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Wild North Land, The Story of a Winter Journey with Dogs across Northern North America

<div class="transnote"> Transcriber’s Note Larger versions of most illustrations may be seen by right-clicking them and selecting an option to view them separately, or by double-tapping and/or stretching them. An even larger version of the map is available through the Larger link below its captions. Cover created by Transcriber, using an illustration from the original book, and placed into the Public Domain. </div> <div id="i_001" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 41em;"> <ANTIMG src="images/i_001.jpg" width-obs="2564" height-obs="1602" alt="" /> <div class="caption">DOG-TRAIN FOR THE NORTH. </div> <div class="captionr">Frontispiece.</div> </div> <div class="newpage p2 center vspace"> <h1> The Wild North Land THE STORY OF A WINTER JOURNEY WITH DOGS ACROSS NORTHERN NORTH AMERICA </h1> BY LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SIR WILLIAM FRANCIS BUTLER, G.C.B. AUTHOR OF “THE GREAT LONE LAND” AND “RED CLOUD, THE SOLITARY SIOUX” “I cannot rest from travel. I will drink life to the lees.” “I am become a name for always roaming with a hungry heart.” WITH FIFTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS AND A MAP TORONTO THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LTD. 1910 </div> <hr /> <div id="i_002" class="newpage figcenter notbpad" style="max-width: 50em;"> <div class="caption large">SIR WILLIAM BUTLER’S WILD NORTH LAND. </div> <ANTIMG src="images/i_002.jpg" width-obs="1788" height-obs="954" alt="" /> <div class="captionl"><div class="floatl smaller"> <div class="center"> Part of BRITISH NORTH AMERICA to illustrate “THE WILD NORTH LAND”</div> </div></div> <div class="captionr floatr small"> Weller & Graham L^{td}. Litho, London</div> <div class="captionc large">BURNS & OATES.</div> (Larger) </div> <hr /> <h2 class="nobreak" id="PREFACE">PREFACE.</h2></div> People are supposed to have an object in every journey they undertake in this world. A man goes to Africa to look for the Nile, to Rome to see the Coliseum or St. Peter’s; and once, I believe, a certain traveller tramped all the way to Jerusalem for the sole purpose of playing ball against the walls of that city. As this matter of object, then, seems to be a rule with travellers, it may be asked by those who read this book, what object had the writer in undertaking a journey across the snowy wilderness of North America, in winter and alone? I fear there is no answer to be given to the question, save such as may be found in the motto on the title-page, or in the pages of the book itself. About eighteen months ago I was desirous of entering upon African travel. A great explorer had been lost for years in the vast lake-region of Southern Central Africa, and the British Nation—which,vi by the way, becomes singularly attached to a man when he is dead, or supposed to be dead—grew anxious to go out to look for him. As the British Nation could not all go out at once, or together, it endeavoured to select one or two individuals to carry out its wishes. It will be only necessary to state here, that the British Nation did not select the writer of this book, who forthwith turned his attention from African tropic zones to American frigid ones, and started out upon a lonely cruise. Many tracks lay before me in that immense region I call “The Wild North Land.” Former wandering had made me familiar with the methods of travel pursued in these countries by the Indian tribes, or far-scattered fur-hunters. Fortunate in recovering possession of an old and long-tried Esquimaux dog—the companion of earlier travel—I started in the autumn of 1872 from the Red River of the North, and, reaching Lake Athabasca, completed half my journey by the first week of March in the following year. From Athabasca I followed the many-windingvii channel of the frozen Peace River to its great cañon in the Rocky Mountains, and, journeying through this pass—for many reasons the most remarkable one in the whole range of the Rocky Mountains—reached the north of British Columbia in the end of May. From thence, following a trail of 350 miles through the dense forests of New Caledonia, I emerged on the 3rd of June at the frontier station of Quesnelle on the Frazer River, still 400 miles north of Victoria. In the ensuing pages the story of that long tramp—for it was mostly performed on foot—will be duly set forth. Written by camp fire, or in cañon, or in the little log-house of a northern fur fort, when dogs and men rested for a day or two in the long icy run, that narrative will be found, I fear, to bear many indications of the rough scenes ’mid which it has been penned; but as, on a former occasion, many critics passed in gentle silence over the faults and failings of another story of travel in the Great Lone Land, so now it may be my fortune to tell to as kindly an audience, this record of a winter’s walk through more distantviii wilds—for in truth there has been neither time for revision nor correction. Fortune, which eighteen months ago denied me African adventure, offers it now with liberal hand. I reached the Atlantic from the Pacific shore to find an expedition starting from England against Ashantee; and long ere this story finds a reader I hope to be pushing my way through the mangrove swamps which lie between the Gold Coast and Coomassie. To others even must fall the task of correcting proofs, while I assume my part in the correction and revision of King Koffi Kancalli, and the administration to his subjects of that proof of British prowess which it has been deemed desirable to give them. Meantime, my old friends Chief Kar-ka-konias, Kalder, and Cerf-vola, will be absent from this new field; but, nevertheless, there will be present many companions of former travel, and one Chief under whose command I first sought the Great Lone Land as the threshold to remoter regions. W. F. Butler. London, September 21st, 1873. <hr /> ix <h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS.