Chapter VIII: A Terrible Journey in Winter

The Bishop had to be ever on the move to cover even a small portion of his huge diocese. He had no comfortable railway cars in which to travel, and no horses to draw him speedily along; only dogs, faithful little animals, to carry his food and camping outfit, while he and his companions walked.

Fort Simpson was chosen by the Bishop as his abode at first. It is situated at the confluence of the Mackenzie and Liard Rivers, and formed the most central and convenient point for managing the vast diocese. This position had been occupied years before by the Hudson’s Bay Company, and here, in 1859, Mr. Kirkby built the church and mission-house.

All around stretched the huge diocese of one million square miles—and such a diocese! It has been well described by the Bishop himself in the following words:

“No shepherd there his flock to fold,
No harvest waves its tresses gold;
No city with its thronging crowd,
No market with its clamour loud;
No magistrates dispense the laws,
No advocate to plead the cause;
No sounding bugle calls to arms,
No bandits rouse to dread alarms;
No courser scours the grassy plain,
No lion shakes his tawny mane;
No carriages for weary feet,
No waggons jostle in the street;
No well-tilled farms, no fencèd field,
No orchard with its welcome yield;
No luscious fruit to engage the taste,
No dainties to prolong the feast;
No steaming car its weighty load
Drags with swift wheel o’er iron road;
No distant messages of fire
Flash, lightning-like, through endless wire;
No church with tower or tapering spire,
No organ note, no chanting choir.”

Writing of the extent of his diocese, the Bishop says:

“To represent the length and tediousness of travel in this diocese, it may be compared to a voyage in a row-boat from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Fort William, on Lake Superior, or a European may compare it to a voyage in a canal barge from England to Turkey. Both the length and breadth of this diocese equal the distance from London to Constantinople.

“If all the populations between London and Constantinople were to disappear, except a few bands of Indians or gipsies, and all the cities and towns were obliterated, except a few log-huts on the sites of the capital cities—such is the solitary desolation of this land. Again, if all the diversity of landscape and variety of harvest-field and meadow were exchanged for an unbroken line of willow and pine trees—such is this country.”

In this region the Bishop and his devoted wife began their great work together. At once an Indian school was started, carried on at first principally by the Bishop himself. Mrs. Bompas says:

“My ears often grew weary of the perpetual ‘ba, be, bo, bu; cha, che, cho, chu.’ These, with a few hymns translated into their own language, and a little counting, were the first studies mastered by our Simpson scholars.”

Three hundred miles from Fort Simpson was another post of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Fort Rae. Here was a band of Indians who needed the message of the Gospel, and the Bishop decided to go to them. Together with several men from Fort Rae he set out, having with his sled Allen Hardisty, an Indian who was being trained as a catechist.

“It was a clear, beautiful morning,” says Mrs. Bompas, “November 27, 1874. The great frozen river glittered in the sunshine. Not a smooth, glassy surface, but all covered with huge boulders of ice, and these again all thickly strewn with snow.... Here are our ‘trippers,’ as they are called, and all ready to start, and my Bishop in his fur cap and warm wraps which I have made for him. His large mittens, formed of deer-skin and fur, are suspended from the neck, as is the custom here. Allen, the catechist, packed the sledges last evening with their bags of clothing and provisions for the way—blankets, cooking implements, etc. There are three sledges, and the dogs ready harnessed. I am rather proud of my ‘tapis,’ which, amid sundry difficulties, I contrived to get finished, with some help, in time. Now comes the word, ‘Off! all ready!’ Our farewells are said, the drivers smack their whips, the dogs cry out and start in full scamper, the trippers running by the side of their sledges at such a pace that they are soon out of sight.”

It is certainly an interesting thing to watch a dog-team start on a long journey. The harness is decorated in gay trappings with ribbons, beads, coloured cloth, and many jingling bells. The dogs enter into the spirit of the undertaking, and lift up their voices in wild yelps and barks.

A good dog-team in the North costs from $100 to $200, averaging about $25 a dog. Some of the best in the country are bred by the natives, nearly every grown-up Indian having his own dog-team and sledge or toboggan. The Indians make their own sledges and harness, the former being made of birch-wood, and the latter of moose-skin.

A couple married at Whitehorse by Bishop Stringer started in November with this team of dogs, and, after a journey of 1,200 miles, arrived at Fairbanks in the spring.]

