Canada: the Empire of the North Part 25

Then the sea otter came to the kelp beds in herds, and through the storm over the wave-dashed reefs, like very spirits of the storm incarnate, rushed the hunters, spear in hand. It is not surprising that the sea-otter hunters perished by tens of thousands every year, or that the sea otter dwindled from a yield of 100,000 a year to a paltry 200 of the present day.

Meanwhile Nor'west traders from Montreal and Quebec, English traders from Hudson Bay, have gone up the Saskatchewan far as the Athabasca and the Rockies. What lies beyond? Whither runs this great river from Athabasca Lake? Whence comes the great river from the mountains? Will the river that flows north or the river that comes from the west, either of them lead to the Pacific Coast, where Cook's crews found wealth of sea otter? The lure of the Unknown is the lure of the siren.

First you possess it, then it possesses you! Cooped up in his fort on Lake Athabasca, Alexander MacKenzie, the Nor'wester, begins wondering about those rivers, but you can't ask business men to bank on the Unknown, to write blank checks for profits on what {325} you may not find. And the Nor'westers were all stern business men. For every penny's outlay they exacted from their wintering partners and clerks not ten but a hundredfold. And Alexander MacKenzie received no encouragement from his company to explore these unknown rivers. The project got possession of his mind. Sometimes he would pace the little log barracks of Fort Chippewyan from sunset to day dawn, trying to work out a way to explore those rivers; or, sitting before the huge hearth place, he would dream and dream till, as he wrote his cousin Roderick, "I did not know what I was doing or where I was." Finally he induced his cousin to take charge of the fort for a summer. Then, a.s.suming all risk and outlay, he set out on his own responsibility June 3, 1789, to follow the Great River down to the Arctic Ocean. "English Chief," who often went down to Hudson Bay for the rival company, went as MacKenzie's guide, and there were also in the canoes two or three white men, some Indians as paddlers, and squaws to cook and make moccasins.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FORT CHIPPEWYAN, ATHABASCA LAKE (From a recent photograph)]

{326} The canoes pa.s.sed Peace River pouring down from the mountains; then six dangerous rapids, where many a Nor'west voyageur had perished, one of MacKenzie's canoes going smash over the falls with a squaw, who swam ash.o.r.e; then rampart sh.o.r.es came, broader and higher than the St.

Lawrence or the Hudson, the boats skimming ahead with blankets hoisted for sails through foggy days and nights of driving rain. Cramped and rain-soaked, bailing water from the canoes with huge sponges, the Indians began to whine that the way was "hard, white man, hard." Then the river lost itself in a huge lagoon, Slave Lake, named after defeated Indians who had taken refuge here; and the question was, which way to go through the fog across the marshy lake! Poking through rushes high as a man, MacKenzie found a current, and, hoisting a sail on his fis.h.i.+ng pole, raced out to the river again on a hissing tide.

Here lived the Dog Rib Indians, and they frightened MacKenzie's men cold with grewsome tales of horrors ahead, of terrible waterfalls, of a land of famine and hostile tribes. The effect was instant. MacKenzie could not obtain a guide till "English Chief" hoisted a Slave Lake Indian into the canoe on a paddle handle. Though MacKenzie himself nightly slept with the vermin-infested guide to prevent desertion, the fellow escaped one night during the confusion of a thunder-storm.

Again a chance hunter was forcibly put into the canoe as guide; and the explorer pushed on for another month. North of Bear Lake, Indian warriors were seen flouris.h.i.+ng weapons along sh.o.r.e, and MacKenzie's men began to remark that the land was barren of game. If they became winter bound, they would perish. MacKenzie promised his men if he did not find the sea within seven days, he would turn back. Suddenly the men lost track of day, for they had come to the region of long light.

The river had widened to swamp lands. Between the 13th and 14th of July the men asleep on the sand were awakened by a flood of water lapping in on their baggage. What did it mean? For a minute they did not realize. Then they knew. It was the tide. They had found the sea. Hilarious as boys, they jumped from bed to man their canoes and chase whales.

