the river banks like chickens in a barnyard, and we saw some very large flocks of them. Geese and black ducks, making their way to the southward, were met with daily. But we had no arms or ammunition with which to kill them. I saw some fox signs, but there were very few or no rabbit signs, strange to say, until we were a full hundred miles farther down the river.

This camp, where we found the stovepipe, we soon discovered was nearly at the head of Indian House Lake, so called by a Hudson's Bay Company factor-John McLean-because of the numbers of Indians that he found living on its shores. McLean, about seventy years earlier, had ascended the river in the interests of his company, for the purpose of establishing interior posts. The most inland Post that he erected was at the lower end of this lake, which is fifty-five miles in length. He also built a Post on a large lake which he describes in his published journal as lying to the west of Indian House Lake. The exact location of this latter lake is not now known, but I am inclined to think it is one which the Indians say is the source of Whale River, a stream of considerable size emptying into Ungava Bay one hundred and twenty miles to the westward of the mouth of the George River. These two rivers are doubtless much nearer together, however, farther inland, where Whale River has its rise. The difficulty experienced by McLean in getting supplies to these two Posts rendered them unprofitable, and after experimenting with them for three years they were abandoned. The agents in charge were each spring on the verge of starvation before the opening of the waters brought fish and food or they were relieved by the brigades from Ungava. They had to depend almost wholly upon their hunters for provisions. It was not attempted in those days to carry in flour, pork and other food stuffs now considered by the traders necessaries. And almost the only goods handled by them in the Indian trade were axes, knives, guns, ammunition and beads.

Indian House Lake now, as then, is a general rendezvous for the Indians during the summer months, when they congregate there to fish and to hunt reindeer. In the autumn they scatter to the better trapping grounds, where fur bearing animals are found in greater abun- dance. We were too late in the season to meet these Indians, though we saw many of their camping places.

A snowstorm began on October seventh, but the wind had so far abated that we were able to resume our journey. It was a bleak and dismal day. Save for now and then a small grove of spruce trees in some sheltered nook, and these at long intervals, the country was destitute and barren of growth. Below our camp, upon entering the lake, there was a wide, flat stretch of sand wash from the river, and below this from the lake shore on either side, great barren, grim hills rose in solemn majesty, across whose rocky face the wind swept the snow in fitful gusts and squalls. Off on a mountain side a wolf disturbed the white silence with his dismal cry, and farther on a big black fellow came to the water's edge, and with the snow blowing wildly about him held his head in the air and howled a challenge at us as we passed close by. Perhaps he yearned for companionship and welcomed the sight of living things. For my part, grim and uncanny as be looked, I was glad to see him. He was something to vary the monotony of the great solemn silence of our world.

The storm increased, and early in the day the snow began to fall so heavily that we could not see our way, and forced us to turn into a bay where we found a small cluster of trees amongst big bowlders, and pitched our tent in their shelter. The snow had drifted in and filled the space between the rocks, and on this we piled armfuls of scraggy boughs and made a fairly level and wholly comfortable bed; but it was a long, tedious job digging with our hands and feet into the snow for bits of wood for our stove. The conditions were growing harder and harder with every day, and our experience here was a common one with us for the most of the remainder of the way down the river from this point.

The day we reached the lower end of the lake I summed up briefly its characteristics in my field book as follows:

"Indian House Lake has a varying width of from a quarter mile to three miles. It is apparently not deep. Both shores are followed by ridges of the most barren, rocky hills imaginable, some of them rising to a height of eight to nine hundred feet and sloping down sharply to the shores, which are strewn with large loose bowlders or are precipitous bed rock. An occasional sand knoll occurs, and upon nearly every one of these is an abandoned Indian camp. The timber growth—none at all or very scanty spruce and tamarack. Length of lake (approximated) fifty-five miles."

I had hoped to locate the site of McLean's old Post buildings, more than three score years ago destroyed by the Indians, doubtless for firewood, but the snow had bidden what few traces of them time had not destroyed, and they were passed unnoticed. The storm which raged all the time we were here made progress slow, and it was not until the morning of the tenth that we reached the end of the lake, where the river, vastly increased in volume, poured out through a rapid.

Below Indian House Lake there were only a few short stretches of slack water to relieve the pretty continuous rapids. The river wound in and out, in and out, rushing on its tumultuous way amongst ever higher mountains. There was no time to examine the rapids before we shot them. We had to take our chances, and as we swung around every curve we half expected to find before us a cataract that would hurl us to destruction. The banks were often sheer from the water's edge, and made landing difficult or even impossible. In one place for a dis- tance of many miles the river had worn its way through the mountains, leaving high, perpendicular walls of solid rock on either side, forming a sort of canyon. In other places high bowlders, piled by some giant force, formed fifty-foot high walls, which we had to scale each night to make our camp. In the morning some peak in the blue distance would be noted as a landmark. In a couple of hours we would rush past it and mark another one, which, too, would soon be left behind.

The rapids continued the characteristic of the river and were terrific. Often it would seem that no canoe could ride the high, white waves, or that we could not avoid the swirl of mighty cross- current eddies, which would have swallowed up our canoe like a chip had we got into them. There were rapids whose roar could be distinctly heard for five or six miles. These we approached with the greatest care, and portaged around the worst places. The water was so clear that often we found ourselves dodging rocks, which, when we passed them, were ten or twelve feet below the surface. It was here that a peculiar optical illusion occurred. The water appeared to be running down an incline of about twenty degrees. At the place where this was noticed, however, the current was not exceptionally swift. We were in a section now where the Indians never go, owing to the character of the river—a section that is wholly untraveled and unhunted.

