By morning the tempest
was at its height, continuing all day and into the night. The
sunset that evening exhibited some of the grandest and wildest
sky scenery we had ever beheld. In the west a vast bank of
luminous orange cloud, edged by torn fringes of green and gray;
in the south a sea of amethyst, and stretching from north to
east masses of steel gray and pearl, shot with brilliant shafts
and tufts of golden vapour. The whole sky streamed with rich
colouring in the fierce wind, as if possessed at once by the
genii of beauty and storm. The boatmen, noting its aspect,
predicted worse weather; but, fortunately, morning belied the
omens--our trials were over.
We were now nearing Shaw's Point, a long willowed spit of land,
called after a whimsical old chief-factor of the Hudson's Bay
Company who had charge of this district over sixty years before.
He appears to have been a man of many eccentricities, one
of which was the cultivation _a la Chinois_ of a very long
finger-nail, which he used as a spoon to eat his egg. But of
him anon. By four p.m. we had rounded his Point, and come into
view of Wyaweekamon--"The Outlet"--a rudimentary street with
several trading stores, a billiard saloon and other accessories
of a brand-new village in a very old wilderness.
Here we were at the treaty point at last, safe and sound, with
new interests and excitements before us; with wild man instead
of wild weather to encounter; with discords to harmonize and
suspicions to allay by human kindness, perhaps by human firmness,
but mainly by the just and generous terms proffered by Government
to an isolated but highly interesting and deserving people.
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