Part 1

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SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE

VOL. XXVI SEPTEMBER, 1899 NO. 3

Copyright 1899, by Charles Scribner's Sons. All rights reserved.

WHERE THE WATER RUNS BOTH WAYS

By Frederic Irland

ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR

The greatest glory of Canada is not its modern progress, but its vast and ancient wilderness. If you weary of the sameness and unprofitableness of every thing you know, go where I went last year, to the upper waters of the Ottawa, where the beaver is the master architect and the moose is king of the woods. See for yourself, as I saw, that the Ottawa and the Gatineau, appearing to come from widely distant regions, have their origin close together and are twins. Behold these two children of the lakes, nourished from the same generous breast. Trace their courses, and see that, though journeying far, in widely different directions, they finally arrive at a common destination.

Nobody knows all about that head-water country around the sources of the Ottawa. It is a prolific game region, where sportsmen rarely go, for the simple reason that they can get all the hunting they want nearer to the railroad. There are plenty of deer close to almost any Canadian Pacific station west of Pembroke, and it is not much trouble to get a chance at a moose in two days from Deux Rivières, Rockliffe, or Mattawa. Not many hunting parties start from there either, and I suppose the reason is that for thousands of miles to the west the woods, prairies, and mountains lie close to the railroad and afford almost limitless opportunities.

The territory enclosed by the Ottawa and the Gatineau has been, from immemorial times, the home of the Algonquin Indians, and they still remain there, in such primitive innocence that they receive no annuity from the Dominion Government. In this they are unlike the Indians of the United States or their brother tribes of Canada.

The map which accompanies this article is reproduced from the latest Crown Land Office charts of the Upper Ottawa River. Hundreds of lakes, some of them many miles in extent, are unmarked, because they have never been surveyed. But a glance at the map will give some idea of the flood which is poured out at the feet of Canada's stately capital. As a canoeing country I believe the Ottawa valley to be unequalled anywhere in the world. The dotted line on the map shows the course of a lazy autumn trip which I took around the borders of the great interior island, formed by the streams which fall from a common birthplace in the Kakebonga region and reunite in front of the city of Ottawa.

The _coureurs du bois_ of the old _régime_ have passed away, but the song of their beloved wilderness is as sweet to-day as when they found it irresistible.

At Mattawa I procured the supplies which are necessary for a canoe trip in the woods, and the branch railroad took me to the shore of Lake Kippewa. Then a lumber company's steamer carried me to Hunter's Point, the farthest settlement, eighty-five miles north of Mattawa. From there it was all canoe and portage. Nowhere was there a carry more than a mile long, and generally the distance was only a few hundred yards from one lake to another, or around a rapid. The rivers form a continuous waterway, but we made many short cuts. In five hundred miles of canoeing there were, perhaps, twenty miles of carrying, all told.

Mr. Isaac Hunter, the postmaster at Hunter's Point, has his office in the front room of his house or else in his coat-pocket. He has a large, well-cleared farm, where his father lived before him, and he sells hay to the lumbermen at fifty dollars a ton. Plenty of people in the United States might well want to be in his place. Yet the farm he lives on has no legal status. It has never been surveyed, and the Crown Land Office has no official knowledge of it. So he pays no taxes and he never cast a vote in his life.

When I got to Mr. Hunter's I was at the end of civilization. Beyond his house there were no roads except the water-ways, and the journey I wished to make through the wilderness was several hundred miles long. But I felt as sure of the way as though I had been there before. There are no maps which are of any use at all. Not one of them shows more than half of the lakes which form the easy road we travelled.

I told Mr. Hunter where I wanted to go. He said: "Well, my brother-in-law, Joe Decountie, knows the way to Ross Lake, about half way to the Grand Lake Victoria. Mr. Christopherson, the Hudson's Bay agent at Grand Lake, will be back here soon. If you want to go with Joe and bring back a moose by Saturday, you'll find Mr. Christopherson here then, and he can tell you how to go the rest of the way. You'll need a canoe. They sell pretty high this year. You can have that one out by the water for six dollars."

Joe was young and big. He lived across the bay from his brother-in-law. He and the rest of the twenty or thirty other people around Hunter's Point speak Algonquin and French and very fair English, and their names show that those early adventurers from Europe, two hundred years ago and later, had no violent race prejudices. The more I have seen of the half-bloods of Canada, the more I have come to admire them. They are of fearless stock, and have inherited many good traits from both races. They regard with amusement and pity their half-brothers, the full-blood Algonquins of the remote forest, but they understand the arts of wood-lore which make life more than endurable there. They have French, English, Scotch, and Scandinavian family names, and any one who thinks they lead an uncomfortable life is very much mistaken.