After leaving Indian House Lake, as we descended from the plateau, the weather grew milder. There were chilly winds and bleak rains, but the snow, though remaining on the mountains, disappeared gradually from the valley, and this was a blessing to us, for it enabled us to make camp with a little less labor, and the bits of wood were left uncovered, to be gathered with more ease. Every hour of light we needed, for with each dawn and twilight the days were becoming noticeably shorter. The sun now rose in the southeast, crossed a small segment of the sky, and almost before we were aware of it set in the southwest.

The wilderness gripped us closer and closer as the days went by. Remembrances of the outside world were becoming like dreamland fancies—something hazy, indefinite and unreal. We could hardly bring ourselves to believe that we had really met the Indians. It seemed to us that all our lives we had been going on and on through rushing water, or with packs over rocky portages, and the Post we were aiming to reach appeared no nearer to us than it did the day we left Northwest River—long, long ago. We seldom spoke. Sometimes in a whole day not a dozen words would be exchanged. If we did talk at all it was at night over soothing pipes, after the bit of pemmican we allowed ourselves was disposed of, and was usually of something to eat—planning feasts of darn goods, bread and molasses when we should reach a place where these luxuries were to be had. It was much like the way children plan what wonderful things they will do, and what unbounded good things they will indulge in, when they attain that high pinnacle of their ambition—"grown-ups."

After our upset in the rapid Easton eschewed water entirely, except for drinking purposes. He had had enough of it, he said. I did bathe my hands and face occasionally, particularly in the morning, to rouse me from the torpor of the always heavy sleep of night. What savages men will revert into when they are buried for a long period in the wilderness and shake off the trammels and customs of the conventionalism of civilization! It does not take long to make an Indian out of a white man so far as habits and customs of living go.

Our routine of daily life was always the same. Long before daylight I would arise, kindle a fire, put over it our tea water, and then get Easton out of his blankets. At daylight we would start. At midday we had tea, and at twilight made the best camp we could.

The hills were assuming a different aspect—less conical in form and not so high. The bowlders on the river banks were superseded by massive bed-rock granite. The coves and hollows were better wooded and there were some stretches of slack water. 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. This was the trail made by John McLean's brigades nearly three- quarters of a century before, for in their journeys to Indian House Lake they had used rowboats and not canoes for the transportation of supplies.

The day we passed over this portage was a most miserable one. We were soaked from morning till night with mingled snow and rain, and numb with the cold, but when we made our night camp, below the junction of the rivers, one or two ax cuttings were found, and I knew that now our troubles were nearly at an end and we were not far from men. The next afternoon (Monday, October sixteenth) we stopped two or three miles below a rapid to boil our kettle, and before our tea was made the canoe was high and dry on the rocks. We had reached tide water at last! How we hurried through that luncheon, and with what light hearts we launched the canoe again, and how we peered into every bay for the Post buildings that we knew were now close at hand can be imagined. These bays were being left wide stretches of mud and rocks by the receding water, which has a tide fall here of nearly forty feet. At last, as we rounded a rocky point, we saw the Post. The group of little white buildings nestling deep in a cove, a feathery curl of smoke rising peacefully from the agent's house, an Eskimo tupek (tent), boats standing high on the mud flat below, and the howl of a husky dog in the distance, formed a picture of comfort that I shall long remember.



CHAPTER XV

OFF WITH THE ESKIMOS

The tide had left the bay drained, on the farther side and well toward the bottom of which the Post stands, and between us and the buildings was a lake of soft mud. There seemed no approach for the canoe, and rather than sit idly until the incoming tide covered the mud again so that we could paddle in, we carried our belongings high up the side of the hill, safely out of reach of the water when it should rise, and then started to pick our way around the face of the clifflike hill, with the intention of skirting the bay and reaching the Post at once from the upper side.

It was much like walking on the side of a wall, and to add to our discomfiture night began to fall before we were half way around, for it was slow work. Once I descended cautiously to the mud, thinking that I might be able to walk across it, but a deep channel filled with running water intercepted me, and I had to return to Easton, who had remained above. We finally realized that we could not get around the hill before dark and the footing was too uncertain to attempt to retrace our steps to the canoe in the fading light, as a false move would have hurled us down a hundred feet into the mud and rocks below. Fortunately a niche in the hillside offered a safe resting place, and we drew together here all the brush within reach, to be burned later as a signal to the Post folk that some one was on the hill, hoping that when the tide rose it would bring them in, a boat to rescue us from our unpleasant position. When the brush was arranged for firing at an opportune time we sat down in the thickening darkness to watch the lights which were now flickering cozily in the windows of the Post house.

"Well, this is hard luck," said Easton. "There's good bread and molasses almost within hailing distance and we've likely got to sit out here on the rocks all night without wood enough to keep fire, and it's going to rain pretty soon and we can't even get back to our pemmican and tent."

"Don't give up yet, boy," I encouraged. "Maybe they'll see our fire when we start it and take us off."

We filled our pipes and struck matches to light them. They were wax taper matches and made a good blaze. "Wonder what it'll be like to eat civilized grub again and sleep in a bed," said Easton meditatively, as he puffed uncomfortably at his pipe.

