back of the neck, a small portion was left after he was wiped off. To this day that is the only place where the rabbit has any fat.
Truly, the Indian is a close observer; and like all of us, he has tried his best to interpret observed facts. What shall we think of our attitudes and feelings about the world about us? Beauty is present in all parts of the world, but my being in what was then considered the Far North may have conditioned some of my reactions. In my diary for December 27 I find the following, written for myself:
“Sunday. I read all morning and in the afternoon went across to the “French Company” to a gathering to sing. I enjoyed it more than the church service here, for there was such an evident feeling of sincerity. As I was coming back with Willie Moore (the Moores’ older son), the moon came out, and I saw it was going to be a rare night. It has been mild today with snow falling most of the time.
“After tea I put on my warm cap and deerskin mittens, and went out for a walk. I believe I enjoyed some of the best moments of my life. I went along the ‘Northwest Path.’ The trees stood around me—masses of spruce, a rich, soft black, the spire tops outlined against the bright, moonlit sky and here and there silvered over with a coating of snow. As I walked, I looked through openings or lanes among the trees, where the soft but clear moon-shadows stretched across, and rounded snow mounds and snow-covered logs were outlined by their delicate shadows. On the level snow and over the snow sprinkled trees sparkled the ‘diamonds,’ and over all, high in the sky, shone a clear moon. I walked along the path, here gazing up at the wonderful moonlit trees, there looking in among the trunks into a little opening flooded with light, or along a lane where the delicate shadows mingled wonderfully. Small bushes seemed frosted over and sparkled. Everything seemed crystalline, yet strangely mellow. There was a feeling of purity about the whole thing, as if I were in a holy place—so much so that when I heard someone shout to his dogs in the distance it felt painful, like a discordant note in music.
“I finally came to the river bank out at the back of the island, and here was another scene. The wide, smooth expanse of the river was bounded by the distant, dark shores of the islands. I crossed over to Charles Island and wandered about on a diminutive lake, and finally turned back as a thin, cloudy haze began to dim the shadows and obscure the wonderful purity of the moonlight. In such surroundings a man feels elated, no task seems too big, and all evil thoughts disappear.”
One day in late January I went through some swamps to “Mi Lord’s Ridge.” I was crossing one of these snowy “plains,” head down against a wind, when I became aware that grouse were running around me, in all directions. These proved to be a flock of about eighteen sharp-tailed grouse, feeding among the scattered dwarf birches and paying little heed to me. The birds would run quickly, then stop abruptly at a little bush, picking away vigorously at the seeds or buds for a moment, only to scurry off to another bush. From time to time one or two of the hindmost would fly along and alight near the front of the band. They appeared very busy, although at times one or two would crouch awhile in the snow, possibly because of my presence. They all carried their tails straight up, and there was a low conversational “whistling” as they fed.
In such snow-covered “muskegs” I found a border of tamaracks, the small deciduous cone-bearing tree common to these places. Years later I found a few sharp-tailed grouse living in a limited tamarack woods in Interior Alaska. Apparently the muskeg-tamarack environment is an agreeable home for the sharptail in the north country.
On the way back on this January day, as I plodded along on snowshoes, I came on the place where these grouse had spent the night under the snow. Each one had tucked itself away underneath, and the snow which had fallen that night and drifted had covered it nicely. In the morning they all had simply pushed up and out and begun feeding. This made me recall boyhood days in Minnesota, when very often prairie chickens would burst out of the snow at my feet when disturbed by my approach to their snug retreat. Willie Moore told me that the sharp-tailed and spruce grouse do not sleep under the snow in springtime when crusts form. But the ruffed grouse continues to do so, and some get frozen in by a strong crust. These birds have learned, as many outdoor people have, that in the cold of midwinter it is warmer under the snow blanket.
So many things to learn about during this first winter in the north! I knew, of course, that the snowshoe rabbit has a more or less regular “population cycle,” a building up of numbers for ten or eleven years to a “high,” followed by a “crash” in numbers. In the winter of 1914–15, these rabbits were at a high, then as the season went on they began to die. There were rabbits everywhere. I got all I wanted in a snare line. At one of the stores frozen rabbits were piled up like cordwood. I bought a rabbit-skin sleeping bag from an Indian for fifteen dollars. The skins had each been cut spirally in a long narrow strip and then woven—one hundred and eighty skins in that one blanket. I made a sleeping bag out of it and used it in various parts of the north for many years.
I was told that when a dogteam made a trip anywhere that winter, the dogs were easily fed by the dead rabbits found along the way.
Stories of dogteam trips were working on my imagination. I had vaguely planned to go on north sometime, but now my plans began to take shape. I decided I must leave the friendly people of Moose Factory and go northward—whenever the opportunity came along.
In the late afternoon of January 27, a bitterly cold day, I was working on some specimens in my room when I heard a shout outside: “The Rupert House dogs have come!”
I hurried out. There in front of the store was the mail packet, a team of ten dogs. The dogs lay resting on the snow, and beside the sled stood the driver, the same Willie Morrison who had been our guide in our summer canoe travel. Willie was trembling with cold, and black patches on his frostbitten face suggested what he had been through. He was waiting for his partner Charlie Hester to find out where they were to put the dogs. When Charlie came out of the store, they quickly unharnessed the dogs and tied them to the palings of a nearby fence. Someone from the store brought out a bundle of frozen rabbits and chopped them apart with an axe. At the sight of food the dogs leaped to their feet, tugging at their chains and howling in chorus. They kept it up until the men had tossed a couple of chunks to each dog. They seized the frozen carcasses and gulped them down in an unbelievably short time—then looked for more. But when they realized that no more was coming, they calmly curled up to sleep in the snow. The sun was setting by now; it was growing dark.
I had run out thinly clad and was feeling the bite of the cold. The sight of Willie shivering there and the dogs’ frozen repast sent a chill through me, and I was glad to run back into Mrs. Moore’s warm kitchen. My enthusiasm for a dogsled trip north cooled.
But plans had been made, and on the morning of January 30, when the mail team was ready to go back to Rupert House, 100 miles east, I was ready, too. This would be my first experience with dog-sledding. As we were saying good-bye, with a group assembled beside the flat fourteen-foot sled, I realized more keenly than ever what my stay with the kindly people at Moose Factory had meant to me. It was like leaving home again. Mrs. Moore had carefully wrapped a cake for my birthday in March. To the last minute she was looking out for my welfare, even braiding a pair of garters for my moleskin leggings while the dogs were being harnessed!
With a shout from Willie and a shove to loosen the runners, we were off on the long trail. The familiar landscape of Moose Factory drew away; the line of buildings grew smaller. We passed island after island where I had hunted—Pilgrim, Middleborough, and finally Ship Sands. The river widened; the north shore became a faint blue line in the distance. Then we were fairly out on “the coast,” where the white expanse of James Bay spread to the horizon. Here the storm-driven snow was packed hard and the pulling was easier for the dogs. We went through Cabbage Willows and past Blackberry Point; then one of the landmarks of this region, Sherrick’s Mount, loomed up blue and white in the winter landscape.
We trotted along beside the loaded sled, the two guides in front to steady the load in
