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Updated: May 9, 2025
To- morrow we will tackle the 2-mile portage with light hearts. We are 3 miles south of where Low's map places us. Am beginning to suspect that the Nascaupee River, which flows through Seal Lake, also comes out of Michikamau, and that Low's map is wrong. Bully stunt if it works out that way. Saw lots of caribou and fresh bear tracks. Trout went fine for supper. Flies very bad.
Daring starvation, we should on the morrow start overland and see what lay beyond the hills to the northward. "Michikamau or Bust!" was still our slogan. There we went into camp for the day in order that Hubbard might rest, as he was still weak from the effects of his recent illness.
The Indians pushed desperately on overland, but one by one they fell, until at last the gaunt fiend, Starvation, had claimed them all. Since that time no Indian has ever travelled that trail the route to Michikamau upon which we had stumbled was thereupon abandoned.
Michikamau, it might be explained, means, in the Indian tongue, big water so big you cannot see the land beyond; Michikamats means a smaller body of water beyond which land may be seen. So somebody has paradoxically defined it "a little big lake."
My heart sank as this was interpreted to me. In that case I could no longer entertain any hope of being in time for the ship. It would mean, too, the entire journey back in winter weather. I had counted that even if we missed the ship we could probably reach Lake Michikamau on the return before winter set in; but that also would be impossible.
Tuesday, August 18th. Temp. 28 degrees at 4 A.M. Clear sky in morning. Much worried last night and this morning, about way to Michikamau. Started early, ready to go at the job harder than ever. Lake expansions, rapids, no signs of Indians. Afraid this a bad stretch which Indians avoided. Stopped at 10 A.M. for tea. Caught fourteen big trout there, in few minutes.
Hubbard had planned to penetrate the Labrador peninsula from Groswater Bay, following the old northern trail of the Mountaineer Indians from Northwest River Post of the Hudson's Bay Company, situated on Groswater Bay, one hundred and forty miles inland from the eastern coast, to Lake Michikamau, thence through the lake and northward over the divide, where he hoped to locate the headwaters of the George River.
Again the silence. The northern lights flashed and swept in fantastic shapes across the sky, illuminating the fir tops in the valley and making the white lichens gleam on the barren hill above us. We thought of the lake ahead with its old wigwams, and the promise it held out of an easy trail to Michikamau made us feel sure that the worst part of our journey was ended.
"All right," said I, laughing at Pete's fancy. "I hope the hill will have a name to-day." It was really a day of anxiety for me, for if Michikamau were not visible from the mountain top with the wide view of country that it must offer, then we were too far away from the lake to hope to reach it.
Neither John nor William had been to Lake Michikamau by this route since they were young lads, but they told us that the Indians, when traveling very light without their families, used to make the journey in twenty-three days. During my previous stay in Labrador one Indian told me it could be done in ten days, while another said that Indians traveling very fast would require about thirty days.
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