The Project Gutenberg eBook of The New North

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: The New North

Author: Agnes Deans Cameron

Release date: July 10, 2004 [eBook #12874]
Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Brendan Lane and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NEW NORTH ***

THE NEW NORTH

Being Some Account of a Woman's Journey through Canada to the Arctic

BY AGNES DEANS CAMERON

WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR

Published November, 1909

A Magnificent Trophy

TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER, JESSIE ANDERSON CAMERON

AND

TO ALL THOSE WHO TRY TO LIVE OUT HER SIMPLE RULE: "WE MUST JUST TRY TO DO THE VERY BEST WE CAN"

PREFACE

It is customary to write a preface. Mine shall be short. Out of a full heart, I wish to thank all the splendid people of the North who, by giving me so freely information and photographs, and chapters out of their own lives, have facilitated the writing of this story. For their spontaneous kindness to me and mine no acknowledgment that I can here make is adequate. What we feel most strongly we cannot put into words.

AGNES DEANS CAMERON.

August, 1909.

CHAPTER I: THE MENDICANTS REACH WINNIPEG

The Mendicants leave Chicago—The invisible parallel of 49 where the eagle perches and makes amorous eyes at the beaver—Union Jack floats on an ox-cart—A holy baggage-room—Winnipeg, the Buckle of the Wheat-Belt—The trapper and the doctor—Mrs. Humphry Ward speaks—Boy Makers of Empire—The vespers of St. Boniface

CHAPTER II: WINNIPEG TO ATHABASCA LANDING

The 1,000-mile wheat-field—Calgary-in-the-Foothills—Edmonton, the end of steel—The Brains of a Trans-Continental—Browning on the Saskatchewan—East Londoners in tents—Our outfit—A Waldorf-Astoria in the wilderness—The lonely cross of the Galician—Height of Land—Sergeant Anderson, R.N.W.M.P., the sleuth of Lesser Slave

CHAPTER III: ATHABASCA LANDING

Athabasca Landing, the Gateway of the North—English gives place to Cree—Limit of the Dry Martini—Will the rabbits run?—The woman printer—Hymn-books by hand in the Cree syllabic—Baseball even here—Rain and reminiscences—The World's Oldest Trust

CHAPTER IV: DOWN THE ATHABASCA ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FIVE MILES TO GRAND RAPIDS

"Farewell, Nistow!"—The rainy deck of a "sturgeon head" under a tarpaulin—Drifting by starlight—The wild geese overhead—Forty-foot gas-spout at the Pelican—The mosquito makes us blood-brothers—Four days on our Robinson Crusoe Island in the swirling Athabasca—Nomenclature of the North—Sentinels of the Silence

CHAPTER V: NINETY MILES OF RAPIDS

The Go-Quick-Her takes the bit in her mouth—Mallards on the half-shell—We set the Athabascan Thames afire—Sturgeon-head breaks her back on the Big Cascade—Fort McMurray—A stranded argosy, wreckage on the beach—Miss Christine Gordon, the Free Trader—A land flowing with coal and oil and gas and tar, timber and lime

CHAPTER VI: FORT CHIPEWYAN PAST AND PRESENT

Old Fort Chipewyan—In the footsteps of Mackenzie and Sir John Franklin—Sir John turns parson—Grey Nuns and brown babies—Where grew the prize wheat of the Philadelphia Centennial—Militant missionaries fight each other for souls—The strong man Loutit—Wyllie at the forge—An electric watch-maker—Where the Gambel sparrow builds—"Out of old books"

CHAPTER VII: LAKE ATHABASCA AND ITS FOND DU LAC

Farewell to the Mounted Police—Our blankets on the deck—Fern odours by untravelled ways—Typewriting and kodaking in 20 hours of daylight—Navigating Lake Athabasca by the power o' man—A 23-inch trout—First white women at Fond du Lac—Carlyle among the Chipewyans, a Fond du Lac library—The hermit padre and the hermit thrush—Worn north trails of the trapper—Caribou by the hundred thousands—The phalarope and the suffragette

CHAPTER VIII: FOND DU LAC TO FORT SMITH

World's records beaten on the Athabasca—Down the Slave to Smith's Landing—Priests sink in the Rapid of the Drowned—The Mosquito Portage—Fort Smith, the new headquarters—Lady-slippers and night-hawks—Steamer built in the wilderness—Last stand of the wood bison—The grey wolf persists—Fur-trade and the silver-fox—Breeding pelicans.