</h2></div> <table id="toc" summary="Contents"> <tr> <td class="tdc chap" colspan="2">CHAPTER I.</td> </tr> <tr class="small"> <td> </td> <td class="tdr">PAGE</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">The Situation at Home—The West again—A Land of Silence</td> <td class="tdr">1</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdc chap" colspan="2">CHAPTER II.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">Powder versus Primroses—The American Lounger—“Home, sweet Home”</td> <td class="tdr">8</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdc chap" colspan="2">CHAPTER III.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">Fort Garry under new aspects—Social Societies—An old Friend—Pony “the perverse”</td> <td class="tdr">12</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdc chap" colspan="2">CHAPTER IV.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">The Wilderness—A Sunset Scene—A white Savage—Cerf-Vola the Untiring—Doggerel for a Dog—The Hill of the Wolverine—The Indian Paradise—I plan a Surprise—Biscuits and Water</td> <td class="tdr">21</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdc chap" colspan="2">CHAPTER V.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">The Forks of the Saskatchewan—A perverse Parallel—Diplomatic Bungling—Its Results</td> <td class="tdr">36</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdc chap" colspan="2">CHAPTER VI.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">Our Winter Home—A Welcome—I start again—The Hunter’s Camp—In quest of Buffalo on the Plains—“Lodge-poling” leads to Love</td> <td class="tdr">43</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdc chap" colspan="2">CHAPTER VII.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">An Ocean of Grass—The Red Man—Whence comes he?—The Buffalo—Puritans and Pioneers—The Red Man’s Friend</td> <td class="tdr">49x</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdc chap" colspan="2">CHAPTER VIII.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">Buffalo Hunts—A Picture once seen long remembered—L’Homme capable—A wonderful Lake—The lost Indian—An Apparition—We return Home</td> <td class="tdr">57</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdc chap" colspan="2">CHAPTER IX.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">Strange Visitors—At-tistighat the Philosopher—Indian Converts—A Domestic Scene—The Winter Packet—Adam and his Dogs</td> <td class="tdr">70</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdc chap" colspan="2">CHAPTER X.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">A tale of Warfare—Dog-sleds—A Missing Link—The North Sea—“Winterers”—Samuel Hearne</td> <td class="tdr">83</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdc chap" colspan="2">CHAPTER XI.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">A Dog of no Character—The Green Lake—Lac Ile à la Crosse—A Cold Day—Fort Ile à la Crosse—A long-lost Brother—Lost upon the Lake—Unwelcome Neighbours—Mr. Roderick Macfarlane—“A beautiful Morning”—Marble Features</td> <td class="tdr">95</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdc chap" colspan="2">CHAPTER XII.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">The Clearwater—A bygone Ocean—A Land of Lakes—The Athabasca River—Who is he?—Chipewyan Indians—Echo—Major succumbs at last—Mal de Raquette</td> <td class="tdr">118</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdc chap" colspan="2">CHAPTER XIII.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">Lake Athabasca—Northern Lights—Chipewyan—The real Workers of the World</td> <td class="tdr">137</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdc chap" colspan="2">CHAPTER XIV.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">A Hudson’s Bay Fort—It comes at last—News from the outside World—Tame and wild Savages—Lac Clair—A treacherous Deed—Harper</td> <td class="tdr">143</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdc chap" colspan="2">CHAPTER XV.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">The Peace River—Volcanos—M. Jean Batiste St. Cyr—Half a Loaf is better than no Bread—An oasis in the Desert—Tecumseh and Black Hawk</td> <td class="tdr">158xi</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdc chap" colspan="2">CHAPTER XVI.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">The Buffalo Hills—A fatal Quarrel—The exiled Beavers—“At-tal-loo” deplores his Wives—A Cree Interior—An attractive Camp—I camp alone—Cerf-vola without a Supper—The Recreants return—Dunvegan—A Wolf-hunt</td> <td class="tdr">171</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdc chap" colspan="2">CHAPTER XVII.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">Alexander Mackenzie—The first Sign of Spring—Spanker the Suspicious—Cerf-vola contemplates Cutlets—An Indian Hunter—“Encumbrances”—Furs and Finery—A “Dead Fall”—The Fur Trade at both Ends—An old Fort—A Night Attack—Wife-lifting—Cerf-vola in Difficulties and Boots—The Rocky Mountains at last</td> <td class="tdr">191</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdc chap" colspan="2">CHAPTER XVIII.