{327} September 12, all sails up before a driving wind, the canoes raced across Athabasca Lake to the fort landing, Roderick, his nephew, shouting a welcome. MacKenzie had laid one of the two ghosts that haunted his peace. Now he must lay the other. Where did Peace River come from? His achievement on MacKenzie River had been greeted by the other Nor'west partners with a snub. Nevertheless MacKenzie asked for leave of absence that he might go to London and study the taking of astronomic observations in order to explore that other river flowing from the mountains; and in London, though poor and obscure, he heard all about Cook's voyages and Meare's brush with the Spaniards at Nootka, and plans for Captain Vancouver to make a final exploration of the Pacific Coast. Hurrying back to the Nor'wester's fort on Peace River, he was beset by the blue devils of despondency. What if Peace River did _not_ lead to the Pacific Ocean at all? What if he were behind some other discoverer? What if the venture proved a fool's trip leading to a blind nowhere? He was only a junior partner and could ill afford either money or time for failure.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ALEXANDER MACKENZIE]

Nevertheless, when the furs have been dispatched for Montreal, MacKenzie launches out on May 9 of 1793 with a thirty-foot birch canoe, six voyageurs, and Alexander Mackay as lieutenant, for the hinterland beyond the Rockies. This time the going was _against_ stream,--hard paddling, but safer than with a {328} swift current in a river with dangerous rapids. Ten days later the river has become a canyon of tumbling cascades, the mountains sheer wall on each side, with snowy peaks jagging up through the clouds. To portage baggage up such cliffs was impossible. Yet it was equally impossible to go on up the canyon, and MacKenzie's men became so terrified they refused to land. Jumping to foothold on the wall, a towrope in one hand, an ax in the other, MacKenzie cut steps in the cliff, then signaled above the roar of the rapids for the men to follow. They stripped themselves to swim if they missed footing, and obeyed, trembling in every limb. The towrope was warped round trees and the loaded canoe tracked up the cascade. At the end of that portage the men flatly refused to go on. MacKenzie ignored the mutiny and ordered the best of provisions spread for a feast.

While the crew rested, he climbed the face of a rocky cliff to reconnoiter. As far as eye could see were cataracts walled by mighty precipices. The canoe could not be tracked up such waters. Mackay, who had gone prospecting a portage, reported that it would be nine miles over the mountain. MacKenzie did not tell his men what was ahead of them, but he led the way up the steep mountain, cutting trees to form an outer railing, and up this trail the canoe was hauled, towline round trees, the men swearing and sweating and blowing like whales.

Three miles was the record that day, the voyageurs throwing themselves down to sleep at five in the afternoon, wrapped in their blanket coats lying close to the glacier edges. Three days it took to cross this mountain, and the end of the third day found them at the foot of another mountain. Here the river forked. MacKenzie followed the south branch, or what is now known as the Parsnip. Often at night the men would be startled by rocketing echoes like musketry firing, and they would spring to their feet to keep guard with backs to trees till morning; but presently they learned the cause of the pistol-shot reports. They were now on the Uplands among the eternal snows. The sharp splittings, the far boomings, the dull breaking thuds were frost cornices of overhanging snow cras.h.i.+ng down in avalanches that swept the mountain slopes clear of forests.

{329}

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAUSE OF A PORTAGE]

A short portage from the Parsnip over a low ridge to a lake, and the canoe is launched on a stream flowing on the far side of the Divide, Bad River, a branch of the Fraser, though MacKenzie mistakes it for an upper tributary of the great river discovered by Gray, the Columbia.

Then, before they realize it, comes the danger of going _with_ the current on a river with rapids. The stream sweeps to a torrent, mad and unbridled. The canoe is as a chip in a maelstrom, the precipices racing past in a blur, the Indians hanging frantically to the gunnels, bawling aloud in fear, the terrified voyageurs reaching, . . .

grasping, . . . s.n.a.t.c.hing at trees overhanging from the banks. The next instant a rock has banged through bottom, tearing away the stern.

