At The Hotel, Also Awaiting The Scows, Was A Body Of Four
(Dis-)Mounted Police, Bound Like Ourselves For The Far North.
The
officer in charge turned out to be an old friend from Toronto, Major
A. M. Jarvis.
I also met John Schott, the gigantic half-breed, who
went to the Barren Grounds with Caspar Whitney in 1895. He seemed
to have great respect for Whitney as a tramper, and talked much of
the trip, evidently having forgotten his own shortcomings of the
time. While I sketched his portrait, he regaled me with memories
of his early days on Red River, where he was born in 1841. 1 did
not fail to make what notes I could of those now historic times.
His accounts of the Antelope on White Horse Plain, in 1855, and
Buffalo about the site of Carberry, Manitoba, in 1852, were new
and valuable light on the ancient ranges of these passing creatures.
All travellers who had preceded me into the Barren Grounds had
relied on the abundant game, and in consequence suffered dreadful
hardships; in some cases even starved to death. I proposed to rely
on no game, but to take plenty of groceries, the best I could buy
in Winnipeg, which means the best in the world; and, as will be
seen later, the game, because I was not relying on it, walked into
camp every day.
But one canoe could not carry all these provisions, so most of it
I shipped on the Hudson's Bay Company scows, taking with us, in
the canoe, food for not more than a week, which with camp outfit
was just enough for ballast.
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