Island of Skulls
We landed to-day on the “Island of Skulls,” an ancient sepulchre of the Hurons. Some skulls and bones were scattered about, with the rough stones which had once been heaped over them. The spot was most wild and desolate, rising from the water edge in successive ledges of rock to a considerable height, with a few blasted gray pines here and there, round which several pair of hawks were wheeling and uttering their shrill cry. We all declared we would not dine on this ominous island, and proceeded. We doubled a remarkable cape mentioned by Henry as the Pointe aux Grondines. There is always a heavy swell here, and a perpetual sound of breakers on the rocks, whence its name. Only a few years ago a trader in his canoe, with sixteen people, were wrecked and lost on this spot.
We also passed within some miles of the mouth of the Rivière des Français, the most important of all the rivers which flow into Lake Huron.53 It forms the line of communication for the north-west traders from Montreal; the common route is up the Ottawa River, across Lake Nippissing, and down the River Français into Lake Huron, and by the Sault-Sainte-Marie into Lake Superior. Pray have a map before you during this voyage.
Leaving behind this cape and river, we came again upon lovely groups of Elysian islands, channels winding among rocks and foliage, and more fields of water-lilies. In passing through a beautiful channel, I had an opportunity of seeing the manner in which an Indian communicates with his friends when en route. A branch was so arranged as to project far across the water and catch the eye: in a cleft at the extremity a piece of birch bark was stuck with some hieroglyphic marks scratched with red ochre, of which we could make nothing—one figure, I thought, represented a fish.
To-day we caught eleven bass, shot four pigeons, also a large water-snake—which last I thought a gratuitous piece of cruelty. We dined upon a large and picturesque island—large in comparison with those we usually selected, being perhaps two or three miles round; it was very woody and wild, intersected by deep ravines, and rising in bold, abrupt precipices. We dined luxuriously under a group of trees: the heat was overpowering, and the mosquitoes very troublesome.
After dinner we pursued our course through an archipelago of islets, rising out of the blue waves, and fringed with white water-lilies. Little fairy Edens, of such endless variety in form and colour, and of such wondrous and fantastic beauty, I know not how to describe them.
We landed on one, where there was a rock so exactly resembling the head and part of a turtle, that I could have taken it for sculpture. The Indians look upon it as sacred, and it is customary for all who pass to leave an offering in money, tobacco, corn, &c., to the spirit. I duly left mine, but I could see by the laughing eyes of Jacques and Louis, that “the spirit” was not likely to be the better for my devotion.
Mr. Jarvis asked me to sing a French song for the voyageurs, and Louis looked back with his bright arch face, as much as to say, “Pray do,” when a shout was heard from the other canoe “A mink! A mink!”54 and all the paddles were now in animated motion. We dashed up among the reeds, we chased the creature up and down, and at last to a hole under a rock; the voyageurs beat the reeds with their paddles, the gentlemen seized their guns; there were twenty-one men half frantic in pursuit of a wretched little creature, whose death could serve no purpose. It dived, but rose a few yards farther, and was seen making for the land: a shot was fired, it sprang from the water; another, and it floated dead;—thus we repaid the beauty, and enjoyment, and lavish loveliness spread around us with pain and with destruction.
I recollect that as we passed a lovely bit of an island, all bordered with flags and white lilies, we saw a beautiful wild-duck emerge from a green covert, and lead into the lake a numerous brood of ducklings. It was a sight to touch the heart with a tender pleasure, and I pleaded hard, very hard, for mercy; but what thorough sportsman ever listened to such a word? The deadly guns were already levelled, and even while I spoke, the poor mother-bird was shot, and the little ones, which could not fly, went fluttering and scudding away into the open lake, to perish miserably.
But what was really very touching was to see the poor gulls: sometimes we would startle a whole bevy of them as they were floating gracefully on the waves, and they would rise soaring away beyond our reach; but the voyageurs suspending their paddles, imitated exactly their own soft low whistle; and then the wretched, foolish birds, just as if they had been so many women, actually wheeled round in the air, and came flying back to meet the “fiery wound.”
The voyageurs eat these gulls, in spite of their fishy taste, with great satisfaction.
I wonder how it is that some of those gentry whom I used to see in London, looking as though they would give an empire for a new pleasure or a new sensation, do not come here? If epicures, they should come to eat white-fish and beavers’ tails; if sportsmen, here is a very paradise for bear-hunting, deer-hunting, otter-hunting;—and wild-fowl in thousands, and fish in shoals; and if they be contemplative lovers of the picturesque, blasés with Italy and elbowed out of Switzerland, let them come here and find the true philosopher’s stone—or rather the true elixir of life—novelty!