The canoe reels in a swirl. Bang goes a rock through the bow. The birch bark flattens like a s.h.i.+ngle. Another swirl, and, to the amazement of all, instead of the death that had seemed impending, smashed canoe, baggage, and voyageurs are dumped on the shallows of a sandy reach. One can guess the gasp of relief that went up. n.o.body uttered a word for some {330} time. One voyageur, who had grasped at a branch and been hoisted bodily from the canoe, now came limping to the disconsolate group, and had stumbled with lighted pipe in teeth across the powder that had been spread out to dry, when a terrific yell of warning brought him to his senses, and relieved the tension. MacKenzie spread out a treat for the men and sent them to gather bark for a fresh canoe. Other adventures on Bad River need not be given. This one was typical. The record was but two miles a day; and now there was no turning back. The difficulties behind were as great as any that could be before. June 15 Bad River led them westward into the Fraser, but somewhere in the canyon between modern Quesnel and Alexandria the way became impa.s.sable. Besides, the river was leading too far south.

MacKenzie struck up Blackwater River to the west. _Caching_ canoe and provisions on July 4, he marched overland. The Pacific was reached on July 22, 1793, near Bella Coola. By September, after perils too numerous to be told, MacKenzie was back at his fur post on Peace River.

As his discoveries on this trip blazed the way to new hunting ground for his company, they brought both honor and wealth to MacKenzie. He was knighted by the English King for his explorations, and he retired to an estate in Scotland, where he died about 1820.

Meanwhile, Napoleon has sold Louisiana to the United States. The American explorers, Lewis and Clark, have crossed from the Missouri to the Columbia; and now John Jacob Astor, the great fur merchant of New York, in 1811 sends his fur traders overland to build a fort at the mouth of Columbia River. The Northwest Company in frantic haste dispatches explorers to follow up MacKenzie's work and take possession of the Pacific fur trade before Astor's men can reach the field. It becomes a race for the Pacific.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIMON FRASER]

Simon Fraser is sent in 1806 to build posts west of the Rockies in New Caledonia, and to follow that unknown river which MacKenzie mistook for the Columbia, on down to the sea. Two years he pa.s.sed building the posts, that exist to this {331} day as Fraser planned them: Fort MacLeod at the head of Parsnip River, on a little lake set like an emerald among the mountains; Fort St. James on Stuart Lake, a reach of sheeny green waters like the Trossachs, dotted with islands and ensconced in mountains; Fraser Fort on another lake southward; Fort St.

George on the main Fraser River. Then, in May of 1808, with four canoes Fraser descends the river named after him, accompanied by Stuart and Quesnel and nineteen voyageurs. This was the river where the rapids had turned MacKenzie back, canyon after canyon tumultuous with the black whirlpools and roaring like a tempest. Before essaying the worst runs of the cascades Fraser ordered a canoe lightened at the prow and manned by the five best voyageurs. It shot down the current like a stone from a catapult. "She flew from one danger to another," relates Fraser, who was watching the canoe from the bank, "till the current drove her on a rock. The men disembarked, and we had to plunge our daggers into the bank to keep from sliding into the river as we went down to their aid, our lives hanging on a thread." Like MacKenzie, Fraser was compelled to abandon canoes. Each with a pack of eighty pounds, the voyageurs set out on foot down that steep gorge where the traveler to-day can see the trail along the side of the precipice like basket work between Lilloet and Thompson River. In Fraser's day was no {332} trail, only here and there bridges of trembling twig ladders across chasms; and over these swinging footholds the marchers had to carry their packs, the river rolling below, deep and ominous and treacherous. At Spuzzum the river turned from the south straight west.

Fraser knew it was not the Columbia. His men named it after himself.

