The Atlantic Monthly/Volume 2/Number 2/A Perilous Bivouac

A PERILOUS BIVOUAC.

It is a pleasant June morning out on the Beauport slopes; the breeze comes laden with perfume from shady Mount Lilac; and it is good to bask here in the meadows and look out upon the grand panorama of Quebec, with its beautiful bay sweeping in bold segments of shoreline to the mouth of the River St Charles. The king-bird, too lazy to give chase to his proper quarry, the wavering butterfly, sways to and fro upon a tall weed; and there, at the bend of the brook, sits an old kingfisher on a dead branch, gorged with his morning meal, and regardless of his reflected image in the still pool beneath. The goguelu^[1] rises suddenly up from his tuft of grass, and, having sung a few staves of his gurgling song, drops down again like a cricket-ball and is no more seen. Smooth-plumaged wax-wings are pruning their feathers in the tamarac-trees; and high up over the waters of the bay sails a long-winged fish-hawk, taking an extended and generally liberal view of sundry important matters connected with the fishery question.

Many a year has gone by since I last looked upon this picture, and then it was a winter scene; for it was near the end of March, which is winter enough in this region, and the blue water of the bay there was flagged over with a rough white pavement of crisp snow. I think I see it now, faintly ruled with two lines of sapins, or young fir saplings,—one marking out the winter road to the Island of Orleans, and the other that from Quebec to Montmorency; and this memory recalls to me how it fell upon a certain day, the incidents of which are expanding upon my mind like those dissolving views that come up out of the dark, I set up a camp-fire just where that wood-barge nods drowsily at anchor, about a mile this side of the town. It was a sort of bivouac a man is not likely to forget in a hurry; not that it makes much of a story, after all,—but a trifling scratch will sometimes leave its mark on a man for life. I was quartered in Quebec then; didn't go much into society, though, because I devoted much of my young energies to shooting and fishing, which were worth any expenditure of energy in those days. And so I restricted my evening rounds of duty to one or two houses which were conducted on the always-at-home principle, walking in and hanging up my wide-awake when it suited me, and staying away when it didn't,—which was about the oftener.

In the winter of eighteen hundred and no matter what, I got three months' leave of absence, with the intention of devoting a great portion of it to a long-planned expedition, an invasion of the wild mountain-region lying north of Quebec, towards the head-waters of the Saguenay,—a district seldom disturbed by the presence of civilized man, but abandoned to the semi-barbarous hunter and trapper, and frequented much by that prince of roving bucks, the shy but stately caribou. I need not go into the details of my two-months' hunt. It was like any other expedition of the sort, about which so much information has already been given to the world in the pleasant narratives of the wandering family of MacNimrod. I succeeded in procuring many hairy and horned trophies of trap and rifle, as well as in converting myself from some semblance of respectability into the veriest looking cannibal that ever breakfasted on an underdone enemy. The return from the chase furnished the little adventure I have alluded to,—a very small adventure, but deeply impressed upon a memory now a good deal cut up with tracks and traces of strange beasts of accidents, quaint "vestiges of creation," ineffaceably stamped upon what poor Andrew Romer used to call the "old red sandstone," in playful allusion to what his friends well knew was a heart of hearts.

The snow lay heavy in the woods, wet and heavy with the breath of coming spring, as I tramped out of them one March morning, and found myself on the queen's highway, within short rifle-shot of the rushing Montmorency, whose roar had reached us through the forest an hour or two before. In the early days of our hunt I had been so lucky as to run down and kill a large moose, whose antlered head was a valuable trophy; and so I confided it to the especial charge of my faithful follower, Zachary Hiver, a brulé or half-breed of the Chippewa nation, who had hunted buffaloes with me on the plains of the Saskatchewan and gaffed my salmon in the swift waters of the Mingan and Escoumains. I had promised him powder and lead enough to maintain his rifle for the probable remainder of his earthly hunting-career, if he succeeded in safely conveying to Quebec the hide and horns of the mammoth stag of the forest. These he had concealed, accordingly, in a safe hiding-place, or cache, to be touched at on our return; and now as he emerged from the dark pine copse, with his ropy locks tasselling his flat skull, and a tattered blanket-coat fluttering in ribbons from his brown and brawny chest, his interest in the venture appeared in the careful manner in which he drew after him a long, slender tobaugan, heavily packed with the hard-won proceeds of trap and gun. Foremost among these were displayed the broad antlers of the moose of my affections, whose skin served as a tarpaulin for the remainder of the baggage, round which it was snugly tucked in with thongs of kindred material.

