Away in the Wilderness by R. M. Ballantyne (best short books to read TXT) 📕

Camping out in the woods at night is truly a delightful thing, and the pleasantest part of it, perhaps, is the lighting of the fire. Light is agreeable to human eyes and cheering to the human heart. Solomon knew and felt that when he penned the words, “A pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun.” And the rising of the sun is scarcely more grateful to the feelings than the lighting of a fire on a dark night. So our friends thought and felt, when the fire blazed up, but they were too busy and too hungry at the time to think about the state of their feelings.

The Indian was hungry. A good fire had to be made before the venison could be roasted, so he gave his whole attention to the felling of dry trees and cutting them up into logs for the fire. Jasper was also hungry, and a slight shower had wetted all the moss and withered grass, so he had enough to do to strike fire with flint and steel, catch a spark on a little piece of tinder, and then blow and coax the spark into a flame.

The artist was indeed free to indulge in a little meditation; but he had stumbled in the dark on landing, and bruised his shins, so he could only sit down on a rock and rub them and feel miserable.

But the fire soon caught; branches were heaped up, great logs were piled on, forked tongues of flame began to leap up and lick the branches of the overhanging trees. The green leaves looked rich and warm; the thick stems looked red and hot; the faces and clothes of the men seemed as if about to catch fire as they moved about the encampment preparing supper. In short, the whole scene was so extremely comfortable, in reality as well as in appearance, that Heywood forgot his bruised shins and began to rub his hands with delight.

In a very short time three juicy venison-steaks were steaming before the three travellers, and in a much shorter time they had disappeared altogether and were replaced by three new ones. The mode of cooking was very simple. Each steak was fixed on a piece of stick and set up before the fire to roast. When one side was ready, the artist, who seemed to have very little patience, began to cut off pieces and eat them while the other side was cooking.

To say truth, men out in those regions have usually such good appetites that they are not particular as to the cooking of their food. Quantity, not quality, is what they desire. They generally feel very much like the Russian, of whom it is said, that he would be content to eat sawdust if only he got plenty of it! The steaks were washed down with tea. There is no other drink in Rupert’s Land. The Hudson’s Bay Company found that spirits were so hurtful to the Indians that they refused to send them into the country; and at the present day there is no strong drink to be had for love or money over the length and breadth of their territories, except at those places where other fur-traders oppose them, and oblige them, in self-defence, to sell fire-water, as the Indians call it.

Tea is the great—the only—drink in Rupert’s Land! Yes, laugh as ye will, ye lovers of gin and beer and whisky, one who has tried it, and has seen it tried by hundreds of stout stalwart men, tells you that the teetotaller is the best man for real hard work.

The three travellers drank their tea and smacked their lips, and grinned at each other with great satisfaction. They could not have done more if it had been the best of brandy and they the jolliest of topers! But the height of their enjoyment was not reached until the pipes were lighted.

It was quite a sight to see them smoke! Jasper lay with his huge frame extended in front of the blaze, puffing clouds of smoke thick enough to have shamed a small cannon. Arrowhead rested his back on the stump of a tree, stretched his feet towards the fire, and allowed the smoke to roll slowly through his nostrils as well as out at his mouth, so that it kept curling quietly round his nose, and up his cheeks, and into his eyes, and through his hair in a most delightful manner; at least so it would seem, for his reddish-brown face beamed with happy contentment.

Young Heywood did not smoke, but he drew forth his sketch-book and sketched his two companions; and in the practice of his beloved art, I have no doubt, he was happier than either.

“I wonder how many trading-posts the Hudson’s Bay Company has got?” said Heywood, as he went on with his work.

“Hundreds of ’em,” said Jasper, pressing the red-hot tobacco into the bowl of his pipe with the end of his little finger, as slowly and coolly as if his flesh were fire-proof. “I don’t know, exactly, how many they’ve got. I doubt if anybody does, but they have them all over the country. You’ve seen a little of the country now, Heywood; well, what you have seen is very much like what you will see as long as you choose to travel hereaway. You come to a small clearing in the forest, with five or six log houses in it, a stockade round it, and a flagstaff in the middle of it; five, ten, or fifteen men, and a gentleman in charge. That’s a Hudson’s Bay Company’s trading-post. All round it lie the wild woods. Go through the woods for two or three hundred miles and you’ll come to another such post, or fort, as we sometimes call ’em. That’s how it is all the country over. Although there are many of them, the country is so uncommon big that they may be said to be few and far between. Some are bigger and some are less. There’s scarcely a settlement in the country worthy o’ the name of a village except Red River.”

“Ah! Red River,” exclaimed Heywood, “I’ve heard much of that settlement—hold steady—I’m drawing your nose just now—have you been there, Jasper?”

“That have I, lad, and a fine place it is, extendin’ fifty miles or more along the river, with fine fields, and handsome houses, and churches, and missionaries and schools, and what not; but the rest of Rupert’s Land is just what you have seen; no roads, no houses, no cultivated fields—nothing but lakes, and rivers, and woods, and plains without end, and a few Indians here and there, with plenty of wild beasts everywhere. These trading-posts are scattered here and there, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from Canada to the Frozen Sea, standin’ solitary-like in the midst of the wilderness, as if they had dropped down from the clouds by mistake and didn’t know exactly what to do with themselves.”

“How long have de Company lived?” inquired Arrowhead, turning suddenly to Jasper.

The stout hunter felt a little put out. “Ahem! I don’t exactly know; but it must have been a long time, no doubt.”

“Oh, I can tell you that,” cried Heywood.

“You?” said Jasper in surprise.

“Ay; the Company was started nearly two hundred years ago by Prince Rupert, who was the first Governor, and that’s the reason the country came to be called Rupert’s Land. You know its common name is ‘the Hudson’s Bay Territory,’ because it surrounds Hudson’s Bay.”

“Why, where did you learn that?” said Jasper, “I thought I knowed a-most everything about the Company; but I must confess I never knew that about Prince Rupert before.”

“I learned it from books,” said the artist.

“Books!” exclaimed Jasper, “I never learned nothin’ from books—more’s the pity. I git along well enough in the trappin’ and shootin’ way without ’em; but I’m sorry I never learned to read. Ah! I’ve a great opinion of books—so I have.”

The worthy hunter shook his head solemnly as he said this in a low voice, more to himself than to his companions, and he continued to mutter and shake his head for some minutes, while he knocked the ashes out of his pipe. Having refilled and relighted it, he drew his blanket over his shoulder, laid his head upon a tuft of grass, and continued to smoke until he fell asleep, and allowed the pipe to fall from his lips.

The Indian followed his example, with this difference, that he laid aside his pipe, and drew the blanket over his head and under his feet, and wrapped it round him in such a way that he resembled a man sewed up in a sack.

Heywood was thus compelled to shut his sketch-book; so he also wrapped himself in his blanket, and was soon sound asleep.

The camp-fire gradually sank low. Once or twice the end of a log fell, sending up a bright flame and a shower of sparks, which, for a few seconds, lighted up the scene again and revealed the three slumbering figures. But at last the fire died out altogether, and left the encampment in such thick darkness that the sharpest eye would have failed to detect the presence of man in that distant part of the lone wilderness.