Chapter 7

After drinking holy water, we approached as near as we could to the sacred Black Stone, the subject of so much sacred Oriental tradition, and prayed before it. The stone was surrounded by a crowd of pilgrims, kissing it and pressing their hearts against it. Then followed the ceremony of circumambulation. Seven times we passed round the Kaabah, which was draped in a huge dark curtain, to which pilgrims clung weeping. The boy Mohammed, by physical violence, made a way to the Black Stone. While kissing it, I narrowly observed it, and came away persuaded that it is a big aërolite. After several other ceremonies, I left the holy place thoroughly exhausted.

I did not enter the interior of the Kaabah until later. Nothing could be more simple; a marble floor, red damask hangings, three columns supporting the cross-beams of the ceiling, many lamps said to be of gold, and a safe of aloe-wood, sometimes containing the key of the building, were all that was to be seen. Many pilgrims refuse to enter the Kaabah for religious reasons. Those who tread the hallowed floor are bound, among many other things, never again to walk barefooted, to take up fire with the fingers, or to tell lies. These stipulations, especially the last-named, are too exacting for Orientals.

Meccah is an expensive place during the pilgrimage. The fees levied by the guardians of the Kaabah are numerous and heavy. The citizens make large sums out of the entertainment of pilgrims; they are, for the most part, covetous spendthrifts, who anticipate the pilgrimage by falling into the hands of the usurer, and then endeavour to "skin" the richer Hajis.

On September 12 we set forth for the ceremonies at Mount Arafat, where Adam rejoined Eve after the Fall, and where he was instructed by the archangel Gabriel to erect a house of prayer. At least 50,000 pilgrims were encamped at the foot of the holy mountain. On the day after our arrival we climbed to the sacred spots, and in the afternoon a sermon was preached on the mountain, which I did not hear--being engaged, let me confess, in a flirtation with a fair Meccan. At length the preacher gave the signal to depart, and everyone hurried away with might and main. The plain bristled with tent-pegs, litters were crushed, pedestrians trampled and camels overthrown; single combats with sticks and other weapons took place; briefly, it was a state of chaotic confusion.

Next day was performed, at Muna, on the way back to Meccah, the ceremony of stoning the Shaytan el Kabir, or Great Devil, who is represented by a dwarf buttress placed against a rough wall of stones. The buttress was surrounded by a swarm of pilgrims, mounted and on foot, eager to get as near to the Great Devil as possible. I found myself under the stomach of a fallen dromedary, and had great difficulty in extricating myself; the boy Mohammed emerged from the tumult with a bleeding nose. Schooled by adversity, we bided our time ere approaching to cast the seven stones required by the ceremonial.

At Muna sheep were sacrificed by those pilgrims who, like myself, had committed breaches of the rules. Literally, the land stank. Five or six thousand animals were slain and cut up in this Devil's punch-bowl. I leave the reader to imagine the rest. When I had completed El Umrah, or the little pilgrimage--a comparatively simple addition to the other ceremonies--I deemed it expedient to leave Meccah. The danger of detection was constantly before me; for had my disguise been penetrated, even although the authorities had been willing to protect me, I should certainly have been slain by indignant devotees.

Issuing from Meccah into the open plain, I felt a thrill of pleasure--such pleasure as only the captive delivered from his dungeon can experience. At dawn the next morning (September 23) we sighted the maritime plain of Jeddah, situated 44 miles distant from Meccah. Worn out with fatigue, I embarked on a vessel of the Bombay Steam Navigation Company, received the greatest kindness from the officers (I had revealed my identity to the British consul at Jeddah), and in due time arrived at Suez.

Let me conclude in the words of a long-dead brother traveller, Fahian, "I have been exposed to perils, and I have escaped them; and my heart is moved with emotions of gratitude that I have been permitted to effect the objects I had in view."

