It Was Very Necessary To Make Fort Chipewyan
While There Was A Calm, So We Pushed On.
After four hours' groping
among blind channels and mud banks, we reached the lake at
midnight - though of course there was no night, but a sort of gloaming
even at the darkest - and it took us four hours' hard rowing to
cover the ten miles that separated us from Chipewyan.
It sounds very easy and commonplace when one says "hard rowing,"
but it takes on more significance when one is reminded that those
oars were 18 feet long, 5 inches through, and weighed about 20 pounds
each; the boat was 30 feet long, a demasted schooner indeed, and
rowing her through shallow muddy water, where the ground suction
was excessive, made labour so heavy that 15 minute spells were all
any one could do. We formed four relays, and all worked in turn
all night through, arriving at Chipewyan. 4 A.M., blistered, sore,
and completely tired out.
Fort Chipewyan (pronounced Chip-we-yan') was Billy Loutit's home,
and here we met his father, mother, and numerous as well as interesting
sisters. Meanwhile I called at the Roman Catholic Mission, under
Bishop Gruard, and the rival establishment, under Reverend Roberts,
good men all, and devoted to the cause, but loving not each other.
The Hudson's Bay Company, however, was here, as everywhere in the
north, the really important thing.
There was a long stretch of dead water before we could resume our
downward drift, and, worse than that, there was such a flood on the
Peace River that it was backing the Athabaska, that is, the tide
of the latter was reversed on the Rocher River, which extends
twenty-five miles between here and Peace mouth.
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