Runes of the North by Sigurd F Olson

Author:Sigurd F Olson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-10-28T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

THE PAYS PLAT

W EST OF Port Arthur, between the port and Nipigon, lies the Pays Plat. Someone had mentioned trout in the stream and I pictured just another river with a bridge of steel and concrete. It would look, I imagined, like any one of the many beautiful streams along the north shore of Lake Superior, brawling down from the highlands through black, desperate gorges with swirling foam-laced pools below them, the inevitable sand bars at the mouth where they emptied into the broad, slow wash of the lake.

When we reached the Pays Plat all thoughts of fishing left me for here was a vision of the past, of the days before the road. Long ago the voyageurs of the fur brigades, in their great Montreal canoes, following the treacherous shoal areas of the coast from St. Ignace Island to Thunder Bay, had given it that name. It means relatively flat, low country. The valley through which the river ran was a green, open meadow, spruce trees hemming it in where the hills came down. An old church and a graveyard lay close to the road, the stones covered with moss and lichens. Crude picket fences guarded some of the graves.

Cars roared beside them now, traffic toward the famous Nipigon, Terrace Bay, Michipicoten, and to the cities of the east. While we were there it was raining. Mist covered the valley and for a moment the sound of motors was gone. The valley of the Pays Plat was quiet, as it used to be.

Upstream and on either side of the river were scattered log cabins, the homes of those who, after living in the wilderness of the back country, were hungry for the warmth of old friendships and the waves of Lake Superior. My thoughts went back to a world of long ago, when neither the road nor the cities of Port Arthur and Duluth were even thought of. The Pays Plat was then a mission and a trading post for the Indians and French who trapped and gathered furs and lived their simple, primitive lives.

Now fishermen come with strange equipment, hip boots, baskets and rods, to fish for speckled trout below the rapids and the falls. They arrive in beautiful cars, camp along the shore, take pictures of the quaint weather-beaten church and the cabins; some have great trailer houses larger than the cabins themselves. There are hundreds everyday, and the roar never ends. Always in a hurry, they are going east and west as though their lives depended on speed, as though it were wrong to stay too long. At night their fires are bright along the lake and sometimes they gather around them to sing.

While I stood there I heard a woman singing, over by the church, a song I had heard that very morning over my radio at Port Arthur. The voice was soft and melodious and I recognized the minor key and the quaver of the Chippewa though the old song she sang was strange to those of Indian blood.

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