The Forest

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MAN WHO WALKS BY MOONLIGHT.

We had been joined on the River by friends. "Doug," who never fished
more than forty rods from camp, and was always inventing water-gauges,
patent indicators, and other things, and who wore in his soft slouch
hat so many brilliant trout flies that he irresistibly reminded you of
flower-decked Ophelia; "Dinnis," who was large and good-natured, and
bubbling and popular; Johnny, whose wide eyes looked for the first time
on the woods-life, and whose awe-struck soul concealed itself behind
assumptions; "Jim," six feet tall and three feet broad, with whom the
season before I had penetrated to Hudson Bay; and finally, "Doc," tall,
granite, experienced, the best fisherman that ever hit the river. With
these were Indians. Buckshot, a little Indian with a good knowledge of
English; Johnnie Challán, a half-breed Indian, ugly, furtive, an
efficient man about camp; and Tawabinisáy himself. This was an honour
due to the presence of Doc. Tawabinisáy approved of Doc. That was all
there was to say about it.

After a few days, inevitably the question of Kawágama came up. Billy,
Johnnie Challán, and Buckshot squatted in a semi-circle, and drew
diagrams in the soft dirt with a stick. Tawabinisáy sat on a log and
overlooked the proceedings. Finally he spoke.

"Tawabinisáy" (they always gave him his full title; we called him
Tawáb) "tell me lake you find he no Kawágama," translated Buckshot. "He
called Black Beaver Lake."

"Ask him if he'll take us to Kawágama," I requested.

Tawabinisáy looked very doubtful.

"Come on, Tawáb," urged Doc, nodding at him vigorously. "Don't be a
clam. We won't take anybody else up there."

The Indian probably did not comprehend the words, but he liked Doc.

"A'-right," he pronounced laboriously.

Buckshot explained to us his plans.

"Tawabinisáy tell me," said he, "he don' been to Kawágama seven year.
To-morrow he go blaze trail. Nex' day we go."

"How would it be if one or two of us went with him to-morrow to see how
he does it?" asked Jim.

Buckshot looked at us strangely.

"_I_ don't want to follow him," he replied, with a significant
simplicity. "He run like a deer."

"Buckshot," said I, pursuing the inevitable linguistics, "what does
Kawágama mean?"

Buckshot thought for quite two minutes. Then he drew a semicircle.

"W'at you call dat?" he asked.

"Crescent, like moon? half-circle? horseshoe? bow?" we proposed.

Buckshot shook his head at each suggestion. He made a wriggling mark,
then a wide sweep, then a loop.

"All dose," said he, "w'at you call him?"

"Curve!" we cried.

"Áh hah," assented Buckshot, satisfied.

"Buckshot," we went on, "what does Tawabinisáy mean?"

"Man-who-travels-by-moonlight," he replied promptly.

The following morning Tawabinisáy departed, carrying a lunch and a
hand-axe. At four o'clock he was back, sitting on a log and smoking a
pipe. In the meantime we had made up our party.

Tawabinisáy himself had decided that the two half-breeds must stay at
home. He wished to share his secret only with his own tribesmen. The
fiat grieved Billy, for behold he had already put in much time on this
very search, and naturally desired to be in at the finish. Dick, too,
wanted to go, but him we decided too young and light for a fast march.
Dinnis had to leave the River in a day or so; Johnnie was a little
doubtful as to the tramp, although he concealed his doubt--at least to
his own satisfaction--under a variety of excuses. Jim and Doc would go,
of course. There remained Doug.

We found that individual erecting a rack of many projecting arms--like
a Greek warrior's trophy--at the precise spot where the first rays of
the morning sun would strike it. On the projecting arms he purposed
hanging his wet clothes.

"Doug," said we, "do you want to go to Kawágama to-morrow?"

Doug turned on us a sardonic eye. He made no direct answer, but told
the following story:--

"Once upon a time Judge Carter was riding through a rural district in
Virginia. He stopped at a negro's cabin to get his direction.

"'Uncle,' said he, 'can you direct me to Colonel Thompson's?'

