The panorama of mountain, and lake, and island was very impressive.
For miles in every direction were the lakes. Countless wooded
islands, large and small, dotted their surfaces, and westward,
beyond the confusion of islands and water around us, lay the great
shining Michikamau. Still we could see no open way to reach it.
Lying along its eastern shore a low ridge stretched away northward,
and east of this again the lakes. We thought this might perhaps be
the Indian inland route to George River, which Mr. Low speaks of in
his report on the survey of Michikamau. Far away in the north were
the hills with their snow patches, which we had seen from Lookout
Mountain. Turning to the east we could trace the course of the
Nascaupee to where we had entered it on Sunday. We could see
Lookout Mountain, and away beyond it the irregular tops of the
hills we had come through from a little west of Seal Lake. In the
south, great rugged hills stood out west towards Michikamau. North
and south of the hill we were on were big waters. The one to the
south we hoped would lead us out to Michikamau. It emptied into
the lake we had just crossed in a broad shallow rapid at the foot
of our hill, one and a half miles to the west.
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.
