The New North. Agnes Deans CameronЧитать онлайн книгу.
the kodak films wrapped in oilcloth and packed in biscuit-tins. The bits of impedimenta look unfamiliar as we take our first inventory, but we are to come to know them soon by their feel in the dark, to estimate to an ounce the weight of each on many a lonely portage.
At seven in the morning the stage pulls up for us, and it rains—no gentle sizzle-sozzle, but a sod-soaker, yea a gully-washer! The accusing newness of those raincoats is to come off at once. Expansive Kennedy looks askance at the tenderfoots who climb over his wheel. His Majesty's Royal Mail Stage sifts through the town picking up the other victims. We are two big stage-loads, our baggage marked for every point between Edmonton and the Arctic Ocean. Every passenger but ourselves looks forward to indefinite periods of expatriation in the silent places. We alone are going for fun. Our one care is to keep those precious cameras dry. This is the beginning of a camera nightmare which lasts six months until we again reach Chicago.
And the fellow-passengers? Law is represented, and medicine, and the all-powerful H.B. Co. With us is Mr. Angus Brabant going in on his initial official trip in charge of H.B. interests in the whole Mackenzie River District, and with him two cadets of The Company. On the seat behind us sit a Frenchman reading a French novel, a man from Dakota, and a third passenger complaining of a camera "which cost fifty pounds sterling" that somehow has fallen by the way. Sergeant Anderson, R.N.W.M.P., with his wife and two babies are in the other stage.
Kennedy, the driver, is a character. Driving in and out and covering on this one trail twelve thousand miles every year, he is fairly soaked with stories of the North and Northmen. The other stage is driven by Kennedy's son, who, tradition says, was struck by lightning when he was just forgetting to be a boy and beginning to be a man. Dwarfed in mind and body, he makes a mild-flavoured pocket-edition of Quilp.
The roads are a quagmire. The querulous voice of the man who lost his camera claims our attention. "I thought I would be able to get out and run behind and pick flowers." Turning and introducing ourselves, we find the troubled one to be an English doctor going north off his own bat with the idea of founding a hospital for sick Indians on the Arctic Circle.
The girlish figure of a teacher struggling through the awful mud in gum-boots indicates that we have not travelled beyond the range of the little red schoolhouse. Stray wee figures splashing their way schoolward look dreary enough, and I seem to hear the monotonous drone of "seven times nine," "the mountains of Asia," "the Tudor sovereigns with dates of accession," and other things appertaining to "that imperial palace whence I came." All the summer afterwards, when mosquitoes are plenty and food scarce, a backward thought to this teacher making muddy tracks toward the well of English undefiled, brings pleased content.
At noon it clears, and as we "make tea" at Sturgeon Creek (the Namao Sepee of the Indians), the first of the "stopping-places" or Waldorf-Astorias of the wilderness, the Doctor has his will and gathers violets, moccasin flowers, and the purple dodecatheon. As we pass Lily Lake he remarks, "This reminds me of the Duke of Norfolk's place at Arundel; it is just like this." South Dakoty returns, "I don't know him."
Here and there we pass clusters of Galician huts. Instead of following the line of least resistance in the fertile plains to the south, these people, the Mark Tapleys of the prairies, choose cheap land up here for the pleasure of conquering it and "coming out strong." They are a frugal people, with a fondness for work, a wholesome horror of debt, and the religious instinct strongly insistent. Off on a hillside near each little settlement a naked cross extends its arms. These are their open-air churches, and in all weathers, men, women, and children gather at the foot of the cross to worship the God of their fathers. By and by, when the soil has yielded to their labours, with their own hands will they build a church and without debt it will be dedicated. The idea of raising an imposing church and presenting God with the mortgage does not appeal to the Galician.
The clean sheets at "Eggie's," the second stopping-place, are attractive, and we sleep the sleep of the just. We acknowledge with inward shame that two years of city life have given us the soft muscles of the chee-chaco; we'll have to harden up a bit if we are to reach that far-away ocean.
Next day, midway between Edmonton and Athabasca Landing, we water our horses at the Tautinau. We are standing at the Height of Land, the watershed between the Saskatchewan and the Athabasca. This little ridge where the harebells grow divides the drops of rain of the noon-day shower. Some of these drops, by way of the Saskatchewan, Lake Winnipeg, and Hudson Bay, will reach the Atlantic. Others, falling into the Athabasca, will form part of that yellow-tinged flood which, by way of Great Slave Lake and the mighty Mackenzie, carries its tribute to the Frozen Ocean. These last are the drops we follow.
To save the horses we walk the hills, and I try to match giant steps with Sergeant Anderson. Kennedy, Junior, joins us and has a knotty point to settle regarding "the gentleman wot murdered the man." It is hard to induce a Mounted Policeman to talk. However, to be striding Athabasca Trail with the hero of the Hayward-King murder-trial is too good an opportunity to lose, and, reluctantly rendered, bit by bit the story comes out.
Most people looking at a map of Northwest Canada would think it a safe wilderness for a live man or a dead man to disappear in with no questions asked. In reality, it is about the worst place in America in which to commit a crime and hope to go unpunished.
In September, 1904, the Indians reported to the Mounted Police that they had seen two white men in the early summer, and that afterwards one man walked alone, and was now at Lesser Slave. An observant Cree boy added, "The dog won't follow that other white fellow any more." Sergeant Anderson, going to their last camp, turned over the ashes and found three hard lumps of flesh and a small piece of skull bone. Convinced that murder had been done, he arrested the suspected man and sent him to Fort Saskatchewan for trial. No one knew the identity of either the dead man or the living. In front of the old camp-fire was a little slough or lake, and this seemed a promising place to look for evidence. Sergeant Anderson hired Indian women to wade in the ooze, feeling with their toes for any hard substance. In this way were secured a sovereign-case and a stick-pin of unusual make. The lake was systematically drained and yielded a shoe with a broken-eyed needle sticking in it. Sifting the ashes of the camp-fire and examining them with a microscope, Anderson discovered the eye of the broken needle and thus established a connection between the camp with its burnt flesh and the exhibits from the lake. The maker of the stick-pin in London, England, was cabled to by the Canadian Government, and a Mr. Hayward summoned to come from there to identify the trinkets of his murdered brother. A cheque drawn by the dead Hayward in favour of King came to the surface in a British Columbia bank. Link by link the chain of evidence grew.
It took eleven months for Sergeant Anderson to get his case in shape. Then he convoyed forty Indian witnesses two hundred and fifty miles from Lesser Slave to Edmonton to tell what they knew about the crime committed in the silent places. The evidence was placed before the jury, and the Indians returned to their homes. A legal technicality cropped up and the trial had to be repeated. Once more the forty Indians travelled from Lesser Slave to repeat their story. The result was that Charles King of Utah was found guilty of the murder of Edward Hayward and paid the death penalty.
This trial cost the Canadian Government over $30,000—all to avenge the death of one of the wandering units to be found in every corner of the frontier, one unknown prospector. Was it worth while? Did it pay? Yes, it paid. It is by such object-lessons that to Indian and white alike is forced home the truth that God's law, "Thou shalt not kill," is also the law of Britain and of Canada.
We are still on foot, when a cry from the Kid hurries us to the hilltop. Reaching the crest, we catch our breaths. Down below lies the little village of "The Landing." That