Part 19 (2/2)
On Great Slave River, the higher lat.i.tude is offset by lower alt.i.tude, and on June 2, 1907, while among the tall white spruce trees I measured one of average size--118 feet high, 11 feet 2 inches in girth a foot from the ground (3 feet 6 1/2 inches in diameter), and many black poplars nearly as tall were 9 feet in girth.
But the stunting effect of the short summer became marked as we went northward. At Fort Smith, June 20, I cut down a jackpine that was 12 feet high, 1 inch in diameter, with 23 annual rings at the bottom; 6 feet up it had 12 rings and 20 whorls. In all it appeared to have 43 whorls, which is puzzling. Of these 20 were in the lower part. This tree grew in dense shade.
At Fort Resolution we left the Canadian region of large timber and entered the stunted spruce, as noted, and at length on the timber line we saw the final effort of the forests to combat Jack Frost in his own kingdom. The individual history of each tree is in three stages:
First, as a low, thick, creeping bush sometimes ten feet across, but only a foot high. In this stage it continues until rooted enough and with capital enough to send up a long central shoot; which is stage No. 2.
This central shoot is like a Noah's Ark pine; in time it becomes the tree and finally the basal thicket dies, leaving the specimen in stage No. 3.
A stem of one of the low creepers was cut for examination; it was 11 inches through and 25 years old. Some of these low mats of spruce have stems 5 inches through. They must be fully 100 years old.
A tall, dead, white spruce at the camp was 30 feet high and 11 inches in diameter at 4 feet from the ground. Its 190 rings were hard to count, they were so thin. The central ones were thickest, there being 16 to the inmost inch of radius; on the outside to the north 50 rings made only 1/2 an inch and 86 made one inch.
Numbers 42 and 43, counting from the outside, were two or three times as thick as those outside of them and much thicker than the next within; they must have represented years of unusual summers.
No. 99 also was of great size. What years these corresponded with one could not guess, as the tree was a long time dead.
Another, a dwarf but 8 feet high, was 12 inches through. It had 205 rings plus a 5-inch hollow which we reckoned at about 100 rings of growth; 64 rings made only 1 3/8 inches; the outmost of the 64 was 2 inches in from the outside of the wood. Those on the outer two inches were even smaller, so as to be exceedingly difficult to count. This tree was at least 300 years old; our estimates varied, according to the data, from 300 to 325 years.
These, then, are the facts for extremes. In Idaho or Connecticut it took about 10 years to produce the same amount of timber as took 300 years on the edge of the Arctic Zone.
CHAPTER x.x.xII
THE TREELESS PLAINS
On August 7 we left Camp Last Woods. Our various specimens, with a stock of food, were secured, as usual, in a cache high in two trees, in this case those already used by Tyrrell seven years before, and guarded by the magic necklace of cod hooks.
By noon (in 3 hours) we made fifteen miles, camping far beyond Twin b.u.t.tes. All day long the boat shot through water crowded with drowned gnats. These were about 10 to the square inch near sh.o.r.e and for about twenty yards out, after that 10 to the square foot for two hundred or three hundred yards still farther from sh.o.r.e, and for a quarter mile wide they were 10 to the square yard.
This morning the wind turned and blew from the south. At 2 P. M.
we saw a band of some 60 Caribou travelling southward; these were the first seen for two or three days. After this we saw many odd ones, and about 3 o'clock a band of 400 or 500. At night we camped on Casba River, having covered 36 miles in 7 hours and 45 minutes.
The place, we had selected for camp proved to be a Caribou crossing.
As we drew near a dozen of them came from the east and swam across.
A second band of 8 now appeared. We gave chase. They spurted; so did we. Our canoe was going over 6 miles an hour, and yet was but slowly overtaking them. They made the water foam around them. Their heads, necks, shoulders, backs, rumps, and tails were out. I never before saw land animals move so fast in the water. A fawn in danger of being left behind reared up on its mother's back and hung on with forefeet. The leader was a doe or a young buck, I could not be sure which; the last was a big buck. They soon struck bottom and bounded along on the sh.o.r.e. It was too dark for a picture.
As we were turning in for the night 30 Caribou came trotting and snorting through the camp. Half of them crossed the water, but the rest turned back when Billy shouted.
Later a band of two hundred pa.s.sed through and around our tents.
In the morning Billy complained that he could not sleep all night for Caribou travelling by his tent and stumbling over the guy ropes.
From this time on we were nearly always in sight of Caribou, small bands or scattering groups; one had the feeling that the whole land was like this, on and on and on, unlimited s.p.a.ce with unlimited wild herds.
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