Though the Bishop and his companions started off bravely and in high spirits, they little realized what difficulties were ahead. The snow was deep and the cold intense. The dogs suffered much. The sharp crust and ice cut their feet and blood-marked every foot of the trail. This is by no means uncommon in Northern travel. The snow gathers in lumps between the dogs’ toes, and often the poor brutes will stop and tear savagely at the pieces with their teeth. Often the driver does this work of mercy, and the dog will lie on his side or back, looking up piteously into his master’s face. Sometimes little moose-skin moccasins are made, in shape like a miner’s gold-poke, with a drawing-string at the top. These, fastened securely upon the dogs’ feet, give them much relief, though it is hard for them to draw heavy loads, as the moccasins prevent their toes from gripping the trail. The lash, too, adds to the dogs’ suffering. To a person who has never been on the trail, or in common parlance “mushed dogs,” it may seem an unnecessary cruelty; but the truth is, they will not work at all unless the whip is used to a certain extent. There is a great difference, of course, between urging on the animals now and then with a sharp cut of the whip and ill-treating them as some drivers do. It is no uncommon thing for a brutal master to pound his dogs with a heavy stick, beating them until they are almost insensible. The curses of some men are terrible to listen to, and many contend that dogs will not travel without a string of oaths being hurled at them.

A missionary some years ago in the Yukon held a service, at which only miners and prospectors were present. His subject was swearing, and he spoke about dog-driving. He appealed to them, and asked if it were not possible to drive dogs without cursing at them. At this a hardy, husky miner rose to his feet, and looking calmly at the missionary, replied: “Your Reverence, it can’t be done.” Now this is all nonsense. It can be done, and dogs which are properly trained will travel just as well to the words, “Mush on,” and “Hike on, there,” as to all the choicest oaths in the English language.

The Bishop would never allow the dogs to be ill-treated in his presence; neither would he permit his men to swear at them. It was his usual custom to go ahead, on his long, springing snow-shoes, which sometimes are called “Northern slippers,” and break down the trail. He was a man of great endurance, and day after day he kept the lead, sometimes till long after dark. “The ground is generally rough, and to walk in some places may be compared to what it would be to walk over the heads and shoulders of a crowd.”

“Snow-shoe walking,” says the Bishop, “requires care to avoid trouble. If the snow-shoe lashings, or any other bands, are too tight on the limbs, or if the feet are held too stiffly, a very painful affliction of the muscles supervenes, known as the snow-shoe sickness. This sickness sometimes causes the legs to swell like those of an elephant, and renders them so powerless that the feet may have to be lifted with the hand by lines attached to the front of the snow-shoes.”

Day by day the dark forms moved on. All around was the pitiless waste. The terrible cold chilled to the bone. No sound broke the silence but the crunch, crunch of the snow-shoes, or the shouts of the drivers, the cracks of the whips, and the yelps of the dogs. At times they had to contend with driving storms, and only those who have been on the Northern trails can fully realize what they mean. Bishop Stringer, who spent many hard years within the Arctic Circle, vividly describes such an experience. He was travelling over a desolate region, away to the east, where the foot of white men had never before trod.

“It may appear,” he says, “quite novel to travel over lands where no white man has ever been. The novelty wears off quickly, though, when one has to face the storms and isolation of those desolate wilds. I had as a guide a boy (the only one I could obtain from one of the villages) who was both deaf and stupid, and somewhat lazy. We had, of course, to carry our wood from the sea-coast, or do without any. We had a cotton tent that had seen many winters’ rough usage, and a small stove made out of an old stove-pipe. By means of this we were able to keep warm while the wood lasted. When on the return trip our wood gave out, and we had to travel in the face of a blinding snowstorm, or freeze in the tent, and for part of the night we were hopelessly lost, and without any means of camping or getting ourselves warm, except by running. The boy gave out early, and while he sat on the sled, I had to run before the dogs, in the face of the storm, without track or guide of any kind. By keeping right into the wind I judged we were not far astray. I was quite glad, when the daybreak came, to find ourselves not far from the village.”

It was always a great joy when Bishop Bompas and the men dragged their weary bodies into camp. Sometimes they had to travel over a barren stretch of country, and how eagerly they would watch ahead for a clump of trees in which to spend the night! But when camping-time arrived, there was no warm house or steaming supper awaiting them—nothing but the silent trees, grim and desolate, surrounding them.