We halted on a broad ledge of rock by the western verge of the bay of the Falls, glad of an opportunity of enjoying my independence to the last, unfettered by the conventionalities for which I was beginning to be imbued with a savage contempt. Here we set up a primitive kitchen-range, and, having feasted upon cutlets of the caribou, scientifically treated by a skewer process with which Zach was familiar, we lounged like "lazy shepherds" in the sun, and the eye of the Indian flashed as I produced from the folds of my sash a leather-covered flask which did not look as if it was meant to contain water. During the weeks of the chase I had been very careful to conceal this treasure from Zach, knowing how helpless an Indian becomes under the influence of the "fire-water"; and as I had had a pull at it myself only two or three times, under circumstances of unusual adversity and hardship, there still remained in it a very respectable allowance for two, from which I subtracted a liberal measure, handing over the balance to Zach, who gulped down the skiltiwauboh with a fiendish grin and a subsequent inhuman grunt. As I lit my pipe after this satisfactory arrangement, the roar of the mighty Montmorency, whirling down its turbulent perpendicular flood behind a half-drawn curtain of green and azure ice, sounded like exquisite music to my ears, and I looked towards Quebec and blinked at its fire-flashing tin spires and house-tops burning through the coppery morning fog, until my mind's eye became telescopic, and my thoughts, unsentimental though I be, reverted to civilized society and its agréments, and particularly to a certain steep-roofed cottage situated on a suburban road, in the boudoirs of which I liked to imagine one pined for my return. If memory has its pleasures, has it not also its glimpses of regret?—and who can say that the former compensate for the latter? Even now I see her as she used to step out on the veranda,—the lithe Indian girl, rivalling the choicest "desert-flower" of Arabia in the rich darkness of her eyes and hair, and in the warm mantling of her golden-ripe complexion,—unutterably graceful in the thorough-bred ease of her elastic movements,—Zosime MacGillivray, perfect type and model of the style and beauty of the brulée. She was the only child of a retired trader of the old North-West Fur Company and his Indian wife; had been partly educated in England; possessed rather more than the then average Colonial allowance of accomplishments; and was, altogether, so much in harmony with my roving forest-inclinations, that I sometimes thought, half seriously, how pleasant and respectable it would be to have one such at the head of one's camp-equipage, and how much nicer a companion she would be on a hunt than that disreputable old scoundrel, Zach Hiver.

"Pack the tobaugan, Zach! The sun will come out strong by and by, and the longer we tarry here, the heavier the snow will be for our stretch to the Citadel. Up, there! lève-toi, cochon!" shouted I, in the elegant terms of address which experience had taught me were the only ones that had any effect upon the stolid sensibilities of the half-breed,—at the same time administering to him a kick that produced a thud and a grunt, as if actually bestowed on the unclean quadruped to which I had just likened him. The ragamuffin was very slow this time in getting the traps together on the tobaugan, and, if I had not attended to the matter myself, the moose trophy, at least, would in all probability have been left to perish, and would never have pointed a moral and adorned a tale, as it now does, in its exalted position among the reminiscences of things past. At length we got under way, and, as a walk over the open plain offered a pleasing variety to a man who had been feeling his way so long through the dim old woods, I determined to descend from the ridge of Beauport, and proceed over the snow-covered surface of the bay, in a bird's-eye line, to our point of destination. Winding down the almost perpendicular declivity, sometimes sliding down on our snow-shoes, with the tobaugan running before us, "on its own hook," at a fearful pace, and sometimes obliged to descend, hand under hand, by the tangled roots and shrubs, we soon found ourselves on the great white winter-prairie of the grand St. Lawrence, upon which I strode forward with renewed energy, steering my course, like the primitive steeple-chasers of my boyhood's home, upon the highest church-tower looming up from the heterogeneous huddle of motley houses that just showed their gable-tops over the low ring of mist which mingled with the smoke of the Lower Town.

