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When I turned down toward the wharf, I found a score of Indians and half-breed trippers unloading freight from a couple of six-fathom birch-bark canoes. Eager men and boys were good-naturedly loading themselves with packs and hurrying away with them to the storehouse, while others were lounging around or applauding the carriers with the heaviest loads.
With them came their clerks, mostly English and Scotch younger sons, with a vast respect for the Company, and a vaster for their Factors daughter. Once in two or three years appeared the inspectors from Winnipeg, true lords of the North, with their six-fathom canoes, their luxurious furs, their red banners trailing like gonfalons in the water.
The building of a six-fathom or "North" canoe generally takes place under a shed erected for the purpose, where there is a clear, level space and plenty of working room. Two principal stakes are driven at a distance apart of thirty-six feet, the length of the craft to be. These are connected by two rows of smaller stakes diverging and converging so as to form the shape of the canoe.
A hundred years ago as many as ten brigades, each numbering twenty six-fathom canoes, sometimes swept along those northern highways and awoke those wild solitudes with the rollicking songs and laughter of fifteen or sixteen hundred voyageurs; but alas for those wonderfully picturesque days of bygone times! The steamboats and the railroads have driven them away.
The soft, rich voices of the crews blended as they quietly chatted and joked and laughed together. In manning six-fathom canoes the bowman are always the most important; the steersman coming next in rank, while the others are called "midmen." The brigade would paddle incessantly for about two hours; then they would "spell", and paddles were laid aside "one smoke." Later, a stern wind came along.
A six-fathom canoe carries from twenty to thirty packages; a York boat, seventy-five packages; a Sturgeon-head scow, one hundred packages; and a Red River cart, six hundred pounds. The carts were made entirely of wood and leather and were hauled by horse or ox.
When we arrived at Fort Consolation, Oo-koo-hoo and his party were greeted by a swarm of their copper-coloured friends, among whom were The Little Pine and his father, mother, and sister. On their way to the Indian shop they passed the canoe shed, where skilled hands were finishing two handsome six-fathom canoes for the use of the Fur Brigade; and they stopped to examine them.
Lastly, it was clearly accessible at any state of the tide, for the six-fathom channel of the Ems estuary runs hard up to it on the south, and thence sends off an eastward branch which closely borders the southern horn, thus offering an anchorage at once handy, deep, and sheltered from seaward gales.
"Up with it, then, men," returned the skipper; and in another minute, for we were only in some six-fathom water, the anchor-stock showed itself above the surface and was run up to the cathead.
With them came their clerks, mostly English and Scotch younger sons, with a vast respect for the Company, and a vaster for their Factor's daughter. Once in two or three years appeared the inspectors from Winnipeg, true lords of the North, with their six-fathom canoes, their luxurious furs, their red banners trailing like gonfalons in the water.