Forty days was Fraser going from St. George to tide water. Early in August he was back at his fur posts of New Caledonia.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ASTORIA IN 1813]

Yet another explorer did the Nor'westers send to take possession of the region beyond the mountains. David Thompson had been surveying the bounds between the United States and what is now Manitoba, when he was ordered to explore the Rockies in the region of the modern Banff. Up on Canoe River, Thompson and his men build canoes to descend the Columbia. Following the Big Bend, they go down the rolling milky tide past Upper and Lower Arrow Lakes, a region of mountains sheer on each side as walls, with wisps of mist marking the cloud line. Then a circular sweep westward through what is now Was.h.i.+ngton, pausing at Snake River to erect formal claim of possession for England, then a riffle on the current, a {333} smell of the sea, and at 1 P.M. on July 15, 1811, Thompson glides within view of a little raw new fort, Astoria. In the race to the Pacific the Americans have gained the ground at the mouth of the Columbia just two months before Thompson came. In Astor's fort Thompson finds old friends of the Northwest Company hired over by Astor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP OF THE WEST COAST, SHOWING THE OGDEN AND ROSS EXPLORATIONS]

After war has broken out in open flame it is easy to ascribe the cause to this, that, or the other act, which put the match to the combustibles; but the real reason usually lies far behind the one act of explosion, in an acc.u.mulation of ill feeling that provided the combustibles.

So it was in the fratricidal war of 1812 between Canada and the United States. The war was criminal folly, as useless as it was unnecessary.

What caused it? What acc.u.mulated the ill feeling lying ready like combustibles for the match? Let us see.

The United Empire Loyalists have, by 1812, increased to some 100,000 of Canada's population, cheris.h.i.+ng bitter memories of ruin and confiscation and persecution because Congress failed to carry out the pledge guaranteeing protection to the losing side in the Revolution.

Then, because Congress failed to carry out _her_ guarantee, England delayed turning over the western fur posts to the United States for almost ten years; and whether true or false, the suspicion became an open charge that the hostility of the Indians to American frontiersmen was fomented by the British fur trader.

Here, then, was cause for rankling anger on both sides, and the bitterness was unwittingly increased by England's policy. It was hard for the mother country to realize that the raw new nation of the United States, child of her very flesh and blood, kindred in thought and speech, was a power to be reckoned with, on even ground, looking on the level, eye to eye; and not just a b.u.mptious, underling nation, like a boy at the hobbledehoy age, to be hectored and chaffed and bullied and badgered and licked into shape, as a sort of protectorate appended to English interests.

I once asked an Englishman why the English press was so virulently hostile to one of the most brilliant of her rising men.

"Oh," he answered, "you must be English to understand that. We never think it hurts a boy to be well ragged when he 's at school."

Something of that spirit was in England's att.i.tude to the new nation of the United States. England was hard pressed in life-and-death struggle with Napoleon. To recruit both army and navy, conscription was rigidly and ruthlessly enforced. Yet more! England claimed the right to impress British-born subjects in foreign ports, to seize deserters in either foreign ports or on foreign s.h.i.+ps, and, most obnoxious of all, to search neutral vessels on the ocean highway for deserters from the British flag. It was an era of great brutality in military discipline.

Desertions were frequent. Also thousands of immigrants were flocking to the new nation of the United States and taking out naturalization papers. England ignored these naturalization papers when taken out by deserters.

Let us see how the thing worked out. A pa.s.senger vessel is coming up New York harbor. An English frigate with cannon pointed swings across the course, signals the American vessel on American waters to slow up, sends a young lieutenant with some marines across to the American vessel, searches her from stem to stern, or compels the American captain to read the roster of the crew, forcibly seizes half a dozen of the American crew as British deserters, and departs, leaving the Americans gasping with wonder whether they are a free nation or a tail to the kite of English designs. It need not be explained that the offense was often aggravated by the swaggering insolence of the young officers. They considered the fury of the unprepared American crew a prime joke. In vain the government at Was.h.i.+ngton complained to the government at Westminster. England pigeonholed the complaint and went serenely on her way, searching American vessels from Canada to Brazil.