While he was speaking the glow of a lantern appeared from the Post house, which we could locate by its lamp-lit windows, and moved down toward the place where we had seen the boats on the mud. The sight of it made us hope that we had been noticed, and we jumped up and combined our efforts in shouting until we were hoarse. Then we ignited the pile of brush. It blazed up splendidly, shooting its flames high in the air, sending its sparks far, and lighting weirdly the strange scene. We stood before it that our forms might appear in relief against the light reflected by the rocky background, waving our arms and renewing our shouts. Once or twice I fancied I heard an answering hail from the other side, like a far-off echo; but the wind was against us and I was not sure. The lantern light was now in a boat moving out toward the main river. Even though it were coming to us this was necessary, as the tide could not be high enough yet to permit its coming directly across to where we were. We watched its course anxiously. Finally it seemed to be heading toward us, but we were not certain. Then it disappeared altogether and there was nothing but blackness and silence where it had been.

"Some one that's been waiting for the tide to turn and he's just going down the river, where he likely lives," remarked Easton as we sat down again and relit our pipes. "I began to taste bread and molasses when I saw that light," he continued, after a few minutes' pause. "It's just our luck. We're in for a night of it, all right."

We sat smoking silently, resigned to our fate, when all at once there stepped out of the surrounding darkness into the radius of light cast by our now dying fire, an old Eskimo with an unlighted lantern in his hands, and a young fellow of fifteen or sixteen years of age.

"Oksutingyae," * said the Eskimo, and then proceeded to light his lantern, paying no further attention to us. "How do you do?" said the boy.

* [Dual form meaning "You two be strong," used by the Eskimos as a greeting. The singular of the same is Oksunae, and the plural (more than two) Oksusi]

The Eskimo could understand no English, but the boy, a grandson of Johm Ford, the Post agent, told us that the Eskimo had seen us strike the matches to light our pipes and reported the matter at once at the house. There was not a match at the Post nor within a hundred miles of it, so far as they knew, so Mr. Ford concluded that some strangers were stranded on the hill—possibly Eskimos in distress—and he gave them a lantern and started them over in a boat to investigate. Their lantern had blown out on the way—that was when we missed the light.

With the lantern to guide us we descended the slippery rocks to their boat and in ten minutes landed on the mud flat opposite, where we were met by Ford and a group of curious Eskimos. We were immediately con- ducted to the agent's residence, where Mrs. Ford received us in the hospitable manner of the North, and in a little while spread before us a delicious supper of fresh trout, white bread such as we had not seen since leaving Tom Blake's, mossberry jam and tea. It was an event in our life to sit down again to a table covered with white linen and eat real bread. We ate until we were ashamed of ourselves, but not until we were satisfied (for we had emerged from the bush with unholy appetites) and barely stopped eating in time to save our reputations from utter ruin. And now our hosts told us—and it shows how really generous and open-hearted they were to say nothing about it until we were through eating—that the Pelican, the Hudson's Bay Company's steamer, had not arrived on her annual visit, that it was so late in the season all hope of her coming had some time since been relinquished, and the Post provisions were reduced to forty pounds of flour, a bit of sugar, a barrel or so of corn meal, some salt pork and salt beef, and small quantities of other food stuffs, and there were a great many dependents with hungry mouths to feed. Molasses, butter and other things were entirely gone. The storehouses were empty.

This condition of affairs made it incumbent upon me, I believed, in spite of a cordial invitation from Ford to stay and share with them what they had, to move on at once and endeavor to reach Fort Chimo ahead of the ice. Fort Chimo is the chief establishment of the fur trading companies on Ungava Bay, and is the farthest off and most isolated station in northern Labrador. This journey would be too hazardous to undertake in the month of October in a canoe—the rough, open sea of Ungava Bay demanded a larger craft—and although Ford told me it was foolhardy to attempt it so late in the season with any craft at all, I requested him to do his utmost the following day to engage for us Eskimos and a small boat and we would make the attempt to get there. It has been my experience that frontier traders are wont to overestimate the dangers in trips of this kind, and I was inclined to the belief that this was the case with Ford. In due time I learned my mistake.

Ford had no tobacco but the soggy black chewing plug dispensed to Eskimos, and we shared with him our remaining plugs and for two hours sat in the cozy Post house kitchen smoking and chatting. Over a year had passed since his last communication with the outside world, for no vessel other than the Pelican when she makes her annual call with supplies ever comes here, and we therefore had some things of interest to tell him.

Our host I soon discovered to be a man of intelligence. He was sixty- six years of age, a native of the east coast of Labrador, with a tinge of Eskimo blood in his veins, and as familiar with the Eskimo language as with English. For twenty years, he informed me, with the exception of one or two brief intervals, he had been buried at George River Post, and was longing for the time when he could leave it and enjoy the comforts of civilization.

After our chat we were shown to our room, where the almost forgotten luxuries of feather beds and pillows, and the great, warm, fluffy woolen blankets of the Hudson's Bay Company—such blankets as are found nowhere else in the world—awaited us. To undress and crawl between them and lie there, warm and snug and dry, while we listened to the rain, which had begun beating furiously against the window and on the roof, and the wind howling around the house, seemed to me at first the pinnacle of comfort; but this sense of luxury soon passed off and I found myself longing for the tent and spruce-bough couch on the ground, where there was more air to breathe and a greater freedom. I could not sleep. The bed was too warm and the four walls of the room seemed pressing in on me. After four months in the open it takes some time for one to accustom one's self to a bed again.

The next day at high tide, with the aid of a boat and two Eskimos, we recovered our things from the rocks where we had cached them.

