The Discovery Of Slowness (22 page)

For weeks they journeyed through endless forests with gigantic trees, their tops rustling in the wind. It would have been beautiful had it not been for the snowshoes, which felt like punishment for every wrong one might have ever done. They clung to the boots like enormous ducks' feet of wood and webbing, and their weight in pounds turned into hundredweights as they became encrusted
with snow and ice. The human being is designed wrongly for snowshoes; there should be a much greater distance between the ankles. After only a few miles the pain remained steady, for the edge of the duck's foot always hit the same spot. ‘Go slower,' John admonished. ‘You'll conserve energy.'

Back was strong, well-rested and fast. Too fast! Perhaps he just wanted to endure more hardships than John – a rather questionable source of energy, but effective.

Back rushed ahead. Back waited impatiently. Back seized the initiative. And his smile seemed to John to become ever more predatory.

‘Why so fast?' John asked. ‘It's a very long way.'

‘That's why,' replied Back insolently, and grinned. Hepburn was visibly annoyed, but his rank was lower and he had to keep himself in check. Back made him feel he was in the way, though actually it was John who was purposely slowing their pace.

The
voyageurs
looked thoughtfully down their noses and were silent. They could have kept up with Back, but for them this trip was work for pay, pure and simple, and so extra effort should not certainly become routine. Besides, they could tell the difference between a commander and a midshipman.

When they made a rest stop, though Back was far ahead, Hepburn said casually to his superior, ‘He wants to show us up.' With that he put ointment on his sore ankles as if nothing had been said, and John Franklin fidgeted with compass and sextant for a considerable time before replying. ‘Strength can also be something other than mere speed,' he said as he took bearings through the diopter.

It was John Franklin who made these stops, and he did so even when he didn't need them for himself. It was not that the navigator needed the pause, but rather that the pause needed the navigator. This Back was a giant of ambition, but when there were delays he was a dwarf about time.

They arrived at Fort Chipewyan at the end of March. John saw the representatives of the fur-trading companies immediately to
inquire about the promised supplies. It was exactly as he had feared: much amiability, many empty words, supplies nowhere in sight. When he became more stubborn, the amiability cooled and the derision became more pronounced. ‘Everything in my power' – this was how Governor Simpson described his support for the expedition. But, alas, this was not very much – in a brutal and degrading way, it was good for nothing. The Hudson's Bay Company referred them to the North-West Company, and the latter back to Hudson's Bay: they had obviously been fighting for years. Neither wanted to trade at a disadvantage by contributing more to the expedition than the other. Orders sent by the government in London were mere paper here: it was a big country. Moreover, the fur traders and officials didn't think much of naval officers with wanderlust. For them Franklin and his men were only naïve would-be heroes. Going on a journey on foot or in a birchbark canoe? ‘They'll never reach the polar sea,' one of them said within Back's earshot. ‘And if they do, the first Eskimo attack will wipe them out. Why give them supplies when we're so low ourselves?'

And John was told a joke, ostensibly crude yet kindly, though also suggesting something else. ‘You were at Trafalgar. You'll make it. If not with your head, then with your character.'

Back became more and more incensed. He couldn't stand watching how Franklin began by politely accepting these declarations by the local powers before asking anew. He noticed that they laughed about Franklin, and perhaps he feared that some of that derision might be directed at him. When they were alone, he delivered a raging speech to the officials in charge as he would have done it if he had been John Franklin. The sentence ‘We know what game is being played here' occurred several times. That, too, John had to listen to. He tried to calm Back: ‘You must be able to play games you may lose. That they make fun of us is irrelevant. I never knew anything different. And it never stays that way.' ‘You're too good-hearted!' Back exclaimed. ‘You put up with too much.'

John nodded and thought some more. Then he said, ‘I'm more than ten years older than you. I have learned to look stupid up
until the moment they see I am smart, or, even better, until the others seem more stupid than me. Do you believe me?'

It was difficult to comfort Back. John sensed that here, too, he was concerned with something different from what he said.