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">The wild Animals of the Peace River—Indian Method of hunting the Moose—Twa-poos—The Beaver—The Bear—Bear’s Butter—A Bear’s Hug and how it ended—Fort St. John—The River awakes—A Rose without a Thorn—Nigger Dan—A threatening Letter—I issue a Judicial Memorandum—Its Effect is all that could be desired—Working up the Peace River</td> <td class="tdr">206</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdc chap" colspan="2">CHAPTER XIX.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">Start from St. John’s—Crossing the Ice—Batiste le Fleur—Chimeroo—The last Wood-buffalo—A dangerous Weapon—Our Raft collapses—Across the Half-way River</td> <td class="tdr">225</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdc chap" colspan="2">CHAPTER XX.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">Hudson’s Hope—A Lover of Literature—Crossing the Peace—An unskilful Pilot—We are upset—Our Rescue—A strange Variety of Arms—The Buffalo’s Head—A glorious View</td> <td class="tdr">236</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdc chap" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXI.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">Jacques, the French Miner—A fearful Abyss—The Great Cañon of the Peace River—We are off on our Western Way—Unfortunate Indians—A burnt Baby—“The Moose that walks”</td> <td class="tdr">247xii</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdc chap" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXII.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">Still Westward—The Dangers of the Ice—We enter the main Range—In the Mountains—A Grizzly—The Death of the Moose—Peace River Pass—Pete Toy—The Ominica—“Travellers” at Home</td> <td class="tdr">263</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdc chap" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXIII.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">The Black Cañon—An ugly Prospect—The vanished Boat—We struggle on—A forlorn Hope—We fail again—An unhoped-for Meeting and a Feast of Joy—The Black Cañon conquered</td> <td class="tdr">279</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdc chap" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXIV.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">The Untiring over-estimates his Powers—He is not particular as to the Nature of his Dinner—Toil and Temper—Farewell to the Ominica—Germansen—The Mining Camp—Celebrities</td> <td class="tdr">294</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdc chap" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXV.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">Mr. Rufus Sylvester—The Untiring developes a new Sphere of Usefulness—Mansen—A last Landmark</td> <td class="tdr">304</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdc chap" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXVI.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">British Columbia—Boundaries again—Juan de Fuça—Carver—The Shining Mountains—Jacob Astor—The Monarch of Salmon—Oregon—“Riding and Tying”—Nation Lake—The Pacific</td> <td class="tdr">310</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdc chap" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXVII.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">The Look-out Mountain—A gigantic Tree—The Untiring retires before superior Numbers—Fort St. James—A strange Sight in the Forest—Lake Noola—Quesnelle—Cerf-vola in civilized Life—Old Dog, good-bye!</td> <td class="tdr">327</td> </tr> <tr class="p2"> <td class="tdl">Postscript</td> <td class="tdr">343</td> </tr> <tr class="p2"> <td class="tdl">Appendix</td> <td class="tdr">349</td> </tr> </table> <hr /> xiii <h2 class="nobreak" id="ILLUSTRATIONS">ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2></div> <table id="loi" summary="Illustrations"> <tr> <td class="tdl">Dog-Train for the North</td> <td class="tdr">Frontispiece</td> </tr> <tr class="small"> <td> </td> <td class="tdr">PAGE</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">Cerf-Vola, the Esquimaux Dog</td> <td class="tdr">16</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">View from the Spathanaw Watchi</td> <td class="tdr">31</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">“Our Hut at the Forks of the Saskatchewan”</td> <td class="tdr">43</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">Sunset Scene, with Buffalo</td> <td class="tdr">57</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">Tent in the Great Prairie</td> <td class="tdr">69</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">The Valley of the Peace River</td> <td class="tdr">158</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">Alone in the Wilderness</td> <td class="tdr">181</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">Night into Day</td> <td class="tdr">187</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">The Wolf-Chase</td> <td class="tdr">189</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">Clinging to the Canoe</td> <td class="tdr">239</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">Mount Garnet Wolseley and the Peace River</td> <td class="tdr">266</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">Cutting up the Moose</td> <td class="tdr">271</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">Running stern foremost the Black Cañon</td> <td class="tdr">283</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="tdl">“The Look-out Mountain”</td> <td class="tdr">327</td> </tr> </table> <hr /> <h2 class="nobreak vspace" id="THE_WILD_NORTH_LAND"> THE WILD NORTH LAND.</h2></div> <hr /> <div id="toclink_1"> <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</h2></div> <div class="blockquot inhead short"> The Situation at Home.—The West again.