A good deal has been written lately about the hardships and dangers of camp life. For years I have spent a considerable time each season in the woods, sometimes depending for days on the resources of the country, and I can truthfully say I never had one uncomfortable hour there.

"Where shall we go after a moose, Joe?" I asked.

Joe said: "Well, it's bes' to go where we sure to find 'em. Dese fellers aroun' here don't like de place where I go, because it takes most all day to get dere. But I never failed yet to see moose." So we threw our luggage into the canoe, and departed, in a gentle rain-storm.

It was nearly a year since I had had a paddle in my hand, but it was only a short distance between portages. I know of no form of severe muscular exertion which is so little irksome as paddling a canoe. Rowing is galley-slavery in comparison. With the paddle there are not less than three variations of position on each side, which bring new muscles into play and relieve the weary ones; and a shift from one hand to the other is a complete rest. So it was not long, during the succeeding month of canoeing, before I came, at daylight, to look forward to a long day's paddling with positive delight.

If any one wishes to know just where we went on that little side issue of a moose hunt let him get a good map of the Kippewa region, and locate the space between Lake Ostoboining and Hay Bay. It is a blank space on a Crown Land Office map, but there are at least fifty small lakes in it. It took six hours' canoeing and carrying, from Mr. Hunter's house, till we came to the lake Joe had chosen.

That moose hunt was too easy. We got to the lake, put up the tent, chopped some wood, and just at dusk, when Joe was baking biscuits in the frying-pan, suddenly he set the pan down and made a rush for the canoe. At the same moment I saw a big bull moose wading out of his depth, from the opposite shore, into the deep water, about the length of a city block from the tent. He did not see us at all, and went right on, swimming leisurely across. The lake was narrow, and the moose did not hurry. His broad yellow antlers were so heavy that he barely kept his nose above the water. It was a great sight to see the ripple spread in a diagonal behind him, while Joe urged the little canoe right up close astern. What a pity it was too dark for the camera! When he was forty rods from shore and we were close to him, Joe asked, loudly and pleasantly, "Jack, where you goin' to-day?" Jack turned his big head, and the expression in his ox-like eye was that of pained surprise. He began to swim so hard that he half climbed out of the water.

"Let's head him off," said Joe. So we made a respectful circle around the moose, and he ported his helm and turned back toward the place whence he came.

"Drive him to the tent," I suggested; and we did the meanest thing I ever saw done on a moose hunt. We kept between him and where he wanted to go, and actually made him carry himself to shore close to the tent, before I turned the express bullet loose. It was all done so quickly that the biscuits did not burn.

"Now, we worked ourselves out of business, didn't we?" commented Joe, by the fire-light, after we had completed certain anatomical dismemberments, the result of which would have astonished the moose very greatly if he could have seen himself hung up. "My pore leetle cousins ain't got no fresh meat," continued Joe, relapsing from the severely studied English with which he had previously addressed me. "It's 'bout twelve mile straight so, to de house. How you t'ink if I bring my cousins to-morrow to take out de moose?"

I thought that was a very good idea, so the next day Joe left me and walked through the woods to Hunter's Point, to bring his relatives. In the afternoon it rained, so Joe and his cousins did not appear, and I had the blankets to myself that night.

The Hudson's Bay Company supply a tent which can be closed up tightly. This is good in mosquito time, but in the fall there is nothing so fine as a plain shed tent, open in front. The heat from the fire is reflected down from the slanting roof, and you can keep warm and dry in the coldest rain that ever fell, especially if you have a light fly spread above the tent. I had brought along a tent of this pattern, and was as comfortable as any king that night, though the nearest human being was twelve miles or so away. The rain made the fire burn more brightly than usual, by knocking the film of ashes from the logs.

The next morning I was awakened by my old friends, the moose-birds. A pair of them were trying to carry off the moose meat, all at one mouthful, and at the same time fighting away a third bird which sneaked in between their trips to their place of storage. The moose-bird takes life very seriously, and his sole business is stealing everything he can stick his bill into. Unless he is very often disturbed he is without fear, and will readily alight on a stick held in your hand, if you put a piece of meat on the end of the stick. I have often photographed the bird at a distance of three or four feet.

