A Difficult March—Cariboo Path—Organization of Advance—Passing Through the Canyon—Timber Jam—A Gun-shot Heard—The Columbia Again—Indians—Disappointment—The Question of Supplies becomes Urgent—No Relief Party Found—Suspense.
It rained when we awoke at five on the Monday. Dave, our cook, had had one of those nights of misery which many have now and then to undergo, but his excellencies are more appreciable as difficulties increase. Soaking wet to the skin he performs the duty of preparing breakfast as cheerfully as if he were in the Royal Kitchen, and in such a situation good humour is the first of virtues. Some time is exacted in drying, even partially, our wet blankets and clothing, so as to lighten the loads, already heavy enough; we cannot, therefore, start as early as we wish.
In the first hours of our journey we make fair progress. We are now far up the mountain side, and here and there we come upon the path of the bear and the cariboo. Generally these trails do not run in the direction we wish to take, but if they incline in the least towards the West we gladly turn to them. They are gone over with so much more ease than the tangled forest, that however much they prolong the distance it is a saving to follow their windings. The cariboo paths, however, too frequently lead to recesses in the mountains or to alder swamps near the river. An attempt to systematize our travelling was made to-day. Hitherto our rests had been irregular. Our halts were long and we were drenched with perspiration; we got chilled, so we laid down the rule to walk for twenty minutes and rest for five. Dr. Grant is appointed the quartermaster-general for the occasion, with absolute authority to time our halts and our marches by the sound of a whistle, and when he sees fit to call special halts after extraordinary efforts. Our period of progress for twenty minutes often seems very long, and we wearily struggle through the broken ground and clamber over obstacles, eagerly listening for the joyful sound to halt proclaimed by the whistle. It was a system of forced marches and answered admirably, for we made more progress in this way than on any previous occasion. We have another experience of an alder swamp, possibly not quite so formidable as that of yesterday, for we did not sink deeper than the knee. But we had another phase of experience. We reached the lower canyon of the Ille-celle-waet and climbed from rock to rock, grasping roots and branches, scrambling up almost perpendicular ascents, swinging ourselves occasionally like experienced acrobats and feeling like the clown in the pantomime as he tells the children, “here I am again.” At some places the loads had to be unpacked and the men had to draw each other up, by clinched hands, from one ledge to another. Then we had another chapter of the Kicking-Horse Valley experience: passing cautiously along a steep slope, where a false step was certain disaster; creeping under a cascade, over a point of precipitous rock and surmounting obstacles, which, unless we had to go forward or to starve, would have been held to be insurmountable. But we persevere and overcome them, and reach our camping ground for the night, all of us showing traces of our day’s work. We select for our camp a small plateau of about half an acre, overlooking the river, which passes in a foaming torrent through a deep canyon with perpendicular rocky sides, which twists in gigantic irregularities. Such places are only seen in these mountains. The packmen give them the name of “box canyons.” A dead tree furnishes us with fuel, and we obtain water by letting a man down with a sling half way to the river’s edge to a spot where there is an excellent spring. The water of the river was objectionable, being impregnated with dark sand held in solution.
As we were preparing to rest for the night a bright glare of lightning and a sharp peal of thunder warn us to protect our clothes as best we can against rain. We saw but one flash and heard its accompanying loud crash, to remind us that each night of our descent by the Ille-celle-waet we have been saluted after dark by heaven’s artillery.
Our relief is great in the morning to find that it does not rain, that the sky is clear and that there is promise of a fine day. We have all slept well and are refreshed and hope to make the Columbia early in the day. We start off cheerfully, but we are not out of the canyon. We again climb through the rocky defile, and about half a mile from our starting point we reach a jam of trunks of trees, not far from its lower end. Tree after tree has been piled here by the current for many a year. Who can tell the period? For the space of some hundreds of yards up and down the stream a mass has been heaped up thirty or forty feet above the level of the water. There is an accumulation of material at this spot which would be a fortune to its possessor if he had it in London or any European city. We cautiously clamber from log to log over this jam and reach the opposite side of the canyon. We proceed onward soon to find the ground cumbered by many fallen trees, with masses of rocks and the invariable ferns and devil’s clubs in all their luxuriance. We continue our march, making our halts by rule, and on the whole make decent progress.
