Part 30

Then there was Bob MacDonald, a red-headed man-o’-war’s man who had served under Dewey at the taking of the Philippines and later on had been a steam-shovel man at Panama. He needed no urging to reel off tales of mad pranks and wild adventures on every seaboard of the world, but when the deed for which he had been recommended for the Carnegie medal was mentioned his face would turn as fiery as his hair. So, as he could never be induced to tell the story, some one, to his intense embarrassment, would insist on telling it for him. While prospecting in that remote and barren region which borders on the Great Slave Lake his only companion had gone suddenly insane. MacDonald bound the raging madman hand and foot, placed him in a canoe which he built of whip-sawed planks, and brought him down a thousand miles of unexplored and supposedly unnavigable rivers, sometimes dragging his flimsy craft across mile-long portages, sometimes hoisting it, inch by inch, foot by foot, over rocky walls half a thousand feet in height, sometimes running cataracts and rapids where his life hung on the twist of a paddle, living on wild berries and such game as he could kill along the way, but always caring for the gibbering maniac as tenderly as though he were a child. He reached New Hazelton and its hospital with his charge at last, after one of the most intrepid journeys ever made by a white man—and the next day his comrade died. Yet when I exclaimed over his heroism, MacDonald was genuinely abashed. “Hell,” he blurted, “what else was there for me to do? You wouldn’t have had me go off and leave him up there to die, would you? You’d do the same thing if your pal was took sick on the trail. Sure you would.”

When his instrument would cease its chatter for a time, the telegraph operator would chip in with stories of the men who sit in those lonely cabins scattered along two thousand miles of copper wire and relay the news of the world to the miners of the Yukon. In hair-raising detail he told of that terrible winter when the pack-train with its supplies was lost and the snow-bound operators had to keep themselves alive for many months upon such scanty game as they could find in the frozen forests. He told of the insufferable loneliness that drives men raving mad, of the awful silence that seems to crush one down. He told, with the thrill in the voice that comes only from actual experience, of how men run from their own shadows and become frightened at the sound of their own voices; of how each succeeding day is the intolerable same, only a little worse, the messages that come faintly over the line being the sole relief from the awful feeling that you are the only person left on all the earth.

Occasionally Eugene Caux, or Old Man Cataline as he is invariably called because of his Catalonian origin, would join our conversazione. His ninety odd years notwithstanding, he is a magnificent figure of a man, six feet four in his elk-hide moccasins, with a chest like a barrel, his mop of snowy hair in striking contrast to a skin which has been tanned by sun and wind to the rich, ripe colour of a well-smoked meerschaum. Cataline is the most noted packer in the whole North country, being, in fact, the owner of the last great pack-train north of the Rio Grande. So much of his life has been spent in the wild, with Indian packers and French-Canadian trappers for his only companions, that his speech has become a strange mélange of English, French, half a dozen Indian dialects, and some remnants of his native Spanish, the whole thickly spiced with oaths. When, upon his periodic visits to the settlements, he is compelled to sleep under a roof, he strips the bed of its blankets and, wrapping himself in them, spends the night in comfort on the floor, his cocked revolver next his leg so that he can shoot through the coverings in case a marauder should appear. It is a custom among those who know him to invariably offer him a drink for the sake of enjoying the unique performance that ensues. His invariable brand of “hooch” is Hudson Bay rum, strong enough to eat the lining from a copper boiler. “Salue, señores!” says the old Spaniard, and drains half his glass at a single gulp. But he does not drink the other half. Instead, he pours it slowly over his mop of tousled hair and carefully rubs it in. It is a strange performance.

They tell with relish in the northern camps the story of how Old Man Cataline, summoned to appear before the court sitting at Quesnel to defend the title to some land that he had filed a claim on, strode into the crowded court-room in the midst of a trial, and, shoving aside the bailiffs, menacingly confronted the startled judge. “Je worka pour that land, señor!” he thundered, shaking his fist and his whole frame trembling with passion. “Je payez pour heem, mister! He belonga to moi! Je killa any one who try tak heem away! Oui, by God, je killa you, m’sieu!” and, drawing a hunting-knife from his belt, he drove its blade deep into the top of the judge’s table. Leaving this grim memento quivering in the wood, Cataline turned upon his heel and strode away. He was not molested.