SIR WILLIAM BUTLER

The Great Lone Land

_I.--The Red River Expedition_

Sir William Francis Butler, G.C.B., born at Suirville, Tipperary, Ireland, Oct. 31, 1838, was educated at the Jesuit College, Tullabeg, King's County, and joined the British Army as an ensign in the 69th Regiment in 1858. In 1877 he married Miss Thompson, the celebrated painter of "The Roll Call." Sir William Butler is a versatile writer, his works embracing records of travel, histories of military campaigns, biographies, and fiction. His first book was "The Great Lone Land," published in 1872. Half the volume is devoted to a sketch of the early history of the northwest regions of Canada, and to tracing the causes which led to the rebellion of the settlers--principally half-breeds--under Louis Riel, against the Canadian Government in 1870. He describes the romantic part he took in the bloodless campaign of the expeditionary force under Colonel (now Lord) Wolseley, from Lake Superior to Winnipeg, for its suppression. In the other half of the book he describes his journey on a special mission for the Canadian Government to the Hudson Bay forts and Indian camps in the valleys of the North and South Saskatchewan Rivers. Sir William, as a writer, has the rich vocabulary of the cultivated Celt; he presents many striking word pictures of the natural scenery of the regions he traversed. He was almost the first to proclaim the possibilities of the settlement of the Saskatchewan prairies, now receiving such an influx of population from all over the world.

It was a period of universal peace over the world. Some of the great powers were even bent on disarming. To be more precise, the time was the close of the year 1869. But in the very farthest West, somewhere between the Rocky Mountains, Hudson Bay, and Lake Superior, along the river called the Red River of the North, a people, of whom nobody could tell who and what they were, had risen in insurrection.

Had the country bordering on the Red River been an unpeopled wilderness, the plan of transferring the land of the Northwest from the Hudson Bay Company to the crown, and from the crown to the Dominion of Canada, might have been an eminently wise one. But, unfortunately, it was a country which had been originally settled by the Earl of Selkirk in 1812 with Scots from the Highland counties and the Orkney Islands, and subsequently by French _voyageurs_ from Lower Canada.

There were 15,000 persons living in peaceful possession of the soil thus transferred, and these persons very naturally objected to have themselves and their possessions signed away without one word of consent or note of approbation. Hence began the rebellion led by Louis Riel, who, with his followers, seized Fort Garry, with all its stores of arms, guns, provisions, dominated the adjacent village of Winnipeg, and established what was called a Provisional Government. The rebels went steadily from violence to pillage, from pillage to robbery, much supplemented by drunkenness and dictatorial debauchery; and, finally, on March 4, 1870, with many accessories of cruelty, shot to death a loyalist Canadian prisoner they had taken, named Thomas Scott.

When, at the beginning of April 1870, news came of the projected dispatch of an armed force from Canada against Louis Riel and his malcontent followers at the Red River, there was one who hailed in the approaching expedition the chance of a solution to the difficulties which had beset him in his career. That one was myself. Going to the nearest telegraph station, I sent a message to the leader: "Please remember me." I sailed at once for Canada, visited Toronto, Quebec, and Montreal, interviewed many personages, and finally received instructions on June 12 from those in authority to proceed west.

The expedition had started some time before for its true base of operations, Fort William, on the north-west shore of Lake Superior. It was to work its way from Lake Superior to the Red River through British territory. My instructions were to pass round by the United States, and, after ascertaining the likelihood of a Fenian intervention from the side of Minnesota and Dakota, to arrange for supplies for the expeditionary force from St. Paul; then to endeavour to reach Colonel Wolseley beyond the Red River, with all the tidings I could gather as to the state of parties and the chances of fight. At St. Paul my position was not at all a pleasant one. My identity as a British officer became known, and to escape unnecessary attention I paid a flying visit to Lake Superior and then pushed on to Fort Abercrombie. I could find no evidence at either place that there was a possibility at Vermilion Lakes, eighty miles north of the latter place, of any filibusters making a dash at the communications of the expeditionary force.