"'Yes, sah,' replied the negro; 'yo' goes down this yah road 'bout two
mile till yo' comes to an ol' ailm tree, and then yo' tu'us sha'p to
th' right down a lane fo' 'bout a qua'ter of a mile. Thah you sees a
big white house. Yo' wants to go through th' ya'd, to a paf that takes
you a spell to a gate. Yo' follows that road to th' lef till yo' comes
to three roads goin' up a hill; and, jedge, _it don' mattah which one
of them thah roads yo' take, yo' gets lost surer 'n hell anyway!_'"

Then Doug turned placidly back to the construction of his trophy.

We interpreted this as an answer, and made up an outfit for five.

The following morning at six o'clock we were under way. Johnnie Challán
ferried us across the river in two instalments. We waved our hands and
plunged through the brush screen.

Thenceforth it was walk half an hour, rest five minutes, with almost
the regularity of clockwork. We timed the Indians secretly, and found
they varied by hardly a minute from absolute fidelity to this schedule.
We had at first, of course, to gain the higher level of the hills, but
Tawabinisáy had the day before picked out a route that mounted as
easily as the country would allow, and through a hardwood forest free
of underbrush. Briefly indicated, our way led first through the big
trees and up the hills, then behind a great cliff knob into a creek
valley, through a quarter-mile of bottom-land thicket, then by an open
strip to the first little lake. This we ferried by means of the bark
canoe carried on the shoulders of Tawabinisáy.

In the course of the morning we thus passed four lakes. Throughout the
entire distance to Kawágama were the fresh axe-blazes the Indian had
made the day before. These were neither so frequent nor as plainly cut
as a white man's trail, but each represented a pause long enough for
the clip of an axe. In addition the trail had been made passable for a
canoe. That meant the cutting out of overhanging branches wherever they
might catch the bow of the craft. In the thicket a little road had been
cleared, and the brush had been piled on either side. To an
unaccustomed eye it seemed the work of two days at least. Yet
Tawabinisáy had picked out his route, cleared and marked it thus,
skirted the shores of the lakes we were able to traverse in the canoe,
and had returned to the River in less time than we consumed in merely
reaching the Lake itself! Truly, as Buckshot said, he must have "run
like a deer."

Tawabinisáy has a delightful grin which he displays when pleased or
good-humoured or puzzled or interested or comprehending, just as a dog
sneezes and wrinkles up his nose in like case. He is essentially
kind-hearted. If he likes you and approves of you, he tries to teach
you, to help you, to show you things. But he never offers to do any
part of your work, and on the march he never looks back to see if you
are keeping up. You can shout at him until you are black in the face,
but never will he pause until rest-time. Then he squats on his heels,
lights his pipe, and grins.

Buckshot adored him. This opportunity of travelling with him was an
epoch. He drank in eagerly the brief remarks of his "old man," and
detailed them to us with solemnity, prefaced always by his "Tawabinisáy
tell me." Buckshot is of the better class of Indian himself, but
occasionally he is puzzled by the woods-noises. Tawabinisáy never. As
we cooked lunch, we heard the sound of steady footsteps in the
forest--_pat_; then a pause; then _pat_; just like a deer
browsing. To make sure I inquired of Buckshot.

"What is it?"

Buckshot listened a moment.

"Deer," said he decisively; then, not because he doubted his own
judgment, but from habitual deference, he turned to where Tawabinisáy
was frying things.

"Qwaw?" he inquired.

Tawabinisáy never even looked up.

"Adjí-domo" (squirrel), said he.

We looked at each other incredulously. It sounded like a deer. It did
not sound in the least like a squirrel. An experienced Indian had
pronounced it a deer. Nevertheless it was a squirrel.

We approached Kawágama by way of a gradual slope clothed with a
beautiful beech and maple forest whose trees were the tallest of those
species I have ever seen. Ten minutes brought us to the shore. There
was no abrupt bursting in on Kawágama through screens of leaves; we
entered leisurely to her presence by way of an ante-chamber whose
spaciousness permitted no vulgar surprises. After a time we launched
our canoe from a natural dock afforded by a cedar root, and so stood
ready to cross to our permanent camp. But first we drew our knives and
erased from a giant birch the half-grown-over name of the banker
Clement.

