The men on the bank have finally given it up as a bad job, and they set round the fires smoking and slapping different parts of their persons, swearing volubly in English. For the Cree language is devoid of invective. In the morning we are a sorry crowd, conversation is monosyllabic and very much to the point. It is the first serious trial to individual good-humour. When each one of your four million pores is an irritation-channel of mosquito-virus it would be a relief to growl at somebody about something. But the sun and smiles come out at the same time, and, having bled together, we cement bonds of friendship. What did Henry the Fifth say on the eve of Agincourt—"For he to-day who sheds his blood with me shall be my brother"?
Who would worry about mosquitoes with that splendid spectacular of the Grand Rapids at our feet? The great flood (Kitchee Abowstik) is divided into two channels by an island probably half a mile in length, with its long axis parallel to the flow of the river, and this island solves the question of progress. The main channel to the left is impassable; it is certain death that way. Between the island and the right shore is a passage which on its island side, with nice manipulation, is practicable for empty boats. Then the problem before us is to run the rough water at the near end of the island, tie up there, unload, transfer the pieces by hand-car over the island to its other end, let the empty scows down carefully through the channel by ropes, and reload at the other end.
Between the bank where we are and the island ahead is a stretch of roaring water dangerous enough looking. We have learned ere this, however, to sit tight and watch for events. The careless Indians have straightened into keen-eyed, responsible voyageurs, each muscle taut, every sense alert. Our boat goes first, one half-breed with huge pole braces himself as bowsman, the most able man takes the stern sweep, the others stand at the oars. Fifteen minutes of good head-work brings us to the island and we step out with relief. The other boats follow and anchor, and we have opportunity at close range to inspect these worst rapids of the Athabascan chain. The current on the west side of the dividing island looks innocent, and we understand how the greenhorn would choose this passage-way, to his destruction.
The transportation of pieces occupied four days, every moment of which we enjoyed. Grand Rapids Island is prodigal in wild flowers—vetches, woodbine, purple and pink columbines, wild roses, several varieties of false Solomon's seal, our persisting friend dwarf cornel, and, treasure-trove, our first anemone—that beautiful buttercup springing from its silvered sheath—
"And where a tear has dropt a wind-flower blows."
I measured a grass-stem and found it two feet three inches high, rising amid last year's prostrate growth.
At Grand Rapids Island we overtook two scows which had preceded us from The Landing and whose crews had waited here to assist in the transport. It gave us opportunity to observe these sixty representative half-breeds from Lac la Biche. Tall, strong, happy-go-lucky, with no sordid strain in their make-up, they are fellows that one cannot help feeling sympathy for. A natural link between the East and the West, the South of Canada and the North, they have bridged over the animosity and awkwardness with which the Red race elsewhere has approached the White.
In a glade our camp is made, inside our tents we arrange the mosquito-bar (a tent within a tent looking something like a good-sized dog-kennel), and here we lie in our blankets. The hum of the foiled mosquito is unction to our souls. It is a relief, too, to remove the day's clothing, the first time in ninety-six hours.
The Athabasca here cuts through a cretaceous sandstone—soft, yellowish, homogeneous. In passing Grand Rapids Island it has a fall of ninety feet. The river has weathered the banks into vertical cliffs four or five hundred feet high, imbedded in which are wonderful cheese-shaped nodules, some the size of baseballs, some as big as mill-stones. The river-bed is strewn thick with these concretions from which the swift current has worn the softer matrix away, and many of the stones are as spherical as if turned out by a hand-lathe. The sandstone banks opposite the island are overlain with a stratum of lignite three or four feet thick, which burns freely and makes acceptable fuel. Sections of fossil trees are also seen, and the whole thing is fascinating, one's great wish being for a larger knowledge of geology so as to read aright this strange page of history in stone.
Timber along the Athabasca has suffered much from forest fires. What we see is largely second growth—Banksian pine, fir, spruce, birch, and aspen. The aspen is the first deciduous tree to leaf. Tall, slender, delicate, its bole is clean as an organ-pipe and its terraced feathery branches seem to float in air.
Across the roaring water swallows are nesting in the clayey cliffs:—
"This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendant bed and procreant cradle:
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed,
The air is delicate."
We learn that half-breeds share the Scottish superstition that it is unlucky to disturb bank-swallows.
Others of the migrant host travel in upper air more quickly than we on water, and have left us far behind—swans, the Canada goose, great flocks of brant, waveys by the millions, followed by their cousins of the duck tribe—spoon-bill, canvas-back, mallard, pin-tail, ring-neck, wood duck, and merganser. The geese will not stop until they have passed the Arctic Circle. Why people use the word "goose" as synonym for stupidity is beyond the ken of the ordinary observer. The text-books tell us tritely that the goose lives to be a hundred years. If she does, she may exclaim with the Churchmen, "Yet are my years but labour and sorrow." The little chaps who have their birthday parties among sub-Arctic reeds are surrounded with enemies from the first day they crack their baby shells. Lynx and raccoon prey upon them by land, eagles and owls swoop upon them as they swim; and as with one eye they scan the sky above them, a greedy pike is apt to snap their web-feet from under them and draw them to a watery grave.
The cadets of the Hudson's Bay Company exchange courtesies with the Mounted Police, each considering himself a distinct cut above the other. One Mounted Policeman, whose duty it had been to escort the crazed Russian Doukhobortsi on one of their "altogether" pilgrimages, is hailed across the circle, "Here, lend us your knife, you nursemaid to the Douks." "Who spoke?" yawned the Policeman. "Was it that fur-pup of the Hudson's Bay?" "Yes," retorted the first, "and I'm glad I'm it; you couldn't pay me to wear a red coat and say 'Sir' to a damned little Frenchman, even if you are going to blaze a trail to Hudson Bay."
Some one asks Sergeant Joyce to tell his Bible story. He says, "Oh, about Coal-Oil Johnnie! It was the cub's first year in the service, and he got off with some civilians and was drunk for a week. When he was in the Guard Room awaiting court-martial he had lots of time 'to sit in clink, admirin' 'ow the world was made.' Likewise he was very dry. There was nothing for him to amuse himself with but a paper of pins. He took the pillow of his cot and used the whole bunch of pins in working on it the one word 'Hagar,' in letters
