The Long Labrador Trail Part 19

Mrs. Mumford made us most welcome, and entertained me in the doctor's house, and was as good and kind as she could be.

I must again express my appreciation of the truly wonderful work that Dr. Grenfell and his brave a.s.sociates are carrying on amongst the people of this dreary coast. Year after year, they brave the hards.h.i.+ps and dangers of sea and fog and winter storms that they may minister to the lowly and needy in the Master's name. It is a saying on the coast that "even the dogs know Dr. Grenfell," and it is literally true, for his activities carry him everywhere and G.o.d knows what would become of some of the people if he were not there to look after them. His practice extends over a larger territory than that of any other physician in the world, but the only fee he ever collects is the pleasure that comes with the knowledge of work well done.

At Battle Harbor I was told by a trader that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to procure dogs to carry us up the Straits toward Quebec, and I was strongly advised to end my snowshoe and dog journey here and wait for a steamer that was expected to come in April to the whaling station at Cape Charles, twelve miles away. This seemed good advice, for if we could get a steamer here within three weeks or so that would take us to St. Johns we should reach home probably earlier than we possibly could by going to Quebec.

There is a government coast telegraph line that follows the north sh.o.r.e of the St. Lawrence from Quebec to Chateau Bay, but the nearest office open at this time was at Red Bay, sixty-five miles from Battle Harbor, and I determined to go there and get into communication with home and at the same time telegraph to Bowring Brothers in St. Johns and ascertain from them exactly when I might expect the whaling steamer.

William Murphy offered to carry me over with his team, and, leaving Stanton and Easton comfortably housed at Battle Harbor and both of them quite content to end their dog traveling here, on the morning after my arrival Murphy and I made an early start for Red Bay.

Except in the more sheltered places the bay ice had broken away along the Straits and we had to follow the rough ice barricades, sometimes working inland up and down the rocky hills and steep grades. Before noon we pa.s.sed Henley Harbor and the Devil's Dining Table--a basaltic rock formation--and a little later reached Chateau Bay and had dinner in a native house. Beyond this point there are cabins built at intervals of a few miles as shelter for the linemen when making repairs to the wire. We pa.s.sed one of these at Wreck Cove toward evening, but as a storm was threatening, pushed on to the next one at Green Bay, fifty-five miles from Battle Harbor. It was dark before we got there, and to reach the Bay we had to descend a steep hill. I shall never forget the ride down that hill. It is very well to go over places like that when you know the way and what you are likely to bring up against, but I did not know the way and had to pin my faith blindly on Murphy, who had taken me over rotten ice during the day--ice that waved up and down with our weight and sometimes broke behind us. My opinion of him was that he was a reckless devil, and when we began to descend that hill, five hundred feet to the bay ice, this opinion was strengthened.

I would have said uncomplimentary things to him had time permitted. I expected anything to happen. It looked in the night as though a sheer precipice with a bottomless pit below was in front of us. Two drags were thrown over the komatik runners to hold us back, but in spite of them we went like a shot out of a gun, he on one side, I on the other, sticking our heels into the hard snow as we extended our legs ahead, trying our best to hold back and stop our wild progress. But, much to my surprise, when we got there, and I verily believe to Murphy's surprise also, we landed right side up at the bottom, with no bones broken. There were three men camped in the shack here, and we spent the night with them.

Early the next day we reached Red Bay and the telegraph office. There are no words in the English language adequate to express my feelings of gratification when I heard the instruments clicking off the messages.

It had been seventeen years since I had handled a telegraph key--when I was a railroad telegrapher down in New England--and how I fondled that key, and what music the click of the sounder was to my ears!

My messages were soon sent, and then I sat down to wait for the replies.

The office was in the house of Thomas Moors, and he was good enough to invite me to stop with him while in Red Bay. His daughter was the telegraph operator.

