FOREST AND STREAM 
993 
The Igloo in Which the Party Slept—Caribou Dragged Together After the Hunt—This Was Not Wanton Slaughter as the Meat Was Needed 
and Used. 
OVER DRIFTING SNOW CAME THE CARIBOU 
NOT THE MAIN MIGRATION BUT IT SUFFICED TO FURNISH A HUDSON’S BAY 
POST PARTY WITH A THRILLING HOUR AND A BOUNTIFUL SUPPLY OF MEAT 
O N the shores of Hudson Bay, where the Nel¬ 
son River mingles its muddy waters with 
the sea and is dignified by the name of a 
port, we had broken old winter’s backbone. In 
March a move was made still farther north, to 
the frost-stilled Churchill. With April we her¬ 
alded the approach of spring, but now as I look 
through my photo album and study a picture of 
huge snowdrifts, white and clean and new-look¬ 
ing, like our January snow, heaped high to the 
roofs of the police barracks, I find it hard to 
realize that I took this same photo in the begin¬ 
ning of the springtime. Surely winter must still 
have been upon the land. There were none of 
the signs of our temperate clime—no budding of 
trees, twittering of newly arrived songsters, or 
trickling of awakened streams. On the edge ot 
the Barren Lands the warm season is backward. 
Mid-April found me still farther north, fifty 
miles beyond Fort Churchill. A half hundred 
miles on some trails, particularly more southern 
ones, is considerable of a distance, but on the 
hard-packed, wind-swept Arctic wastes it is cov¬ 
ered in two days’ travel. And easily so when 
you have well-fed, thoroughbred huskies to haul 
your dunnage, as most of the police dogs are. 
Corporal Walker, a tried tripper of the North¬ 
west Mounted, was my companion on this snow 
trail. Walybuck, a half breed Neckillingmiut 
Eskimo, who for years at Churchill had drawn 
a special constable’s pay, was our guide. As 
handy men we had taken three of his tribes¬ 
men, Jimmie, George and Nansen—they had na¬ 
tive names as well, which can be found some¬ 
where in my journal. The resident missionary 
at Churchill named them for me, then out of 
Christian kindness spelt them, and I wrote them 
in my diary. There they have rested ever since; 
undisturbed, and Jimmie, George and Nansen 
have sufficed. 
Walker chose the Eskimos, or “huckies,” as 
we soon learned to call them, in preference to 
their Chippewyan Indian neighbors. The latter 
are slow, taciturn and sullen, and not altogether 
reliable, while the “huckie” is always on the 
jump, bright and cheerful, ready with a laugh 
in the face of misfortune, and in a pinch he is 
always where you want him. 
The two days’ run to the Seal River was a 
rather uneventful one. We saw little game. The 
first day Walker got three snow white ptarmigan, 
which made a choice supper for two hungry 
white men. That same day I felt not a little 
By R. J. Fraser. 
proud of the feat of running down an Arctic 
fox—a little thick-furred beauty—and stopping 
him in his tracks with a charge of duck shot. 
The Arctic fox has not the cunning of his col¬ 
ored brethren and Walker informed me that 
they are often decoyed and shot. In spite of this 
I still felt elated at my success in bagging this 
one and told myself I had risen a peg or two 
in the huckies’ estimation. 
By three o’clock the sun was well on its down¬ 
ward path and Waly, pointing to a little clump 
of green spruce a mile ahead that stood out 
darker against the background of scraggy, bare- 
limbed sticks, uttered the one word “Camp.” 
“All right, boy,” answered Walker. The day 
looked young yet, but in that latitude the sun 
has a most disconcerting habit of dropping 
quickly below the western rim and leaving the 
traveler to make his camp in the chill and dark¬ 
ness of the Arctic night. 
“Camp ho 1 camp ho 1 ” cried the corporal to 
the weary team. With one accord the intelligent 
animals pricked up their ears and set their gaze 
on the hunters ahead of them who, with a laugh 
and a jest, had broken into a run and headed 
for the thicker woods. The dogs threw them¬ 
selves into the race and the day’s run finished 
with a burst of speed that left me far behind. 
When I overtook the team they had stopped on 
the lee side of the green spruce clumps and 
Walker had just ordered the natives to build an 
igloo for us. It was a beautiful, calm, starlit 
evening and the tent would have provided per¬ 
fect shelter. But my companion explained that 
he wished me to have the experience of sleeping 
in an igloo, and I was far too pleased at the 
opportunity to do aught than express my thanks. 
Every year on the annual close-to-nature trek 
you find the camp that is better than the best 
ever. But I have no hesitation in stating that 
that little igloo on the northern snow wastes 
proved by far one of the cosiest shelters in which 
I ever stretched a tired, aching body. The two 
beds made of snow blocks and occupying three 
sides of a rectangle within the circular walls 
were made very comfortable with several layers 
of caribou skin and the tent provided a carpet 
for the floor. A Primus stove, an old, tried 
friend which I had added to our equipment, 
warmed the snow-house so that in fifteen min¬ 
utes after we had settled our dunnage we were 
able to dispense with our heavy outer clothing. 
I was curious to see what effect the heat of the 
stove would have on the ceiling and expected to 
be drenched by a small shower of melted snow. 
But no such discomfort was inflicted on us. The 
inner side of the dome hardened instead, and 
when we left the snug shelter in the early morn¬ 
ing it had assumed the appearance and hardness 
of ice. 
By the light of a couple of candles Walker, 
who proved to be a first-class chef, prepared a 
meal with the ptarmigan and some shredded 
caribou meat, previously cooked and frozen. I 
had added to the regular police rations a four- 
pound tin of desiccated potatoes, and the odors 
of good things that presently filled that little 
heap *of snow blocks would have tickled the 
fancy of an epicure. 
After supper we changed and dried our cloth¬ 
ing, and as I had brought along three gallons 
of kerosene for the stove, in well-corked lime 
juice bottles, and a quart of methylated spirits 
for priming—the stove, not the hunters—we did 
not fear to keep the source of heat going. 
That night, surrounded by a halo of blue Vir¬ 
ginia smoke wreaths, I listened to a first-hand 
account of the trip which Corporal Walker had 
made with the pioneer police squad that three 
years before traveled across the Barren Lands 
from Great Slave Lake to Chesterfield Inlet and 
established the first patrol of that region. And 
Walker is no mean raconteur. When he had 
concluded a most interesting yarn we both rolled 
up in our eiderdown bags and slept like babes. 
Up till two o’clock of the second day when we 
came to and crossed the North River, we had 
along with us a Peterborough canoe, lashed on 
the eighteen-foot komatik. This same North 
River had a bad reputation of breaking up be¬ 
fore its fellows and unexpectedly hurling its 
winter covering down to the sea. At ten degrees 
below zero we did not relish the thought of a 
ducking and so the canoe accompanied the party. 
We found the ice hard and fast, but as a pre¬ 
cautionary measure against trouble on our re¬ 
turn, dropped the canoe on the north bank. As 
Walker said, “In the north country in spring¬ 
time one never knows when he’ll need a ferry.” 
It was the next day that our exploration tour 
was converted into a hunt. We had broken camp 
early, tents this time, pitched on the edge of a 
small barren, and had crossed the latter and 
penetrated a fringe of green woods that lines 
the bank of the Seal River. On its southern 