After a progress of about five miles, I found I had very materially widened the distance between myself and Zach, who, encumbered by the baggage, and by the spring snow which each moment accumulated in wet heavy cakes upon his snow-shoes, was now a good mile in my rear. This I was surprised at, as he generally outwalked me, even when carrying on his back a heavy load, with perhaps a canoe on his head, cocked-hat fashion, as he was often obliged to do in our fishing-excursions to the northern lakes. It now occurred to me, however, that I had incautiously left the brandy-flask in his charge, and when he came up with me I gathered from his fishy eye, and the thick dribblings of his macaronic gibberish,—which was compounded of sundry Indian dialects and French-Canadian patois, coarsely ground up with bits of broken English,—that the modern Circe, who changes men into beasts, had wrought her spells upon him; a circumstance at which I was terribly annoyed, as foreboding an ignominious entry into the city by back-lane and sally-port, instead of my long-anticipated triumphal progress up St. Louis Street, bearded in splendor, bristling with knife and rifle, and followed by my wild Indian coureur-des-bois, drawing my antlered trophies after him upon the tobaugan as upon a festival car.

"Kaween nishishin! kaw-ween!" howled the big monster, in his mixed-pickle macaronio,—"je me sens saisi du mal-aux-raquettes, je ne pouvons plus. Why you go so dam fast, when hot sun he make snow for tire, eh? Sacr-r-ré raquettes! il me semble qu'ils se grossissent de plus en plus à chaque démarche. Stop for smoke, eh?—v'là! good place for camp away there, kitchee hogeemaus endaut, big chief's house may-be!" grinned he, as he indicated with Indian instinct and a wavering finger a structure of some kind that peered through the fog at a short distance on our left.

We were now within about a mile of Quebec. The Indian's intoxication had increased to a ludicrous extent, so that to have ventured into the town with him must have resulted in a reckless exposure of myself to the just obloquy and derision of the public; while, on the other hand, if I left him alone upon the wide world of ice, and dragged the tobaugan to town myself, the unfortunate brulé must inevitably have stepped into some treacherous snow-drift or air-hole, and thus miserably perished. So I made up my mind for a camp on the ice; and, diverging from our course in the direction pointed out by the Indian, we soon arrived at the object indicated by him, which proved to be a stout framework about twelve feet square, constructed of good heavy timber solidly covered with deal boarding, and conveying indubitable evidence, to my thinking, of the remains of one of the cabanes or shanties commonly erected on the ice by those engaged in the "tommy-cod" fishery,—portable structures, so fitted together as to admit of being put up and removed piecemeal, to suit the convenience of their proprietors. I blessed mentally the careless individual who had thus unconsciously provided for our especial shelter; and as the wind had now suddenly arisen sharp from the west, driving the fog before it with clouds of fine drifting snow, I was glad to get under the lee of the providential wall, in the hospitable shelter of which, before two minutes had elapsed, "Stephano, my drunken butler," was snoring away like a phalanx of bullfrogs, with his head bolstered up somehow between the great moose-horns, and his brawny limbs rolled carelessly in the warm but somewhat unsavory skin of the dead monarch of the forest. I gloried in his calm repose; for the day was yet young, and I flattered myself that a three-hours' snooze would restore his muddled intellects to their normal mediocrity of useful instinct, and that I might still achieve my triumphal entry into the city,—a procession I had been so much in the habit of picturing to myself over the nocturnal camp-fire, that it had become a sort of nightmare with me. Indeed, I had idealized it roughly in my pocket-book, intending to transfer the sketches, for elaboration on canvas, to Tankerville, the regimental Landseer, whose menagerie of living models, consisting of two bears, one calf-moose, one loup-cervier, three bloated raccoons, and a bald eagle, formed at once the terror and delight of the rising generation of the barracks.