Afterwards, at Frog's Point on the Red River, I joined the steamer International, which took me down to a promontory within a couple of hundred yards of the junction of the Assiniboine and Red rivers, where, with the connivance of the captain, I jumped ashore and escaped Riel's scouts, who had heard of my coming, and had been ordered by their leader to bring me into Fort Garry, "dead or alive." After a pursuit of several hours in the dark, in which I had a narrow "shave" of being captured, I reached the lower fort, occupied by loyalists, and thence passed on next day to an Indian settlement. This was on July 23.

Riel, learning where I was, sent a messenger to say that the pursuit of me had all been a mistake, and that I might safely come to Fort Garry. I was anxious to see the position of affairs at the fort, and I repaired thither, passing without challenge a sentry who was leaning lazily against a wall. There were two flagstaffs; one flew a Union Jack in shreds and tatters, and the other a bit of bunting with a _fleur-de-lys_ and a shamrock on a white field. I was conducted to a house, and asked if I wished to see Mr. Riel. "To call upon him?" "Yes." "Certainly not!" "But if he calls upon you?" "Then I will see him."

A door opened, and there entered a short, stout man with a large head; a sallow, puffy face; a sharp, restless, intelligent eye; his square-cut, massive forehead overhung by a mass of long and thickly clustering hair, and marked with well-cut eyebrows--altogether a remarkable-looking face. This was Louis Riel. He was dressed in a curious mixture of clothing--a black frock coat, vest, trousers, and Indian mocassins. In the course of the interview he denied he was making preparation to resist the approaching British expeditionary force. Everything he had done had been for the sake of peace and to prevent bloodshed; but if the expedition tried to put him out of his position, they would find they could not do it, and he would keep what was his till a proper governor arrived!

Eventually he said: "Had I been your enemy, you would have known it before. I heard you would not visit me, and although I felt humiliated, I came to see you to show my pacific inclinations."

_II.--The Expedition in the Wilderness_

An hour later I left the fort, hastened to my old quarters at the Indian settlement, and started by canoe to seek the coming expedition. We paddled down the Red River to Lake Winnipeg, crossing which we entered the mouth of the Winnipeg River, and came to Fort Alexandra, a mile up stream.

This river has an immense volume of water. It descends 360 feet in a distance of 160 miles by a series of terraces; it is full of eddies and whirlpools; has every variety of waterfall, from chutes to cataracts; it expands into lonely pine-cliffed lakes and far-reaching island-studded bays. My Ojibway crew with infinite skill accomplished the voyage up-stream, surmounting falls and cataracts by making twenty-seven portages in five days from leaving Fort Alexandra, during which we had only encountered two solitary Indians. It was on the evening of July 30 that we reached the Lake of the Woods. Through a perfect maze of islands, we steered across this wonderfully beautiful sheet of water to the mouth of the Rainy River, up which we paddled to Fort Francis, where we arrived on August 4, and heard, for the first time, news of the expeditionary force.

We were now 400 miles from Fort Garry, and 180 miles beyond the spot where I had counted upon falling in with them. Next morning we paddled up to the foot of a rapid which the river makes as it flows out of the Rainy Lake. Glancing along the broad waters of the lake the glint of something strange caught my sight. Yes, there they were! Coming with the full swing of eight paddles, swept a large North-west canoe, its Iroquois paddlers timing their strokes to an old French chant. We put into the rocky shore, and, mounting upon a crag which guarded the head of the rapid, I waved to the leading canoe as it swept along. In the centre sat a figure in uniform, with a forage-cap on head, and I could see that he was scanning through a field-glass the strange figure that waved a welcome from the rock. Soon they entered the rapid, and at the foot, where I joined the large canoe, Colonel Wolseley called out: "Where on earth have you dropped from?" "From Fort Garry," said I; "twelve days out, sir."

It is unnecessary to describe the voyage to Fort Garry along the same route which I had taken in my canoe. The expeditionary force consisted of 400 of the 60th Rifles, soldiers whose muscles and sinews, taxed and tested by continuous toil, had been developed to a pitch of excellence seldom equalled, and whose appearance and physique told of the glorious climate of these northern solitudes. There were also two regiments of Canadian militia, who had undergone the same hardships. Some accidents had occurred during the journey of 600 miles through the wilderness. There had been many "close shaves" of rock and rapid, but no life had been lost.

