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Stopped at noon three-quarters of an hour for observation. Northwest River runs through spruce-covered valley, between high hills, easily seen from lake, but not in river as spruce is too close. In many places high banks, many turns, many little rapids. Water low. Have to pole and track. See that we have our work cut out. Doubt if we can make more than 10 miles a day up this river.
The river up which we started to ascend with light hearts was the Susan, a river which was to introduce us promptly to heart-breaking hardships, a river which is to me associated with the most tragic memories. On the southerly side of the little lake Porcupine Hill raises its spruce-covered head a thousand feet above the water.
Timber was his objective. Not a hundred acres of it, nor a thousand, but tens of thousands, even a hundred thousand acres of spruce-covered hills was the goal he had set. To control his valley he must have money; to get money for his developments he must have timber. Also, ownership of vast limits of growing spruce was necessary to the control of the valley.
With the hope of reaching Pottle's Bay before dark we started forward early, and at one o'clock in the afternoon were in the soft snow of the spruce-covered neck. Traveling was very bad and progress so slow that darkness found us still amongst the scrubby firs.
Duncan was to follow later in the evening in his rowboat with some of our outfit which we left in his charge. Silently we paddled through the "little lake." The clouds hung somber and dull with threatening rain, and a gentle breeze wafted to us now and again a bit of fragrance from the spruce-covered hills above us. Almost before I realized it we were at the rapid.
Some four miles farther up to the northwest, the river itself, where it was choked with blocks of ice, made its appearance and threaded its way down to the southeast until it was finally lost in the spruce-covered valley. Beyond, bits of Grand Lake, like silver settings in the black surrounding forest, sparkled in the light of the rising sun.
In a little while he located it, a well-defined path, and we walked across it half a mile to another and considerably larger lake in which was a small, round, moundlike, spruce-covered island so characteristic of the Labrador lakes. On our way back to the first lake Pete called my attention to a fresh caribou track in the hard earth.
Just below Duncan's tilt is a spruce-covered island, but the mainland has a stunted new growth of spruce, with a few white birch, covering the wreck of the primeval forest that was flame swept thirty odd years ago.
Hurrying into my clothes, I went on deck, from which, through the slight haze that hung over the water, I could discern the lights of a ship, and beyond, dimly visible, the old familiar line of Post buildings showing against the dark spruce-covered hills behind, where the great silent forest begins.
It was all pure white, rolling in gentle undulations where the ice-jams of the freeze-up had formed. North and south, as far as his eye could see, it was unbroken white, save for a dark hair-line that curved and twisted from around the spruce-covered island to the south, and that curved and twisted away into the north, where it disappeared behind another spruce-covered island.
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