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The Lure of the Labrador Wild
D >> Dillon Wallace >> The Lure of the Labrador Wild Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 This etext was produced by Martin Schub
THE LURE OF THE LABRADOR WILD
The Story of the Exploring Expedition Conducted by Leonidas
Hubbard, Jr.
by Dillon Wallace
L.H.
Here, b'y, is the issue of our plighted troth.
Why I am the scribe and not you, God knows:
and you have his secret.
D.W.
"There's no sense in going further--it's the edge of cultivation,"
So they said, and I believed it...
Till a voice, as bad as Conscience, rang interminable changes
On one everlasting Whisper day and night repeated--so:
"Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the
Ranges--
Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!"
--Kipling's "The Explorer."
PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION
Three years have passed since Hubbard and I began that fateful
journey into Labrador of which this volume is a record. A little
more than a year has elapsed since the first edition of our record
made its appearance from the press. Meanwhile I have looked behind
the ranges. Grand Lake has again borne me upon the bosom of her
broad, deep waters into the great lonely wilderness that lured
Hubbard to his death.
It was a day in June last year that found me again at the point
where some inexplicable fate had led Hubbard and me to pass
unexplored the bay that here extends northward to receive the
Nascaupee River, along which lay the trail for which we were
searching, and induced us to take, instead, that other course that
carried us into the dreadful Susan Valley. How vividly I saw it
all again--Hubbard resting on his paddle, and then rising up for a
better view, as he said, "Oh, that's just a bay and it isn't worth
while to take time to explore it. The river comes in up here at
the end of the lake. They all said it was at the end of the lake."
And we said, "Yes, it is at the end of the lake; they all said so,"
and went on, for that was before we knew--Hubbard never knew. A
perceptible current, a questioning word, the turn of a paddle would
have set us right. No current was noticed, no word was spoken, and
the paddle sent us straight toward those blue hills yonder, where
Suffering and Starvation and Death were hidden and waiting for us.
How little we expected to meet these grim strangers then. That
July day came back to me as if it had been but the day before. I
believe I never missed Hubbard so much as at that moment. I never
felt his loss so keenly as then. An almost irresistible impulse
seized me to go on into our old trail and hurry to the camp where
we had left him that stormy October day and find if he were not
after all still there and waiting for me to come back to him.
Reluctantly I thrust the impulse aside. Armed with the experience
gained upon the former expedition, and information gleaned from the
Indians, I turned into the northern trail, through the valley of
the Nascaupee, and began a journey that carried me eight hundred
miles to the storm-swept shores of Ungava Bay, and two thousand
miles with dog sledge over endless reaches of ice and snow.
While I struggled northward with new companions, Hubbard was
always with me to inspire and urge me on. Often and often at night
as I sat, disheartened and alone, by the camp-fire while the rain
beat down and the wind soughed drearily through the firtops, he
would come and sit by me as of old, and as of old I would hear his
gentle voice and his words of encouragement. Then I would go to my
blankets with new courage, resolved to fight the battle to the end.
One day our camp was pitched upon the shores of Lake Michikamau,
and as I looked for the first time upon the waters of the lake
which Hubbard had so longed to reach, I lived over again that day
when he returned from his climb to the summit of the great grey
mountain which now bears his name, with the joyful news that there
just behind the ridge lay Michikamau; then the weary wind-bound
days that followed and the race down the trail with all its
horrors; our kiss and embrace; and my final glimpse of the little
white tent in which he lay.
And so with the remembrance of his example as an inspiration the
work was finished by me, the survivor, but to Hubbard and to his
memory belong the credit and the honour, for it was only through my
training with him and this inspiration received from him that I was
able to carry to successful completion what he had so well planned.
My publishers inform me that five editions of our story have found
their way into the hearts and homes of those who cannot visit the
great northern wilds, but who love to hear about them. I shall
avail myself of this opportunity to thank these readers for the
kindly manner in which they have received the book. This reception
of it has been especially gratifying to me because of the lack of
confidence I had in my ability to tell the story of Hubbard's life
and glorious death as I felt it should be told.
The writing of the story was a work of love. I wished not only to
fulfil my last promise to my friend to write the narrative of his
expedition, but I wished also to create a sort of memorial to him.