About two o'clock that afternoon Joe and his friends appeared on the scene, with another canoe; and they carried the moose home in sections.

The next day was so warm and bright that we took the canoe and went on a long observation tour. Joe made a big circuit, from lake to lake and pond to pond. One of the geographical peculiarities of the country is that you can go by water in any direction you choose, with short portages. Between almost any two ridges you will find a lake or two.

In many places we saw where, earlier in the season, the moose had been eating the water-lilies. The remnants of the roots, as thick as a man's wrist, were floating on the surface by the score.

About four o'clock in the afternoon, when we were on the return to our tent, and paddling along very quietly, we heard a stick break close by the edge of the water. Looking sharply into the thick brush I caught sight of a cow moose, with two calves, in the woods about twenty feet back from the shore. We kept very quiet, hoping they would come out where they could be photographed. But soon the cow's great ears straightened out in our direction, the calves backed around behind their mamma, and in an instant they had begun a noiseless flight.

It was dusk by the time we reached our own lake, and there was a faint moon. All through the day we had traversed about as fine a moose country as one could find. Every lake had its well-defined path around the shore, just along the edge of the bushes.

At the head of our lake, about a mile from the tent, we stopped and ran the canoe ashore. Joe grunted hoarsely, and splashed the water with his paddle, and, sooner than it takes to tell this, we heard, not two hundred yards away, the most impressive sound that ever comes to a sportsman's ears, the ripping, tearing noise made by a bull moose, hooking the trees right and left out of sheer joy and pride in his strength. He tore down a few cords of saplings, judging by the racket, and then came out, "oofing" at every step, circling around us. In the gathering dusk we saw his great black shape for a moment as he crossed the little stream in which the canoe was hidden. That was the time to have fired, if I had wanted him very badly, but Joe, whose wealth of luck had made him over-bold, whispered, "I bring him close," and emitted a loud roar, very like the squeal of a horse, and the moose never stopped to take one more look. He simply wheeled around behind the fir thicket where he was concealed, and, with a few characteristic remarks in his own language, expressive of disdain and opprobrium, made a hasty departure for a distant section of the country. He acted as though he recognized Joe's voice. "Well, we fright him good, anyway," said Joe.

There was only one other place on our whole subsequent trip where the moose seemed to be so plentiful as right here, close to Lake Kippewa. We had one moose, and had seen that there were plenty more. The Quebec law allows only two in a season, to one man.

I wished to see more of the Kippewa country before going north; so we went back to Mr. Hunter's the next morning, and there met Mr. Christopherson, on his way back to the Grand Lake Victoria, and with him an Indian named Jocko, one of the "Grand Lakers," as Joe called them. Jocko was a thick-set, open-faced barbarian who smiled at the slightest excuse, and who was so pleasant and bright that I am going hunting with him some day if I can. Mr. Christopherson said there would be no trouble in finding our way to the Grand Lake Victoria, as there was a plain trail from Ross Lake, where Joe had been, to Trout Lake, and that on this latter sheet of water were two or three families of Indians who traded at the Grand Lake Victoria, any one of whom could be induced, for a dollar a day, to show us the way.

Joe and I spent another week camping about Kippewa Lake, getting used to each other's paddling, before we started on our northern journey.

It was at this stage of the proceedings that Joe modestly suggested that he had a little nephew, Billy Paulson, thirteen years old, who could do a good deal around camp, and that he would like to take him with us. So Billy went and was happy. He was a versatile little boy. He could read, which Joe could not do, and he spoke English without much accent. I shall not soon forget my amazement when he began, soon after our introduction, to whistle, in good tune, Sousa's "Washington Post" march. How it had reached that far corner of the earth I do not know, and neither did he; but he had it, and with "Her Golden Hair was Hanging down Her Back," as an occasional interlude, he made distant lakes melodious during the succeeding days.

The next day we took another side trip, to the east end of Lake Kippewa. Joe had been telling of a wonderful trout lake, away up the mountain, and we went to see it. There we found one of Billy's relatives, Johnnie Puryea, and two squaws, catching a winter's supply of trout. They had been there about a week, and had more than three hundred beautiful fish hung up on a frame over a slow, smoky fire. While we partook of Johnnie's trout, such a violent thunder-shower came up, with heavy wind, that we stayed late. It was almost as dark as it could be when we started back over the mile portage to the big lake. There was no good trail, only a few trees being "spotted," and the side of the mountain was furrowed with countless ravines, at the bottom of some one of which lay our canoe. We could not see the trail at all, but kept going down hill, and feeling of every tree we came to for the axe-spots. I suppose we were about two hours making that mile, and I vividly appreciated the force of the expression "feeling one's way." When we finally found the canoe, and the moon came out from under the clouds, the smooth lake seemed, after the storm, to be an old friend.