When the world was electrified by the news that gold had been discovered on the Yukon, the authorities at Ottawa, anticipating the stampede of the lawless and the desperate that ensued, rushed a body of troops to the scene for the preservation of law and order. To Old Man Cataline was intrusted the task of transporting the several hundred soldiers and their supplies overland to the gold-fields by pack-train. The officer in command was a pompous person, fresh from the Eastern provinces and much impressed with his own importance, who insisted that the routine of barrack life should be rigidly observed upon the long and tedious march through the wilderness, the men rising and eating and going to bed by bugle-call. The absurdity of this proceeding aroused the contempt of Cataline, who would snort disgustedly: “Pour cinquante, soixante year I live in the grand forêt. Je connais when it ees time to get up. Je connais when I am hongry. Je connais when I am tired. But now it ees blowa de bug’ to get up; blowa de bug’ to eat; blowa de damned bug’ to sleep. Nom d’un nom d’un nom du chien! What t’ell for?” Within twenty-four hours Cataline and the commanding officer were not on speaking terms. But the expedition continued to press steadily forward, the commander riding at the head of the mile-long string of soldiers on mule back, and Cataline bringing up the rear. One day a heavily laden pack-mule became mired in a marsh and, despite the orders of the officer and the efforts of the soldiers, could not be extricated. As they were standing in deep perplexity about the helpless animal Cataline came riding up from the rear. Pulling up his mule, he sat quietly in his saddle without volunteering any advice. At last the officer, at his wit’s end, pocketed his pride.

“How would you suggest that we get this mule out, Mr. Cataline?” he asked politely.

“Oh,” remarked the old frontiersman drily, “blowa de bug’.”

Nor will I readily forget Michael Flaherty, a genial Irish section boss on the Grand Trunk Pacific, whose effervescent Celtic wit formed a grateful relief to the grim stories of hardship and suffering. He had a front tooth conveniently missing, I remember, and one of his chief delights was to lean back in his chair and write patriotic “G. R.’s” and “U. S. A.’s” in squirts of tobacco juice upon the ceiling. One day he ordered out his hand-car in a hurry.

“And where moight yez be goin’, Misther Flaherty?” solicitously inquired his assistant.

“To hell wid yer questions,” was the answer. “Did Napoleon always be tellin’ his min where he was goin’?”

* * * * *

The Indians of British Columbia, doubtless because of their remoteness from civilisation, have retained far more of their racial customs and characteristics than have their cousins below the international boundary. Though divided into innumerable clans and tribes, under local names, they fall naturally, on linguistic grounds, into a few large groups. Thus, the southern portion of the hinterland is occupied by the Salish and the Kootenay; in the northern interior are to be found the Tinneh or Athapackan people; while the Haidas, Tsimshians, Kwakiatles, and Nootkas have their villages along the coast, though the white settlers speak of them collectively as Siwashes, “Siwash” being nothing more than a corruption of the French _sauvage_. These British Columbian aborigines are strikingly Oriental in appearance, having so many of the facial characteristics of the Mongol that it does not need the arguments of an ethnologist to convince one that they owe their origin to Asia. Indeed, it is a common saying that if you cut the hair of a Siwash you will find a Japanese. They are generally short and squat of figure and, though habitually lazy, are possessed of almost incredible endurance. One of them was pointed out to me, a brave named Chickens, who packed a piece of machinery weighing three hundred pounds over one hundred and eighty miles of rough forest trails in twelve days. Some years ago the Indians of the Hag-wel-get village constructed a suspension bridge of rope and timbers across the dizzy chasm at the bottom of which flows the raging Bulkley. This bridge is an interesting piece of work, for in building it the Indians adopted the cantilever system, a form of construction generally supposed to be beyond the comprehension of uncivilised peoples. But the amazing feature of the structure is that the varying members are not secured together by nails, bolts, or screws but simply lashed with willow withes. It is a crazy-looking affair, and when you venture on it it creaks, groans, and swings as if threatening to collapse. Even the weight of a dog is sufficient to set it vibrating sickeningly. When it was completed, the Indians were evidently in some doubt as to the stability of their handiwork, for they tested it by sending a score of kloochmen out upon the quivering structure. If it held, well and good—it was strong enough to bear the weight of an Indian; if it gave way—oh, well, there were plenty of other squaws where those came from.

[Illustration: “Some of the cemeteries look as though they were filled with white-enamelled cribs.”

The grave-house of a chieftain near Kispiox.

“Over each grave is a house which is a cross between ... a Turkish kiosk and a Chinese pagoda.”

SOME SIWASH CEMETERIES.]

