The Young Voyageurs: Boy Hunters in the North, Mayne Reid [some good books to read .txt] 📗

After remaining a day at their first camp on the lake, our voyageurs continued their journey. Their course lay a little to the west of north, as the edge of the lake trended in that direction. Their usual plan, as already stated, was to keep out in the lake far enough to shun the numerous indentations of the shore, yet not so far as to endanger their little craft when the wind was high. At night they always landed, either upon some point or on an island. Sometimes the wind blew “dead ahead,” and then their day’s journey would be only a few miles. When the wind was favourable they made good progress, using the skin of the wapiti for a sail. On one of these days they reckoned a distance of over forty miles from camp to camp. It was their custom always to lie by on Sunday, for our young voyageurs were Christians. They had done so on their former expedition across the Southern prairies, and they had found the practice to their advantage in a physical as well as a moral sense. They required the rest thus obtained; besides, a general cleaning up is necessary, at least, once every week. Sunday was also a day of feasting with them. They had more time to devote to culinary operations, and the cuisine of that day was always the most varied of the week. Any extra delicacy obtained by the rifle on previous days, was usually reserved for the Sunday’s dinner. On the first Sunday after entering Lake Winnipeg the “camp” chanced to be upon an island. It was a small island, of only a few acres in extent. It lay near the shore, and was well wooded over its whole surface with trees of many different kinds. Indeed, islands in a large lake usually have a great variety of trees, as the seeds of all those sorts that grow around the shores are carried thither by the waves, or in the crops of the numerous birds that flit over its waters. But as the island in question lay in a lake, whose shores exhibited such a varied geology, it was natural the vegetation of the island itself should be varied. And, in truth; it was so. There were upon it, down by the water’s edge, willows and cottonwoods (Populus angulata), the characteristic sylva of the prairie land; there were birches and sugar-maples (Acer saccharinum); and upon some higher ground, near the centre, appeared several species that belonged more to the primitive formations that bounded the lake on the east. These were pines and spruces, the juniper, and tamarack or American larch (Laryx Americana); and among others could be distinguished the dark cone-shaped forms of the red cedar-trees. Among the low bushes and shrubs there were rose and wild raspberry; there were apple and plum trees, and whole thickets of the “Pembina” (Viburnum oxycoccos). There is, in fact, no part of the world where a greater variety of wild fruit has been found indigenous than upon the banks of the Red River of the North, and this variety extended to the little island where our voyageurs had encamped.

The camp had been placed under a beautiful tree—the tacamahac, or balsam poplar (Populus balsamifera). This is one of the finest trees of America, and one of those that extend farthest north into the cold countries. In favourable situations it attains a height of one hundred and fifty feet, with a proportionate thickness of trunk; but it is oftener only fifty or eighty feet high. Its leaves are oval, and, when young, of a rich yellowish colour, which changes to a bright green. The buds are very large, yellow, and covered with a varnish, which exhales a delightful fragrance, and gives to the tree its specific name.

It was near sunset on the afternoon of Saturday; the travellers had just finished their repast, and were reclining around a fire of red cedar, whose delicate smoke curled up among the pale-green leaves of the poplars. The fragrant smell of the burning wood, mixed with the aromatic odour of the balsam-tree, filled the air with a sweet perfume, and, almost without knowing why, our voyageurs felt a sense of pleasure stealing over them. The woods of the little island were not without their voices. The scream of the jay was heard, and his bright azure wing appeared now and then among the foliage. The scarlet plumage of the cardinal grosbeak flashed under the beams of the setting sun; and the trumpet-note of the ivory-billed woodpecker was heard near the centre of the island. An osprey was circling in the air, with his eye bent on the water below, watching for his finny prey; and a pair of bald eagles (Haliaetus leucocephalus) were winging their way towards the adjacent mainland. Half-a-dozen turkey vultures (Cathartes atratus) were wheeling above the beach, where some object, fish or carrion, had been thrown up by the waves.

For some time the party remained silent, each contemplating the scene with feelings of pleasure. François, as usual, first broke the silence.

“I say, cook, what’s for dinner to-morrow?”

It was to Lucien this speech was addressed. He was regarded as the maître de cuisine.

“Roast or boiled—which would you prefer?” asked the cook, with a significant smile.

“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed François; “boiled, indeed! a pretty boil we could have in a tin cup, holding less than a pint. I wish we could have a boiled joint and a bowl of soup. I’d give something for it. I’m precious tired of this everlasting dry roast.”

