How I wanted it to be true. Ungava, in spite of hopes and
resolves, had seemed always far away, mysterious, and unattainable,
but now it had been suddenly thrust forward almost within my reach.
If true, this would mean the well-nigh certain achievement of my
heart's desire - the completion of my husband's work. Yet there
were the rapids, where the skill and judgment of the men were our
safeguards. One little miscalculation and it would take but an
instant to whelm us in disaster. Still we had come so far on the
way with success, surely it would be given to us to reach the goal
in safety. But here inevitably thought flew to one who had been
infinitely worthy but who had been denied.
Five days to Ungava! and because I so much wished it to be true I
was afraid, for the hard things of life will sometimes make cowards
of its pilgrims.
The Barren Grounds Water was very fair in the morning sunshine. It
was as if, while exploring some great ruin, we had chanced into a
secret, hidden chamber, the most splendid of them all, and when
after lunch the promised fair wind sprang up, and the canoes with
well-filled sails were speeding northward, the lake and its
guardian hills became bluer and more beautiful than ever.
Nowhere did we find the lake more than two miles wide. Long points
reaching out from either shore cut off the view and seemed to
change the course; but in reality they did not, for it was always
northward. To right and left there were the hills, now barren
altogether, or again with a narrow belt of "greenwoods" - spruce,
balsam, tamarack - along the shore. In many places skeleton
wigwams marked the site of old Nascaupee camps. The hills on the
east in places rose abruptly from the water, but on the west they
stood a little back with sand-hills on terraces between and an
occasional high, wedge-shaped point of sand and loose rock reached
almost halfway across the lake. Often as I looked ahead, the lake
seemed to end; but, the distant point passed, it stretched on again
into the north till with repetition of this experience, it began to
seem as if the end would never come. Streams entered through
narrow openings between the hills, or roared down their steep
sides. At one point the lake narrowed to about a quarter of a mile
in width where the current was very swift. Beyond this point we
saw the last caribou of the trip.
It was a three-year-old doe. She stood at the shore watching us
curiously as we came towards her. Then stepping daintily in, she
began to swim across. We soon caught her up and after playing
round her in the canoe for a time the men with shouts of laughter
headed her inshore and George, in the bow, leaning over caught her
by the tail and we were towed merrily in the wake.
