During All This Time I Had Lost No Good Opportunity Of Impressing
On The Men The Sinfulness Of Leaving A Camp-Fire Burning And Of
Taking Life Unnecessarily; And Now, I Learned Of Fruit From This
Seeding.
That night Bezkya was in a better humour, for obvious
reasons; he talked freely and told me how that day he came on a
large Blackbear which at once took to a tree.
The Indian had his
rifle, but thought, "I can kill him, yet I can't stop to skin him
or use his meat," so left him in peace.
This is really a remarkable incident, almost unique. I am glad
to believe that I had something to do with causing such unusual
forbearance.
CHAPTER XX
ON THE NYARLING
All night it rained; in the morning it was dull, foggy, and showery.
Everything was very depressing, especially in view of this second
defeat. The steady diet of Moose and tea was debilitating; my legs
trembled under me. I fear I should be a poor one to stand starvation,
if so slight a brunt should play such havoc with my strength.
We set out early to retrace the course of the Nyarling, which in
spite of associated annoyances and disappointments will ever shine
forth in my memory as the "Beautiful River."
It is hard, indeed, for words to do it justice. The charm of a
stream is always within three feet of the surface and ten feet of
the bank. The broad Slave, then, by its size wins in majesty but
must lose most all its charm; the Buffalo, being fifty feet wide,
has some waste water; but the Nyarling, half the size, has its
birthright compounded and intensified in manifold degree. The water
is clear, two or three feet deep at the edge of the grassy banks,
seven to ten feet in mid-channel, without bars or obstructions
except the two log-jambs noted, and these might easily be removed.
The current is about one mile and a half an hour, so that canoes
can readily pass up or down; the scenery varies continually and is
always beautiful. Everything that I have said of the Little Buffalo
applies to the Nyarling with fourfold force, because of its more
varied scenery and greater range of bird and other life. Sometimes,
like the larger stream, it presents a long, straight vista of a
quarter-mile through a solemn aisle in the forest of mighty spruce
trees that tower a hundred feet in height, all black with gloom,
green with health, and gray with moss.
Sometimes its channel winds in and out of open grassy meadows that
are dotted with clumps of rounded trees, as in an English park.
Now it narrows to a deep and sinuous bed, through alders so rank
and reaching that they meet overhead and form a shade of golden
green; and again it widens out into reedy lakes, the summer home
of countless Ducks, Geese, Tattlers Terns, Peetweets, Gulls, Rails,
Blackbirds, and half a hundred of the lesser tribes.
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