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

276 Notes to Pages 131-139usually awaits the foot that treads among rather than atophummocks. When thirteen men helped Lord Lonsdale crossthe Peel River Portage from Fort McPherson to La PierreHouse in September 1888, he found the hummocks "very verybad" (Krech, Victorian 69). The nrst day's trek westward on theportage had always elicited desperate descriptions from whitetravellers. Alexander Hunter Murray was reminded of the'''Slough of Dis po nd'" (22) in Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queenewhen he spent IIJune 1847 wading his way westward throughthe hummocky-laden lowlands of the Peel's drainage are. ElihuStewart, who crossed the portage inJuly 1906, included thisfeature in his description: "The grass grows in hummocksknown as tete defemme (woman's head). The trail is generallycovered with some water, and one is often tempted to try tostep from one to another of these tufts of grass, but as thesomewhat larger head rests on a slender neck you will soonprefer to wade along the narrow path, after perhaps having afew tumbles" (II7). Vyvyan saved her most interesting remarkon the vegetation for her letter to her mother of 3 August:"these are grassy tussocks with a 2 ft. drop between each, andusually they are too small and wobbly for you to hop along thecrests, so down you go up to the knee, also rather exhausting.How Gwen's ankle survived I don't know, but the AklavikDoctor turned her out of that plaster cast sound as a bell."CHAPTER 21: A DAY OF DAYS (15 JULY)The chapter's nrst three paragraphs amplify the quotation ofVyvyan's field note for I5July, and the sensation that thewomen were lords and conquerors appears only in the book.There are SOIne feelings too deep for tearsVyvyan here paraphrases lines from English Romantic poetWilliam Wordsworth's poem "Ode: Intimations ofImmortality": "To me the meanest flower that blows can give IThoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."Loon Lake Inarks the Divide between Canada and AlaskaOn the Department of Mines and Technical Surveys' modernmap of the region-II6P, Bell River-Vyvyan's "Loon Lake" isnamed Summit Lake. Her choice of name likely comes fromSittichinli, for "Loon" is the direct English translation of theGwich'in name for the lake-Daadzaiivim (GSCI no. 13). Thepertinent aerial photographs of McDougall Pass are Ar7622-135, from the three forks of the Rat River on the east to LongLake on the west, and Ar7622-I33, showing Long Lake,Summit Lake, and the stream flowing westward to connect tothe Little Bell River (copies in Goering [33,35]). Of course,Vyvyan means that Loon Lake straddles, not the Divide betweenCanada and Alaska (one does not exist), but, rather, the Dividebetween the Mackenzie River and Yukon River basins, whichmarks the boundary between the Northwest and Yukon territories.CHAPTER 22: A GRIZZLY BEAR (16-17 JULY)As Vyvyan notes, it is only with the book's retrospection thatthe hunt becomes both "the most exciting experience of thewhole trip" and a shameful act. She could well feel shame forher own part-although her shot did not register-but herproprietary notion is misplaced. The desire for fresh meatcomes from the men, they kill the bear, and it provides themwith food for the trek back over the Peel River Portage to FortMcPherson; certainly, it is as much Gwich'in/Gwitchin riverand country as it is an animal refuge. Vyvyan's subsequent useof the term "murder" seems a product of histrionic retrospection.Neither the sense of shame nor "murder" make anappearance in the field notes for 16 and 17 July; both tend tocontradict her published assessment: "as the days went by wewere filled with admiration for [Sittichinli' sl knowledge of wildlife which amounted to an almost mystical union with his owncountry" (99). The book alone includes her resentment of howhigh the men's wages are, although both field notes and bookpraise the men's work.Perhaps because Vyvyan's own field notes do not mentionwhen it was discarded, the lump of bear's meat stays with thewomen in the book much longer than it did in DorrienSmith's field notes: her entry for Sunday, I8July only the dayafter the men were paid off, mentions setting off from their"lovely" camp at I p.m., "leaving the sack of grizzly bear by theriver."American Margaret Murie, whose book of Alaskan travelsappeared a year after Vyvyan' s, travelled up the Porcupine Riverwith her husband and young baby and withJess Rust inJune1926, the previous month. Her published views contrast withVyvyan's: "At the mouth of the Coleen River, on the lush goose-