Young Alaskans in the Far North
by Emerson Hough · English · Gutenberg #28694 · 307,607 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Young Alaskans in the Far North
Author: Emerson Hough
Release date: May 5, 2009 [eBook #28694]
Most recently updated: January 5, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK YOUNG ALASKANS IN THE FAR NORTH ***
Produced by D Alexander and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. The University
of Iowa, Iowa Authors collection graciously researched and
provided scans of missing pages for this book. (This book
was produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Google Print project.)
YOUNG ALASKANS
IN THE
FAR NORTH
BY
EMERSON HOUGH
_Author of_ "YOUNG ALASKANS
IN THE ROCKIES" ETC.
ILLUSTRATED
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
YOUNG ALASKANS IN THE FAR NORTH
Copyright, 1918, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
[Illustration: THE FIRST PORTAGE--SLAVE RIVER. "THE SCOWS WERE HAULED
UP THE STEEP BANK BY MEANS OF BLOCK AND TACKLE"]
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE START FOR THE MIDNIGHT SUN 1
II. THE SCOWS 12
III. THE GREAT BRIGADE 32
IV. THE GRAND RAPIDS 51
V. WHITE-WATER DAYS 64
VI. ON THE STEAMBOAT 79
VII. THE WILD PORTAGE 89
VIII. ON THE MACKENZIE 112
IX. UNDER THE ARCTIC CIRCLE 132
X. FARTHEST NORTH 149
XI. THE MIDNIGHT SUN 164
XII. THE RAT PORTAGE 176
XIII. DOWN THE PORCUPINE 192
XIV. AT FORT YUKON 212
XV. THE FUR TRADE 222
XVI. DAWSON, THE GOLDEN CITY 231
XVII. WHAT UNCLE DICK THOUGHT 246
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE FIRST PORTAGE--SLAVE RIVER. "THE SCOWS
WERE HAULED UP THE STEEP BANK BY MEANS
OF BLOCK AND TACKLE" _Frontispiece_
AN ENCAMPMENT OF ESKIMOS ON THE BEACH AT
FORT MCPHERSON _Facing p._ 55
HUSKY FLEET--FORT MCPHERSON " 172
HUSKY DOG--RAMPART HOUSE " 206
YOUNG ALASKANS IN THE FAR NORTH
I
THE START FOR THE MIDNIGHT SUN
"Well, fellows," said Jesse Wilcox, the youngest of the three boys who
stood now at the ragged railway station of Athabasca Landing, where
they had just disembarked, "here we are once more. For my part, I'm
ready to start right now."
He spoke somewhat pompously for a youth no more than fifteen years of
age. John Hardy and Rob McIntyre, his two companions, somewhat older
than himself, laughed at him as he sat now on his pack-bag, which had
just been tossed off the baggage-car of the train that had brought
them hither.
"You might wait for Uncle Dick," said John. "He'd feel pretty bad if
we started off now for the Arctic Circle and didn't allow him to come
along!"
Rob, the older of the three, and the one to whom they were all in the
habit of looking up in their wilderness journeyings, smiled at them
both. He was not apt to talk very much in any case, and he seemed now
content in these new surroundings to sit and observe what lay about
him.
It was a straggling little settlement which they saw, with one long,
broken street running through the center. There was a church spire, to
be sure, and a square little wooden building in which some business
men had started a bank for the sake of the coming settlers now
beginning to pass through for the country along the Peace River. There
were one or two stores, as the average new-comer would have called
them, though each really was the post of one of the fur-trading
companies then occupying that country. Most prominent of these,
naturally, was the building of the ancient Hudson's Bay Company.
A rude hotel with a dirty bar full of carousing half-breeds and rowdy
new-comers lay just beyond the end of the uneven railroad tracks which
had been laid within the month. The surface of the low hills running
back from the Athabasca River was covered with a stunted growth of
aspens, scattered among which here and there stood the cabins or board
houses of the men who had moved here following the rush of the last
emigration to the North. There were a few tents and lodges of
half-breeds also scattered about.
"Well, Uncle Dick said we would be starting right away," argued Jesse,
a trifle crestfallen.
