C Ihe Ladies c cu. V'VVAN - History and Classics, Department of

274 Notes to Pages 101-111,212Field Note for Wednesdqy 7 JuJyMr, Parsons + Aherdeen hoy in H.B.Co gas hoatDorrien Smith's field note for this date names the gas boat,Bluenose, as well as the Aberdeen boy, Duncan, the mechanic; aswell, it confirms that the ninety-five-mile trip took seventeenhours in the boat. Vyvyan's accounts following the last datedentry in her field notes show that the trip cost $30.00 (227).CHAPTER 16: CHECK TO OUR PROGRESS(8-9 JULY)Vyvyan's exaggeration about the origins of the name"Destruction City" accord well with the additional ominousstatements and allusion to the failure of Laura F razeur.Stronger than anything in the field notes is the chapter's sensethat the women have embarked on an unknown and powerfulwilderness, one which not only defeated many Klondike goldstampeders but, apparently, also effaced, in twenty-eight shortyears, any sign that humans had made a place of it. As the partyis stopped by rising water, the field notes record only anxietyabout the river. The book's repeated and anxious references tothe woman whose guides refused to take her farther do notappear in the field notes, but if the women felt uncertain abouttheir guides at the outset of the trip, perhaps they had otherreasons than the spectre of Laura F razeur.CHAPTER 17: MOODS, RAPIDS AND ISLANDS(10 JULY)This chapter's central episode, Vyvyan's sudden and fearfulcomprehension of their distance from human settlement andtheir helplessness in the face of the wilderness, occurs in thefield notes (ro July) as well as the book. However, the book'sshift in narrative point of view, from the field notes' firstpersonplural "we," which includes Dorrien Smith in theexperience, to the first person-singular narrator, narrows thefocus of the experience. The narrator is thus not only physicallyisolated in the wilderness, but also psychologicallyisolated, alone in her fear and uncertainty. It is interesting tonote by contrast that Dorrien Smith's field note for this dayexpresses no alarm and attests very well, not only to Vyvyan' spublished implication that her own thoughts differed fromGwen's, but also, perhaps, to her description of Gwen as lionhearted:"Saturday lOth: Fine. Some thunder in the p.m. Weleft our camp in the spruce trees at 7 a.m. Clara + I walking on1. bank + climbing along as best we could. keeping view of thecanoe on the opposite side till at last we got in touch. Boy lostaxe + later p.m. we continued a short spell in their company +then had stiff climbing to do + eventually came down to them atthe canoe + with them along a steep hillside + hard rapids. Hada meal at 6 + continued a little way, but canoe got intodifficulties + Lazarus came after us + called us back to camp at 9p.m." When in her book Vyvyan recounted the episode withheightened fear, she was doing so for the fourth time in print.The episode appeared similarly in the articles she published in1931,1933, and 1939, but not in the one published in 1929 inthe GeographicalJournal of the RGS. In it, the persona of a fearlessmale adventurer is emphatic.All our strength and powers of endurance, are they to hesnuffed out like a candle extinguished? Is the Rat a IllalignanteneInY and are we unwelcoIne, fatally dooInedintruders?Eli MacLaren has noted that, although it has no equal in thefield note for 10July, the chapter's reference to the candleseems particularly apposite to the ominous mood of fatal doomwhich Vyvyan aims for in this passage. The women are readingaloud extracts from Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth, in which theimage of the extinguished candle occurs in Macbeth's speech athearing the report of Lady Macbeth's death:To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow.Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,To the last syllable of recorded time;And all our yesterdays have lighted foolsThe way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player.That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,And then is heard no more. It is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing. (5.5.19-28)Then a vague fear tool. hold of me; at first it was lil.e thatlittle cloud in the Bible, no bigger than a Inan's handThis evocative image does justice to the moment, if not to theoriginal source. The biblical cloud brings a providential rain