Mattie Mitchell by Gary Collins Page B

white population—
territory. It was as much unlike his country as it was possible to
be. Murray stayed here until 1884, when he returned to Scotland.
He died in Belmont Cottage in Crieff, Scotland, the following
year at the age of seventy-four.
    Mattie Mitchell, at twenty-two years of age, met the fifty-six-year-old Murray in 1866. They were joined by Newfoundland’s
own geologist, James Howley, two years later. The two geologists
would walk the hills, scale the cliffs, walk and sometimes float
downstream, and make their difficult way against river currents
for more than twenty years. And guiding them on all of their
major forays was the Indian Mattie Mitchell.
    Up the Indian River from Halls Bay he led them in the month
of June, when the flies feed in swarms. Or, as Murray put it: “The
black buggers have voracious apatite, and tek a mon’s bluid so
that I wonder the greate horrads of them aire not redd.”
    South, and away from the waters that run east into the Notre
Dame Bay, Mitchell led them to the west- and south-running waters
of the huge Humber River system, which pours into the Bay of
Islands on Newfoundland’s west coast. Murray and Howley kept
carefully written records and mapped their expeditions. They
took note of great tracts of timber that took days to walk through,
and the rivers to get them to potential sawmills and markets.
They noted powerful waterfalls and deep waters, and fish stocks
as well as their spawning beds. The explorers came upon veins of
coal, copper, lead, zinc, and traces of gold. The host rocks of the
minerals, and in come cases their compass bearings, were entered
accurately into their well-thumbed ledgers.
    They talked about their findings as they wrote them down at
the end of every long day. The men showed Mattie how to identify
minerals, realizing early on that his incredible eye for detail was
a valued asset with their work. They showed him what to look for
and told him, “Rocks never rust. Only metals rust.” And always
their tall, quiet guide listened and would forever remember.
    Mattie held the Scotsman in high regard and some reverence.
At almost every evening meal, Murray would clasp his hands
together, bow his head, and say the grace of Scotland’s greatest
bard, Robert Burns: “Some hae meat and cannae eat, some would
eat that want it, but we hae meat and we can eat, sae let the Lord
be thankit.” And when he finished, Mattie always said “Amen.”
    Mattie also considered Alexander Murray to be the toughest
white man he knew, and with good reason.
    They were working in the Cape St. George area of the Port
au Port peninsula. Murray was doing his usual detailed mappingof every brook he found and recording the potential resources.
They had been in the area for a few days and had walked the
entire sandy length of Long Point. Standing alone at its naked
northernmost point, with a brisk summer wind rising from the
gulf with the evening tide, Murray breathed deep of the sea air
and quoted his beloved Robert Burns again: “Nae man can tether
time or tide.”
    That next morning, it rained. They were making their sodden
way to the narrow isthmus of the small peninsula late that evening,
where they planned to spend the night. The men were hurrying,
longing to get there. They had crossed it on the way out and had
left their camp there in the east bay for their return.
    It was a magical place, surrounded by beaches, filled with
seasoned grey driftwood that washed ashore from the huge
western gulf. It made the best firewood. With hundreds of nesting
waterfowl flying in from both the Port au Port and St. George’s
Bay sides, they would dine on roasted duck tonight.
    It was their haste over the wet ground that took Murray down.
Keeping pace with Mattie’s long steps ahead of him, Murray
jammed his right foot into a rock crevice at the very extent of its
back reach. When he pulled the leg, without breaking his stride,
his