The next day the answers to my telegrams came, and many messages from friends, and one from Bowring & Company stating that no steamer would be sent to Cape Charles. I had been making inquiries here, however, in the meantime, and learned that it was quite possible to secure dogs and continue the journey up the north sh.o.r.e, so I was not greatly disappointed. I dispatched Murphy at once to Battle Harbor to bring on the other men, waiting myself at Red Bay for their coming, and holding teams in readiness for an immediate departure when they should arrive.

They drove in at two o'clock on April fourth, and we left at once. On the morning of the sixth we pa.s.sed through Blanc Sablon, the boundary line between Newfoundland and Canadian territory, and here I left the Newfoundland letters from my mail bag. From this point the majority of the natives are Acadians, and speak only French.

At Brador Bay I stopped to telegraph. No operator was there, so I sent the message myself, left the money on the desk and proceeded.

Three days more took us to St. Augustine Post of the Hudson's Bay Company, where we arrived in the morning and accepted the hospitality of Burgess, the Agent.

Our old friends the Indians whom we met on our inland trip at Northwest River were here, and John, who had eaten supper with us at our camp on the hill on the first portage, expressed great pleasure at meeting us, and had many questions to ask about the country. They had failed in their deer hunt, and had come out half starved a week or so before, from the interior.

We did fifty miles on the eleventh, changing dogs at Harrington at noon and running on to Sealnet Cove that night. Here we found more Indians who had just emerged from the interior, driven to the coast for food like those at St. Augustine as the result of their failure to find caribou.

Two days later we reached the Post at Romain, and on the afternoon of April seventeenth reached Natashquan and open water. Here I engaged pa.s.sage on a small schooner--the first afloat in the St. Lawrence--to take us on to Eskimo Point, seventy miles farther, where the Quebec steamer, _King Edward_, was expected to arrive in a week or so. That night we boarded the schooner and sailed at once. Into the sea I threw the clothes I had been wearing, and donned fresh ones. What a relief it was to be clear of the innumerable horde "o' wee sma' beasties" that had been my close companions all the way down from the Eskimo igloos in the North. I have wondered many times since whether those clothes swam ash.o.r.e, and if they did what happened to them.

It was a great pleasure to be upon the water again, and see the sh.o.r.e slip past, and feel that no more snowstorms, no more bitter northern blasts, no more hungry days and nights were to be faced.

Since June twenty-fifth, the day we dipped our paddles into the water of Northwest River and turned northward into the wastes of the great unknown wilderness, eight hundred miles had been traversed in reaching Fort Chimo, and on our return journey with dogs and komatik and snowshoes, two thousand more.

We reached Eskimo Point on April twentieth, and that very day a rain began that turned the world into a sea of slush. I was glad indeed that our komatik work was finished, for it would now have been very difficult, if not impossible, to travel farther with dogs.

I at once deposited in the post office the bag of letters that I had carried all the way from far-off Ungava. This was the first mail that any single messenger had ever carried by dog train from that distant point, and I felt quite puffed up with the honor of it.

The week that we waited here for the _King Edward_ was a dismal one, and when the s.h.i.+p finally arrived we lost no time in getting ourselves and our belongings aboard. It was a mighty satisfaction to feel the pulse of the engines that with every revolution took us nearer home, and when at last we tied up at the steamer's wharf in Quebec, I heaved a sigh of relief.

On April thirtieth, after an absence of just eleven months, we found ourselves again in the whirl and racket of New York. The portages and rapids and camp fires, the Indian wigwams and Eskimo igloos and the great, silent white world of the North that we had so recently left were now only memories. We had reached the end of The Long Trail. The work of exploration begun by Hubbard was finished.

APPENDIX

LABRADOR PLANTS

Specimens collected along the route of the expedition between Northwest River and Lake Michikamau. Determined at the New York Botanical Gardens:

Ledum groonlandic.u.m, Oeder. Comarum pal.u.s.tre L. Rubus arcticus L.