Having chosen a suitable spot with plenty of dry wood near, the snow was scraped away with a snow-shoe for a shovel. This place was then thickly covered with fir, spruce, or pine branches, and a fire started from the shavings of dry wood or a piece of birch bark.

“If there are no pine,” wrote the Bishop, “a fire can be made with dry willows. If these are lacking, evergreen willows are supposed to burn, when once ignited. Should there be none of these, there may probably be no fire, unless, as a last resort, a sledge can be chopped up for the purpose. There may be inconvenience also in the lack of materials for starting a fire. In the absence of sulphur matches, fire is commonly made with flint and steel and a piece of country touch-wood, which consists of a fungoid growth or excrescence on the bark of the birch or poplar. A small particle of this touch-wood is kindled to a spark with flint and steel, the touch-wood is then placed on a handful of shavings cut from dry wood, and the whole is waved together in the air until it bursts into a flame. When a steel is missing, a knife may be at hand, or fire may be obtained by snapping a gun. An Indian chief has told of his life being saved at a last emergency by obtaining fire from a piece of greenstone, carried for a whetstone, and an iron buckle from his dog-harness.”

After the fire was started, snow was melted in the kettles, for it is almost impossible to obtain water in any other way on the trail. The dogs are not fed until the end of the day. This may seem cruel; but if fed before, they are lazy, and will do very little work.

Once I was travelling in the Yukon, and in the morning, seeing the dogs looking wistfully at us as we ate our breakfast, I urged my Indian guide to feed them. He did so under strong protest. Then I found my mistake. We made very little progress that day, and were forced to camp unusually early. The dogs would go a short distance, stop, squat down upon the trail, and look back at us. The whip had little or no effect. The food in the morning had spoiled them, and they were not anxious to reach the camp at night.

After supper was over, and the dogs fed, the moccasins and socks were hung up to dry, for they are always wet after a day’s travel. Then the Bishop, sitting there, would bring out his little Bible, read a word of comfort, and offer up a few prayers to the great Father; then, rolling themselves up in their blankets on the yielding boughs, close to the fire, they would take their well-earned rest. Sometimes they would awake to find the fire out and themselves covered with a soft white mantle of snow. Shortly after midnight they would arise, and prepare for another long day’s march. Such was their daily experience, and all the time the trail was getting more difficult.

The usual fare of these useful animals is fish.]

The worst was yet to come. Much snow had fallen, and their progress was slower, and food running low. They were still a long distance from Fort Rae, and had therefore to place themselves on short allowance. Steadily their small supply of provisions diminished, until only a little was left; then a mouthful apiece for hungry men and ravenous dogs. The latter did some hunting on their own account when the day’s work was over, and fortunate were they to find a timid rabbit lurking near. Their keenness of scent is marvellous, especially when starving. I remember once, when our dog-food was all gone, that Yukon, my noble leader, dug through the snow on the shore of Lake Laberge and found a sack containing several dried fish, which had been left there the previous fall by some lone fisherman.

At length the food was all gone, and the tired, starving men looked at one another. What were they to do? The Bishop straightened himself up, drew the girdle tighter about his waist, and pointed forward. He even smiled, for he could ever do that, even when his face was drawn and haggard. It was not the smile of scorn, but of trust. He well knew that, as the Lord stood with the great veteran St. Paul, he would stand by him there in the great northland. He must have experienced a certain joy that he was suffering for the Master’s sake. Ah! he was being trained in a stern school for the great work which still lay before him. It was but one of the thousands of sufferings he endured, of which he would seldom speak. It was the Venerable Archdeacon Canham who once found the Bishop in a lonely place with nothing to eat but a few tallow candles. Upon these he subsisted until he obtained proper food.

There was now nothing to do but drag on their weary steps. It was necessary, too, to assist the dogs, for the poor creatures were so weak that they could do but little. So on they pressed, and crunch, swish, sounded the snow-shoes. What a pitiful little procession wound its way through that white, cruel desolation! The keen frost whitened their beards and eyebrows, singeing their faces, and chilling their hearts. And then the desolate camp at night, with nothing to eat!

But there was hope, and what will not men endure when they have even a spark of hope in their hearts? They were drawing near to Fort Rae. At last the buildings hove into sight, and slowly and painfully they struggled in, faint and weary to the point of collapse. The dogs must have scented the settlement long before the men saw the place. They would smell the smoke in the air and take courage.