"Yes," said Rob, "but he told me we would be lucky if 'right away'
meant inside of a week. He said the breeds always powwow around and
drink for a few days before they start north with the brigade for a
long trip. That's a custom they have. They say the Hudson's Bay
Company has more customs than customers these days. Times are changing
for the fur trade even here.
"Where's your map, John?" he added; and John spread out on the
platform where they stood his own rude tracing of the upper country
which he had made by reference to the best government maps obtainable.
Their uncle Dick, engineer of this new railroad and other frontier
development enterprises, of course had a full supply of these maps,
but it pleased the boys better to think that they made their own
maps--as indeed they always had in such earlier trips as those across
the Rockies, down the Peace River, in the Kadiak Island country, or
along the headwaters of the Columbia, where, as has been told, they
had followed the trails of the wilderness in their adventures before
this time.
They all now bent over the great sheet of paper, some of which was
blank and marked "Unknown."
"Here we are, right here," said John, putting his finger on the map.
"Only, when this map was made there wasn't any railroad. They used to
come up from Edmonton a hundred miles across the prairies and muskeg
by wagon. A rotten bad journey, Uncle Dick said."
"Well, it couldn't have been much worse than the new railroad,"
grumbled Jesse. "It was awfully rough, and there wasn't any place to
eat."
"Oh, don't condemn the new railroad too much," said Rob. "You may be
glad to see it before you get back from this trip. It's going to be
the hardest one we ever had. Uncle Dick says this is the last great
wilderness of the world, and one less known than any other part of the
earth's surface. Look here! It's two thousand miles from here to the
top of the map, northwest, where the Mackenzie comes in. We've got to
get there if all goes well with us."
John was still tracing localities on the map with his forefinger.
"Right here is where we are now. If we went the other way, up the
Athabasca instead of down, then we would come out at the Peace River
Landing, beyond Little Slave Lake. That's where we came out when we
crossed the Rockies, down the Finlay and the Parsnip and the Peace.
I've got that course of ours all marked in red."
"But we go the other way," began Jesse, bending over his shoulder and
looking at the map now. "Here's the mouth of the Peace River, more
than four hundred miles north of here, in Athabasca Lake. Both these
two rivers, you might say, come together there. But look what a long
river it is if you call the Athabasca and the Mackenzie the same! And
look at the big lakes up there that we have read about. The Mackenzie
takes you right into that country."
"The Mackenzie! One of the very greatest rivers of the world," said
Rob. "I've always wanted to see it some time. And now we shall.
"I'd have liked to have been along with old Sir Alexander Mackenzie,
the old trader who first explored it," he added, thoughtfully.
"I forget just what time that was," said Jesse, hesitating and
scratching his head.
"It was in seventeen eighty-nine," said Rob, always accurate. "He was
only a young Scotchman then, and they didn't call him Sir Alexander at
all until a good while later--after he had made some of his great
discoveries. He put up the first post on Lake Athabasca--right here
where our river discharges--and he went from there to the mouth of the
Mackenzie River and back all in one season."
"How did they travel?" demanded John. "They must have had nothing
better than canoes."
"Nothing else," nodded Rob, "for they could have had nothing else.
They just had birch-bark canoes, too, not as good as white men take
into that country now. There were only six white men in the party,
with a few Indians. They left Athabasca Lake--here it is on the
map--on June third, and they got to the mouth of the great river in
forty days. That certainly must have been traveling pretty fast! It
was more than fifteen hundred miles--almost sixteen hundred. But they
got back to Athabasca Lake in one hundred and two days, covering over
three thousand miles down-stream and up-stream. Well, we've all
traveled enough in these strong rivers to know how hard it is to go
back up-stream, whether with the tracking-line or the paddle or the
sail. They did it."
"And now we're here to see what it was that they did," said Jesse,
looking with some respect at the ragged line on the map which marked
the strong course of the Mackenzie River toward the Arctic Sea.
"He must have been quite a man, old Alexander Mackenzie," John added.