The Siwashes bury their dead in some of the strangest cemeteries in the world, over each grave being erected a grave house of grotesquely carved and gaudily painted wood, which is a cross between a dog kennel, a chicken-coop, a Chinese pagoda, and a Turkish kiosk. In these strange mausoleums the personal belongings and gewgaws of the dear departed are prominently displayed. It may be a trunk or a dressing-table, usually bedecked with vases of withered flowers; from a line stretched across the interior of the structure hang the remnants of his or her clothing, and always in a conspicuous position is a photograph of the deceased. Though sometimes several hundred dollars are expended in the erection of one of these quaint structures, as soon as the funeral rites are over the tomb is left to the ravages of wind and rain, not a cent being expended upon its up-keep. Of recent years, however, those Indians who can afford it are abandoning the old-time wooden grave houses for elaborate enclosures of wire netting which gave the cemeteries the appearance of being filled with enamelled iron cribs. Perhaps their most curious custom, however, is that of potlatch giving. A potlatch is generosity carried to the nth degree. Some of them are very grand affairs, the Indians coming in to attend them from miles around. It is by no means unusual for an Indian to actually beggar himself by his munificence on these occasions, a wealthy chieftain who gave a potlatch recently at Kispiox piling blankets, which are the Indians’ chief measure of wealth, around a totem-pole to a height of forty feet.

The Siwash villages are usually built high on a bank above some navigable stream, the totem-poles in front of the miserable cabins being so thick in places as to look from a distance like a forest that has been ravaged by fire. The Skeena might, indeed, be called the Totem-Pole River, for from end to end it is bordered by Indian villages whose grotesquely carven spars proclaim to all who traverse that great wilderness thoroughfare the genealogies of the families before whose dwellings they are reared. Though the Siwashes are accustomed to desert a village when the fishing and hunting run out and establish themselves elsewhere, their totem-poles may not be disturbed with impunity, as some business men of Seattle once found out. A few years ago the Seattle Chamber of Commerce arranged an excursion to Alaska, chartering a steamer for the purpose. While returning down the British Columbian coast, the vessel dropped anchor for a few hours at the head of a fiord, off a deserted Siwash village whose water-front was lined with imposing totem-poles.

[Illustration: “Proclaiming ... the stories of the families before whose dwellings they are reared.”

“The Skeena might be called the Totem Pole River.”

The base of a Siwash totem-pole—“the God of Love.”

HERALDRY IN THE HINTERLAND.]

“Say,” said an enterprising business man, “this place is deserted, all right, all right. The Indians have evidently gotten out for good. So what’s the matter with our chopping down that big totem-pole over there, hoisting it on deck, and taking it back to Seattle? It’ll look perfectly bully set up in Pioneer Square.”

Every one agreed that it was, indeed, a perfectly bully suggestion and it was carried out, the purloined pole being erected in due time in the heart of Seattle’s business section, where it stands to-day. The affair received considerable notice in the newspapers, of course, and those responsible for thus adding to the city’s attractions were editorially patted on the back. A few weeks later, however, they were served with papers in a civil suit brought against them by the Indians from whose village, without so much as a by-your-leave, they had removed the pole. At first they jeered at the idea of a handful of Siwash villagers dwelling up there on the skirts of civilisation having any rights which they could enforce in a court of law, but they soon found that it was no laughing matter, for the Indians, backed by the British Columbian Government, pressed their claim and it cost the gentlemen concerned four thousand dollars for their Siwash souvenir.

Everything considered, British Columbia is, I believe, the finest game country in the western hemisphere, bar none, for the sportsmen have as yet barely nibbled at its edges. It is to America, in fact, what the Victoria Nyanza country is to Africa: a veritable sportsman’s paradise, to make use of a term which the writers of railway folders have taken for their own. It is the sole remaining region south of Alaska where the hunter can go with almost positive assurance that he will have a chance to draw a bead upon a grizzly bear; mountain sheep and goat are seen so frequently on the slopes of the Rocher de Boulé, at the back of New Hazelton, that they do not provoke even passing comment; the islands off the province’s ragged coast are the only habitat of that _rara avis_, the spotted bear; musk-ox and wood-buffalo, among the scarcest big game in existence, still graze on the prairies which are watered by the headwaters of the Mackenzie and the Peace; elk, caribou, and mule-deer are as common as squirrels in Central Park; wolves, wolverenes, lynxes, and the fox in all its species, to say nothing of the beaver, the marten, and the mink, still make the province one of the richest fur grounds in the world. Wild fowl literally blacken its lakes and fiords in the spring and autumn; grouse and pheasant, as I have previously remarked, are so tame that they can be and are killed with a club; while salmon, trout, and sturgeon fill the countless streams, sometimes in such vast numbers that they actually choke the smaller creeks and rivers. When there is taken into consideration the fact of its comparative accessibility (New Hazelton can be reached from Seattle in a little more than three days) and the healthfulness of its climate—for British Columbia, unlike most of the other celebrated hunting-grounds, is distinctly a “white man’s country”—it is almost incomprehensible why it has not attracted far greater attention from the men who go into the wild with rod and gun.