I was travelling to Dalton Post during the spring of 1905 with three dogs and an Indian. One day we had a terrible march, and were forced to abandon tent and supplies owing to a flooded stream. From three o’clock in the morning until eight at night we plodded on, in some places wading to our knees in water, and again facing a furious snowstorm on a large lake. On the little Klukshu Lake the dogs stopped. They were tired out, and refused to advance. The shore was desolate, and we had very little to camp with. What were we to do? Suddenly Yukon, the leader, pricked up his ears and started on a run, and it was all we could do to keep pace with him. Not for an instant did he stop until we swung into an Indian lodge about a mile away. He had scented the camp the whole of that distance. When I related this incident afterwards to one well accustomed to Indians and their ways of living, astonishment was expressed that the dog had not scented the camp long before. And it certainly was a wonder, for the place was most foul. But how welcome for all that to weary travellers!

Great was the Bishop’s pleasure at reaching Fort Rae. It was joy after the battle. He had suffered, but what did it matter? Sitting around the camp-fire, all difficulties of the way were forgotten, as he explained to the Indians the message he had come to bring of the loving Saviour.

Meanwhile, at the Fort, Mrs. Bompas was anxiously awaiting the Bishop’s return. Mr. Reeve took charge of the settlement, while Mr. Hodgson conducted the Indian school. It was a weary time—a time of darkness, for grease had given out, and there were few candles, as the deer were very thin. Never before had there been such a scarcity. Every particle was saved with jealous care, and doled out with the greatest caution.

But, notwithstanding the darkness, a cheerful time was spent at Christmas, when Mrs. Bompas brought in twelve old Indian wives and gave them a Christmas dinner. They tried their best to use the knives and forks, but at last gave up in despair, and had to “take to Nature’s implements.”

Then a Christmas-tree—a grand affair—was given for the Indian and the white children of the officers of the fort. The presents were made by hand, and Mrs. Bompas wrote:

“Years ago, in my childhood, when my busy fingers accomplished things of this kind, my dear mother used to tell me I should one day be the head of a toy-shop. How little did she then dream in what way her words would be fulfilled! I actually made a lamb—‘Mackenzie River breed’—all horned and woolly, with sparkling black eyes.”

Many were the wonderful things made for that tree, and great was the delight of those little dark-skinned Indians as they looked upon their first Christmas-tree.

After the excitement had subsided dreary days of waiting followed, when, one Sunday morning, bells were heard, and a dog-team swung into the fort, and there, to the astonishment of all, appeared the Bishop “with white, snowy beard fringed with icicles, in a deer-skin coat and beaver hat and mittens—a present from Fort Rae.” What rejoicing there was! and more rejoicing still when he poured into Mrs. Bompas’s lap the long-looked-for home letters, which had been eight months reaching her. “Dear, precious letters,” says the faithful recorder of these early days, “for which I had so longed and prayed and wept for eight months past! The long silence was broken, the electric chain laid down between England, Darmstadt, and Fort Simpson.”

The Bishop’s experience on this trip by no means prevented him from taking others. Shortly after his return from Fort Rae an incident happened which almost deprived the Church of its heroic missionary. He wished to visit Fort Norman, some 200 miles north of Fort Simpson, and made ready to travel in the dead of winter with several of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s men, who were going that way. On the morning of the departure, Mrs. Bompas went to the Indian camp and asked the natives, who were to accompany the travellers, to look after the Bishop. “Are we not men?” said one of them, Natsatt by name. “Is he not our Bishop? Koka” (_i.e._, That’s enough.)

And so they started. But on this occasion the Bishop did not go ahead, as was his custom. He lagged behind the sled, travelling slower and slower all the time. Natsatt kept looking back, and when at length the Bishop disappeared from sight, he became alarmed. “Me no feel easy,” he presently remarked; “me not comfortable.” Leaving the rest of the party, who swung on their way, he went back to look for the Bishop. Soon he found him, helpless, in the middle of the trail, bent double, with hands on his knees, trying to walk. He had been seized with fearful cramps, which were rendering him powerless. Natsatt made a fire as quickly as possible, and rubbed the Bishop thoroughly, and after the suffering man was well warmed, with a great effort succeeded in getting him back to the fort. The day was extremely cold—40 degrees below zero. A few minutes more, and the Bishop would have perished on the trail.