Ungava

R.M. Ballantyne (continued 8)

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Moses, finding the life of a fur-trader not quite to his taste, rejoined his countrymen, and reverted to killing seals and eating raw blubber. The two Indians also returned to a purely savage life, which, indeed, they had only forsaken for a time. Augustus and Oolibuck died; and the latter left a son, who has already rendered good service as interpreter to the arctic expeditions, as his worthy father did before him. François and Gaspard are still together at one of the posts of the interior. They are now fast friends, and have many a talk over the days when they quarrelled and messed together at Fort Chimo.

As for the poor Esquimaux, they were for a time quite inconsolable at the departure of the fur-traders, and with a species of childlike simplicity, hung about the bay, in the hope that they might, after all, return. Then they went off in a body to the westward, and the region of Ungava, to which they had never been partial, was left in its original dreary solitude. It may be that some good had been done to the souls of these poor natives during their brief intercourse with the traders. We cannot tell, and we refrain from guessing or speculating on a subject so serious. But of this we are assured—if one grain of the good seed has been sown, it may long lie dormant, but it cannot die.

Maximus accompanied his countrymen, along with Aneetka and Old Moggy, who soon assumed the native costume, and completely identified herself with the Esquimaux. Maximus was now a great man among his people, who regarded with deep respect the man who had travelled through the lands of the Indians, had fought with the red men, single-handed, and had visited the fur-traders of the south. But the travelled Esquimaux was in reality a greater man than his fellows supposed him to be. He fully appreciated the advantages to be derived from a trading-post near their ice-girt lands, and resolved, when opportunity should offer, to do all in his power to strengthen the friendship now subsisting between the Indians and the Esquimaux of Ungava, and to induce his countrymen, if possible, to travel south towards the establishment on James’s Bay.

He still retains, however, a lingering affection for the spot where he had spent so many happy days, and at least once a year he undertakes a solitary journey to the rugged mountains that encircled Fort Chimo. As in days of yore, with wallet on shoulder and seal-spear in hand, the giant strides from rock to rock along the now silent banks of the Caniapuscaw River. Once again he seats himself on the flat rock beside the spring, and gazes round in sadness on those wild, majestic hills, or bends his eye upon the bright green spot that indicates the ancient site of the trading-post, not a vestige of which is now visible, save the little wooden cross that marks the lonely grave of Dick Prince; and the broad chest of the giant heaves with emotion as he views these records of the past, and calls to mind the merry shouts and joyous songs that used to gladden that dreary spot, the warm hearth at which he was wont to find a hearty welcome, and the kind comrades who are now gone for ever. Ungava spreads, in all its dark sterility, around him, as it did in the days before the traders landed there; and that bright interval of busy life, in which he had acted so prominent a part, seems now but the fleeting fancy of a bright and pleasant dream.

The End.