FOREST AND S T R E A M 
947 
and not many of them. Caught seven wall-eyed' 
pike for supper. Aside from the few fish we 
had caught, our food had been pork and beans 
and beans and pork with tea and a little jam. 
I say little for, as noted on the first day, some 
of the jam was spilled on the portage to Hea- 
fey’s. Dave, however, had provided us with fine 
biscuits with the help of the aluminum baker 
which we brought along and we were not doing 
so badly after all. The country, after leaving 
Wolf Lake, is much flatter with considerable 
swamp spruce. It looks very much like a moose 
country, but as yet we had seen none. We trav¬ 
eled about twenty-seven miles, mostly water. 
Tuesday, September 7. At eight o’clock start¬ 
ed up Rapid Lake, a very fine one. It is be¬ 
tween forty and fifty miles long and from one to 
seven miles wide. We kept free from rain until 
about noon when we had a few showers. 
We reached the Hudson Bay Post at the head 
of Lake Des Rapids at 3.15 P. M. after paddling 
twenty-three miles. The Post is a rough looking 
place with some cleared land around the build¬ 
ings which are constructed entirely of logs. Still, 
there was a homelike appearance to it with three 
horses and three or four cows grazing on the 
cleared land. There was also a garden and a 
good sized potato patch. The Post has, besides 
the Factor’s house, two barns and five or six 
other houses which are used for storing furs 
purchased from the Indians and for the supplies 
sold to them. One of the buildings is called the 
Store, and in it there was scattered around in a 
most disorderly fashion a miscellaneous assort¬ 
ment of supplies. There were Sweet Caporal 
cigarettes, firearms, bolts of calico and cotton 
and woolen cloths, mostly high colored to at¬ 
tract the eye of the Indian, traps, powder and 
shot, sugar, pork and the always present tea 
and some coffee, which we tried and found very, 
very bad. To our surprise, we were able to pur¬ 
chase some very fine Cross & Blackwell jams 
and the Factor presented us with ten pounds of 
the finest maple sugar I ever tasted. It was 
the real quill, made by the Indians and packed 
in birch bark baskets. 
Across the way from the Post, on the oppo¬ 
site side of the river, which connects Lake Des 
Rapids with Lake Barriere, the Indians have 
built a few cabins. They have also cleared a 
little' land; some of them had small gardens. 
There was also a cleared piece of land used by 
the Indians for tenting purposes when they come 
in with furs and to attend the Roman Catholic 
Mission. The Church has a small chapel at the 
Post, but no regular priest in charge. Mr. Chris- 
topherson, the Factor, stated that the Church 
sent a priest up there once a year, who remained 
for several weeks, holding a mission and that 
the Indians came in from a hundred miles or so 
around to attend it. 
Mr. Christopherson was a new man on the 
job; in fact he had only been at the Post about 
six months. His father, who is located at the 
Grand Lake Victoria Post, is one of the General 
Superintendents of the company. Mr. Christo¬ 
pherson had with him his wife—a young girl— 
with a four months old baby. He also had an 
assistant by the name of Bates who kept the 
books and looked after the store. They received 
us very pleasantly and gave us supper and break¬ 
fast ; in fact, they seemed delighted to see us 
and get some outside news. They said they had 
had no mail for over two months and they asked 
all sorts of questions; wanted to know about 
the war; the Becker trial and the Harry Thaw 
case. It seemed strange to have these people 
way off in the Canadian wilderness interested in 
Becker and Thaw. We purchased some supplies 
and took a letter with us to mail for Mr. Chris¬ 
topherson. 
There were quite a few Indians (Tete Boules 
of the Algonquin tribe) buying supplies and get¬ 
ting ready for their fall and winter trapping. 
They were a rather pathetic sight and I do not 
know what they would do if it were not for the 
Hudson Bay Company, and I guess the Hudson 
Bay Company would have a hard time too with¬ 
out the Indians to trap for them. The company 
pays the Indians in cash or in trade for the furs 
they bring in. Most of them, however, are paid 
for in trade and the majority of the Indians are 
considerably in debt to the company. The prices 
paid this year were far below the past; tor 
example, the company was only paying sixty to 
seventy-five cents for a mink skin as against a 
dollar and a half to two dollars last year. We 
traveled about twenty-three miles and went to 
bed with our tents up as the weather was threat¬ 
ening. 
Wednesday, September 8. We left the Hud¬ 
son Bay Post at 9.25 and paddled about eight 
miles to the end of Rapid Lake and then on into 
another Rock Lake, so-called, which is really the 
upper end of Lake Kagebonga. It is a beautiful 
lake about ten or twelve miles long with many 
islands and bays. Just before going into Rock 
Lake we saw three moose and a little later on 
Frank ran plump into a big bull near where we 
made camp. He actually got within a hundred 
feet of him before the moose sighted him. The 
moose was wading in the water eating lily pads 
but as soon as he saw Frank he was off into the 
woods. 
The rain stopped about 3 P. M. and we had a 
starlight night with the wind shifting to the 
north. During the afternoon we caught four 
wall-eyed-pike which Dave fixed up in a chow¬ 
der. We traveled twenty miles and pitched our 
tents, as we expected to stay on Rock Lake for 
more than one night. 
Thursday, September 9. Frank and Joe while 
locating a trail saw a fight on the shore of the 
lake between two red foxes and one black fox. 
They fought for three or four minutes just like 
a lot of dogs and made a noise with their snarl¬ 
ing and snapping that could be heard for a con¬ 
siderable distance. 
Dave and I ran into a big wild rice marsh full 
of ducks. Over two hundred got up when we 
approached and when we came back that way 
(Continued on page 968.) 