I wanted the world to know Hubbard as he was, his noble character,
his devotion to duty, and his faith, so strong that not even the
severe hardships he endured in the desolate north, ending only with
death, could make him for a moment forget the simple truths that he
learned from his mother on the farm in old Michigan. I wanted the
young men to know these things, for they could not fail to be the
better for having learned them; and I wanted the mothers to know
what men mothers can make of their sons.
An unknown friend writes me, "To dare and die so divinely and leave
such a record is to be transfigured on a mountain top, a master
symbol to all men of cloud-robed human victory, angel-attended by
reverence and peace...a gospel of nobleness and faith." And
another, "How truly 'God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to
perform.' Mr. Hubbard went to find Lake Michikamau; he failed,
but God spelled 'Success' of 'Failure,' and you brought back a
message which should be an inspiration to every soul to whom it
comes. The life given up in the wilds of Labrador was not in
vain." Space will not permit me to quote further from the many
letters of this kind that have come to me from all over the United
States and Canada, but they tell me that others have learned to
know Hubbard as be was and as his friends knew him, and that our
book has not failed of its purpose.
The storms of two winters have held in their icy grasp the bleak
land in which he yielded up his life for a principle, and the
flowers of two summers have blossomed upon his grave, overlooking
the Hudson. But it was only his body that we buried there. His
spirit still lives, for his was a spirit too big and noble to be
bound by the narrow confines of a grave. His life is an example of
religious faith, strong principle, and daring bravery that will not
be forgotten by the young men of our land.
New York, June 1, 1906. D. W.
PREFACE TO ELEVENTH EDITION
As the eleventh edition of this book goes to press, the opportunity
is given for a brief prefatory description of a pilgrimage to
Hubbard's death-place in the Labrador Wilderness from which I have
just returned.
For many years it had been my wish to re-visit the scene of those
tragic experiences, and to permanently and appropriately mark the
spot where Hubbard so heroically gave up his life a decade ago.
Judge William J. Malone, of Bristol, Connecticut, one of the many
men who have received inspiration from Hubbard's noble example, was
my companion, and at Northwest River we were joined by Gilbert
Blake, who was a member of the party of four trappers who rescued
me in 1903. We carried with us a beautiful bronze tablet, which
was designed to be placed upon the boulder before which Hubbard's
tent was pitched when he died. Wrapped with the tablet was a
little silk flag and Hubbard's college pennant, lovingly
contributed by his sister, Mrs. Arthur C. Williams, of Detroit,
Michigan. These were to be draped upon the tablet when erected and
left with it in the wilderness. Our plan was to ascend and explore
the lower Beaver River to the point where Hubbard discovered it,
and where, in 1903, we abandoned our canoe to re-cross to the Susan
River Valley a few days before his death. Here it was our
expectation to follow the old Hubbard portage trail to Goose Creek
and thence down Goose Creek to the Susan River.
Of our journey up the Beaver River suffice it to say that we met
with many adventures, but proceeded without serious accident until
one day our canoe was submerged in heavy rapids, the lashings gave
way, and to our consternation the precious tablet, together with
the flag and pennant, was lost in the flood. After two days' vain
effort to recover the tablet and flags we continued on the river
until at length further ascent seemed unpractical. From this
point, with packs on our backs, we made a difficult foot journey of
several days to the Susan River valley.
I shall not attempt to describe my feelings when at last we came
into the valley where Hubbard died and where we had suffered so
much. Man changes with the fleeting years and a civilized world
changes, but the untrod wilderness never changes. Before us lay
the same rushing river I remembered so well, the same starved
forest of spruce with its pungent odor, and there was the clump of
spruce trees in which our last camp was pitched just as I had seen
it last. Malone and Blake remained by the river bank while I
approached alone what to me was sacred ground. Time fell away, and
I believe that I expected, when I stepped beside the boulder before
which his tent was pitched when we said our last farewell on that
dismal October morning ten years ago, to hear Hubbard's voice
welcome me as of old. The charred wood of his camp fire might,
from all appearances, have but just grown cold. The boughs, which
I had broken and arranged for his couch, and upon which he slept
and died, were withered but undisturbed, and I could identify
exactly the spot where he lay. There were his worn old moccasins,
and one of the leather mittens, which, in his last entry in his
diary he said he might eat if need be. Near the dead fire were
some spoons and other small articles, as we had left them, and
scattered about were remnants of our tent.
