Behind me in my canoe sat the
trusty hero whose courage and honour and fidelity made my venture
possible, and who took from my shoulders so much of the
responsibility. Through George Elson I engaged and paid the other
men of my party, and on him I relied to communicate to them my
plans and my directions and desires.
It was a perfect day. The air was clear as crystal, and the water,
the greenwoods, the hills and mountains with lines and patches of
white upon them, the sky with its big, soft clouds made such a
combination of green and blue and silver as I had never seen except
in Labrador. Before five o'clock we had passed the rapid at the
head of the three-mile stretch of river draining Grand Lake to Lake
Melville, to which alone the natives give the name Northwest River,
and turned into Grand Lake.
The thought of Grand Lake had troubled me a little. It is forty
miles long and four miles wide, and only a little wind is needed to
make such a body of water impassable for loaded canoes. M. Duclos
had offered his yacht to take us to the mouth of the Nascaupee
River, but when we were ready to start there was not enough wind to
carry her past the rapid, and we decided not to wait.
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