There were no Eskimos at the Post competent or willing to attempt the open-boat journey to Fort Chimo. Those that were here all agreed that the ice would come before we could get through and that it was too dangerous an undertaking. Therefore, galling as the delay was to me, there was nothing for us to do but settle down and wait for the time to come when we could go with dog teams overland.

On Thursday afternoon, three days after our arrival at the Post, we saw the Eskimos running toward the wharf and shouting as though something of unusual importance were taking place and, upon joining the crowd, found them greeting three strange Eskimos who had just arrived in a boat. The real cause of the excitement we soon learned was the arrival of the Pelican. The strange Eskimos were the pilots that brought her from Fort Chimo. All was confusion and rejoicing at once. Ford manned a boat and invited us to join him in a visit to the ship, which lay at anchor four miles below, and we were soon off.

When we boarded the Pelican, which, by the way, is an old British cruiser, we were received by Mr. Peter McKenzie, from Montreal, who has superintendence of eastern posts, and Captain Lovegrow, who commanded the vessel. They told us that they had called at Rigolet on their way north and there heard of the arrival of Richards, Pete and Stanton at Northwest River. This relieved my mind as to their safety.

We spent a very pleasant hour over a cigar, and heard the happenings in the outside world since our departure from it, the most important of which was the close of the Russian-Japanese war. We also learned that the cause of delay in the ship's coming was an accident on the rocks near Cartwright, making it necessary for them to run to St. Johns for repairs; and also that only the fact of the distressful condition of the Post, unprovisioned as they knew it must be, had induced them to take the hazard of running in and chancing imprison- ment for the winter in the ice.

Mr. McKenzie extended me a most cordial invitation to return with them to Rigolet, but the Eskimo pilots had brought news of large herds of reindeer that the Indians had reported as heading eastward toward the Koksoak, the river on which Fort Chimo is situated, and I determined to make an effort to see these deer. This determination was coupled with a desire to travel across the northern peninsula and around the coast in winter and learn more of the people and their life than could be observed at the Post; and I therefore declined Mr. McKenzie's invitation.

Captain James Blanford, from St. Johns, was on board, acting as ship's pilot for the east coast, and he kindly offered to carry out for me such letters and telegrams as I might desire to send and personally attend to their transmission. I gladly availed myself of this offer, as it gave us an opportunity to relieve the anxiety of our friends at home as to our safety. Captain Blanford had been with the auxiliary supply ship of the Peary Arctic expedition during the summer and told us of having left Commander Peary at eighty degrees north latitude in August. The expedition, he told us, would probably winter as high as eighty-three degrees north, and he was highly enthusiastic over the good prospects of Peary's success in at least reaching "Farthest North."

The Eskimo pilots of the Pelican were more venturesome than their friends at George River. They had a small boat belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company, and in it were going to attempt to reach Fort Chimo. Against his advice I had Ford arrange with them to permit Easton and me to accompany them. It was a most fortunate circumstance, I thought, that this opportunity was opened to us.

Accordingly the letters for Captain Blanford were written, sufficient provisions, consisting of corn meal, flour, hard-tack, pork, and tea to last Easton and me ten days, were packed, and our luggage was taken on board the Pelican on Saturday afternoon, where we were to spend the night as Mr. McKenzie's and Captain Lovegrow's guests.

Mr. McKenzie, before going to Montreal, had lived nearly a quarter of a century as Factor at Fort Chimo, and, thoroughly familiar with the conditions of the country and the season, joined Ford in advising us strongly against our undertaking, owing to the unusual hazard attached to it, and the probability of getting caught in the ice and wrecked. But we were used to hardship, and believed that if the Eskimos were willing to attempt the journey we could get through with them some way, and I saw no reason why I should change my plans.

Low-hanging clouds, flying snowflakes and a rising northeast wind threatened a heavy storm on Sunday morning, October twenty-second, when the Pelican weighed anchor at ten o'clock, with us on board and the small boat, the Explorer, that was to carry us westward in tow, and steamed down the George River, at whose mouth, twenty miles below, we were to leave her, to meet new and unexpected dangers and hardships.

At the Post the river is a mile and a half in width. About eight miles farther down its banks close in and "the Narrows" occur, and then it widens again. There is very little growth of any kind below the Narrows. The rocks are polished smooth and bare as they rise from the water's edge, and it is as desolate and barren a land as one's imagination could picture, but withal possesses a rugged grand beauty in its grim austerity that is impressive.

About three or four miles above the open bay the Pelican's engines ceased to throb and the Explorer was hauled alongside. Everything but the provisions for the Eskimo crew was already aboard. We said a hurried adieu and, watching our chances as the boat rose and fell on the swell, dropped one by one into the little craft. A bag of ship's biscuit, the provisions of our Eskimos, was thrown after us. Most of them went into the sea and were lost, and we needed them sadly later. I thought we should swamp as each sea hit us before we could get away, and when we were finally off the boat was half full of water.

The Eskimos hoisted a sail and turned to the west bank of the river, for it was too rough outside to risk ourselves there in the little Explorer. The pulse of the big ship began to beat and slowly she steamed out into the open and left us to the mercies of the unfeeling rocks of Ungava.



CHAPTER XVI

CAUGHT BY THE ARCTIC ICE

We ran to shelter in a small cove and under the lee of a ledge pitched our tent, using poles that the Eskimos had thoughtfully provided, and anchoring the tent down with bowlders.

