It was
shot and the Indians carried away three black whelps to improve the breed
of their dogs. I purchased one of them, intending to send it to England,
but it perished for want of proper nourishment.
The latitude of these tents was 53 degrees 12 minutes 46 seconds North,
and longitude by chronometers 103 degrees 13 minutes 10 seconds West. On
the 5th of April we set out for the hunting tent by our former track and
arrived there in the evening.
As the increasing warmth of the weather had threatened to interrupt
communication by removing the ice orders had been sent from Cumberland
House to the people at the tent to quit it without delay, which we did on
the 7th. Some altitudes of the Aurora Borealis were obtained.
We had a fine view at sunrise of the Basquiau Hill, skirting half the
horizon with its white sides chequered by forests of pine. It is seen
from Pine Island Lake at the distance of fifty miles and cannot therefore
be less than three-fourths of a mile in perpendicular height; probably
the greatest elevation between the Atlantic Ocean and the Rocky
Mountains.
A small stream runs near the hunting tent, strongly impregnated with
salt. There are several salt springs about it which are not frozen during
the winter.
The surface of the snow, thawing in the sun and freezing at night, had
become a strong crust which sometimes gave way in a circle round our
feet, immersing us in the soft snow beneath. The people were afflicted
with snow blindness, a kind of ophthalmia occasioned by the reflection of
the sun's rays in the spring.
The miseries endured during the first journey of this nature are so great
that nothing could induce the sufferer to undertake a second while under
the influence of present pain. He feels his frame crushed by
unaccountable pressure, he drags a galling and stubborn weight at his
feet, and his track is marked with blood. The dazzling scene around him
affords no rest to his eye, no object to divert his attention from his
own agonising sensations. When he arises from sleep half his body seems
dead till quickened into feeling by the irritation of his sores. But
fortunately for him no evil makes an impression so evanescent as pain. It
cannot be wholly banished nor recalled by the force of reality by any act
of the mind, either to affect our determinations or to sympathise with
another. The traveller soon forgets his sufferings and at every future
journey their recurrence is attended with diminished acuteness.
It was not before the 10th or 12th of April that the return of the swans,
geese, and ducks gave certain indications of the advance of spring. The
juice of the maple-tree began to flow and the women repaired to the woods
for the purpose of collecting it. This tree which abounds to the
southward is not I believe found to the northward of the Saskatchewan.
The Indians obtain the sap by making incisions into the tree. They boil
it down and evaporate the water, skimming off the impurities. They are so
fond of sweets that after this simple process they set an extravagant
price upon it.
On the 15th fell the first shower of rain we had seen for six months, and
on the 17th the thermometer rose to 77 degrees in the shade. The whole
face of the country was deluged by the melted snow. All the nameless
heaps of dirt accumulated in the winter now floated over the very
thresholds, and the long-imprisoned scents dilated into vapours so
penetrating that no retreat was any security from them. The flood
descended into the cellar below our house and destroyed a quantity of
powder and tea; a loss irreparable in our situation.
The noise made by the frogs which this inundation produced is almost
incredible. There is strong reason to believe that they outlive the
severity of winter. They have often been found frozen and revived by
warmth, nor is it possible that the multitude which incessantly filled
our ears with its discordant notes could have been matured in two or
three days.
The fishermen at Beaver Lake and the other detached parties were ordered
to return to the post. The expedients to which the poor people were
reduced to cross a country so beset with waters presented many uncouth
spectacles. The inexperienced were glad to compromise with the loss of
property for the safety of their persons and, astride upon ill-balanced
rafts with which they struggled to be uppermost, exhibited a ludicrous
picture of distress. Happy were they who could patch up an old canoe
though obliged to bear it half the way on their shoulders through miry
bogs and interwoven willows. But the veteran trader, wedged in a box of
skin with his wife, children, dogs, and furs, wheeled triumphantly
through the current and deposited his heterogeneous cargo safely on the
shore. The woods reechoed with the return of their exiled tenants. A
hundred tribes, as gaily dressed as any burnished natives of the south,
greeted our eyes in our accustomed walks, and their voices, though
unmusical, were the sweetest that ever saluted our ears.
From the 19th to the 26th the snow once more blighted the resuscitating
verdure, but a single day was sufficient to remove it. On the 28th the
Saskatchewan swept away the ice which had adhered to its banks, and on
the morrow a boat came down from Carlton House with provisions. We
received such accounts of the state of vegetation at that place that Dr.
Richardson determined to visit it in order to collect botanical
specimens, as the period at which the ice was expected to admit of the
continuation of our journey was still distant.