[Illustration: The Rocher de Boulé from the Indian village of Awillgate.

The Upper Fraser at Quesnel. This is the head of steamer navigation and the end of the Cariboo Trail.

The Babine Range from Old Hazelton.

A LAND OF SUBLIMITY AND MAGNIFICENCE AND GRANDEUR, OF GLOOM AND LONELINESS AND DREAD.]

It is a land of immensity and majesty and opportunity, is this almost unknown empire in the near-by North. It is a region of sublimity and magnificence and grandeur, of gloom and loneliness and dread. It is as savage as a grizzly, as alluring as a lovely woman. Its scenery is of the set-piece and drop-curtain kind. Streams of threaded quicksilver, coming from God knows where, hasten through deep-gashed valleys as though anxious to escape from the solitude that reigns. On the flanks of the ridges, massed in their black battalions, stand the bleak barbarian pines, while above the scented pine gloom, like blanketed chiefs in council under the wigwam of the sky, the snow peaks gleam in splendour, and behind them, beyond them, the sun-god paints his canvas in the West. Pregnant with the seed of unborn cities, potent in resources and possibilities beyond the stranger’s ken, it lies waiting to be conquered:

“The last and the largest empire, The map that is half unrolled.”

INDEX

Abbott, Judge, ranch-house of, 22.

Acoma, New Mexico, 22, 35, 40-55; antiquity, 44; costumes, 52, 53; church, 48, 49; customs, 44, 55; dwellings, 46; funeral, 51; graveyard, 51; houses, 45-47; industries, 53, 54; paths to, 42; people of, 42; picture of San José in, 49, 50; police, 58; site of, 40, 41, 45; symbolic hair-dressing, 54, 55; women, 53-55.

Agricultural College, Oregon, 315, 316.

Agriculture, United States Department of, 98.

Alaska, 381, 438, 439.

Alberni, B. C., 363, 375, 376.

Albuquerque, New Mexico, 13-16, 35; agricultural possibilities, 14; climate, 13; commercial club, 14, 15; university at, 15.

Alcatraz, prison at, 218.

Aldermere, B. C., 434.

Alejandro, Padre, 179.

Alfalfa raising, 9, 74, 75, 100, 260.

Algiers, 190.

Amargosa River, the, 174.

“American Alps,” the, 217.

“American Mentone,” the, 217.

American River, the, 229, 230.

American School of Archæology, 23, 25.

Anacapa Island, 151

Anacortes, 344.

Apple orchards, Oregon, 296, 297, 318, 319.

Archæological research in the United States, 22-25.

Architecture, California, 199, 200.

Arizona, 31; admitted to the Union, 79; cities, 80; climate, 83-85; contrasted with Egypt, 71; copper output, 81; desert, 72, 73; early inhabitants, 77; effects of civilization in, 63-65; game-hunting, 85-87; history of, 76-79, 91; irrigation, 70, 88, 93, 94; misconceptions concerning, 71, 74; missions, 91-93; organised as territory, 79; people law-abiding, 88, 89; pioneers, 67-69, 79; prison system, 89, 90; products of the soil, 74-76; progress in, 66-69; two distinct regions of, 87, 88.

Arizona Rangers, the, 89.

Ark, the, 376, 377.

Arroyo Hondo, 56.

Ashcroft, B. C., 391-6.

Ashland, Oregon, 323.

Automobiles, in Oregon, 313.

Avalon, Santa Catalina, 148-151.

Bakersfield, California, 259-261, 324.

Banning Company, the, 147.

Barbareños, 152, 153.

Barkerville, B. C., 392.

Barrancas, 56.

Bay of Monterey, the lost, 195.

Beaman, Judge, 150.

Bellingham, 348.

“Ben Hur,” 16.

Benedict, Judge Kirby, 50.

Benicia, California, 219, 220.

Bent, Governor, 21.

Big-game hunting, 85-87, 347, 451-3.

Big trees of California, 254, 255, 257, 258.

Bisbee, Arizona, 87.

Black Hills, 81.

Blackwater, B. C., 401, 405, 406.

Blaine, 348, 349.

Boar-hunting, 153.

Bobtail Lake, B. C., 403, 404.

Bohemian Club of San Francisco, the, 158, 202.

Bohemians in California, 282, 283.

Borax deposits, 174, 177.

Bradshaw Mountains, 82.

Bret Harte, 229, 230.

