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Updated: May 11, 2025
Erlandson the difficulties of the inland route, and also that a great number of the natives had gone to Esquimaux Bay, with the intention of remaining there, I considered it incumbent upon me to visit that quarter at an early period of the winter, and I accordingly set out from Fort Chimo on the 2d of January. I submit the following narrative of my journey to the reader.
Fort Chimo is the chief establishment of the fur trading companies on Ungava Bay, and is the farthest off and most isolated station in northern Labrador.
At Fort Chimo the Hudson's Bay Company set aside two small buildings to his use, one for a chapel, the other a little cabin in which he lives. Here we found him one day with a pot of high-smelling seal meat cooking for his dogs and a pan of dough cakes frying for himself. With Stewart in this cabin I spent many delightful hours.
So thoroughly correct were they in this supposition, that when Edith was seated in her sledge for a trial trip, and Chimo harnessed, he ran away with her and gave Frank a chase of half a mile over the river ere he condescended to stop in his wild career. But the intended excursion was suddenly interrupted and postponed, by an event which we shall relate in the next chapter.
No one finds fault with this, not even the women, for it is an Indian custom immemorial for the woman to do all the hard, physical work. The Mountaineer Indians that we met on the George River, and one Indian who visited Fort Chimo while we were there, are the only ones of the Labrador that I have ever seen drive dogs.
He still retains, however, a lingering affection for the spot where he had spent so many happy days, and at least once a year he undertakes a solitary journey to the rugged mountains that encircled Fort Chimo. As in days of yore, with wallet on shoulder and seal-spear in hand, the giant strides from rock to rock along the now silent banks of the Caniapuscaw River.
Another spring and an agile bound sent him headlong into the pool about a yard from the spot where La Roche had last sunk. Scarcely had he disappeared when the dog Chimo bounded towards the scene of action, and, with what intent no one could tell, leaped also into the water. By this time Frank, Stanley, and nearly all the party had assembled on the bank of the river, ready to render assistance.
In another moment she beheld Chimo bounding towards a gaunt savage-looking wolf, which stood close beside the body of a man extended at full length upon the snow. At first the wolf did not seem inclined to retreat, but the shriek which Edith uttered on suddenly beholding the scene before her induced him to turn tail and fly.
At this moment Edith who had been for the last few minutes occupied in alternately drying her eyes and kissing her hands to a group of little children who had been her play-fellows during her sojourn at the fort uttered a loud exclamation. "Oh! oh! papa, mamma Chimo! we've forgot Chimo! Oh me! don't go away yet!" "So we have!" said her father; "dear me, how stupid to forget our old friend! Hallo!
When the sun had set that night, and the song of the sailors had ceased, and most of the wearied inhabitants of Fort Chimo were enjoying a fragrant pipe after the labours of the day, Frank and Stanley seated themselves, one on either side of the fire-place, with Mrs Stanley and Edith in front of the hearth between them.
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