The expedition camped on August 23 within six miles of Fort Garry. All through the day the river-banks were enlivened with people shouting welcome to the soldiers, and church-bells rang out peals of gladness as the boats passed by. I was scouring the woods, but found no Riel to dispute the passage. Next morning the troops began to disembark from the boats for the final advance to Fort Garry at a bend in the Red River named Point Douglas, two miles from the fort. Preceded by skirmishers and followed by a rear-guard, the little force drew near Fort Garry. There was no sign of occupation; no flag on the flagstaff, no men upon the walls, no sign of resistance visible. The gate facing the Assiniboine River was open, and two mounted men entered the fort at a gallop. On the top steps stood a tall, majestic-looking man--an officer of the Hudson Bay Company, who alternately welcomed with uplifted hat the new arrivals, and denounced in no stinted terms one or two miserable-looking men who cowered beneath his reproaches.

With insult and derision Riel and his colleagues had fled from the scene of their triumph and their crimes. On the bare flagstaff in the fort the Union Jack was once more hoisted, and from the battery found in the square a royal salute of twenty-one guns told settler and savage that the man who had been "elevated by the grace of Providence and the suffrages of his fellow-citizens to the highest position in the government of his country," had been ignominiously expelled therefrom. The breakfast in Government House was found untouched, and thus that tempest in the teacup, the revolt of Red River, found a fitting conclusion in the president's untasted tea!

Colonel Wolseley had been given no civil authority, and a wild scene of drunkenness and debauchery among the _voyageurs_ and Indians followed the arrival of the troops; but when the Hon. Mr. Archibald, the Civil Governor, reached Winnipeg, he set matters completely to rest. Before ten days elapsed the regular troops commenced their return journey to Canada. On September 10, Colonel Wolseley also took his leave, and I was left alone in Fort Garry. The Red River expedition was over. My long journey seemed finished; but I was mistaken, for it was only about to begin.

_III.--In the Far North-west_

Early in the second week of October the Hon. Mr. Archibald, Lieutenant-governor of Manitoba, offered me, and I accepted, a mission to the Saskatchewan Valley and through the Indian countries of the West, and on the 24th of that month I quitted Fort Garry and commenced my long journey. My instructions were to inquire into the state of affairs in the territory; to obtain every particular in connection with the rise and spread of the scourge of small-pox, from which thousands of Indians, Esquimaux, and others had lately perished; to distribute medicines suitable for its treatment to every fort, post, clergyman, or intelligent person belonging to the settlements, or outside the Hudson Bay Company's posts.

I made the first stage of 230 miles in five days to Fort Ellice, where we stayed a couple of days to make preparations for the winter journey into the Great Lone Land. It was near the close of the Indian summer, and we travelled at the rate of fifty miles a day, I riding my little game horse Blackie, while the Red River cart, containing the baggage and medicines, was drawn by six horses--three in the shafts for a spell, the other three running free alongside.

Between Fort Ellice and Carlton Fort you pass through the region of the Touchwood Hills, around which are immense plains scored with the tracks of the countless buffaloes which, until a few years ago, roamed in vast herds between the Saskatchewan and Assiniboine. On November 4, and on several successive days thereafter, snowstorms burst upon us, and the whole country around was hidden in the dense mist of driving snowflakes.

On the 7th we emerged upon a hill plateau, and 300 feet below was raging the mighty South Saskatchewan, with great masses of floating, grinding ice. We contrived a raft made from the box of the wagon, but we could not accomplish the passage in it. Later on, hard frost having set in, we were able to cross the river on foot, with the loss of my horse Blackie, and when half a dozen of the twenty miles to Carlton Fort had been covered we met a party from it, including the officer in charge. The first question was, "What of the plague?" And the answer was that it had burned itself out.

On November 14, we set out again on our western journey, and crossed the North Saskatchewan. On account of the snow we had discarded our cart and used sleds. Travelling over hill and dale and frozen lake, we lost the way in the wilderness, but, taking a line by myself, steering by the stars, I came on November 17 to Fort Pitt, after having been fifteen hours on end in the saddle.

