IX HUNGER AND COLD
The guide aroused the camp before daylight. Wind and waves had fallen,and the boats got away quickly. All day they went ahead under sail oroars along the north shore. Camp was made on a narrow ridge of sandseparating a large bay from the main body of water. A contrary wind keptthe boats at Limestone Bay,--as it was called from the fragments oflimestone strewn along its shores,--until late the following day.
Among the reeds and wild rice ducks were feeding. The voyageurs succeededin shooting a number of the birds, made a stew of some, and buried therest, unplucked, in ashes and hot sand. A fire was kept going above themfor several hours until they were well cooked. When they were taken outand the skins stripped off, Walter found his portion very good eatingindeed.
Two days later the mouth of the Saskatchewan River was reached. Walterwas beginning to understand why the length of time required to traverseLake Winnipeg could not be foretold. The lake is about two hundred andsixty miles long in a direct course, but the open boats were obliged tokeep well in towards shore, making the journey upwards of three hundred.When the weather was favorable, sails were raised and good speed made,but the autumn gales had set in, and contrary winds were frequent.Skirting the shore in head winds and high waves was both slow anddangerous. Sometimes the boats had to be beached through surf, the menjumping into the water and dragging them above the danger line. By thetime camp was pitched, both voyageurs and settlers were not only tiredand hungry, but usually wet and chilled to the bone.
October came with unseasonable cold, even for that northern country. Withdarkness the temperature sank far below the freezing point. One nightMatthieu the unfortunate went to sleep without drying his wet shoes andstockings, and frosted both feet so that they were sore for the rest ofthe journey.
Whenever it was possible to go on, whether at daybreak, noon, ormidnight, the boats were away. Meals were irregular and food scanty. Muchof the time the lake was too rough for fishing, but sometimes ducks wereshot. To Murray's boat the loss of the sack of pemmican was serious. Thesupplies were reduced to tea and a little barley meal.
The boats did not always make the same camping ground, though they triedto keep together. How far behind the second brigade might be, no onecould guess. Walter worried about the Periers. Surely this must be a hardexperience for Elise and little Max, and for Mr. Perier also.
For two days the guide's boat and Murray's were windbound on an exposedbeach where everything had to be carried well above the water line.
Fishing was impossible in this open, wind-swept spot, but Louis shot awhite pelican. The clumsy looking bird with its great pouched beak was acuriosity to Walter. If he had not been so very hungry he could not haveeaten its fishy-tasting flesh.
Suddenly the weather changed for the better. In less than eight hoursafter the boats got away from their enforced camping ground, the lakelooked as if it had never been disturbed. There was not a breath of windto catch the sail, not a wave, or even a ripple. Plying the oars, thecrews held a course far out across the mouth of a bay. On and on theyrowed, watching the sunset and the afterglow reflected in still water andthe stars coming out one by one.
The southern half of Lake Winnipeg is very broken in outline, with manypoints and islands. One night, reaching the sheltered head of a deep,sandy bay with a high background of rocks and forest, the travelers foundthe sands covered thick with the dead bodies of insects.
"Grasshoppers!" exclaimed Louis. "They have come again!"
Walter was gazing up and down the beach in amazement. "I never knew therecould be so many grasshoppers in the world," he said. "Where did they allcome from?"
"From the prairie to the south. They're not ordinary grasshoppers likethe big green ones. These are smaller and a different color, and theirhorns,"--Louis meant their antennae,--"are short. I never saw this kindtill three years ago, and then they came all of a sudden. They ate upeverything. Ugh, how they smell! We can't camp here."
The place was indeed impossible as a camping ground. The boats put offagain to seek a spot where the waves had washed the shores clean of theremains of the dead insects. Louis was right when he said that they werenot ordinary grasshoppers. They were the dread locust,--the RockyMountain locust. At the camp fire that night, the Canadian boy toldWalter and his companions how the locusts had come to the Red Rivervalley.
"I was at Fort Douglas with my father," he began. "We had just come downfrom Pembina with some carts. Everything looked well on the settlers'farms. The grain was in the ear and ripening. Then came the grasshoppers.These short-horned grasshoppers fly much higher than the ordinary kind.Their wings are stronger. They came in great clouds that darkened the airas if real clouds were passing across the sun. Late in the afternoon theybegan to alight, such hordes of them you can't imagine. Men, women, andchildren ran out into the fields, crushing grasshoppers at every step,the flying creatures dashing against them like hailstones. The poorsettlers could do nothing against such an army. They saved a few halfripe ears of barley, the women hiding them under their aprons, but thatwas all. By the next morning everything was gone."
"Do you mean that the grasshoppers ate the crops?" asked Walter, scarcelyable to believe what he had heard.
"They ate everything green," Louis replied impressively, "not only thegrain and the gardens, but every green blade of grass on the prairie."
"And they have come again this year," said Matthieu the weaver slowly,"and perhaps they have again taken everything." His voice soundeddiscouraged.
"I fear it," was Louis' grave response.
"What did the settlers do for food?" asked Walter. "Did Lord Selkirksupply it?"
Louis shook his head. "That was a hard winter. Most of the colonists wentto Pembina, where they could hunt the buffalo. They got some food fromthe Company and some pemmican from the Indians. But they had almost noseed for the next year. In the spring they sowed the little barley theyhad saved, and it came up and promised well. Then the young grasshoppershatched out from the eggs left in the ground the year before, and ate itall. So again the settlers were without meal for the winter. The Governorsent M'sieu Laidlaw and other men into the Sioux country, up the RedRiver and down the St. Peter to the great Mississippi where there is asettlement called Prairie du Chien. It was a hard journey in winter onsnowshoes, but they came back in June with more than three hundredbushels of seed wheat, oats, and peas. The seeding was too late for agood crop last year, but this year they hoped for a big one."
"And the grasshoppers have come again," Matthieu repeated dully.
Around points and among islands the boats threaded their way, hugging theshore most of the time, risking traverses across the mouths of bays whenthe weather permitted.
No food was left in Murray's boat, nothing but a little tea. Fishing hadto be resorted to, often with poor luck. Few animals were seen, thoughthe howling of wolves had come to be a familiar sound at night. Flocks ofducks and geese passed high overhead, but to shoot them the hunters hadto seek the marshy places in bays or at stream mouths. Bad weather causedso much delay that to take advantage of calm water or favorable windeveryone was compelled, more than once, to go breakfastless orsupperless. Walter was reduced to skin, muscle and bone. He felt aconstant gnawing hunger, was seldom warm except when exercising, andfound his hard-won muscular strength diminishing. An hour's pulling atthe oar almost exhausted him. He wondered at Murray, on whose strengthand endurance starvation seemed to have no effect. Even Louis admittedweakness and had lost some of his cheery high spirits.
At last the low shore at the south end of the lake, a long point ofshingle and sand, came in view. When the water was high and the wind fromthe north, much of the long sand bar was covered, but luckily the lakewas calm when the guide's boat reached the point. Murray's craft followedLaroque's closely.
Sharing one gun between them, Louis and Walter went, with some of theothers, hunting for their supper. They rowed along the sand spit to themarsh which
was alive with birds,--ducks, geese, tall herons, and manyother smaller kinds. In a little pond several graceful, long-necked swanswere feeding. Walter did not think of firing at swans, but Louis had noscruples. He brought one down with his first shot.
At sunset the hunters returned to camp with four fat geese, one of whichWalter had killed, two swans, and eighteen or twenty ducks. A party fromone of the other boats brought in almost as many. For the first time inmany days Walter had a chance to really satisfy his appetite. Wrapped inhis blanket, he slept soundly on his bed of sand, untroubled by hungerdreams.