Bridge built by Indians, 448, 449.

Bridger, Jim, 56.

British Columbia, 209, 355 _et seq._; area, 358, 359; character of the country, 362, 363, 453; cities of, 363, 364; climate, 361; corduroying roads in, 411, 412; cutting path through forest, 428, 429; freighters, 398; frontier, 389 _et seq._, 421 _et seq._; game-hunting, 451-3; government’s interest in settlers, 407; Indians, 415, 447-451; “muskeg,” 410, 411; pioneers in, 385, 386, 390, 397 _et seq._; prohibition in, 407-9; railways, 378-382; resources, 359-361; roads, 411, 415, 416, 433.

British Columbia Express Company, 391, 392.

Brussels, restoration of, 17.

Bryce, James, 299.

Bunk-houses, British Columbia, 413.

Bureau of Indian Affairs, 58.

Burlingame, California, 198, 199.

Burns Lake, B. C., 424, 425.

Busch Gardens, Pasadena, 141.

Cabbage-growing in New Mexico, 10.

Cabrillo, Juan Rodrigues, 147, 171, 172.

_Cabrillo_, the, 147, 149.

Caire estate, the, 152.

California Debris Commission, 226.

California, 160 _et seq._; agriculture of, 218; architecture, 199, 200; Chinese in, 207; climate, 157-9; coast, 161, 162; discovery of, 172; dust, 159; festivals, 201-3; fogs, 159; Great Valley of, 242-4; hinterland, 240 _et seq._; Japanese in, 207-210; labour problems in, 206-8; missions, 117-122, 179, 180, 183, 186, 195, 198; orange groves, 125-8, 133-8; popular misnomers, 216, 217; rain, 158; roads, 116, 132, 197, 198; seaside resorts, 142-4; summer climate, 157-160; three distinct zones of, 157; trees, 254-8.

Camels, wild, 86, 87.

Camino Real, El, 21, 108, 115, 122, 161, 178, 185, 197, 198.

Camp Sierra, 257.

Canada, agricultural invasion of, 357, 358; motoring in, 348-350; railways, 378-381.

Canadian Northern Railway, 378-381.

Canadian Pacific Railway, 378-380, 395.

Canal at Celilo, 291.

Cañon of the Macho, 21; of the Santa Fé, 21.

Cañons, 21, 23.

Cañon’s Crest, 131.

Cape Flattery, 344.

Cape Horn, 232, 301.

Caravels, miniature, 171, 172.

Cariboo Trail, the, 391-9.

Carmel, mission of, 183.

Carpinteria, California, 166.

Carquinez Straits, the, 219.

Carson, Kit, 21, 56.

Casa Grande, ruins of, 91, 94; irrigation, 110.

Cascade Range, the, 277, 285, 293, 295, 298-300, 310.

Casitas Pass, the, 166.

Casteñeda, 45.

Castle Hot Springs, Arizona, 81-83.

Castle Rock, 301.

Castro, General, 186.

Catalina Range, 85.

Cattle-raising in New Mexico, 26.

Caux, Eugene (Old Man Cataline), 444-7.

Cave-dwellers, 22-25.

Caves, painted, of Santa Cruz, 151; Oregon, 324.

Celilo, canal at, 291.

Channel Islands, the, 146-154.

Charles the Second of Aragon, 49.

Chinese, in California, 207; farming, 7, 8.

Church, adobe, at Acoma, 48-50.

Civil War, 79.

Clarksburg, California, 223.

Cline, “Dutch,” 439, 441.

Cloud Cap Inn, 297.

Coast Range, the, 241.

Colorado Desert, 98.

Colorado River, the, 99, 100.

Colton Hall, Monterey, 183.

_Columbia, of Boston_, the, 303.

Columbia River, the, 273 _et seq._; Indian legend, 293-5; length of, 289, 290; romance of, 292-6; salmon, 302; scenery, 290, 299-301; traffic, 301, 302; waterfalls, 300, 301.

Commerce of the prairies, 20, 21.

Commercial Club in Albuquerque, 14, 15.

Contra Costa County, California, 219.

Copper mines, 32, 81.

Coronado, California, 103-7, 216; hotel, 105-7; Polo Club, 104; Tent City, 112, 113.

Coronado, Don Francisco Vasquez de, expedition of, 45, 78, 115.

Coronados Islands, the, 146.

Cotton, Egyptian, 75, 76.

Coulterville, California, 256; road, 246.

Crater Lake, 285, 286.

Crocker’s Sierra Resort, 246, 247.

Czechs, 282.

Dalton Divide, the, 21, 22.