“You shall have both,” rejoined Lucien, “for to-morrow’s dinner. I promise you both the soup and the joint.”

Again François laughed incredulously.

“Do you mean to make soup in your shoe, Luce?”

“No; but I shall make it in this.”

And Lucien held up a vessel somewhat like a water-pail, which the day before he had himself made out of birch-bark.

“Well,” replied François, “I know you have got a vessel that holds water, but cold water ain’t soup; and if you can boil water in that vessel, I’ll believe you to be a conjuror. I know you can do some curious things with your chemical mixtures; but that you can’t do, I’m sure. Why, man, the bottom would be burned out of your bucket before the water got blood-warm. Soup, indeed!”

“Never mind, Frank, you shall see. You’re only like the rest of mankind—incredulous about everything they can’t comprehend. If you’ll take your hook and line, and catch some fish, I promise to give you a dinner to-morrow, with all the regular courses—soup, fish, boiled, roast, and dessert, too! I’m satisfied I can do all that.”

“Parbleu! brother, you should have been cook to Lucullus. Well, I’ll catch the fish for you.”

So saying, François took a fish-hook and line out of his pouch, and fixing a large grasshopper upon the hook, stepped forward to the edge of the water, and cast it in. The float was soon seen to bob and then sink, and François jerked his hook ashore with a small and very pretty fish upon it of a silver hue, with which the lake and the waters running into it abound. Lucien told him it was a fish of the genus Hyodon. He also advised him to bait with a worm, and let his bait sink to the bottom, and he might catch a sturgeon, which would be a larger fish.

“How do you know there are sturgeon in the lake?” inquired François.

“I am pretty sure of that,” answered the naturalist; “the sturgeon (Acipenser) is found all round the world in the northern temperate zone—both in its seas and fresh waters; although, when you go farther south into the warmer climate, no sturgeons exist. I am sure there are some here, perhaps more than one species. Sink your bait, for the sturgeon is a toothless fish, and feeds upon soft substances at the bottom.”

François followed the advice of his brother, and in a few minutes he had a “nibble,” and drew up and landed a very large fish, full three feet in length. Lucien at once pronounced it a sturgeon, but of a species he had not before seen. It was the Acipenser carbonarius, a curious sort of fish found in these waters. It did not look like a fish that would be pleasant eating; therefore François again took to bobbing for the silver fish (Hyodons), which, though small, he knew to be excellent when broiled.

“Come,” said Basil, “I must furnish my quota to this famous dinner that is to be. Let me see what there is on the island in the way of game;” and shouldering his rifle, he walked off among the trees.

“And I,” said Norman, “am not going to eat the produce of other people’s labour without contributing my share.”

So the young trader took up his gun and went off in a different direction.

“Good!” exclaimed Lucien, “we are likely to have plenty of meat for the dinner. I must see about the vegetables;” and taking with him his new-made vessel, Lucien sauntered off along the shore of the islet. François alone remained by the camp, and continued his fishing. Let us follow the plant-hunter, and learn a lesson of practical botany.

Lucien had not gone far, when he came to what appeared to be a mere sedge growing in the water. The stalks or culms of this sedge were full eight feet high, with smooth leaves, an inch broad, nearly a yard in length, and of a light green colour. At the top of each stalk was a large panicle of seeds, somewhat resembling a head of oats. The plant itself was the famous wild rice (Zizania aquatica), so much prized by the Indians as an article of food, and also the favourite of many wild birds, especially the reed-bird or rice-bunting. The grain of the zizania was not yet ripe, but the ears were tolerably well filled, and Lucien saw that it would do for his purpose. He therefore waded in, and stripped off into his vessel as much as he wanted.

“I am safe for rice-soup, at all events,” soliloquised he, “but I think I can do still better;” and he continued on around the shore, and shortly after struck into some heavy timber that grew in a damp, rich soil. He had walked about an hundred yards farther, when he was seen to stoop and examine some object on the ground.

“It ought to be found here,” he muttered to himself; “this is the very soil for it,—yes, here we have it!”

The object over which he was stooping was a plant, but its leaves appeared shrivelled, or rather quite withered away. The upper part of a bulbous root, however, was just visible above the surface. It was a bulb of the wild leek (Allium tricoccum.) The leaves, when young, are about six inches in length, of a flat shape and