So Hepburn seemed preferable as a man to talk to, a man who kept faith and didn't grouse about it. One didn't have to deal with him one way or another unless one wanted to. If he didn't exchange a word with Hepburn for days, it was all right, too.

A commander was like a physician: he liked the healthy person better, but most of his time he had to spend with the sick – the sicker, the more time.

In June, Dr Richardson and Hood followed in canoes. After endless sessions with the officials, John brought them round, wearing them down by attrition, with a tactical mix of extreme politeness, constant repetition of the same arguments, and a complete abandonment of any sense of time. He never hinted that anyone might not truly want to support the expedition, refusing even to expose their hypocrisy with accusations: he knew he could play this game longer than the others. Perhaps Back learned a little. Obstinately, John continued to treat that scoundrel Simpson as a friend and patron and became such a nuisance that suddenly provisions for several weeks and a dozen
voyageurs
became available after all. Further supplies of double that amount were to be sent later to Fort Providence. John got it in writing. He assured Simpson with a vigorous handshake, and without batting an eyelid, that his noble and humane attitude would be praised in England.

Now their route led northwards along the Slave River; they were on their way to the coast. The distance from Fort Chipewyan to Fort Providence at the Great Slave Lake amounted to only ninety pipes. They took two days to cross the lake, often completely out of sight of the shore. A violent windstorm forced them to seek shelter on an island – a foretaste of the canoe trip that was in store for them on the Arctic Ocean. The base at Fort Providence, on the northern shore of a bay whose extreme end formed the
estuary of the Yellow Knife river, belonged to the North-West Company. They allowed Franklin to take one of their officials along with him. Friedrich Wentzel was a German who knew several Indian dialects. Unless they succeeded in securing Indian support, they would have to call off the expedition, for the supplies were insufficient by themselves and would have to be supplemented with continual hunting. In this part of the world, only the Indians were skilled enough to hunt extra game for others as well. Wentzel promised to arrange a meeting with the chief of the Copper Indians, who was indebted to the North-West Company and so might be persuaded to lend his warriors as escorts if certain promises were made.

John Franklin noted sadly that he was becoming more and more nervous and irritable the closer they approached their meeting with the Indians. Everything depended on them, and he knew next to nothing about them. He had two interpreters for the Athabaskan language: Pierre Saint-Germain and Jean-Baptiste Adam. Wentzel seemed to possess enormous knowledge, but his way of talking was wearisomely encyclopedic, like that of a collector with a box of index cards. ‘The Tsantsa-Hut-Dinneh are more warlike but also more dependable than the Thlin-Cha-Dinneh, who live farther north and are commonly known as the Dog Rib Nation. Athabaskan is one of the most difficult Indian dialects of the Kenai language, upon which I would not like to elaborate at this point.' Writing of this sort made John even more restless.

The chief of the tribe was called Akaitcho, which roughly means Big Foot. He was reputed to be a prudent man, and that was welcome: fifty years ago the Copper Indians had gone to the polar sea with a fur trader named Hearne, who had not been able to prevent a gruesome massacre of the Eskimos there.

John saw the Indians approach across the lake in a long line of canoes. Behind him, a tent had been erected at the fort. The flag was waving, and next to him the uniformed officers and Hepburn were lined up in formation. On John's orders they had put on their decorations. He wore none himself. His instinct for
dignity told him that, as the highest chief, he should be able to do without them.

Akaitcho climbed out of the first canoe and strode slowly up to the Englishmen without looking right or left, so that John had to take him most seriously. This was not a man who would let his warriors fall upon Eskimos and chop off their hands and feet. Whoever walked this way kept his word.

In contrast to his warriors, the chief wore no feather headdress; he was dressed in mocassins, long blue trousers, and a wide shirt with crossed shoulder-straps hanging loose over his trousers, belt and powder-horn; a beaver cloak hung from his shoulders to the ground.