"Yes," said Rob. "As you know, he came back to Athabasca and started
up the Peace River in seventeen ninety-three, and was the first man to
cross to the Pacific. We studied him over in there. But he went
up-stream there, and we came down. That's much easier. It will be
easier going down this river, too, which was his first great
exploration place.
"Now," he continued, "we'll be going down-stream, as I said, almost
two thousand miles to the mouth of that river. Uncle Dick says we'll
be comfortable as princes all the way. We'll have big scows to travel
in, with everything fixed up fine."
"Here," said Jesse, putting his finger on the map hesitatingly, "is
the place where it says 'rapids.' Must be over a hundred miles of it
on this river, or even more."
"That's right, Jess," commented John. "We can't dodge those rapids
yet. Uncle Dick says that the new railroad in the North may go to Fort
McMurray at the foot of this great system of the Athabasca rapids.
That would cut out a lot of hard work. If there were a railroad up
there, a fellow could go to the Arctics almost as easy as going to New
York."
"I'd rather go to the Midnight Sun now," said Rob. "There's some
trouble about it now, and there's some wilderness now between here and
there. It's no fun to do a thing when it's too easy. I wouldn't give a
cent to go to Fort McPherson, the last post north, by any railroad."
John was still poring over the map, which lay upon the rude boards of
the platform, and he shook his head now somewhat dubiously. "Look
where we'll have to go," he said, "and all in three months. We have to
get back for school next fall."
"Never doubt we can do it," said Rob, stoutly. "If we couldn't, Uncle
Dick would never try it. He's got it all figured out, you may be sure
of that, and he's made all his arrangements with the Hudson's Bay
Company. You forget they've been going up into this country for a
hundred years, and they know how long it takes and how hard it is.
They know all about how to outfit for it, too."
"The hardest place we'll have," said John, following his map with his
finger now almost to the upper edge, "is right here where we leave the
Mackenzie and start over toward the Yukon, just south of the Arctic
Ocean. That's a whizzer, all right! No railroad up in there, and I
guess there never will be. That's where so many of the Klondikers were
lost, my father told me--twenty years ago that was."
"They took a year for it," commented Rob, "and sometimes eighteen
months, to get across the mountains there. They built houses and
passed the winter, and so a great many of them got sick and died. But
twenty years ago is a long time nowadays. We can do easily what they
could hardly do at all. Uncle Dick has allowed us about three weeks to
cover that five hundred miles over the Rat Portage!"
"Well, surely if Sir Alexander Mackenzie could make that trip in
birch-bark canoes, over three thousand miles, with just a few men who
didn't know where they were going, we ought to be able to get through
now. That was a hundred and twenty-eight years ago, I figure it, and a
lot of things have happened since then." John spoke now with
considerable confidence.
"Well, Uncle Dick will take care of us," said Jesse, the youngest of
these adventurers.
"Yes, and we'll take care of ourselves all we can," added Rob. "Uncle
Dick tells me that the trouble with the Klondikers was that they
didn't know how to take care of themselves out of doors. A lot of them
were city people fresh to all kinds of wilderness work, and they
simply died because they didn't know how to do things. They were
tenderfeet when they started. A good many of them died before they got
through. Some of those who did get through are the prominent men of
Alaska to-day. But we're not tenderfeet. Are we, boys?"
"No, indeed," said Jesse, stoutly. "As I said, I'm ready to start."
And he again puffed out his chest with much show of bravery, although,
to be sure, the wild country in which he now found himself rather
worked on his imagination.
It had required all the persuasion of Uncle Dick, expert railway
engineer in wilderness countries, to persuade the parents of these
three boys to allow them to accompany him on this, his own first
exploration into the extreme North, under the Midnight Sun itself. He
had promised them--and something of a promise it was, too--to bring
the young travelers back safely to their home in Valdez, on the
Pacific Ocean, in three months from the time they left the head of the
railroad at Athabasca Landing.
"Well, now," said John, folding up his map and putting it back in his
pocket, "here comes Uncle Dick at last. I only hope that we won't have
to wait long, for it seems to me we'll have to hustle if we get
through on time--over five thousand miles it will be, and in less than
ninety days! I'll bet Sir Alexander Mackenzie himself couldn't have
beat that a hundred years ago."