CHAPTER IX: SLAVE RIVER AND GREAT SLAVE LAKE

"Red lemol-lade" kiddies—Tons of crystal salt—Great Slave Lake and its fertile shores—Yellow-Knife and Dog-Rib, subjects of the Seventh Edward—Hay River and its annual mail—Ploughing with dogs—Bill balked—The Alexandra Falls—Bishop Bompas as a surgeon; amputations while you wait.

CHAPTER X: PROVIDENCE TO SIMPSON, ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILES DOWN THE MACKENZIE

Drowning of De-deed—Fort Simpson, the old headquarters—A mouldy museum—The shrew-mice that were not preserved in rum—The farthest north library—Gold-seekers and grub-staked brides—Bishop Bompas, the Apostle of the North—Owindia, the Weeping One—Fort Simpson in the first year of Victoria the Good.

CHAPTER XI: FORT GOOD HOPE ON THE ARCTIC CIRCLE

Tenny Gouley tells us things—Mackenzie River, past and present—The fringed gentian at Fort Wrigley—The fires Mackenzie saw—The weathered knob of Bear Rock—Great Bear Lake—Orangeman's Day at Norman—The Ramparts of the Mackenzie—Fort Good Hope under the Arctic Circle—Mignonette and Old World courtesy—We meet Hagar once more—Potatoes on the Circle—The Little Church of the Open Door

CHAPTER XII: ARCTIC RED RIVER AND ITS ESKIMO

Arctic Red River—Wilfrid Laurier, the merger—Mrs. Ila-la-Rocko, the danseuse—Marriage as the Oo-vai-oo-aks see it—Orange-blossoms at Su-pi-di-do's—Trading tryst at Barter Island—Floating fathers—By-o Baby Bunting—Wild roses and tame Eskimo—Midnight football with walrus bladder and enthusiasm—Education that makes for manliness

CHAPTER XIII: FORT MACPHERSON FOLK

Sir John Franklin's lobsticks at Point Separation—We reach Fort Macpherson on the Peel—Sergeant Fitzgerald, R.N.W.M.P., eulogizes the Eskimo—An Eskimo wife must make boots that are waterproof—She ariseth also while it is yet night and cheweth the boots of her household—Cribbage-boards the link between Dick Swiveller and the Eskimo—Linked sweetness long drawn out—Chauncey Depew of the Kogmollycs

CHAPTER XIV: MORALIZING UNDER THE MIDNIGHT SUN

The Midnight Sun—Our friend the heathen—"We want to go to hell"—Catching fish by prayer—The Eskimo and the Flood—Pink tea at the Pole—Always a balance in the Eskimo Bank—Marriage for better and not for worse—Christmas carols even here

CHAPTER XV: MAINLY CONCERNING FOOD

Jurisprudence on ice—The generous Innuit—Emmie-ray, the Delineator pattern—Weak races are pressed south—Roxi, a re-incarnation of Sir Philip Sidney—Blubbery bon vivants—Eskimo knew the Elephant—We write the last chapter of the story of McClure, the navigator—Cannibalism at the Circle

CHAPTER XVI: THE TALE OF A WHALE

Circumpolar Bowhead makes his last stand—Whales here and elsewhere—The Yankee peddler at Canada's back-door—Thirteen and a half million in whale values—Wind-swept Herschel, the Isle of Whales—One wife for a thousand years—Baleen, Spermaceti, and Ambergris—Save the Whale

CHAPTER XVII: SOUTH FROM THE ARCTIC TO CHIPEWYAN

Lives lost for the sake of a white bead—The stars come back—The Keele party from the Dollarless Divide—"Here and there a grayling"—Across Great Slave Lake—The first white women at Fort Rae—Land of the musk-ox—Tales of 76 below—Two Thursdays in one week—Rabbits on ice

CHAPTER XVIII: TO MC MURRAY AND BACK TO THE PEACE

The nuptials of 'Norine—Ladies round gents and gents don't go—The fossil-gatherers—I give my name to a Cree kiddie—A solid mile of red raspberries—The typewriter an uncanny medicine—The Beetle Fleet leaves for Outside—Shipwrecked on a batture

CHAPTER XIX: UP THE PEACE TO VERMILION

Ho! for the Peace—One break in 900 miles of navigation—A grey wolf—Bear-meat and the Se-weep-i-gons—Ninety-foot spruces—Tom Kerr and his bairns—The fish-seine that never fails—Our lobsticks by Red River—The Chutes of the Peace

