Pilgrims of the Wild. Grey Evil Owl
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and swung my paddle, driving my light, fast canoe steadily northward to the Height of Land. It was not much of a town as towns go. It had no sidewalks, and no roads, and consisted mainly of a Hudson’s Bay store, a sawmill, probably fifty houses scattered on a rocky hillside, and an Indian encampment in a sheltered bay of Biscotasing Lake, on the shores of which this village stood. But it was rather a noted little place, as, being situated within measurable distance of the headwaters of a number of turbulent rivers such as the Spanish, the White, the Mississauga, the Mattawgami, the Ground-hog, and others, and being moreover the gateway to a maze of water routes that stretch southward to lakes Huron and Superior, and northward to the Arctic ocean, the fame of its canoemen was widely known. That part of the district of Algoma, in the province of Ontario, had until lately been one of the best fur-producing territories in Northern Canada, but an influx of get-rich-quick transient hunters had depleted the fur-bearing animals almost to the point of extinction, and times were not what they had been.
Reduced though it might be, nonetheless this isolated post had been my home town for the fifteen years since I had drifted down from the North, if coming out to sell fur and replenish supplies twice a year can be said to establish citizenship. I had seen my best years in the vast forests and on the intricate waterways that commenced at its back door and stretched many hundreds of miles into the interior, and was leaving behind me friendships with both Red men and White, that had been cemented by year after year of trial by ordeal in the crucible of hardship; and I was feeling a little choked up and lonely.
The farewell celebrations had been a little lively, and I was not the only one leaving town that evening, but none of the others were coming my way; they were all headed in the opposite direction, to their stamping grounds on the distant Mississauga whose pine-crowned cliffs, maple-crested ridges, and wild fierce rapids I might never see again. So I thought as I plugged along, the little swirling eddies that slid from my paddle singing a low whispering dirge in the silence of that spring night.
Less than a dozen miles brought me to the first portage. Certain hints dropped by the Hudson’s Bay manager, who was also chief of police (he was, in fact, the whole force; he could serve a warrant so you’d never feel the jar, but was, in certain circumstances, a gentleman to be avoided), made it seem advisable to cross this immediately. It was four miles long and I had two loads, outfit and canoe. But the footing was good and there was a moon. In the ensuing labour a lot of my depression of spirits oozed through my pores in the form of perspiration. It was an arduous trip, eight miles loaded and four empty on the middle return journey; but it was completed soon after sunrise when I made camp, slept till noon, and then proceeded on my pilgrimage.
A disastrous bush fire had swept my hunting ground leaving it a barren area of cracked rock, burnt out stumps, and tortured tree trunks, and I was bound north and east to the far off, supposedly fruitful ranges of the Abitibi district in Northern Quebec; a vast country which, so rumour had it, was little explored and was populated only by a few wandering bands of Ojibway* Indians. Much of my route lay through a country I had known. It was now almost unrecognizable. A railroad had been built through part of it. There were huge burns, areas of bare rocks and twisted rampikes, miles of staring desolation. Riff-raff bushmen, dirty, unkempt; stolid European peasantry tearing down the forest; settlers on stone farms (two crops a year — one snow and the other rocks) existing, no more. The change was nearly unbelievable. Immured in the fastness of the Mississauga I had not known what had been going on. I passed on uneasy, fearful, wondering what lay ahead. There was plenty!
Old Fort Mattawgami, the river dammed, was flooded out, all under water save the little Mission Church which stood awash on a knoll; I had a noon meal on its steps, sorrowfully. Another trading post, a startling new pale-looking affair, stood on the far shore on high land. I passed it by at half a mile; Old Man Miller wasn’t there anyway, he was living in Gogama on a pension from the Company,* still worrying about his old post.
I met some old-time faces, men who had made history in these parts; I got the news such as it was. It sounded to me more like a Book of Doom. Flying Post was on its last legs, its Indians dispersed. Alec McLeod, factor at Elbow Lake, who so wore his thigh with the paddle that cancer had set in and the leg had to be amputated — cursing, roaring, mighty McLeod that no man could ever outface and few could follow — dead. Ancient John Buffalo on the Montreal River, a trapper of the old régime, almost a landmark in the country, dead these many years. Snape, who ran Moose Factory at a time when a round trip from the front took six weeks fast voyaging, now manager of a Company store in a small town, his ankle broken and badly knit — off the trail for keeps. Andy Luke, who habitually carried four hundred pounds on a portage and who had made big hunts that were a byword in the land, working on the railroad as a labourer, his son Sam, lean, wiry Sam with the speed and endurance of a greyhound, a wizard in a canoe, doing odd jobs. Big Alec Langevin, six feet two in his summer moccasins to whom fifty miles on snowshoes was a small matter, gone away to Quebec for marten. I later met him there — on his way back.
Tommy Saville, the White Indian, adopted by the Ojibways when young and who had made and spent a fortune in a gold rush, living in a house in a town, eating his heart out for the trail, sneaking down cellar to boil a pail of tea over a little fire of shavings — to get the feel of it again: people thought him queer —
What did it all mean; was the whole wilderness falling about our ears?
I kept going. Further on the tale improved but little. Shining tree and Gowganda, rich camps of earlier days, far from the railroad and undisturbed by the hodge-podge and the hurly-burly of the march of progress, were still kept alive by many of the old originals, waiting for a break, hoping with the perennial optimism of the dyed-in-the-wool prospector, for a new strike to keep the old camp going. The whole Gowganda lake area had been burnt to the bare rock. White Duck, who had carried the mail in the early days, had passed into a legend.
One reunion was notable and all too short, with Billy Guppy, that king of all woodsmen, respected by all men, Red and White, and whom the Indians called Pijeense — The Little Lynx. Time had changed him in no discernible way; he alluded to the subject of our last conversation, held fifteen years before. He still clung to his traditions and always would.
I encountered Indians, White woodsmen, real prospectors, each meeting an experience. But when their conversation turned to future plans there were evidences of a vague foreboding in their speech. No man felt secure. Fire, railroads, power projects, the aeroplane, they were tearing the old life apart. The frontier was rolling back like a receding tide. I must hurry.
Four hundred miles travel brought me to a town on the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway which, when I first saw it, had been a frontier post. Before the coming of the steel, rare sportsmen and adventurers, seeking the freedom and spiritual satisfaction to be found in an untouched virgin territory, had come here at intervals. We guided them, a strange, new, interesting job; these men had been our comrades on the trail. We talked about such a trip all winter, and showed each other the letters we got from our patrons. The place was now a populous tourist resort. An automobile highway was in the making. I took a job here; the party was a good one, people from New York, with all the genial good fellowship of the American on a vacation. But there was a false note. Guides were no longer companions, they were lackeys, footmen, toadies; a kind of below-stairs snobbery had sprung up among them, — kid-glove guiding; some of them actually wore white cotton gloves at their work. Old-timers talked about it, shook their heads — but they had to follow suit; fur was gone and this now-emasculated occupation was their only means of subsistence.
My main outfit had been sent around to this place by freight; I shipped it ahead three hundred miles, replenished my supplies and left, in my heart rebellion and disillusionment. This place held memories I had hoped to renew. I pitied the pine trees standing there. They had to stay.
The Frontier was on its way. So was I.
I had billed my freight to a point on the Transcontinental where I arrived a month later, renewed my food supply and sent the outfit another stage ahead. In this manner, touching the railroad at strategic points, a journey was made that covered approximately two thousand miles. This