Lovingly we put ourselves to our task. Judge Malone, with a brush
improvised from Blake's stiff hair, and with white lead intended
for canoe repairs, lettered upon the boulder this inscription:
Leonidas Hubbard, Jr.,
Intrepid Explorer
And
Practical Christian
Died Here
Oct. 18, 1903.
"Whither I go ye know,
and the way ye know."
John XIV.--4.
Then with hammer and chisel I cut the inscription deep into the
rock, and we filled the letters with white lead to counteract the
effect of the elements.
It was dark when the work was finished, and by candlelight, beneath
the stars, I read, from the same Testament I used in 1903, the
fourteenth of John and the thirteenth of First Corinthians, the
chapters which I read to Hubbard on the morning of our parting.
Judge Malone read the Fiftieth Psalm. We sang some hymns and then
knelt about the withered couch of boughs, each of us three with the
feeling that Hubbard was very close to us.
In early morning we shouldered our packs again, and with a final
look at Hubbard's last camp, turned back to the valley of the
Beaver and new adventures.
DILLON WALLACE.
Beacon-on-the-Hudson, November eighteenth, 1913.
CONTENTS
I. The Object of the Expedition
II. Off at Last
III. On the Edge of the Wilderness
IV. The Plunge into the Wild
V. Still in the Awful Valley
VI. Searching for a Trail
VII. On a Real River at Last
VIII. "Michikamau or Bust!"
IX. And There was Michikamau!
X. Prisoners of the Wind
XI. We Give It Up
XII. The Beginning of the Retreat
XIII. Hubbard's Grit
XIV. Back Through the Ranges
XV. George's Dream
XVI. At the Last Camp
XVII. The Parting
XVIII. Wandering Alone
XIX. The Kindness of the Breeds
XX. How Hubbard Went to Sleep
XXI. From Out the Wild
XXII. A Strange Funeral Procession
XXIII. Over the Ice
XXIV. Hubbard's Message
Acknowledgment is due Mr. Frank Barkley Copley, a personal and
literary friend of Mr. Hubbard, for assistance rendered in the
preparation of this volume.
D. W.
New York, January, 1905.
THE LURE OF THE LABRADOR WILD
I. THE OBJECT OF THE EXPEDITION
"How would you like to go to Labrador, Wallace?" It was a snowy
night in late November, 1901, that my friend, Leonidas Hubbard,
Jr., asked me this question. All day he and I had been tramping
through the snow among the Shawangunk Mountains in southern New
York, and when the shades of evening fell we had built a lean-to of
boughs to shelter us from the storm. Now that we had eaten our
supper of bread and bacon, washed down with tea, we lay before our
roaring campfire, luxuriating in its glow and warmth.
Hubbard's question was put to me so abruptly that it rather
startled me.
"Labrador!" I exclaimed. "Now where in the world is Labrador?"
Of course I knew it was somewhere in the north-eastern part of the
continent; but so many years had passed since I laid away my old
school geography that its exact situation had escaped my memory,
and the only other knowledge I had retained of the country was a
confused sense of its being a sort of Arctic wilderness. Hubbard
proceeded to enlighten me, by tracing with his pencil, on the fly-
leaf of his notebook, an outline map of the peninsula.
"Very interesting," I commented. "But why do you wish to go there?"
"Man," he replied, "don't you realise it's about the only part of
the continent that hasn't been explored? As a matter of fact,
there isn't much more known of the interior of Labrador now than
when Cabot discovered the coast more than four hundred years ago."
He jumped up to throw more wood on the fire. "Think of it,
Wallace!" he went on, "A great unknown land right near home, as
wild and primitive to-day as it has always been! I want to see it.
I want to get into a really wild country and have some of the
experiences of the old fellows who explored and opened up the
country where we are now."
Resuming his place by the blazing logs, Hubbard unfolded to me his
plan, then vague and in the rough, of exploring a part of the
unknown eastern end of the peninsula. Of trips such as this he had
been dreaming since childhood. When a mere boy on his father's
farm in Michigan, he had lain for hours out under the trees in the
orchard poring over a map of Canada and making imaginary journeys
into the unexplored. Boone and Crockett were his heroes, and
sometimes he was so affected by the tales of their adventures that
he must needs himself steal away to the woods and camp out for two
or three days.