No word was spoken. He sat motionlessly and smoked the offered pipe and sipped so little of an offered glass of rum that the level of the liquid hardly dropped before he passed it on to his companions.

Then he began to speak, and Saint-Germain interpreted.

He was pleased to see such great chiefs of the whites in their midst. He was prepared to accompany them to the north with his tribe, although he had already had one complaint about his first disappointment: he had been told that the whites had a very strong magic medicine, and that a great medicine man was with them who could call the dead back to life. So he had looked forward to seeing his deceased relatives once more and to being able to speak with them. A few days ago he had been told by Mr Wentzel that this was not possible, and he now felt as though his friends and brothers and sisters had died for the second time. But he was prepared to forget this and to hear what the white chiefs were planning.

John had prepared his response as thoroughly as Akaitcho. He took care to speak even more slowly.

‘I am pleased to see the great chief about whom I have heard so many good words.' Saint-Germain began to translate. It seemed to John as though the interpreter required at least four times more time for the Indian than for the English text. It struck him that Akaitcho bowed slightly several times. Odd how many Indian words could be made of a dozen English words.

‘I was sent by the greatest chief of the inhabited earth, for all of the world's people, white, red, black and yellow, are his children who love and venerate him. He is full of goodness, but he has also the power to compel people. That is never necessary, for all of them know his goodness and wisdom.'

This time Saint-Germain required only at most a quarter of John's speaking-time. John, who had a feeling for how much time things had to take, remained silent and thought this over.

‘Mr Wentzel, did he translate correctly?'

‘Beg pardon, sir,' said the German, ‘but Athabaskic is indeed extremely––'

‘Mr Hepburn,' said John, ‘would you please fetch Parkinson's chronometer for me, the one with the second hand.' He stipulated to Saint-Germain that the translation must be neither longer nor shorter than the time he, Franklin, required for the original. Hepburn monitored this, and lo and behold, it worked.

Akaitcho sat motionless as before, but his eyes betrayed that he had been much amused by this incident.

John continued. The supreme white chief wished to let his Indian children obtain even more beautiful things than before. For that reason, he wished to discover a place on the Arctic Ocean where the largest canoes in the world could land. Also, the supreme chief wished to find out more about the land and about the Indians and Eskimos. It was very painful to him to hear that these two did not always live in harmony, for the Eskimos were his children, too. Finally, John revealed to the Indian that they had few provisions. These he would distribute gladly, but after that they would all have to depend on how industriously the Indians applied themselves to hunting. He would give them ammunition for that purpose.

Akaitcho understood that John took the reconciliation with the Eskimos very seriously. He admitted that there had been wars, but now his tribe was filled with longing for peace. Unfortunately, he added, the Eskimos were perfidious and unreliable.

When in the afternoon John thought back on this scene, he was pleased with his success not only for the expedition but also for how he had achieved it. He took it as proof that peace can
happen when one approaches the adversary not fast but slowly. This was a point in favor of Franklin's System and of the honour of mankind. John took a sip of rum on that.

It also occurred to him that Akaitcho had recognised him at once as the highest-ranking person and had sat down opposite him although he had not seated himself in the centre. He asked Saint-Germain about this. ‘The chief was of the opinion that you have several lives, sir: because of the scar on your forehead and, if you excuse me, because of your – “wealth of time”. And whoever is immortal must be the chief. So stupid are the Indians.'

John looked darkly at the interpreter: ‘How do you know that the chief is wrong?'

On 2 August, they climbed into the canoes, more than two dozen men and a further dozen Indian women and children.

John Franklin had now memorised the names of the
voyageurs
: Peltier, Crédit and Vaillant were the big men; Perrault, Samandré and Beauparlant were small. John's mind resisted Benoît's name the longest; that was because Benoît had such a melancholy look. John had a talk with him. He was not French-Canadian but came from France, from a little village named St-Yrieix-La-Perche, near Limoges, and after ten years he still suffered from attacks of homesickness. In this way, John managed to retain a simple name in combination with a complicated one.