There seems to me little use in telling you that Kawágama is about four
miles long by a mile wide, is shaped like a crescent, and lies in a
valley surrounded by high hills; nor that its water is so transparent
that the bottom is visible until it fades into the sheer blackness of
depth; nor that it is alive with trout; nor that its silence is the
silence of a vast solitude, so that always, even at daybreak or at high
midday, it seems to be late afternoon. That would convey little to you.
I will inform you quite simply that Kawágama is a very beautiful
specimen of the wilderness lake; that it is as the Lord made it; and
that we had a good time.

Did you ever fish with the fly from a birch-bark canoe on absolutely
still water? You do not seem to move. But far below you, gliding,
silent, ghostlike, the bottom slips beneath. Like a weather-vane in an
imperceptible current of air, your bow turns to right or left in
apparent obedience to the mere will of your companion. And the flies
drop softly like down. Then the silence becomes sacred. You whisper--
although there is no reason for your whispering; you move cautiously,
lest your reel scrape the gunwale. An inadvertent click of the paddle
is a profanation. The only creatures in all God's world possessing the
right to utter aloud a single syllable are the loon, far away, and the
winter wren, near at hand. Even the trout fight grimly, without noise,
their white bodies flashing far down in the dimness.

Hour after hour we stole here and there like conspirators. Where showed
the circles of a fish's rise, thither crept we to drop a fly on their
centre as in the bull's-eye of a target. The trout seemed to linger
near their latest capture, so often we would catch one exactly where we
had seen him break water some little time before. In this was the charm
of the still hunt. Shoal water, deep water, it seemed all the same to
our fortunes. The lake was full of fish, and beautiful fish they were,
with deep, glowing bronze bellies, and all of from a pound to a pound
and a half in weight. The lake had not been fished. Probably somewhere
in those black depths over one of the bubbling spring-holes that must
feed so cold and clear a body of water, are big fellows lying, and
probably the crafty minnow or spoon might lure them out. But we were
satisfied with our game.

At other times we paddled here and there in exploration of coves,
inlets, and a tiny little brook that flowed westward from a reed marsh
to join another river running parallel to our own.

The Indians had erected a huge lean-to of birch bark, from the ribs of
which hung clothes and the little bags of food. The cooking-fire was
made in front of it between two giant birch trees. At evening the light
and heat reflected strongly beneath the shelter, leaving the forest in
impenetrable darkness. To the very edge of mystery crowded the strange
woods noises, the eerie influences of the night, like wolves afraid of
the blaze. We felt them hovering, vague, huge, dreadful, just outside
the circle of safety our fire had traced about us. The cheerful flames
were dancing familiars who cherished for us the home feeling in the
middle of a wilderness.

Two days we lingered, then took the back track. A little after noon we
arrived at the camp, empty save for Johnnie Challán. Towards dark the
fishermen straggled in. Time had been paid them in familiar coinage.
They had demanded only accustomed toll of the days, but we had returned
laden with strange and glittering memories.

XIX.

APOLOGIA.

The time at last arrived for departure.

Deep laden were the canoes; heavy laden were we. The Indians shot away
down the current. We followed for the last time the dim blazed trail,
forded for the last time the shallows of the river. At the Burned Rock
Pool we caught our lunch fish from the ranks of leviathans. Then the
trodden way of the Fur Trail, worn into a groove so deep and a surface
so smooth that vegetation has left it as bare as ever, though the Post
has been abandoned these many years. At last the scrub spruce, and the
sandy soil, and the blue, restless waters of the Great Lake. With the
appearance of the fish-tug early the following day the summer ended.

