MICHIKAMAU

It was the sun that did it, or else it was a scheme on the part of George and Job to work in an extra pudding.  However that may have been, we found ourselves on Wednesday morning not yet on Lake Michikamau, and we did not reach it until 5.15 P.M. that day.

We started, expecting to paddle straight away west into the great lake.  As we glided out on what proved to be, after all, another lake instead of an arm of Michikamau, we saw that land, not water, stretched across the western horizon.  South from our island camp the shore of the lake was a low ridge sloping to the water in three distinct terraces, moss-covered and smooth as a carefully kept lawn, with here and there a clump of stunted fir trees.  Four miles to the west the ridge terminated in a low point.

As we crossed the lake Job remarked that there was some current here.  On nearing the point we were startled by a sudden exclamation from him.  He had caught sight of a freshly cut chip on the water.  We stopped, and the chip was picked up.  The two canoes drew together, when it was examined closely, and an animated discussion in Indian went on.  It was all interesting to watch, and a revelation to me to see an ordinary little chip create so much excitement.  How much a seeming trifle may mean to the “Children of the Bush,” or for that matter to any other “children,” who see the meaning of things.  I could not tell of course what they were saying, but I knew that the question was:  “Who, beside ourselves, is in this deep wilderness?” The conclusion reached was that the wind had brought it here in the night from our own camp.

Passing the point the canoe again stopped some distance beyond it, and another brisk conversation ensued.  I learned they had discovered a current coming from the south, and we turned to meet it.  Following it up, one mile south and one mile west, we came to where the river flows in from the south in a rapid.  This was really funny.  We had comfortably settled ourselves in the belief that the rapids had all been passed.  Job and Gilbert had taken off their “shoe-packs” with the prospect of a good day’s paddling, and here were the rapids again.  Our course for four miles above this point was up a tortuous, rapid river.  It seemed to flow from all points of the compass, and, in almost continuous rapids.  They were not rough, but the currents were fearfully swift, and seemed to move in all directions.  These are more difficult to understand, and hence more dangerous than many of the rougher rapids.

About 2 P.M. we came out upon a lake.  It was not very large, and its upper end was crowded with islands.  Four miles from the outlet the lake narrowed, and the water flowed down round the islands with tremendous swiftness.  Again it widened, and a mile west from the rapids we landed to climb a hill.  Everyone went, and by the time I was half-way up, the men were already at the top jumping