Solidago multiradiata. Ait. Sanguisorba Canadensis L. Linnaea Americana, Forbes. Dasiphora fruticosa (L), Rydb. Chamnaerion latifolium (L), Sweet. Viburnum pancifloram, Pylaim. Viscaxia alpina (L), Roehl. Menyanthes trifoliata L. Vaznera trifolia (L), Morong.

Ledum prostratum, Rotlb. Betula glandulosa, Michx. Kalmia angustifolia.

Aronia nigra (Willd), Britt. Comus Canadensis L. Arenaria groenlandica (Retz), Spreng. Barbarea stricta, Audry. Eriophorum russeolum, Fries.

Eriophorum polystachyon L. Phegopteris Phegopt@ (L), Fee.

LICHENS

Cladonia deformis (L), Hoffen. Alectoria dehrolenea (Ehrh.), Nyl.

Umbilicaria Neuhlenbergii (Ac L.), Tuck.

GEOLOGICAL NOTES By G. M. Richards All bearings given, refer to the true meridian.

My sincere thanks are due Prof. J.F. Kemp and Dr. C.P. Berkey, whose generous a.s.sistance has made this work possible.

ROUTE FOLLOWED

The route was by steamer to the head of Hamilton Inlet, Labrador--thence by canoes up Grand Lake and the Nascaupee River.

Fifteen miles above Grand Lake, a portage route was followed which makes a long detour through a series of lakes to avoid rapids in the river. This trail again returns to the Nascaupee River at Seal Lake and for some fifty miles above Seal Lake, follows the river. It then leaves the Nascaupee, making a second long detour through lakes to the north. On one of these lakes (Bibiquasin Lake) the trail was lost, and thereafter we traveled in a westerly direction until reaching Lake Michikamau.

Our food supply was then in so depleted a condition the party was obliged to separate, three of us returning to Northwest River.

It will be understood that the circ.u.mstances would allow of but a very limited examination of the geological features of the country. Only typical rock specimens, or those whose character was at all doubtful were brought back.

PREVIOUS EXPLORATION

Mr. A.P. Low penetrated to Lake Michikamau, by way of the Grand River.

He has thoroughly described the lake in his report to the Canadian Geological Survey, 1895, and it is not touched upon in the following paper. In the summer of 1903, an expedition led by Leonidas Hubbard, Jr., attempted to reach Lake Michikamau by ascending the Nascaupee River; they, however, missed the mouth of that stream on Grand Lake and followed the Susan River instead, pursuing a northwesterly course for two months without reaching the lake. On the return journey, Mr.

Hubbard died of starvation, his two companions, Mr. Wallace and a half-breed Indian, barely escaping a similar fate.

GEOGRAPHICAL RESULTS OF THE EXPEDITION

The Northwest River represented on the map of the Canadian Geological Survey (made from information obtained from the Indians) as draining Lake Michikamau, is but three and one-half miles long, and connects Grand Lake with Hamilton Inlet. There are six streams flowing into Grand Lake, instead of only one. It is the Nascaupee River that flows from Lake Michikamau to Grand Lake; and Seal Lake instead of being the source of the Nascaupee River is merely an expansion of it.

The source of the Crooked River was also discovered and mapped, as well as a great number of smaller lakes.

On the Northern Slope the George and Koroksoak Rivers and several lakes were mapped, and some smaller rivers located.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF ROUTE EXPLORED

Northwest River which flows into a small sandy bay at the head of Hamilton Inlet is only three and one-half miles long and drains Grand Lake.

For one-quarter of a mile above its mouth the river maintains an average width of one hundred and fifty yards, and a depth of two and one-half fathoms. It then expands into a shallow sheet of water two miles wide and three miles long, known locally as "The Little Lake." At the head of this small expansion the river again contracts where it flows out of Grand Lake. This point is known as "The Rapids," and although there is a strong current, the stream may be ascended in canoes without tracking.

At the foot of "The Rapids" the effect of the spring tides is barely perceptible. Between Grand Lake and the head of Hamilton Inlet, Northwest River flows through a deposit of sand marked by several distinct marine terraces.