Fort Pitt was free of small-pox, but 100 Crees had perished close around its stockades. The unburied dead lay for days, until the wolves came and fought over the decaying bodies. The living remnant had fled in despair six weeks before my arrival. When we renewed our journey on November 20, the weather became comparatively mild, and our course lay through rich, well-watered valleys with groves of spruce and pine. Edmonton, which we reached on November 26, is the headquarters of the Hudson Bay Company's Saskatchewan trade and the residence of a chief factor of the corporation.

My objective after leaving Edmonton on December 1 was Rocky Mountain House, 180 miles distant by horse-trail. Our way led over hills and plains and the great frozen Gull Lake to the Pas-co-pee, or Blind Man's River, where we camped on December 3. At midnight there was a heavy storm of snow. Next morning we rode through the defiles of the Three Medicine Hills, and after midday, at the western termination of the last gorge, there lay before me a sight to be long remembered. The great chain of the Rocky Mountains rose their snow-clad sierras in endless succession and in unclouded glory. The snow had cleared the atmosphere, the sky was coldly bright.

An immense plain stretched from my feet to the mountains--a plain so vast that every object of hill and wood and lake lay dwarfed into one continuous level. And at the back of this level, beyond the pines and lakes and the river courses, rose the giant range, solid, impassable, silent--a mighty barrier rising amidst an immense land, standing sentinel over the plains and prairies of America, over the measureless solitudes of this Great Lone Land.

That night there came a frost, and on the morning of November 5 my thermometer showed 22 degrees below zero. Riding through the foot hills and pine woods we suddenly emerged on the high banks of the Saskatchewan, and in the mid distance of a deep valley was the Mountain House. There was great excitement at my arrival. My journey from the Red River had occupied 41 days, and I had ridden in that time 1,180 miles.

_IV.--On the Dog Trail to Fort Garry_

I said good-bye to my friends at the Mountain House on December 12, and once more turned my footsteps eastward. Without incident we reached Edmonton, and there changed horses and travelled thenceforth, setting out on December 20, with three trains of dogs--one to carry myself, and the others to carry provisions and baggage. In fifty days of dog travel we covered a distance of 1,300 miles, with the cold sometimes 45 degrees below zero. Great as were the hardships and privations, the dog trail had many moments of keen pleasure. It was January 19 when we reached the high ground which looks down upon the forks of the Saskatchewan River.

We now entered the great sub-Arctic pine forest, the most important preserve of those animals whose skins are rated in the markets of Europe at four times their weight in gold. On January 22, 1871, we reached Fort-a-la-Corne, where an old travel-worn Indian came with a mail which contained news of the surrender of Metz, the investment of Paris, the tearing up of the Treaty of Paris by the Prussians; and on being questioned the old man said he had heard at Fort Garry that there was war, and that England was gaining the day!

To cross with celerity the 700 miles lying between me and Fort Garry became the chief object of my life. The next morning, with the lightest of equipment, I started for Cumberland House, the oldest post of the Hudson Bay Company in the interior. There I obtained, at fabulous expense, a train of pure Esquimaux dogs, and started on January 31 through a region of frozen swamp for fully 100 miles. On February 7 we reached Cedar Lake, thence sped on to Lake Winnipegoosis and Shoal Lake, across a belt of forest to Waterhen River, which carries the surplus floods of Lake Winnipegoosis to Lake Manitoba, the whole length of which we traversed, camping at night on the wooded shore, and on February 19 arrived at a mission-house fifty miles from Fort Garry. Not without a feeling of regret was the old work of tree-cutting, fire-making, supper-frying, and dog-feeding gone through for the last time.

My mission was accomplished; but in the after-time, 'midst the smoke and hum of cities, 'midst the prayer of churches, it needs but little cause to recall again to the wanderer the message of the immense meadows where far away at the portals of the setting sun lies the Great Lone Land.

The Wild North Land

_I.--From Civilisation to Savagery_