Having got up a small fire with the assistance of the chips and scraps of wood that were plentifully scattered around, I placed my snow-shoes one on top of the other, and sat down on them,—a sort of preparatory step in my transition to civilization, for they had somewhat the effect of a cane-bottomed chair minus the legs and without a back. Then I filled my short black pipe from the seal-skin tobacco-pouch, the contents of which had so often assuaged my troubled spirit when I brooded over griefs which then were immature, if not imaginary. It was a very pleasant smoke, I recollect,—so pleasant, that I rather congratulated myself upon my position; the only drawback to it being that I was shut out from a view of the town, as the wind and drift rendered it indispensable for comfort in smoking that I should keep strictly to leeward of my bulwark. Tobacco is notoriously a promoter of reflection; there must be something essentially retrospective in the nature of the weed. I retired upon the days of my boyhood, my legs and feet becoming clairvoyant of the corduroys and highlows of that happy period of my existence, as the revolving curls of pale smoke exhibited to me, with marvellous fidelity, many quaint successive tableaux of the old familiar scenes of home,—sentimental, some of them—comic, others,—like the domestic incidents revealed with exaggerations on the hazy field of a magic-lantern. I thought of my poor mother, and of the excellent parting advice she gave me,—but more particularly of the night-caps with strings, which she extracted such a solemn promise from me to wear carefully every night in all climates, and which, on the second evening of my sojourn in barracks, were so unceremoniously reduced to ashes in a noisy auto-da-fé. These retrospective pictures were succeeded by others of more modern date, coming round in a progressive series, until I had painted myself up to within a few weeks of my present position, the foreground of my existence. Then I remembered promises made by me of contributions to a certain album,—further contributions,—for I had already furnished several pages of it with food for mind and eye in the form of melancholy verses and "funny" sketches, with brief dramatic dialogues beneath the latter, to elucidate the "story." I particularly recollected having volunteered a translation or imitation of a pretty song in Ruy Blas; and as the fit was upon me, I produced my pocketbook, to commit to paper a version of it which I had mentally devised. The leaves of my book were all filled, however; some with memoranda,—a sort of savage diary it was,—some with sketches of scenes in the wilderness: there was not a corner vacant. Turning towards the planking of my bulwark, I perceived that it was smoothly planed and clean, and to work on it I went, pencil in hand. First I wrote "Zosime MacGillivray," in several different styles of chirography, flourished and plain, and even in old text. Then I sketched out a rough design for an ornamental heading, with a wreath of flowers encircling the words "To Zozzy," and beneath this work of Art I inscribed the effort of my muse, which ran thus:—

Fields and forests rejoice
In their silver-toned throng;
I hear but the voice
Of the bird in thy song!

In April's glad shower
Flash petals and leaves,
Less bright than the flower
Round thy heart that weaves!

Stars waken, stars slumber,
Stars wink in the sky,
Bright numberless number;
But none like thine eye!

For bird-song and flower
And star from above
Combine in thy bower;
Their union is love!

My mind being considerably relieved by this gush of sentiment, I felt myself entitled to unbend a little, and, turning my attention to artistic pursuits, principally of a humorous character, I developed successively many long-pent-up imaginings in the way of severe studies of sundry garrison notables. There was "Bendigo" Phillips, with boxing-gloves fearfully brandished, appearing in the attitude in which he polished off young Thurlow of the R.A., under the pretence of giving him a lesson in the noble art of self-defence, but in reality to revenge himself upon him for an ill-timed interference in a certain affaire du cœur. The agony of young Thurlow, pretending to look pleased, was depicted by a very successful stroke of Art. To the extreme right you might have beheld Vegetable Warren, the staff-surgeon, slightly exaggerated in the semblance of a South-Down wether nibbling at a gigantic Swedish turnip. Written lampoons of the fiercest character accompanied the illustrations. But my boldest effort was an atrocious and libellous cartoon of the commandant of the garrison, popularly known as "Old Wabbles,"—I believe from the preternatural manner in which his wide Esquimaux boots vacillated about his long, lean shanks. This chef d'œuvre was executed upon a rather large scale, and I imparted considerable force and breadth to the design by "coaling in" the shadows with a charred stick. Then calling color to my aid, as far as my limited means admitted, I scraped from the edges of the moose-hide a portion of the red-streaked fat, and, having impasted therewith the bacchanalian nose of my subject, I stepped back a few paces to contemplate the effect. So ludicrous was the resemblance, that I laughed outright in the pride of my success,—a transient hilarity, nipped suddenly in the bud by the loud boom of a cannon, accompanied rather than followed by a rushing sound a few feet above my head, and a thundering bump and splutter upon the ice some thirty or forty yards beyond me, as the heavy shot skipped and ricochetted away with receding bounds to its vanishing-point somewhere in the neighborhood of the Island of Orleans. Two strides to the front, and a glance at the broad, black ring emblazoned on the hitherto disregarded face of my bulwark, and the truth flashed upon my staggering senses.