How often have I ruminated in the long marches the problem of the
Forest! Subtle she is, and mysterious, and gifted with a charm that
lures. Vast she is, and dreadful, so that man bows before her fiercer
moods, a little thing. Gentle she is, and kindly, so that she denies
nothing, whether of the material or spiritual, to those of her chosen
who will seek. August she is, and yet of a homely, sprightly
gentleness. Variable she is in her many moods. Night, day, sun, cloud,
rain, snow, wind, lend to her their best of warmth and cold, of comfort
and awe, of peace and of many shoutings, and she accepts them, but yet
remains greater and more enduring than they. In her is all the
sweetness of little things. Murmurs of water and of breeze, faint
odours, wandering streams of tepid air, stray bird-songs in fragment as
when a door is opened and closed, the softness of moss, the coolness of
shade, the glimpse of occult affairs in the woods life, accompany her
as Titania her court. How to express these things; how to fix on paper
in a record, as one would describe the Capitol at Washington, what the
Forest is--that is what I have asked myself often, and that is what I
have never yet found out.

This is the wisdom reflection has taught. One cannot imprison the ocean
in a vial of sea-water; one cannot imprison the Forest inside the
covers of a book.

There remains the second best. I have thought that perhaps if I were to
attempt a series of detached impressions, without relation, without
sequence; if I were to suggest a little here the beauty of a moon-beam,
there the humour of a rainstorm, at the last you might, by dint of
imagination and sympathy, get some slight feeling of what the great
woods are. It is the method of the painter. Perhaps it may suffice.

For this reason let no old camper look upon this volume as a treatise
on woodcraft. Woodcraft there is in it, just as there is woodcraft in
the Forest itself, but much of the simplest and most obvious does not
appear. The painter would not depict every twig, as would the
naturalist.

Equally it cannot be considered a book of travel nor of description.
The story is not consecutive; the adventures not exciting; the
landscape not denned. Perhaps it may be permitted to call it a book of
suggestion. Often on the street we have had opened to us by the merest
sketches of incident limitless vistas of memory. A momentary pose of
the head of a passer-by, a chance word, the breath of a faint
perfume--these bring back to us the entirety of forgotten scenes. Some
of these essays may perform a like office for you. I cannot hope to
give you the Forest. But perhaps a word or a sentence, an incident, an
impression, may quicken your imagination, so that through no conscious
direction of my own the wonder of the Forest may fill you, as the mere
sight of a conch-shell will sometimes till you with the wonder of the
sea.

SUGGESTIONS FOR OUTFIT.

In reply to inquiries as to necessary outfit for camping and
woods-travelling, the author furnishes the following lists:--

1. _Provisions per man, one week._

7 lbs. flour; 5 lbs. pork; 1-5 lb. tea; 2 lbs. beans; 1 1-2 lbs. sugar;
1 1-2 lbs. rice; 1 1-2 lbs. prunes and raisins; 1-1-2 lb. lard; 1 lb.
oatmeal; baking-powder; matches; soap; pepper; salt; 1-3 lb.
tobacco--(weight, a little over 20 lbs.). This will last much longer if
you get game and fish.

2. _Pack one, or absolute necessities for hard trip._

_Wear_ hat; suit woollen underwear; shirt; trousers; socks; silk
handkerchief; cotton handkerchief; moccasins.

_Carry_ sweater (3 lbs.); extra drawers (1 1-2 lbs.); 2 extra
pairs socks; gloves (buckskin); towel; 2 extra pairs moccasins;
surgeon's plaster; laxative; pistol and cartridges; fishing-tackle;
blanket (7 1-2 lbs.); rubber blanket (1 lb.); tent (8 lbs.); small axe
(2 1-2 lbs.); knife; mosquito-dope; compass; match-box; tooth-brush;
comb; small whetstone--(weight, about 25 lbs.); 2 tin or aluminium
pails; 1 frying-pan; 1 cup; 1 knife, fork, and spoon--(weight, 4 lbs.
if of aluminium).

Whole pack under 50 lbs. In case of two or more people, each pack would
be lighter, as tent, tinware, etc., would do for both.

3. _Pack two--for luxuries and easy trips--extra to pack one._

More fishing-tackle; camera; 1 more pair socks; 1 more suit
underclothes; extra sweater; wading-shoes of canvas; large axe;
mosquito net; mending materials; kettle; candles; more cooking-utensils;
extra shirt; whisky.

THE END.

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