—A Land of Silence. </div> There had never been so many armies in England. There was a new army, and there was an old army; there was an army of militia, an army of volunteers, and an army of reserve; there were armies on horse, on foot, and on paper. There was the army of the future—of which great things were predicted—and far away, lost in a haze of history (but still more substantial than all other armed realities, present or future), there lay the great dead army of the past. It was a time when everybody had something to do with military matters, everybody on the social ladder, from the Prime Minister on the topmost round to the mob-mover on the lowest. Committees controlled the army, Departments dressed it, Radicals railed at it, Liberals lectured4 upon it, Conservatives condemned it, Peers wrote pamphlets upon it, Dukes denounced it, Princes paraded it, and every member of Parliament who could put together half a dozen words with tolerable grammatical fluency had something to say about it. Surely such a period must have been one in which every soldier would have recognized the grandeur and importance of his profession, and clung with renewed vigour to a life which seemed of moment to the whole British nation. But this glowing picture of the great “nation of shopkeepers,” suddenly fired by military ardour, had its reverse. The stream of advancement slowly stagnating under influences devised to accelerate it, the soldier wearied by eternally learning from masters the lesson he could have taught, the camp made a place of garrison routine and not of military manœuvre, the uniform harness which had galled a Burton, a Palgrave, a Ruxton, and a Hayward, from ranks where the spirit of adventurous discovery sickened under chilling regulation—this harness made more unrelaxingly irksome; a system of promotion regulated by money—the offspring, it is true, of foul corruption, but which had become not a little purified by lapse of time; this system, supplanted by one of selection theoretically pure, but5 destined to fall into that lowest of all corruptions, the influence of political jobbery: all this formed the leading features in that order of things, old and new, which the spectacle of a neighbouring nation, struck suddenly to the ground by a mighty army, had caused the panic-stricken British people to overhaul and to reconstruct. Taken any way one can, an army on paper is not a satisfactory profession. It is subject to sudden and unlooked-for bursts of military zeal; it is so bent upon nervously asserting itself fit for anything; it is from its nature so much akin to pen, ink, and envelope of a common-place type; it has such disagreeable methods of garrisoning the most pestilential spots upon the earth, and abandoning to republican bluster whole continents called colonies; those who shape its destinies are so ready to direct it against matchlock monarchs and speared soldiery; while arms are folded before those conflicts which change the past and future of the centuries; all these considerations go a great way towards making the profession of arms, on paper, at any time an anomaly. But when there was also present to the memory of one who thus regarded the new order of military life, the great solitudes, the inland oceans, the desolate wilds, the gloomy forests of a far-away land, through which his former wanderings6 had carried him; when thought re-sought again those vast regions of the earth where Nature has graven her image in characters so colossal, that man seems to move slowly amidst an ocean frozen rigid by lapse of time, frozen into those things we name mountains, rivers, prairies, forests; man a mere speck, powerless so far to mark his presence, in blur of smoke, in noise of city, in clash of crank, or whirl of wheel: when these things came back in pictures touched by the soft colours Memory loves to limn with, there were not wanting dull professional outlooks and dearth of service to turn the footsteps gladly into the old regions again, there to trace new paths through the almost exhaustless waste which lies between the lonely prairies of the Saskatchewan and the icy oceans of the North. What shall we call this land to those who follow us into its depths? It has prairies, forests, mountains, barren wastes, and rivers; rivers whose single lengths roll through twice a thousand miles of shoreland; prairies over which a rider can steer for months without resting his gaze on aught save the dim verge of the ever-shifting horizon; mountains rent by rivers, ice-topped, glacier-seared, impassable; forests whose sombre pines darken a region half as large as Europe; sterile, treeless7 wilds whose 400,000 square miles lie spread in awful desolation. How shall it all be called? In summer, a land of sound, a land echoing with the voices of birds, the ripple of running water, the mournful music of the waving pine-branch; in winter, a land of silence, a land hushed to its inmost depths by the weight of ice, the thick-falling snow, the intense rigour of a merciless cold—its great rivers glimmering in the moonlight, wrapped in their shrouds of ice; its still forests rising weird and spectral against the Aurora-lighted horizon; its notes of bird or brook hushed as if in death; its nights so still that the moving streamers across the northern skies seem to carry to the ear a sense of sound, so motionless around, above, below, lies all other visible nature. If then we call this region the land of stillness, that name will convey more justly than any other the impress most strongly stamped upon the winter’s scene. <hr /> <div id="toclink_8" class="chapter"> 8 <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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