CHAPTER XX: VERMILION-ON-THE-PEACE

The farthest north flour-mill—The man who made Vermilion—Wheat at $1.25 a bushel—An Experimental Farm in latitude 58° 30'—An unoccupied kingdom as large as Belgium—Where the steamer Peace River was built—The hospitable home of the Wilsons—Vermilion a Land of Promise Fulfilled—Culture and the Cloister—Thomas of Canterbury on the Stump

CHAPTER XXI: FORT VERMILION TO LESSER SLAVE

Se-li-nah of the happy heart—My premier moose—The rare and resourceful boatmen of the North—Alexander Mackenzie's last camp

CHAPTER XXII: PEACE RIVER CROSSING TO LESSER SLAVE LAKE

Pleasant prairies of the Peace—We tramp a hundred miles—The Angelus at Lesser Slave—Poole coats and Norfolk shooting-jackets—Roast duck galore—Alec Kennedy of the Nile—Louise the Wetigo, she ate nineteen

CHAPTER XXIII: LESSER SLAVE LAKE TO EDMONTON

Jim wins: Allie Brick can't run—100,000,000 acres of wheat-land—Jilly-Loo bird still lacks a rib—100 moose in one month—Peripatetic judges but no prisoners—The best-tattooed man in the Province of Alberta—The-Man-Who-Goes-Around-and-Helps

CHAPTER XXIV: HOMES AMONG THE YELLOW WHEAT

Edmonton again—Wyllie goes out on the Long Journey—Donaldson killed by a walrus—Two drowned in the Athabasca—Steel kings and iron horses—Wheat-plains the melting-pot of a New Nation

ROUTES OF TRAVEL

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Map of the Author's Route

CHAPTER I

THE MENDICANTS REACH WINNIPEG

"We are as mendicants who wait

Along the roadside in the sun.

Tatters of yesterday and shreds

Of morrow clothe us every one.

"And some are dotards, who believe

And glory in the days of old;

While some are dreamers, harping still

Upon an unknown age of gold.

"O foolish ones, put by your care!

Where wants are many, joys are few;

And at the wilding springs of peace,

God keeps an open house for you.

"But there be others, happier few,

The vagabondish sons of God,

Who know the by-ways and the flowers,

And care not how the world may plod."

Isn't it Riley who says, "Ef you want something, an' jest dead set a-longin' fer it with both eyes wet, and tears won't bring it, why, you try sweat"? Well, we had tried sweat and longing for two years, with planning and hoping and the saving of nickels, and now we are off!

Shakespeare makes his man say, "I will run as far as God has any ground," and that is our ambition. We are to travel north and keep on going till we strike the Arctic,—straight up through Canada. Most writers who traverse The Dominion enter it at the Eastern portal and travel west by the C.P.R., following the line of least resistance till they reach the Pacific. Then they go back to dear old England and tell the world all about Canada, their idea of the half-continent being Euclid's conception of a straight line, "length without breadth."

Sir Wilfred Laurier

But Canada has a third dimension, a diameter that cuts through the Belt of Wheat and Belt of Fur, beginning south at the international boundary and ending where in his winter-igloo the Arctic Eskimo lives and loves after his kind and works out his own destiny. This diameter we are to follow. To what end? Not, we hope, to come back like him who went from Dan to Beersheba to say "All is barren," but to come near to the people, our fellow-Britons, in this transverse section of a country bigger than Europe. We want to see what they are doing, these Trail-Blazers of Commerce, who, a last vedette, are holding the silent places, awaiting that multitude whose coming footsteps it takes no prophet to hear.

We will take the great waterways, our general direction being that of all the world-migrations. Colonization in America has followed the trend of the great rivers, and it has ever been northward and westward,—till you and I have to look southward and eastward for the graves of our ancestors. The sons and grandsons of those who conquered the St. Lawrence and built on the Mississippi have since occupied the shores of the Red, the Assiniboine, and the Saskatchewan. They are laying strong hands upon the Peace, and within a decade will be platting townships on the Athabasca, the Mackenzie, and the Slave.

There has always been a West. For the Greeks there was Sicily; Carthage was the western outpost of Tyre; and young Roman patricians conquered Gaul and speculated in real estate on the sites of London and Liverpool. But the West that we are entering upon is the Last West, the last unoccupied frontier under a white man's sky. When this is staked out, pioneering shall be no more, or Amundsen must find for us a dream-continent in Beaufort Sea.