We halt at mid-day sufficiently long to eat our bread and cold bacon, and we thought we ought to be within hearing of a gunshot from the Columbia. We expect the party from Kamloops with supplies to meet us there. It is the eleventh of the month. I had named the 8th of September as the date at the latest when we should reach the place appointed. Accordingly I direct my son rapidly to fire two rifle shots. We listen attentively and in a short time we hear the welcome report of a gunshot. We answer with three shots in quick succession, and again we hear a gunshot. We count almost with breathless excitement. It is repeated and again repeated,—it is the three shots! Thank God! We have established our connection. Our friends are in front of us with the provisions on which we rely. All anxiety for the future is past, and the promised waters of the Columbia cannot be far from us.
By the nature of the ground over which we have to pass some time is exacted for us to overcome the obstacles before us, but not a moment is lost. We are all alive with excitement, and move forward as rapidly as it is possible to do. At our first rest we fire another shot, and we hear two shots more distinctly than on the first occasion. We are much elated to feel that our combinations have been so successful, and that we were on the eve of having to welcome new faces from the outer world, and possibly receive letters from home. We strike a bee line in the direction of the sound and strive to follow it. Soon we are out of the green woods and are in sight of the Columbia. We observe the smoke of a camp a mile from us on the opposite shore. Impulsively we give a series of hurrahs, for it seems to us we can see our friends from Kamloops. Two canoes cross the river. We are standing upon the high sandy bank in full view of the Eagle pass, directly opposite to us. We soon observe that our expectations have deceived us. The canoes contain Indians only. We meet them at the water’s edge. They can speak no English, but with the help of a little “Chinook,” we learn, to our great disappointment, that no one has arrived from Kamloops! It was the Indians who had replied to our shots. They were Fort Colville Indians, and had come by the Columbia some time ago as a small hunting party, and they had been on this spot for at least four weeks. However, we decided to cross the river in their canoes and send back the men to Mr. McMillan, as we had promised him.
We divided our little store of provisions with the fine fellows who had carried our impedimenta down the Ille-celle-waet, so that they would have enough to take them back to McMillan’s camp. I added a letter of approval to their chief. No men ever more deserved thanks than they did. Our lives had been passed side by side for many an hour, so I could judge and estimate their good-will and the cheerfulness with which they performed their duties. I never knew men with better pluck or endurance. I could easily see that my friend, McMillan, had specially picked them out for the arduous service they had to perform. They were all made of the truest and best of stuff, and let me here make my acknowledgments to them for their admirable conduct. We had Campbell, Currie and McDougall, from Ontario; McMillan, from New Brunswick, and Scoly, an Englishman, from Lancashire. These men had been put to the test, and showed of what material their manhood was made. They could not have behaved better, and they carry with them my best wishes for their future welfare.
Our canoes shot out from the shore and those we leave behind give us three hearty cheers, which we as cordially acknowledge. The Columbia at the junction of the Ille-celle-waet, is a noble stream, broad and deep. We landed at the gravelly bank of the Indian encampment, where we found three Indian families, with four canoes. We pitched our tent four hundred yards down stream, where the current was much stronger. The width here is about twelve hundred feet, and the whole river brought to my mind the South-west Miramichi, where the Intercolonial Railway crosses it.