II
THE SCOWS
"Well, well, young gentlemen," called out the tall and bronze-faced
man who now strode toward them across the railway platform, "did you
think I was never coming? I see that you are holding down your
luggage."
"Not a hard thing to do, was it, Uncle Dick?" said Jesse. "We haven't
got very much along."
"That all depends. Let me tell you, my young friends, on this trip
every fellow has to look out for himself the best he can. It's the
hardest travel you've ever had. You must keep your eye on your own
stuff all along."
"What do you mean--that we must be careful or some one will steal our
things?" demanded Jesse.
"No, there isn't so very much danger of theft--that is, from the
breeds or others along the way; they'll steal whisky, but nothing
else, usually. But it's a rough country, and there are many portages,
much changing of cargoes. Each chap must keep his eye on his own kit
all the time, and look out for himself the best way he can. That's the
lesson of this great North. It's the roughest country in the world. As
you know, there is an old saying among the fur-traders that no man has
ever whipped the North.
"I was thinking more especially about the dogs," he added, nodding
toward the luggage on which the boys were sitting.
"And what do you mean about the dogs, Uncle Dick?" asked Jesse.
"Well, those are the beggars that will steal you blind. They'll
eat anything they can swallow and some things they can't. I've had
them eat the heels off a pair of boots, and moccasins are like pie
for them. They would eat your hat if you left it lying--eat the
pack-straps off your bag. So don't leave anything lying around, and
remember that goes now, and all the way through the trip."
"Are there dogs all the way through?" asked John, curiously.
"Yes, we're in the dog country, and will be for five thousand miles
down one river and across and up the other. You'll not see a cow or a
sheep, and only two horses, in the next three months. North of
Smith's Landing, which is at the head of the Mackenzie River proper,
there never has been a horse, and I think there never will be one. The
dogs do all the hauling and all the packing--and they are always
hungry. That's what the fellows tell me who have been up there--the
whole country starves almost the year round, and the dogs worst of
all. I'm just telling you these things to be useful to you, because
we've got nothing along which we can afford to spare."
"When are we going to start, Uncle Dick?" demanded Jesse, once more,
somewhat mindful of the recent laughter of his companions at his
eagerness.
"Well, that's hard to say," replied his elder relative. "I'd like to
start to-morrow morning. It all depends on the stage of the water. If
a flood came down the Athabasca to-morrow you'd see pretty much every
breed in that saloon over there stop drinking and hurry to the scows."
"What's that got to do with it?" asked John.
"Well, when the river goes up the scows can run the Grand Rapids, down
below here, without unloading, or at least without unloading
everything. If the river is low so that the rocks stand out, the men
have to portage every pound of the brigade stuff. The Grand Rapids are
_bad_, let me tell you that! It is only within the last fifty years
that any one has ever tried to run them. I'll show you the man who
first went through--an old man now over seventy; but he was a young
chap when he first tried it. Well, he found that he could get through,
so he tried it over again. He and others have been guiding on those
rapids ever since. That cuts off the old Clearwater trail from here to
Fort McMurray, which used to be their old way of getting north.
"So now you see," he continued, "why these breeds like high water. It
means less work for them. It's hard work for them at best, but a breed
would rather risk his life than do any work he could escape. They know
there is danger--there is hardly a brigade goes north which brings
back all its men again.
"But come on now," he added. "It's almost time for supper. We'll go
fix up our camp for the night."
The boys, each stoutly picking up his own pack-bag, followed their
tall leader as he strode away. Their camp was far enough removed from
the noise of the hotel bar to leave them in quiet and undisturbed.
"My, but the mosquitoes are thick!" said Jesse, brushing at his face
with the broken bough which he had caught up. "I never saw them so
bad."
"Well, Jesse," said Uncle Dick, smiling, "just you wait. Before you
get back you'll say you never saw mosquitoes before in your life. The
traders tell me that they are worse the farther north you go. They say
it takes about two or three years for a new man to get used to them so
that he can sleep or work at his best--it's a sort of nervousness that
they stir up, though in time that wears off. I think also when they
keep on biting you you get immune to the poison, so that it doesn't
hurt so much."