It was at this period that he resolved to head some day an
exploring expedition of his own, and this resolution he forgot
neither while a student nor while serving as a newspaper man in
Detroit and New York. At length, through a connection he made with
a magazine devoted to out-of-door life, he was able to make several
long trips into the wild. Among other places, he visited the
Hudson Bay region, and once penetrated to the winter hunting ground
of the Mountaineer Indians, north of Lake St. John, in southern
Labrador. These trips, however, failed to satisfy him; his
ambition was to reach a region where no white man had preceded him.
Now, at the age of twenty-nine, he believed that his ambition was
about to be realised.
"It's always the way, Wallace," he said; "when a fellow starts on a
long trail, he's never willing to quit. It'll be the same with you
if you go with me to Labrador. You'll say each trip will be the
last, but when you come home you'll hear the voice of the
wilderness calling you to return, and it will lure you away again
and again. I thought my Lake St. John trip was something, but
while there I stood at the portals of the unknown, and it brought
back stronger than ever the old longing to make discoveries, so
that now the walls of the city seem to me a prison and I simply
must get away."
My friend's enthusiasm was contagious. It had never previously
occurred to me to undertake the game of exploration; but, like most
American boys, I had had youthful dreams of going into a great wild
country, even as my forefathers had gone, and Hubbard's talk
brought back the old juvenile love of adventure. That night before
we lay down to sleep I said: "Hubbard, I'll go with you." And so
the thing was settled--that was how Hubbard's expedition had its
birth.
More than a year passed, however, before Hubbard was able to make
definite arrangements to get away. I believe it was in February,
1903, that the telephone bell in my law office rang, and Hubbard's
voice at the other end of the wire conveyed to me the information
that he had "bully news."
"Is that so?" I said. "What's up?
"The Labrador trip is all fixed for this summer," was the excited
reply. "Come out to Congers to-night without fail, and we'll talk
it over."
In accordance with his invitation, I went out that evening to visit
my friend in his suburban home. I shall never forget the
exuberance of his joy. You would have thought he was a boy about
to be released from school. By this time he had become the
associate editor of the magazine for which he had been writing, but
he had finally been able to induce his employers to consent to the
project upon which he had set his heart and grant him a leave of
absence.
"It will be a big thing, Wallace," he said in closing; "it ought to
make my reputation."
Into the project of penetrating the vast solitudes of desolate
Labrador, over which still brooded the fascinating twilight of the
mysterious unknown, Hubbard, with characteristic zeal, threw his
whole heart and soul. Systematically and thoroughly he went about
planning, in the minutest detail, our outfit and entire journey.
Every possible contingency received the most careful consideration.
In order to make plain just what he hoped to accomplish and the
conditions against which he had to provide, the reader's patience
is asked for a few minutes while something is told of what was
known of Labrador at the time Hubbard was making preparations for
his expedition.
The interior of the peninsula of Labrador is a rolling plateau, the
land rising more or less abruptly from the coast to a height of two
thousand or more feet above the level of the sea. Scattered over
this plateau are numerous lakes and marshes. The rivers and
streams discharging the waters of the lakes into the sea flow to
the four points of the compass--into the Atlantic and its inlets on
the east, into Ungava Bay on the north, Hudson Bay and James Bay on
the west, and the Gulf of St. Lawrence on the south. Owing to the
abrupt rise of the land from the coast these rivers and streams are
very swift and are filled with a constant succession of falls and
rapids; consequently, their navigation in canoes--the only possible
way, generally speaking, to navigate them--is most difficult and
dangerous. In this, to a large extent, lies the explanation as to
why only a few daring white men have ever penetrated to the
interior plateau; the condition of the rivers, if nothing else,
makes it impossible to transport sufficient food to sustain a party
for any considerable period, and it is absolutely necessary to run
the risk of obtaining supplies from a country that may be plentiful
with game one year and destitute of it the next, and in which the
vegetation is the scantiest.
The western part of the peninsula, although it, too, contains vast
tracts in which no white man has set foot, is somewhat better known
than the eastern, most of the rivers that flow into Hudson and
James Bays having been explored and correctly mapped. Hubbard's
objective was the eastern and northern part of the peninsula, and
it is with this section that we shall hereafter deal. Such parts
of this territory as might be called settled lie in the region of
Hamilton Inlet and along the coast.