When I say the rocks here are scoured bare, I mean it literally. There was not a stick of wood growing as big as your finger. On the lower George, below the Narrows, and for long distances on the Ungava coast there is absolutely not a tree of any kind to be seen. The only exception is in one or two bays or near the mouth of streams, where a stunted spruce growth is sometimes found in small patches. There are places where you may skirt the coast of Ungava Bay for a hundred miles and not see a shrub worthy the name of tree, even in the bays.

The Koksoak (Big) River, on which Fort Chimo is situated, is the largest river flowing into Ungava Bay. The George is the second in size, and Whale River ranks third. Between the George River and Whale River there are four smaller ones—Tunulik (Back) River, Kuglotook (Overflow) River, Tuktotuk (Reindeer) River and Mukalik (Muddy) River; and between Whale River and the Koksoak the False River. I crossed all of these streams and saw some of them for several miles above the mouth. The Koksoak, Mukalik and Whale Rivers are regularly traversed by the Indians, but the others are too swift and rocky for canoes. There are several streams to the westward of the Koksoak, notably Leaf River, and a very large one that the Eskimos told me of, emptying into Hope's Advance Bay, but these I did not see and my knowledge of them is limited to hearsay.

The hills in the vicinity of George River are generally high, but to the westward they are much lower and less picturesque.

After our camp was pitched we had an opportunity for the first time to make the acquaintance of our companions. The chief was a man of about forty years of age, Potokomik by name, which, translated, means a hole cut in the edge of a skin for the purpose of stretching it. The next in importance was Kumuk. Kumuk means louse, and it fitted the man's nature well. The youngest was Iksialook (Big Yolk of an Egg). Potokomik had been rechristened by a Hudson's Bay Company agent "Kenneth," and Kumuk, in like manner, had had the name of "George" bestowed upon him, but Iksialook bad been overlooked or neglected in this respect, and his brain was not taxed with trying to remember a Christian cognomen that none of his people would ever call or know him by.

Potokomik was really a remarkable man and proved most faithful to us. It is, in fact, to his faithfulness and control over the others, particularly Kumuk, that Easton and I owe our lives, as will appear later. He was at one time conjurer of the Kangerlualuksoakmiut, or George River Eskimos, and is still their leader, but during a visit to the Atlantic coast, some three or four years ago, he came under the influence of a missionary, embraced Christianity, and abandoned the heathen conjuring swindle by which he was, up to that time, making a good living. Now he lives a life about as clean and free from the heathenism and superstitions of his race as any Eskimo can who adopts a new religion. The missionary whom I have mentioned led Potokomik's mother to accept Christ and renounce Torngak when she was on her deathbed, and before she died she confessed to many sins, amongst them that of having aided in the killing and eating, when driven to the act by starvation, of her own mother.

After our tent was pitched and the Eskimos had spread the Explorer's sail as a shelter for themselves, Kumuk and Iksialook left us to look for driftwood and, in half an hour, returned with a few small sticks that they had found on the shore. These sticks were exceedingly scarce and, of course, very precious and with the greatest economy in the use of the wood, a fire was made and the kettle boiled for tea.

At first the Eskimos were always doing unexpected things and springing surprises upon us, but soon we became more or less accustomed to their ways. Not one of them could talk or understand English and my Eskimo vocabulary was limited to the one word "Oksu- nae," and we therefore had considerable difficulty in making each other understand, and the pantomime and various methods of communication resorted to were often very funny to see. Potokomik and I started in at once to learn what we could of each other's language, and it is wonderful how much can be accomplished in the ac- quirement of a vocabulary in a short time and how few words are really necessary to convey ideas. I would point at the tent and say, "Tent," and he would say, "Tupek"; or at my sheath knife and say, "Knife," and he would say, "Chevik," and thus each learned the other's word for nearly everything about us and such words as "good," "bad," "wind" and so on; and in a few days we were able to make each other understand in a general way, with our mixed English and Eskimo.

The northeast wind and low-hanging clouds of the morning carried into execution their threat, and all Sunday afternoon and all day Monday the snowstorm raged with fury. I took pity on the Eskimos and on Sunday night invited all of them to sleep in our tent, but only Potokomik came, and on Monday morning, when I went out at break of day, I found the other two sleeping under a snowdrift, for the lean-to made of the boat sail had not protected them much. After that they accepted my invitation and joined us in the tent.

It did not clear until Tuesday morning, and then we hoisted sail and started forward out of the river and into the broad, treacherous waters of Hudson Straits, working with the oars to keep warm and accelerate progress, for the wind was against us at first until we turned out of the river, and we had long tacks to make.

At the Post, as was stated, there is a rise and fall of tide of forty feet. 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. "Nature exhausted her supply of harbors," some one has said, "before she rounded Cape Chidley, or she forgot Ungava entirely; and she just bunched the tide in here, too."

That Tuesday night sloping rocks and ominous reefs made it impossible for us to effect a landing, and in a shallow place we dropped anchor. Fortunately there was no wind, for we were in an exposed position, and had there been we should have come to grief. A bit of hardtack with nothing to drink sufficed for supper, and after eating we curled up as best we could in the bottom of the boat. No watch was kept. Every one lay down. Easton and I rolled in our blankets, huddled close to each other, pulled the tent over us and were soon dreaming of sunnier lands where flowers bloom and the ice trust gets its prices.