Or an English vessel has come to Hampton Roads to wood and water. An English officer thinks he recognizes among the {335} American crews men who have deserted from English vessels. Three men defy arrest and show their naturalization papers. High words follow, broken heads and broken canes, and the English crew are glad to escape the mob by rowing out to their own vessel.

Is it surprising that the ill feeling on both sides acc.u.mulated till there lacked only the match to cause an explosion? The explosion came in 1807. H. M. S. _Leopard_, cruising off Norfolk in June, encounters the United States s.h.i.+p _Chesapeake_. At 3 P.M. the English s.h.i.+p edges down on the American, loaded to the water line with lumber, and signals a messenger will be sent across. The young English lieutenant going aboard the _Chesapeake_ shows written orders from Admiral Berkeley of Halifax, commanding a search of the _Chesapeake_ for six deserters. He is very courteous and pleasant about the disagreeable business: the orders are explicit; he must obey his admiral. The American commander is equally courteous. He regrets that he must refuse to obey an English admiral's orders, but his own government has given _most_ explicit orders that American vessels must _not_ be searched. The young Englishman returns with serious face. The s.h.i.+ps were within pistol shot of each other, the men on the English decks all at their guns, the Americans off guard, lounging on the lumber piles. Quick as flash a cannon shot rips across the _Chesapeake's_ bows, followed by a broadside, and another, and yet another, that riddle the American decks to kindling wood before the astonished officers can collect their senses. Six seamen are dead and twenty-three wounded when the _Chesapeake_ strikes her colors to surrender; but the _Leopard_ does not want a captive. She sends her lieutenant back, who musters the four hundred American seamen, picks out four men as British deserters, learns that another deserter has been killed and a sixth has jumped overboard rather than be retaken, takes his prisoners back to the _Leopard_, which proceeds to Halifax, where they are tried by court-martial and shot.

It isn't exactly surprising that the episode literally set the United States on fire with rage, and that the American President {336} at once ordered all American ports closed to British war vessels. The quarrel dragged on between the two governments for five years. England saw at once that she had gone too far and violated international law. She repudiated Admiral Berkeley's order, offered to apologize and pension the heirs of the victims; but _as she would not repudiate either the right of impressment or the right of search_, the American government refused to receive the apology.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GENERAL SIR JAMES HENRY CRAIG, GOVERNOR GENERAL OF CANADA, 1807-1811]

Other causes fanned the flame of war. The United States was now almost the only nation neutral in Napoleon's wars. To cripple English commerce, Napoleon forbids neutral nations trading at English ports.

By way of retaliation England forbids neutral nations trading with French ports; and the United States strikes back by closing American ports to both nations. It means blue ruin to American trade, but the United States cannot permit herself to be ground between the upper and nether millstones of two hostile European powers. Then, sharp as a gamester playing his trump card, Napoleon revokes his embargo in 1810, which leaves England the offender against the United States. Then Governor Craig of Canada commits an error that must have delighted the heart of Napoleon, who always profited by his enemy's blunders. Well meaning, but {337} fatally ill and easily alarmed, Craig sends one John Henry from Montreal in 1809 as spy to the United States for the double purpose of sounding public opinion on the subject of war, and of putting any Federalists in favor of withdrawing from the Union in touch with British authorities. Craig goes home to England to die. Henry fails to collect reward for his ign.o.ble services, turns traitor, and sells the entire correspondence to the war party in the United States for $10,000. That spy business adds fuel to fire. Then there are other quarrels. A deserter from the American army is found teaching school near Cornwall in Canada. He is driven out of the little backwoods schoolhouse, p.r.i.c.ked across the field with bayonets, out of the children's view, and shot on Canadian soil by American soldiers, an outrage almost the same in spirit as the British crew's outrage on the _Chesapeake_. Also, in spite of apologies, the war s.h.i.+ps clash again.