I was encamped in the lee of the bran-new artillery target, and they were just commencing practice, on this fine bright afternoon, by pitching thirty-two-pound shot into and about it, at intervals—as I pretty well knew—of distressingly uncertain duration. With frantic strength I grasped the Indian by the neck, and, plunging madly through the snow, dragged him after me a few paces in the direction of our former track; but, hampered as he was by the moose-trappings, the weight was too much for me, and I dropped him, instinctively continuing to run with breathless speed, until, having gained a considerable distance away from any probable line of fire, I flung myself down upon the snow, and was somewhat startled at finding Zach very close upon my tracks, tearing along on all fours with a vague sense of danger of some kind, and looking, in his strange envelope, like an infuriated bull-moose in the act of charging a hunter. A shot struck the corner of the target just as we got away from it, slightly splintering it, so as to give the bewildered Indian a pleasant practical lesson in the science of gunnery and fortification.

Two minutes elapsed,—three minutes,—five minutes,—not another shot; but it might commence again at any moment, and I stood at a respectful distance from the danger, uncertain what course to pursue for the recovery of my traps, all of which, rifle, snow-shoes, and tobaugan loaded with spoils, lay in pledge with the two-faced friend whose treacherous shelter had no longer any charm for me, when I beheld several sleighs approaching us from the town at a fearful pace, in the foremost of which, when within range of rifle, I recognized Old Wabbles, the commandant.

"Who the Devil are you?" shouted he, as he drove right at us. "Two Indians, ha!—somebody said it was one Indian with a moose after him, a man and a moose. Where's Thurlow?—he had the telescope, and asserted there was a man running round the target and a moose after him. I don't see the moose." Zach had dropped the hide and horns from his "recreant limbs," and was seated solemnly upon the snow, in all the majesty of his native dirt.

"By Jove, it's Kennedy!" cried Tankerville, whose artistical eye detected me through my hirsute and fluttering disguise. "What a picturesque object!—I congratulate you, old fellow!—easiest and pleasantest way in the world of making a living!—lose no time about it, but send in your papers at once!—continue assiduously to neglect your person, and you're worth a guinea an hour for the rest of your prime, as a living model on the full pay of the Academies!"

I was soon bewildered by a torrent of inquiries from all sides: as to how I came behind the target,—what success I had had in the woods,—how many miles I had come to-day,—whether I had got the martin-skin I had promised to this one, and the silver fox I undertook to trap for that,—when, suddenly, a diversion was created by a roar from Phillips, who had proceeded to inspect my spoils behind the target, and now stood looking at my portrait-gallery of living celebrities, his great chest heaving with laughter; and before I could satisfy my inquiring friends, the whole crowd had rushed pell-mell to the exhibition.

"Caught, by all that's lovely!" shouted Phillips, repeating my verses at the top of his voice,—

"The bird-song and flower
And star from above
Combine in thy bower;
Their union is love!"

"Ritoorala loorala loorala loo, ritoorala loorala loorala loo!" chorused everybody, as he sang the last verse to the vulgar melody of 'Tatter Jack Welch,' knocking the poetry out of my constitution at once and forever, like the ashes out of a pipe. "Hooray for Miss Mac! Who should have thought it, Darby?"—That was my pet name in the regiment.

"How like!—how very like!—That's Warren there, nibbling the turnip. And there's Thurlow,—ha! ha! ha! how good! And that—that—that's me, by Jingo!—he he! he! he!—not so good that, somehow,—neck too long by half a foot. But the Colonel!—only look at his boots!—He must'n't see this, though, by Jove—Choke the Colonel off, boys!—take him round to the front!—do something!" whispered good-natured Symonds, anxious to keep me clear of the scrape.

But it was too late. The last objects that met my view were the ghastly legs of the Commandant, as he strode through the circle in front of my Art-exhibition. I saw no more. A soldier is but a mortal man. Rushing to the nearest cariole,—it was the Commandant's,—I leaped into it, and, lashing the horse furiously towards the town, never pulled rein until I got up to my long-deserted quarters in the Citadel. There I barricaded myself into my own room, directing my servant to proceed to the target for my scattered property. I had still a month's leave of absence before me, availing myself of which, I started next morning for New York, subsequently obtained an extension of leave, sailed for England, and there negotiating an exchange from a regiment whose facings no longer suited my taste for colors, I soon found myself gazetted into a less objectionable one lying at Corfu.

I have never seen Tankerville's famous picture of my triumphal entry into Quebec.

1. This name is given by the French Canadians to the bobolink or rice bunting. It is an old, I believe an obsolete, French word, and means "braggart."