George showed me, only a few miles from where we were standing,
Mount Hubbard, from which Mr. Hubbard and he had seen Michikamau;
Windbound Lake and the lakes through which they had hoped to find
their way to the great lake; the dip in the hills to the east
through which they had passed on their long portage. He pointed
out to me a little dark line on the brow of the hill where the
bushes were in which they had shot the rabbit, and on the eastern
slope another dark shadow showing where they had shot the
ptarmigan.
So much of life and its pain can crowd into a few minutes. The
whole desperate picture stood out with dread vividness. Yet I had
wished very much to see what he had shown me.
At the rapid we were but a few minutes poling up to the big water
south. Then after two miles of paddling, still southward, we
rounded a point and looked westward straight into Michikamau and
the sun. It was 5.52 P.M.
When the exclamations of delight had subsided Gilbert asked: "Do we
have rice pudding for supper to-night, Mrs. Hubbard?"
That evening we camped in an island flower-garden.
CHAPTER X
MICHIKAMAU
It was the sun that did it, or else it was a scheme on the part of
George and Job to work in an extra pudding. However that may have
been, we found ourselves on Wednesday morning not yet on Lake
Michikamau, and we did not reach it until 5.15 P.M. that day.
We started, expecting to paddle straight away west into the great
lake. As we glided out on what proved to be, after all, another
lake instead of an arm of Michikamau, we saw that land, not water,
stretched across the western horizon. South from our island camp
the shore of the lake was a low ridge sloping to the water in three
distinct terraces, moss-covered and smooth as a carefully kept
lawn, with here and there a clump of stunted fir trees. Four miles
to the west the ridge terminated in a low point.
As we crossed the lake Job remarked that there was some current
here. On nearing the point we were startled by a sudden
exclamation from him. He had caught sight of a freshly cut chip on
the water. We stopped, and the chip was picked up. The two canoes
drew together, when it was examined closely, and an animated
discussion in Indian went on. It was all interesting to watch, and
a revelation to me to see an ordinary little chip create so much
excitement. How much a seeming trifle may mean to the "Children of
the Bush," or for that matter to any other "children," who see the
meaning of things. I could not tell of course what they were
saying, but I knew that the question was: "Who, beside ourselves,
is in this deep wilderness?" The conclusion reached was that the
wind had brought it here in the night from our own camp.
Passing the point the canoe again stopped some distance beyond it,
and another brisk conversation ensued. I learned they had
discovered a current coming from the south, and we turned to meet
it. Following it up, one mile south and one mile west, we came to
where the river flows in from the south in a rapid. This was
really funny. We had comfortably settled ourselves in the belief
that the rapids had all been passed. Job and Gilbert had taken off
their "shoe-packs" with the prospect of a good day's paddling, and
here were the rapids again. Our course for four miles above this
point was up a tortuous, rapid river. It seemed to flow from all
points of the compass, and, in almost continuous rapids. They were
not rough, but the currents were fearfully swift, and seemed to
move in all directions. These are more difficult to understand,
and hence more dangerous than many of the rougher rapids.
About 2 P.M. we came out upon a lake. It was not very large, and
its upper end was crowded with islands. Four miles from the outlet
the lake narrowed, and the water flowed down round the islands with
tremendous swiftness. Again it widened, and a mile west from the
rapids we landed to climb a hill. Everyone went, and by the time I
was half-way up, the men were already at the top jumping round and
waving their hats and yelling like demons, or men at a polo match.
As I came towards them, Gilbert shouted: "Rice pudding for supper
to-night, Mrs. Hubbard." It was not hard to guess what all the
demonstration meant. We could not see all the channel from our
hill-top, there were so many islands; but it could be seen part of
the way and what was most important we could see where it led
straight west to Michikamau.
Once more in the canoes our way still led among the islands up the
swift flowing water. It was not till 5.15 P.M. that we at last
reached the point where the Nascaupee River first receives the
waters of the great lake. Paddling against a rather strong head
wind we continued westward near a long island, landing shortly
before 7 P.M. on its outer shore to make our first camp on Lake
Michikamau.
It was a beautiful place, and had evidently been a favourite with
the Indians. There were the remains of many old camps there. Here
the flies and mosquitoes were awful. It made me shiver even to
feel them creeping over my hands, not to speak of their bites.
Nowhere on the whole journey had we found them so thick as they
were that night.