Our awakening was rude. Some time in the night I dreamed that my neck was broken and that I lay in a pool of icy water powerless to move. When I finally roused myself I found the boat tilted at an angle of forty-five degrees and my head at the lower incline. All the water in the boat had drained to that side and my shoulders and neck were immersed. The tide was out and we were stranded on the rocks. It was bright moonlight. Kumuk and Iksialook got up and with the kettle disappeared over the rocks. The rising tide was almost on us when they returned with a kettle full of hot tea. Then as soon as the water was high enough to float the boat we were off by moonlight, fastening now and again on reefs, and several times narrowly escaped disaster.

It was very cold. Easton and I were still clad in the bush-ravaged clothing that we had worn during the summer, and it was far too light to keep out the bitter Arctic winds that were now blowing, and at night our only protection was our light summer camping blankets. When we reached the Post at George River not a thing in the way of clothing or blankets was in stock and the new stores were not unpacked when we left, so we were not able to re-outfit there.

Wednesday night we succeeded in finding shelter, but all day Thursday were held prisoners by a northerly gale. On Friday we made a new start, but early in the afternoon were driven to shelter on an island, where with some difficulty we effected a landing at low tide, and carried our goods a half mile inland over the slippery rocks above the reach of rising water. The Eskimos remained with the boat and worked it in foot by foot with the tide while Easton and I pitched the tent and hunted up and down on the rocks for bits of driftwood until we had collected sufficient to last us with economy for a day or two.

That night the real winter came. The light ice that we had encountered heretofore and the snow which attained a considerable depth in the recent storms were only the harbingers of the true winter that comes in this northland with a single blast of the bitter wind from the ice fields of the Arctic. It comes in a night—almost in an hour—as it did to us now. 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.

Our hard-tack was gone, and I baked into cakes all of our little stock of flour and corn meal. This, with a small piece of pork, six pounds of pemmican, tea and a bit of tobacco was all that we had left in the way of provisions. The Eskimos had eaten everything that they had brought, and it now devolved upon us to feed them also from our meager store, which at the start only provided for Easton and me for ten days, as that had been considered more than ample time for the journey. I limited the rations at each meal to a half of one of my cakes for each man. Potokomik agreed with me that this was a wise and necessary restriction and protected me in it. Kumuk thought differently, and he was seen to filch once or twice, but a close watch was kept upon him.

With infinite labor we hauled the Explorer above the high-tide level, out of reach of the ice that would soon pile in a massive barricade of huge blocks upon the shore, that she might be safe until recovered the following spring. Then we packed in the boat's prow our tent and all paraphernalia that was not absolutely necessary for the sustenance of life, made each man a pack of his blankets, food and necessaries, and began our perilous foot march toward Whale River. I clung to all the records of the expedition, my camera, photographic films and things of that sort, though Potokomik advised their abandonment.

At low tide, when the rocks were left nearly uncovered, we forded from the island to the mainland. It was dark when we reached it, and for three hours after dark, bending under our packs, walking in Indian file, we pushed on in silence through the knee-deep snow upon which the moon, half hidden by flying clouds, cast a weird ghostlike light. Finally the Eskimos stopped in a gully by a little patch of spruce brush four or five feet high, and while Iksialook foraged for handfuls of brush that was dry enough to burn, Potokomik and Kumuk cut snow blocks, which they built into a circular wall about three feet high, as a wind-break in which to sleep, and Easton and I broke some green brush to throw upon the snow in this circular wind-break for a bed. While we did this Iksialook filled the kettle with bits of ice and melted it over his brush fire and made tea. There was only brush enough to melt ice for one cup of tea each, which with our bit of cake made our supper. . We huddled close and slept pretty well that night on the snow with nothing but flying frost between us and heaven.

We were having our breakfast the next morning a white arctic fox came within ten yards of our fire to look us over as though wondering what kind of animals we were. Easton and I were unarmed, but the Eskimos each carried a 45-90 Winchester rifle. Potokomik reached for his and shot the fox, and in a few minutes its disjointed carcass was in our pan with a bit of pork, and we made a substantial breakfast on the half-cooked flesh.

That was a weary day. 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. Kumuk did not like the small ration that I dealt out, and if they could get the food out of our possession they would have more for themselves.

That night a snow house was built, with the exception of rounding the dome at the top, over which Potokomik spread his blanket; but it was a poor shelter, and not much warmer than the open. When I lay down I was dripping with perspiration from the exertion of the day and during the night had a severe chill.

The next day a storm threatened. We crossed another stream and halted, at twelve o'clock, upon the western side of it to make tea. The Eskimos held a consultation here and then Potokomik told us that they were afraid of heavy snow and that it was thought best to cache everything that we had—blankets, food and everything—and with nothing to encumber us hurry on to a tupek that we should reach by dark, and that there we should find shelter and food. Accordingly everything was left behind but the rifles, which the Eskimos clung to, and we started on at a terrific pace over wind-swept hills and drift- covered valleys, where all that could be seen was a white waste of unvarying snow. We had been a little distance inland, but now worked our way down toward the coast. Once we crossed an inlet where we had to climb over great blocks of ice that the tide in its force had piled there.

Just at dusk the Eskimos halted. We had reached the place where the tupek should have been, but none was there. Afterward I learned that the people whom Potokomik expected to find here had been caught on their way from Whale River by the ice and their boat was crushed.