"Don't they bite the half-breeds and Indians?" asked John.
"Certainly they bite them. You watch the breeds around a camp at
night. Every fellow will cover up his head with his blanket, so that
he can sleep or smother, as it happens. As for us, however, we've got
our black headnets and our long-sleeved gloves. Dope isn't much good.
No one cares much for mosquito dope in the Far North; you'll see more
of it in the States than you will in here, because they have learned
that it is more or less useless.
"Our big mosquito tent is just the same as the one we took down the
Columbia River with us--the one that the Indians cut the end out of
when we gave it to them! I've tried that tent all through Alaska in my
work, and everywhere in this part of the world, and it's the only
thing for mosquitoes. You crawl in through the little sleeve and tie
it after you get inside, and then kill the mosquitoes that have
followed you in. The windows allow you to get fresh air, and the floor
cloth sewed in keeps the mosquitoes from coming up from below. It's
the only protection in the world."
"But I saw a lot of little tents or bars down in the camp near the
river a little while ago," said Rob.
"Precisely. That's the other answer to the mosquito question--the
individual mosquito bar-tent. They are regularly made and sold in all
this northern country now, and mighty useful they are, too. As you
see, it's just a piece of canvas about six feet long and one breadth
wide, with mosquito bar sewed to the edges. You tie up each corner to
a tree or stick, and let the bar of cheese-cloth drop down around your
bed, which you make on the ground. When you lie down you tuck the edge
under your blankets, and there you are! If you don't roll about very
much you are fairly safe from mosquitoes. That, let me say, is the
typical individual remedy for mosquitoes in this country. Of course,
when we are out on railroad work, map-making and writing and the like,
we have to have something bigger and better than that. That sort of
little tent is only for the single night. No doubt we'll use them
ourselves, traveling along on the scows, because it is a good deal of
trouble to put up a big wall tent every night.
"The distances in this country are so big," he added, after a time,
explaining, "that every one travels in a hurry and spends no
unnecessary work in making camp. We'll have to learn to break camp in
ten minutes, and to make it in fifteen. I should say it would take us
about thirty minutes to make a landing, build a fire, cook a meal, and
get off again. There's no time to be wasted, don't you see?"
"I suppose Sir Alexander Mackenzie found that out himself when he
first went down this river," said Rob.
"I'll warrant you he did! And his lesson has stuck in the minds of all
these northern people to this day."
"Well, anyhow," commented Jesse, as one mosquito bit his hand, "I wish
they wouldn't bother me while I'm eating."
"Now if John had said that," said Uncle Dick, "it wouldn't be so
strange."
They all joined in his laughing at John, whose appetite made a
standing joke among them. But John only laughed with them and went on
with his supper. "There can't anybody bluff me out of a good meal,"
said he, "not even the mosquitoes."
"That's the idea," nodded his older adviser. "But really these insect
pests are the great drawback of this entire northern country. Perhaps
they will keep the settlers out as much as anything else. Fur-traders
and trappers and travelers like ourselves--they can't stop for them,
of course. We'll take our chances like Sir Alexander Mackenzie--eh,
boys?"
"I'm not afraid," said Jesse.
"Nor I," added John.
And indeed they finished their evening meal, which they cooked for
themselves, in fairly comfortable surroundings; and in their
mosquito-proof tent they passed an untroubled night, each in the
morning declaring that he had slept in perfect comfort.
"We'll leave the tents standing for a while," said Uncle Dick, "until
we know just when we are going to embark. The brigade may pull out any
day now. We'll have warning enough so that we can easily get ready.
But come on now and we'll go over to the boat-yard," he added. "It's
time we began to see about our own boat and to get our supplies ready
for shipping."
They followed him through the straggling town down to the edge of the
water-front, where the Athabasca, now somewhat turbulent in the high
waters of the spring, rolled rapidly by.
Here there was a rude sort of lumber-yard, to all appearance, with the
addition of a sort of rough shipyard. Chips and shavings and fragments
of boards lay all about. Here and there on trestles stood the gaunt
frames of what appeared to be rough flatboats, long, wide, and
shallow, constructed with no great art or care. There was no keel to
any one of these boats, and the ribs were flimsily put together.
