If we begin on the Monday, we generally see the grand departure take place on the following Saturday. We only import the best of everything and the Indian buying from our stores is assured of the purest provisions and the strongest and most durable goods. This is no boast for where we have no opposition the Indians and our interests are identical, and the company's agent at such posts has the Indians' welfare at heart.
On the frontier we are obliged by other buyers and circumstances over which we have no control to take common out of season skins. As the Indians find sale for skins of any kind, they hunt actually ten months out of the twelve. At our interior posts, where our word is law, we appoint the 25th of October to begin hunting and the 25th of May to finish; except for bears, and these they are allowed to hunt up to the 10th of June. What a sad sight it is for an officer coming from some interior district to a frontier post, where he left well-clothed contented Indians to find those swindled by the unprincipled traders, in rags, drunken and the seeds of consumption marked in their faces.
CHAPTER IV.
TRACKERS OF THE NORTH.
What appears marvelous and positively uncanny to a town person is simple to a bushman.
Years of continuous observation develops the bump of locality, every object has a place and meaning to a trapper; his eye is ever on the alert, and what his eye sees is photographed on the brain and remains there for future reference at any time he may require it.
This bump of locality is highly developed in all Indians and whites who have passed many years in the bush. Without the faculty of remembering objects a bushman could not find his way through the dense forests.
Providing the trapper has once passed from one place to another, he is pretty sure to find his way through the second time, even if years should have elapsed between the trips. Every object from start to finish is an index finger pointing out the right path. A sloping path, a leaning tree, a moss-covered rock, a slight elevation in land, a cut in the hills, the water in a creek, an odd-looking stone, a blasted tree—all help as guides as the observant trapper makes his way through a pathless forest.
Of course, this tax on the memory is not required of trappers about a settled part of the country, but I am telling of what is absolutely necessary for the safety of one's life in the faraway wilds of the North, where to lose one's self might possibly mean death.
I followed an Indian guide once over a trail of 280 miles, whereon we snowshoed over mountains, through dense bush, down rivers and over lakes. To test my powers of a retentive memory, the following winter, when dispatches again had to be taken to headquarters, I asked the Indian to allow me to act as guide, he following.
On that long journey of ten or twelve days, always walking and continually thinking out the road, I was in doubt only once. We were standing on the ice; a tongue of land stood out toward us; a bay on either side. The portage leaving the lake was at the bottom of one of these bays, but which? The Indian had halted almost on the tails of my snowshoes, and enjoyed my hesitation, but said nothing. To be assured of no mistake, I had to pass over the whole of last winter's trip in my mind's eye up to the point on which we stood. Once the retrospect caught up with us, there was no further trouble. Our route was down the left-hand bay.
When the Indian saw me start in that direction, he said: "A-a-ke-pu-ka-tan" ("Yes, yes, you are able").
The most difficult proposition to tackle is a black spruce swamp. The trees are mostly of a uniform size and height, the surface of the snow is perfectly level, and at times our route lies miles through such a country, and should there be a dull leaden sky or a gentle snow falling, there is nothing for the guide to depend on but his ability to walk straight.
It has been written time and again that the tendency when there are no land marks is to walk in a circle.
By constant practice, those who are brought up in the wilds acquire the ability to walk in a straight line. They begin by beating a trail from point to point on some long stretch of ice, and in the bush, where any tree or obstruction bars the way they make up for any deviation from the straight course by a give-and-take process, so that the general line of march is straight.
During forty years in the country, I never knew an Indian or white bushman to carry a compass. Apart from a black spruce swamp, it would be no use whatever.
In going from one place to another, the contour of the country has to be considered, and very frequently the "longest way round is the shortest way home." A ridge of mountains might lay between the place of starting and the objective point, and by making a detour round the spur of same, one would easier reach his destination, rather than to climb up one side and down the other.
On the first day after my arrival in London (the only time I ever crossed the water) a gentleman took me out to see some of the sights. He lived on the Surrey side, and took me direct, or, I should say crooked, into the city across the Thames. After walking me around several blocks and zigzagging considerably about, he came to a sudden stop at a corner. "Now," he said, "Hunter, suppose I was to disappear all at once, do you think you could find your way back to Elm Tree Lodge? I have always heard that you bushmen can find your way anywhere."
Now, although there was no necessity for it, my years of schooling had caused me to observe every conspicuous object, and every turn we had made since leaving his residence; and therefore I replied, with the utmost confidence, "Why, to return to your house from here is as simple as falling off a log."
Looking at me with the greatest incredulity, he said, "If you can find your way back unaided I will pay for the best hat in London."
"Well, my dear sir, my number is 7, and I want it soft felt and dark bottle green. Now follow me, and you can get the hat in the morning."
Without going into details, suffice it to say, I conducted him to his own door, and a more perplexed man was not in London; so much so, he had to call in his wife, his mother-in-law and his next door neighbor to tell them of my achievement.
At last I had to cut short his flow of words by saying my guiding him home was a most simple thing. It was merely the result of observing as I went along, and running the objects backward as I came to the house.
"If I was to tell you as a fact, my dear sir, that a bushman sees the track of some wild animal in the snow, he can tell you not only the name of the animal, but if it was male or female, within an hour of the time the tracks were made, if it was calm or blowing and the direction of the wind at that time and many other minor things, you would think this wonderful. Yet, as wonderful as this may appear, and hardly to be credited, an Indian boy of ten or twelve can read this page from nature as easy as one of us can read a page of print."
When the cold nights of the latter end of October had set in and the leaves were crisp underfoot, I decided to go and set up a line of marten traps through a stretch of green timber, between two large lakes. The distance was considered about eight miles.
I took an Indian youth as companion, for it is lonely work setting trap in the deep gloom of the forest alone. Our blankets, axes, two days' provisions, a square of cotton that we call a canopy, to keep off the wind, and my rifle, made up our necessary equipment, with a few baits to start work upon.
During the summer I had got an Indian to leave an old canoe on the shore of the big lake where we expected to come out; this would save our coming back on our tracks, as we could return by the canoe route, which was considerably longer, but much easier.
We worked away all the day we left the post, and when camping time came we found a pretty, sheltered place, the back of a large, flat-sided boulder. Ten feet in front of this lay a large fallen pine tree, against which we built our fire. Then we cut a lot of pitch pine dry wood in short lengths and split, ready to replenish the fire from time to time during the autumn night.
It is cheerful