Another consultation was held, and as a result we started on again. After a two hours' march Potokomik halted and the others left us. Easton and I threw ourselves at full length upon the snow and went to sleep on the instant. A rifle shot aroused us, and Potokomik jumped to his feet with the exclamation, "Igloo!" We followed him toward where Kumuk was shouting, through a bit of bush, down a bank, across a frozen brook and up a slope, where we found a miserable little log shack. No one was there. It was a filthy place and snow had drifted in through the openings in the roof and side. The previous occupant of the hut had left behind him an ax and an old stove, and with a few sticks of wood that we found a fire was started and we huddled close to it in a vain effort to get warm. When the fire died out we found places to lie down, and, shivering with the cold, tried with poor success to sleep.

I had another chill that night and severe cramps in the calves of my legs, and when morning came and Easton said he could not travel another twenty yards, I agreed at once to a plan of the Eskimos to leave us there while they went on to look for other Eskimos whom they expected to find in winter quarters east of Whale River. Potokomik promised to send them with dogs to our rescue and then go on with a letter to Job Edmunds, the Hudson's Bay Company's agent at Whale River. This letter to Edmunds I scribbled on a stray bit of paper I found in my pocket, and in it told him of our position, and lack of food and clothing.

Potokomik left his rifle and some cartridges with us, and then with the promise that help should find us ere we had slept three times, we shook hands with our dusky friend upon whose honor and faithfulness our lives now depended, and the three were gone in the face of a blinding snowstorm.

Shortly after the Eskimos left us we heard some ptarmigans clucking outside, and Easton knocked three of them over with Potokomik's rifle. There were four, but one got away. It can be imagined what work the .45 bullet made of them. After separating the flesh as far as possible from the feathers, we boiled it in a tin can we had found amongst the rubbish in the hut, and ate everything but the bills and toe-nails—bones, entrails and all. This, it will be remembered, was the first food that we had had since noon of the day before. We had no tea and our only comfort-providing asset was one small piece of plug tobacco.

Fortunately wood was not hard to get, but still not sufficiently plentiful for us to have more than a light fire in the stove, which we hugged pretty closely.

The storm grew in fury. It shrieked around our illy built shack, drifting the snow in through the holes and crevices until we could not find a place to sit or lie that was free from it. On the night of the third day the weather cleared and settled, cold and rasping. I took the rifle and looked about for game, but the snow was now so deep that walking far in it was out of the question. I did not see the track or sign of any living thing save a single whisky-jack, but even he was shy and kept well out of range.

We had nothing to eat—not a mouthful of anything—and only water to drink; even our tobacco was soon gone. Day after day we sat, sometimes in silence, for hours at a time, sometimes calculating upon the probabilities of the Eskimos having perished in the storm, for they were wholly without protection. I had faith in Potokomik and his resourcefulness, and was hopeful they would get out safely. If there had been timber in the country where night shelter could be made, we might have started for Whale River without further delay. But in the wide waste barrens, illy clothed, with deep snow to wallow through, it seemed to me absolutely certain that such an attempt would end in exhaustion and death, so we restrained our impatience and waited. On scraps of paper we played tit-tat-toe; we improvised a checkerboard and played checkers. These pastimes broke the monotony of waiting somewhat. No matter what we talked about, our conversation always drifted to something to eat. We planned sumptuous banquets we were to have at that uncertain period "when we get home," discussing in the minutest detail each dish. Once or twice Easton roused me in the night to ask whether after all some other roast or soup had not better be selected than the one we had decided upon, or to suggest a change in vegetables.

We slept five times instead of thrice and still no succor came. The days were short, the nights interminably long. I knew we could live for twelve or fifteen days easily on water. I had recovered entirely from the chills and cramps and we were both feeling well but, of course, rather weak. We had lost no flesh to speak of. The extreme hunger had passed away after a couple of days. It is only when starving people have a little to eat that the hunger period lasts longer than that. Novelists write a lot of nonsense about the pangs of hunger and the extreme suffering that accompanies starvation. It is all poppycock. Any healthy person, with a normal appetite, after missing two or three meals is as hungry as he ever gets. After awhile there is a sense of weakness that grows on one, and this increases with the days. Then there comes a desire for a great deal of sleep, a sort of lassitude that is not unpleasant, and this desire becomes more pronounced as the weakness grows. The end is always in sleep. There is no keeping awake until the hour of death.

While, as I have said, the real sense of hunger passes away quickly there remains the instinct to eat. That is the working of the first law of nature—self-preservation. It prompts one to eat anything that one can chew or swallow, and it is what makes men eat refuse the thought of which would sicken them at other times. Of course, Easton and I were like everybody else under similar conditions. Easton said one day that he would like to have something to chew on. In the refuse on the floor I found a piece of deerskin about ten inches square. I singed the hair off of it and divided it equally between us and then we each roasted our share and ate it. That was the evening after we had "slept" five times.

After disposing of our bit of deerskin we huddled down on the floor with our heads pillowed upon sticks of wood, as was our custom, for a sixth night, after discussing again the probable fate of the Eskimos. While I did not admit to Easton that I entertained any doubt as to our ultimate rescue, as the days passed and no relief came I felt grave fears as to the safety of Potokomik and his companions. The severe storm that swept over the country after their departure from the shack had no doubt materially deepened the snow, and I questioned whether or not this had made it impossible for them to travel without snowshoes. The wind during the second day of the storm had been heavy, and it was my hope that it had swept the barrens clear of the new snow, but this was uncertain and doubtful. Then, too, I did not know the nature of Eskimos—whether they were wont to give up quickly in the face of unusual privations and difficulties such as these men would have to encounter. They were in a barren country, with no food, no blankets, no tent, no protection, in fact, of any kind from the elements, and it was doubtful whether they would find material for a fire at night to keep them from freezing, and, even if they did find wood, they had no ax with which to cut it. How far they would have to travel surrounded by these conditions I had no idea. Indians without wood or food or a sheltering bush would soon give up the fight and lie down to die. If Potokomik and his men had perished, I knew that Easton and I could hope for no relief from the outside and that our salvation would depend entirely upon our own resourcefulness. It seemed to me the time had come when some action must be taken.