Hamilton Inlet is an arm of the Atlantic extending inland about one
hundred and fifty miles in a southwesterly direction. At its
entrance, which is two hundred miles north of Cape Charles, the
inlet is some forty miles wide. Fifty miles inland from the
settlement of Indian Harbour (which is situated on one of the White
Bear Islands, near the north coast of the inlet at its entrance),
is the Rigolet Post of the Hudson's Bay Company--the "Old Company,"
as its agents love to call it--and here the inlet narrows down to a
mere channel; but during the next eighty miles of its course inland
it again widens, this section of it being known as Groswater Bay or
Lake Melville.
The extreme western end of the inlet is called Goose Bay. Into
this bay flows the Grand or Hamilton River, one of the largest in
Labrador. From its source among the lakes on the interior plateau,
the Grand River first sweeps down in a southeasterly direction and
then bends northeasterly to reach the end of Hamilton Inlet. The
tributaries of the lakes forming the headwaters of the Grand River
connect it indirectly with Lake Michikamau (Big Water). This, the
largest lake in eastern Labrador, is between eighty and ninety
miles in length, with a width varying from six to twenty-five
miles.
The Grand River, as well as a portion of Lake Michikamau, some
years ago was explored and correctly mapped; but the other rivers
that flow to the eastward have either been mapped only from hearsay
or not at all. Of the several rivers flowing into Ungava Bay, the
Koksoak alone has been explored. This river, which is the largest
of those flowing north, rises in lakes to the westward of Lake
Michikamau. Next to the Koksoak, the George is the best known of
the rivers emptying into Ungava Bay, as well as the second largest;
but while it has been learned that its source is among the lakes to
the northward of Michikamau, it has been mapped only from hearsay.
Now if the reader will turn to the accompanying map of Labrador
made by Mr. A. P. Low of the Canadian Geological Survey, he will
see that the body of water known as Grand Lake is represented
thereon merely as the widening out of a large river, called the
Northwest, which flows from Lake Michikamau to Groswater Bay or
Hamilton Inlet, after being joined about twenty miles above Grand
Lake by a river called the Nascaupee. Relying upon this map,
Hubbard planned to reach early in the summer the Northwest River
Post of the Hudson's Bay Company, which is situated at the mouth of
the Northwest River, ascend the river to Lake Michikamau, and then,
from the northern end of that lake, beat across the country to the
George River.
The Geological Survey map is the best of Labrador extant, but its
representation as to the Northwest River (made from hearsay) proved
to be wholly incorrect, and the mistake it led us into cost us
dear. After the rescue, I thoroughly explored Grand Lake, and, as
will be seen from my map, I discovered that no less than five
rivers flow into it, which are known to the natives as the
Nascaupee, the Beaver, the Susan, the Crooked, and the Cape
Corbeau. The Nascaupee is the largest, and as the inquiries I made
among the Indians satisfied me that it is the outlet of Lake
Michikamau, it is undoubtedly the river that figures on the
Geological Survey map as the Northwest, while as for the river
called on the map the Nascaupee, it is in all likelihood non-
existent. There is a stream known to the natives as Northwest
River, but it is merely the strait, one hundred yards wide and
three hundred yards long, which, as shown on my map, connects
Groswater Bay with what the natives call the Little Lake, this
being the small body of water that lies at the lower end of Grand
Lake, the waters of which it receives through a rapid.
Hubbard hoped to reach the George River in season to meet the
Nenenot or Nascaupee Indians, who, according to an old tradition,
gather on its banks in late August or early September to attack
with spears the herds of caribou that migrate at that time, passing
eastward to the sea coast. It is reported that while the caribou
are swimming the river the Indians each year kill great numbers of
them, drying the flesh for winter provisions and using the skins to
make clothing and wigwam-covering. Hubbard wished not only to get
a good story of the yearly slaughter, but to spend some little time
studying the habits of the Indians, who are the most primitive on
the North American continent.
Strange as it may seem to some, the temperature in the interior of
Labrador in midsummer sometimes rises as high as 90 degrees or
more, although at sunset it almost invariably drops to near the
freezing point and frost is liable at any time. But the summer, of
course, is very short. It may be said to begin early in July, by
which time the snow and ice are all gone, and to end late in
August. There is just a hint of spring and autumn. Winter glides
into summer, and summer into winter, almost imperceptibly, and the
winter is the bitter winter of the Arctic.
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