The English sloop _Little Belt_ is cruising off Cape Henry in May of 1811, looking for a French privateer, when a sail appears over the sea.

The _Little Belt_ pursues till she sights the commodore's blue flag of the United States frigate _President_, then she turns about; but by this time the _President_ has turned the tables on the little sloop, and is pursuing to find out what the former's conduct meant. Darkness settles over the two s.h.i.+ps beating about the wind.

"What sloop is that?" shouts an officer through a speaking trumpet from the American's decks.

"What s.h.i.+p is _that_?" bawls back a voice through the darkness from the little Englander.

Then, before any one can tell who fired first (in fact, each accuses the other of firing first), the cannon are pouring hot shot into each other's hulls till thirty men have fallen on the decks of the _Little Belt_. Apologies follow, of course, and explanations; but that does not remedy the ill. In fact, when nations and people want to quarrel, they can always find a cause. War is declared in June of 1812 by Congress. It is war against England; but that means war against Canada, though there are not forty-five hundred soldiers from Halifax to Lake Huron. As for {338} the American forces, they muster an army of some one hundred and fifty thousand; but their generals complain they are "an untrained mob"; and events justified the complaints.

There is nothing for Canada to do but stand up to the war of England's making and fight for hearth and home. Canada on the defensive, there is nothing for the States to do but invade; and the American generals don't relish the task with their "untrained mob."

[Ill.u.s.tration: WILLIAM HULL]

Upper Canada or Ontario has not four hundred soldiers from Kingston to Detroit River; but Major General Isaac Brock calls for volunteers. The clang of arms, of drill, of target practice, resounds in every hamlet through Canada. At Kingston, at Toronto, at Fort George (Niagara), at Erie where Niagara River comes from the lake, at Amherstburg, southeast of Detroit, are stationed garrisons to repel invasion, with hastily erected cannon and mortar commanding approach from the American side.

And invasion comes soon enough. The declaration of war became known in Canada about the 20th of June. By July 3 General Hull of Michigan is at Detroit with two thousand five hundred men preparing to sweep western Ontario. July 3 an English schooner captures Hull's provision boat coming up Detroit River, but Hull crosses with his army on July 12 to Sandwich, opposite Detroit, and issues proclamation calling on the people to throw off the yoke of English rule. How such an invitation fell on United Empire Loyalist ears may be guessed. Meanwhile comes word that the Northwest {339} Company's voyageurs, with four hundred Indians, have captured Michilimackinac without a blow. The fall of Michilimackinac, the failure of the Canadians to rally to his flag, the loss of his provision boat, dampen Hull's ardor so that on August 8 he moves back with his troops to Detroit. Eight days later comes Brock from Niagara with five hundred Loyalists and one thousand Indians under the great chief Tec.u.mseh to join Procter's garrison of six hundred at Amherstburg. The Canadians have come by open boat up Lake Erie from Niagara through furious rains; but they are fighting for their homes, and with eager enthusiasm follow Brock on up Detroit River to Sandwich, opposite the American fort. Indians come by night and lie in ambush south of Detroit to protect the Canadians while they cross the river.

Then the cannon on the Canadian side begin a humming of bombs overhead.

While the bombs play over the stream at Sandwich, Brock rushes thirteen hundred men across the river south of Detroit, and before midday of August 16 is marching his men through the woods to a.s.sault the fort, when he is met by an officer carrying out the white flag of surrender.

While Brock was crossing the river, something had happened inside the fort at Detroit. It was one of those curious cases of blind panic when only the iron grip of a strong man can hold demoralized forces in hand.

The American officers had sat down to breakfast in the mess room at day dawn, when a bomb plunged through the roof killing four on the spot and spattering the walls with the blood of the mangled bodies. Disgraceful stories are told of Hull's conduct. Ashy with fright and trembling, he dashed from the room, and, before the other officers knew what he was about, had offered to surrender his army, twenty-five hundred arms, thirty-three cannon, an armed brig, and the whole state of Michigan.