It was a long while after dark, I do not know how long, and I still lay awake turning these things over in my mind, when I heard a strange sound. Everything had been deathly quiet for days, and I sat up. 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. Our rescuers had come.



CHAPTER XVII

TO WHALE RIVER AND FORT CHIMO

The feeling of relief that came to me when I heard the shout and saw the men and dogs coming can be appreciated, and something of the satisfaction I felt when I grasped the hands of the two Eskimos that strode up on snowshoes can be understood.

The older of the two was an active little fellow who looked much like a Japanese. He introduced himself as Emuk (Water). His companion, who, we learned later, rejoiced in the name Amnatuhinuk (Only a Woman), was quite a young fellow, big, fat and goodnatured.

Without any preliminaries Emuk pushed right into the shack and, from a bag that he carried, produced some tough dough cakes which he gave us to eat, and each a plug of tobacco to smoke. He was all activity and command, working quickly himself and directing Amnatuhinuk. A candle from his bag was lighted. Amnatuhinuk was sent for a kettle of water; wood was piled into the stove, and the kettle put over to boil. The stove proved too slow for Emuk and he built a fire outside where tea could be made more quickly, and when it was ready he insisted upon our drinking several cups of it to stimulate us. Then he brought forth a pail containing strong-smelling beans cooked in rancid seal oil, which he heated. This concoction he thought was good strong food and just the thing for half-starved men, and he set it before us with the air of one who has done something especially nice. We ate some of it but were as temperate as Emuk with his urgings would permit us to be, for I knew the penalty that food exacts after a long fast.

A comfortable bed of boughs and blankets was spread for us, and we were made to lie down. Emuk, on more than one occasion, bad been in a similar position to ours and others had come to his aid, and he wanted to pay the debt he felt he owed to humanity.

He told us that Potokomik and the others, after suffering great hardships, had reached his tupek near the Mukalik the day before, but I could not understand his language well enough to draw from him any of the details of their trip out.

At midnight Emuk made tea again and roused us up to partake of it and eat more dough cakes and beans with seal oil. I feared the consequences, but I could not refuse him, for he did not understand why we should not want to eat a great deal. The result was that with happiness and stomach ache I could not sleep, and before morning was going out to vomit. Even at the danger of seeming not to appreciate Emuk's hospitality, I was constrained to decline to eat any breakfast.

Emuk noticed a hole in the bottom of one of my seal-skin boots. He promptly pulled off his own and made me put them on. He had another though poorer pair for himself.

It was a delight to be moving again. We were on the trail before dawn, Emuk with his snowshoes tramping the road ahead of the dogs and Amnatuhinuk driving the team. The temperature must have been at least ten degrees below zero. The weather was bitterly cold for men so thinly clad as Easton and I were, and the snow was so deep that we could not exercise by running, for we had no snowshoes, and while we wallowed through the deep snow the dogs would have left us behind, so we could do nothing but sit on the komatik (sledge) and shiver.

At noon we stopped at the foot of a hill before ascending it, and the men threw up a wind-break of snow blocks, back of which they built a fire and put over the teakettle. Easton and I had just squatted close to the fire to warm our benumbed hands when the husky dogs put their noses in the air and gave out the long weird howl of welcome or defiance that announces the approach of other dogs, and almost immediately a loaded team with two men came over the hill and down the slope at a gallop toward us. It proved to be Job Edmunds, the half- breed Hudson's Bay Company officer from Whale River, and his Eskimo servant, coming to our aid.

Edmunds was greatly relieved to find us safe. He knew exactly what to do. From his komatik box he produced a bottle of port wine and made us each take a small dose of it which he poured into a tin cup. He put a big, warm reindeer-skin koolutuk [the outer garment of deerskin worn by the Eskimos] on each of us and pulled the hoods over our heads. He had warm footwear—in fact, everything that was necessary for our comfort. Then he cut two ample slices of wheat bread from a big loaf, and toasted and buttered them for us. He was very kind and considerate. Edmunds has saved many lives in his day. Every winter he is called upon to go to the rescue of Eskimos who have been caught in the barrens without food, as we were. He had saved Emuk from starvation on one or two occasions.

After a half-hour's delay we were off again, I on the komatik with Edmunds, and Easton with Emuk. We passed the snow house where Edmunds and his man had spent the previous night. They would have come on in the dark, but they knew Emuk was ahead and would reach us anyway.

Edmunds had a splendid team of dogs, wonderfully trained. The big, wolfish creatures loved him and they feared him. He almost never had to use the long walrus-hide whip. They obeyed him on the instant without hesitation—"Ooisht," and they pulled in the harness as one; "Aw," and they stopped. There was a power in his voice that governed them like magic. The wind had packed the snow hard enough on the barrens beyond the Tuktotuk—and the country there was all barren—to bear up the komatik; the dogs were in prime condition and traveled at a fast trot or a gallop, and we made good time. Once Emuk stopped to take a white fox out of a trap. He killed it by pressing his knee on its breast and stifling its heart beats.