Kipling speaks of "a route unspoiled of Cook's," and we have found it. Going to the office of Thos. Cook & Son, in Chicago, with a friend who had planned a Mediterranean tour, I gently said, "I wonder if you can give me information about a trip I am anxious to take this summer." The young man smiled and his tone was that which we accord to an indulged child, "I guess we can. Cook & Son give information on most places." "Very well," I said, "I want to go from Chicago to the Arctic by the Mackenzie River, returning home by the Peace and the Lesser Slave. Can you tell me how long it will take, what it will cost, and how I make my connections?" He was game; he didn't move an eyebrow, but went off to the secret recesses in the back office to consult "the main guy," "the chief squeeze," "the head push," "the big noise." Back they came together with a frank laugh, "Well, Miss Cameron, I guess you've got us. Cook's have no schedule to the Arctic that way." They were able, however, to give accurate information as to how one should reach Hudson Bay, with modes of travel, dates, and approximate cost. But this journey for another day.

Leaving Chicago one sizzling Sunday in mid-May, we (my niece and I) stop for a day to revel in bird and blossoms at Lake Minnetonka in Minnesota, then silently in the night cross the invisible parallel of 49° where the eagle perches and makes amorous eyes at the beaver.

With the Polar Ocean as ultimate goal, we cannot help thinking how during the last generation the Arctic Circle has been pushed steadily farther north. Forty years ago Minneapolis and St. Paul were struggling trading-posts, and all America north of them was the range of the buffalo and the Indian. Then Fort Garry (Winnipeg) became Farthest North. Before starting, I had dug out from the Public Library the record of a Convention of Wheat-Growers who, fifteen years ago in Chicago, deliberately came to the conclusion (and had the same engrossed on their minutes) that "Our Northern tier of States is too far north to successfully grow wheat." For years Winnipeg was considered the northern limit of wheat-growth, the Arctic Circle of endeavour. Then that line of limitation was pushed farther back until it is Edmonton-on-the-Saskatchewan that is declared "Farthest North." To-day we are embarking on a journey which is to reach two thousand miles due north of Edmonton!

In the train between Minneapolis and Winnipeg an old man with a be-gosh beard looks worth while. We tell him where we are going, and he is all interest. He remembers the time when Montreal merchants wishing to reach Fort Garry had to bend down by way of St. Paul to gain their goal. These were the days of Indian raids and bloody treachery. "But," the old chap says, "the Hudson's Bay people always played fa'r and squar' with the Injuns. Even in them days the Injun knowed that crossed flag and what it stood for. I mind one Englishman and his wife who had come from Montreal to St. Paul in an ox-cart. The whole plains was covered with sneakin' red cusses on the war-path. But that darned Britisher was stubborn-set on pullin' out that night for Fort Garry, with his wife and kid, and what did the cuss do but nail a blame little Union Jack on his cart, poke the goad in his ox, and hit the trail! My God, I kin still see the old ox with that bit of the British Empire, wiggling out of St. Paul at sundown. And the cuss got there all right, too, though we was all wearing crape beforehand for his sweet-faced wife." This incident was not unique. In the early '60's an English curate, afterwards to be known to the world as Bishop Bompas, passed north through St. Cloud on his way from England to the Arctic. When the Sioux were reported on the war-path, Mr. Bompas improvised a Union Jack with bits of coloured clothing and fastened it on the first ox-cart of his cavalcade. Seeing this, the hostile Sioux turned bridle and rode away; and, protected by the flag of the clustered crosses, the Gospel-cart passed on.

Earl Grey, Governor-General of Canada

What Cook & Son failed to supply, the Hudson's Bay Company in Winnipeg furnished. This concern has been foster-mother to Canada's Northland for two hundred and thirty-nine years. Its foundation reaches back to when the Second Charles ruled in England,—an age when men said not "How cheap?" but "How good?", not "How easy?" but "How well?" The Hudson's Bay Company is to-day the Cook's Tourist Company of the North, the Coutts' Banking concern, and the freshwater Lloyd's. No man or woman can travel with any degree of comfort throughout Northwest America except under the kindly aegis of the Old Company. They plan your journey for you, give you introductions to their factors at the different posts, and sell you an outfit guiltless of the earmarks of the tenderfoot. Moreover, they will furnish you with a letter of credit which can be transmuted into bacon and beans and blankets, sturgeon-head boats, guides' services, and succulent sow-belly, at any point between Fort Chimo on Ungava Bay and Hudson's Hope-on-the-Peace, between Winnipeg-on-the-Red and that point in the Arctic where the seagull whistles over the whaling-ships at Herschel.

For a railroad station, the wall-notices in the baggage room of the Canadian Northern at Winnipeg are unique. Evidently inspired for the benefit of employés, they give the incoming traveller a surprise. Here they are as we copied them down:

Let all things be done decently and in order.

1 Cor. xiv, 40.

Be punctual, be regular, be clean.

The New North

About This Book