It occasionally happens that I need to write the Library Corner regular article, because the current holder of the Club’s Library is not able to do it for some reason. I have been taken to task for writing, on such an occasion, about a canoeing book that is not in our library, but if that person could have chosen a book from the Library and posted it to me, it would have been much less effort to have written the article without bringing me in. So now I am going to commit the same crime. I hope to add an HTML copy of each of the books I mention to the Library, in the near future.
Lately I have been looking through the earlier books of that prolific nineteenth century writer of adventure stories, R.M. Ballantyne, who lived 1825-1894. When he left school aged 16 he sailed to Canada to work for the Hudson Bay Company. He was interested in all he saw, and he loved the experience of living in the far north, travelling by canoe and by dog-sleigh: he wrote a number of letters for his friends at home telling them all about it. Towards the end of his stay in Canada he wrote a book about the life, just for his family and friends, but when he got home he was persuaded to have it published, under the name “Hudson Bay” (1850). It makes fascinating reading, and I have loved re-reading it, as also some of his other books about Canada and the canoeing and backwoods life. One of these books, “Ungava”, has been a great favourite of mine for nearly sixty years now. Another well-told tale about canoeing is “The Young Fur Traders” (1855). Ballantyne was good at drawing and painting, and some of his books are illustrated by himself, but the early ones about Canada have colour illustrations which are based upon RMB’s own paintings.
I have been buying these books through the internet, using www.bookfinder.com . But occasionally it is worth looking through an old bookshop to see if there are any old canoeing authors that one has missed. One such that I found a few weeks ago was “By Canoe and Dog-Train Among the Cree and Salteaux Indians” (1892) by the missionary Egerton Ryerson Young, and I would like to quote a few lines from pages 68-69: –
On one of these early trips we came to a place where for many miles the moving ice fields stretched out before us. One narrow channel of open water only was before us. Anxious to get on, we dashed into it, and rapidly paddled ourselves along. I had two experienced Indians, and so had no fear, but expected some novel adventures – and had them with interest.
Our hopes were that the wind would widen the channel, and thus let us into open water. But, to our disappointment, when we had got along a mile or so in this narrow open space, we found the ice was quietly but surely closing in upon us. As it was from four to six feet thick, and of vast extent, there was power enough in it to crush a good-sized ship; so it seemed that our frail birchbark canoe would have but a poor chance.
I saw there was a reasonable possibility that when the crash came we could spring on to the floating ice. But what should we do then? was the question, with canoe destroyed and us on floating ice far from land.
However, as my Indians kept perfectly cool, I said nothing, but paddled away and watched for the development of events. Nearer and nearer came the ice; soon our channel was not fifty feet wide. Already behind us the floes had met, and we could hear the ice grinding and breaking as the enormous masses met in opposite directions. Now it was only about twenty feet from side to side. Still the men paddled on, and I kept paddling in unison with them. When the ice was so close that we could easily touch it on either side with our paddles, one of the Indians quietly said, “Missionary, will you please give me your paddle?” I quickly handed it to him, when he immediately thrust it with his own into the water, holding down the ends of them so low horizontally under the canoe that the blade end was out of water on the other side of the boat. The other Indian held his paddle in the same position, although from the other side of ths canoe. Almost immediately after the ice crowded in upon us. But as the points of the paddles were higher than the ice, of course they rested upon it for an instant. This was what my cool-headed, clever men wanted. They had a fulcrum for their paddles, and so they pulled carefully on the handle ends of them, and, the canoe sliding up as the ice closed in and met with a crash under us, we found ourselves seated in it on the top of the ice. The craft, although only a frail birch-bark canoe, was not in the least injured.
As we quickly sprang out of our canoe, and carried it away from where the ice had met and was being ground into pieces by the momentum with which it met, I could not but express my admiration to my men at the clever feat.
After some exciting work we reached the shore, and there patiently waited until the wind and sun cleared away the ice, and we could venture on.
Niick Hodson, Editor