It was early in the afternoon and the stream furnished us the luxury of a good bath. We made a fire on the beach and had dinner, after which we seriously considered our situation. We were fatigued beyond measure and every joint ached. The skin of all of us in a few places was somewhat lacerated, our hands were festering from the pricks of the devil’s club, and we had not yet come to the end of our work. I was well aware that we would yet have difficulties to meet in reaching Kamloops. Our supply of food was nearly exhausted, and what was left we had to carry ourselves. I certainly felt grievously disappointed that the men from Kamloops were not present. We were three days later than the appointed day of meeting. We ought to have found the party on the spot to receive us, and their absence had a most depressing effect on us. Neither men nor provisions were on the ground. I distinctly remembered the arrangements made at Winnipeg. I read over and over copies of the directions left behind, also the telegrams sent from Calgary, and I knew that if any one could carry out the arrangement it was the agents of the Hudson’s Bay Company. I had been careful in impressing upon the Chief Commissioner that we depended on him solely and absolutely for our supplies of food at this point. We were on the spot where they should have been delivered, and the time had passed when the relief party should be on the ground. We thought of all sorts of mishaps that might have befallen them. We knew there was no trail through the Eagle Pass; indeed I myself had telegraphed that fact from Calgary. Major Rogers and his nephew had traversed it three years ago, and we were aware that the ground to be passed over was of the most trying description: that there were several lakes to be crossed. The thought came upon us that the supply party might have met with an accident in crossing one of these lakes, or they might have been overtaken by forest fires, or some other misadventure might have happened which we knew nothing of.
There was one alternative open to us. Fortunately the band of Indians were on the spot, and if the worst came to the worst we might induce them to paddle us down the Columbia to Fort Colville, in the United States, and thence find our way through Washington Territory and Oregon to our destination. But we had started to go through the mountains to reach Kamloops on a direct line, and the idea of abandoning the attempt and making a flank movement was the last we could entertain.
Our decision as to the course we are to take cannot be long delayed, as our slender stock of provisions will last but a few days. In this painful embarrassment, and it was painful, we asked ourselves the question: Would it be prudent to go on risking the chance of meeting the party from Kamloops, or do the circumstances compel us to give up the idea of crossing the Gold Range and force us to enlist the services of the Indians to take us down the Columbia, some two hundred miles to their own village, from which point we can find our way to Portland in Oregon in twelve days, and then by Puget’s Sound reach our destination in British Columbia? This mode of procedure was most repugnant to us; but however desirous we were to cross the Gold Range of mountains, we had seriously to consider the situation. I may seem to exaggerate the doubt and misgiving which thus crossed my mind. But the facts of the case must be borne in mind that our dependence rested entirely upon receiving the supplies from Kamloops; this source failing, none was open to us. Had our stock of provisions been exhausted and no Indians been present on the Columbia, I do not see that our fate would have been different to that of many an explorer: starvation. There was only one deduction to be drawn from the absence of the Kamloops party: that there had been misapprehension or misfortune, and that we could not look for assistance where we stood.
The responsibility of determining the course to be taken under such circumstances was serious and depressing. It was evident that we had to act independently of others, and viewing the state of our provisions we had at once to do so. Our united feeling was strong that we should not abandon the Eagle Pass. We all recognized that after a night’s rest immediate action was imperative, that we ought in no way to delay but to proceed onward, leaving behind us tent, blankets, baggage and everything not absolutely required, carrying only the remnant of food we still had, with a small frying pan, and so work our way westward as best we could. With this feeling uppermost in our minds we try to consider the prospect before us with equanimity.
We had at least accomplished an important part of the journey, and our advance had so far been without mishap. We had crossed through the Rocky Mountain Range and the Selkirk Range, and had arrived at the second crossing of the Columbia by the time estimated. We are no longer in the wet and clammy recesses which we passed through along the course of the turbulent river recently followed. We are on the banks of a noble stream in the wide open valley of the Columbia. The landscape which met our view was of great beauty. It was mellowed with autumnal tints and confined within countless lofty peaks. To the east lay the valley of the Ille-celle-waet, surrounded by towering heights gradually fading in the distance, while in front of us the Columbia swept along through its various windings, made more glittering by the contrast of the dark masses of foliage on the low ground.
Evening came on to throw a more sombre tint of colour over the scene. All that was to be heard was the peculiar sound of the rapidly flowing stream and the distant roar of the Falls of the Ille-celle-waet.