The next morning we paddled along the shores of the deep indenting bays for miles, looking for moose tracks. At one place a whole family, big and little, had left fresh hoof-prints in the mud, and Joe followed them to see where they went, while Billy and I trolled, and caught as many walleyed pike and pickerel as we pleased.

All along the shores of the lake, at conspicuous points, the bush-rangers, or fire police, had posted printed warnings against leaving fires in the woods. It is a misdemeanor there to leave a smouldering fire. He who starts a blaze must see that it is extinguished.

Joe showed us a place where he and a companion were watching for moose last year. "De moose come out. I shoot. De ca'tridge bu'st, and mos' blind me. I listen for my chum to shoot, but he no shoot. I look 'round, and my chum run away. So we no get dat moose."

There are many men who do not seem to be able to face a moose, but the animal cannot do anything to a man with a heavy rifle, who uses it.

My note-book is full of Joe's moose stories. Here is one that shows how common the animals are at Kippewa. "Las' year anoder lad and me, we took a big head out to de station to sell. A man offer us five dollar for it. At las' we sell it for six. De trouble was, 'noder feller sell a moose, de head, skin, meat, and all, de week before, for five dollar. I swore I never help take out no more heads twenty-five mile for t'ree dollar my share, and me kill de moose, too!"

The shores of Lake Kippewa are high hard-wood ridges, and one can see a long way through the trees, as there is not much undergrowth. It is an ideal place to hunt. As late as October 14th it was rather warm for a night fire in front of the tent.

Every red and golden leaf as it fell at our feet bore to us the same message. The Indian summer was upon us, and it was time to be going northward. So we gathered our simple belongings together, and started on our swing around the wilderness circle, to find where the two rivers run from the same lake, to behold the mountain home of the twins.

There is joy in the mere fact of following unmapped water-ways. No matter if you mistake your course, you can, at least, come back by the same way you go. The river will run just as it has run during all the centuries while you were neglecting it, and the lake will stay where it has waited for you these countless years. The land-marks will not fade away. Few, indeed, have been the kings of earth who ever felt as jaunty and independent as the one white man and two half-breeds who left Hunter's Point for the far Upper Ottawa, on the 16th of October, last year. No matter what happened to other people, we were secure; and the farther away we got, the better pleased we were.

Half a day of steady paddling through the Birch Lakes took us past shores where the standing pine has never been disturbed by the lumbermen. There are in these vast forests thousands of miles of country which have never yet been decimated.

The farther end of Big Birch Lake was the best we could do the first day, and we camped at the foot of a portage as well cleared as a country road, which has been in use by the Indians for a hundred years, and probably much longer. Joe here rebelled against any elaborate tenting arrangements for travellers. He cut three long poles, stuck them in the ground slanting, and threw the tent over them. In truth this did just as well, when the wind did not blow, as anything else.

A half-mile climb the next morning brought us to the top of a long hill; and right at the very top, where a hundred dollars' worth of blasting would let it run down into Birch Lake, stretched away Lake Sissaginega, or "Island Lake," appropriately named, for there are about five hundred islands in it.

Joe produced a couple of short oars from the bottom of the canoe, and nailed a pair of rude rowlocks onto the gunwales. He explained that on the long, wind-swept lakes which we should have to traverse, a pair of oars were superior to two paddles against a head wind. It was a wonderful thing, but during hundreds of miles of lake travel after that we never once had a serious delay from weather. Nearly every morning the wind rose briskly with the sun, blew during the middle of the day, and moderated toward evening; so we pursued the ancient Indian custom of starting very early in the morning, before the wind came up; took a good rest in the middle of the day, and continued as late as we could in the evening. But not once on all our prosperous journey were we really wind-bound, though this is one of the most common of occurrences on these lakes, where the wind often piles the swells up so high that not even a birch-bark can weather them.

The height of the wave which this marvellous little evolution of the ages can stand is not conceivable till you have witnessed it. Running with a heavy, fair wind, the swells rise behind you and seem about to engulf you. But in some way the canoe rises with the wave, and the boiling, foaming mass rushes harmlessly by, while you sit on the dry, clean bottom, and your pride increases with each successive triumph.