"Well, I don't think much of these boats," grumbled John, as he passed
among them slowly.
"Don't be too rough with them," said Uncle Dick, laughingly. "Like
everything else up here, they may not be the best in the world, but
they do for their purpose. These scows are never intended to come
back, you must remember; all they have to do is to stand the trip
down, for a month or two. All the frame houses of the Far North are
made out of these scows; they break them up at the ends of the trips.
Our boat may be part of a church before it gets through.
"Come now, and I'll introduce you to old Adam McAdam, the builder and
pump-maker." He nodded toward an old man who was passing slowly here
and there among the rude craft. "This old chap is no doubt over
seventy-five years old, and he must have built hundreds of these boats
in his time. He makes the pumps, too, and a pump has to go with every
scow to keep it from sinking at first, before the seams get swelled
up."
The old man proved pleasant enough, and with a certain pride showed
them all about these rude craft of the fur trade. Each boat appeared
to be about fifty feet in length and nearly twenty in width, the
carrying capacity of each being about ten tons.
"Of course you know, my lads," said the old man, "a scow goes no
faster than the river runs. Here's the great oar--twenty feet it is in
length--made out of a young tree. The steersman uses that to
straighten her up betimes. But there's nothing to make the boat run
saving the current, do ye mind?"
"Well, that won't be so very fast," commented Rob, thinking of the
long distances that lay ahead.
"Oh, we're not confined to scows for much more than two hundred and
fifty miles," replied Uncle Dick. "At McMurray we get a steamer which
carries us down-stream to Smith's Landing. That's the big and bad
portage of the whole trip--that is to say, excepting the Rat Portage
of five hundred miles over the Yukon. But when we get below the
Smith's Landing portage we strike another Hudson's Bay Company steamer
that takes us fast enough, day and night, all the way to the Arctic
Circle. That's where we make our time, don't you see? These boats only
get us over the rapids.
"Of course," he explained, a little later, "a few of them go on down,
towed by the steamboats, because the steamboats are not big enough to
carry all the freight which must go north. There are only two
steamboats between us and the Arctic Circle now, barring one or two
little ones which are not of much account. The scows have to carry all
the supplies for the entire fur trade--trade goods, bacon, flour, and
everything."
"Who's that old gentleman coming along there, Uncle Dick?" demanded
Jesse, turning toward the end of the street.
"That's old Father Le Fèvre," replied his uncle. "He's the purchasing
agent for all the many missions of the Catholic Church in the Far
North. Each year he comes in with ten or more scows, each carrying ten
tons of goods. He may go as far as Chippewyan, and then come back, or
he may go on to Great Slave. I understand there are two good Sisters
going even farther north this year. No one knows when they will come
back, of course; they'll be teachers up among the native schools.
"Well, now you see the transport system beyond the head of the rails
in the Athabasca and Mackenzie country," he continued, as, hands in
pocket, he passed along among the finished and unfinished craft which
still lay in the shipyard.
Outside, moored to stumps along the shore, floated a number of the
rude scows, some of which even now were partially laden. The leader of
the expedition pointed out to one of these.
"That's our boat yonder, young men," said he. "You'll see that she has
the distinction of a name. Most scows have only numbers on them, and
each post gets certain scows with certain numbers. But ours has a
name--the _Midnight Sun_. How do you like that?"
"That's fine, sir!" said Rob. "And we'll see to it that she doesn't
come to grief as long as we use her."
"Well, it will only be for a couple of hundred miles or so," said
Uncle Dick, "but I fancy there'll be nothing slow in that two hundred
miles."
"Where will we eat?" demanded John, with his usual regard for creature
comforts.
"That's easy," said Rob. "I know all about that. I saw two men loading
a cook-stove on one of the scows. They took it out of a canoe, and how
they did it without upsetting the canoe I can't tell, but they did it.
I suppose we'll cook as we go along."
"Precisely," nodded Uncle Dick. "The cook-boat is the only thing that
goes under steam. The cook builds his fire in the stove just as though
he were on shore. When he calls time for meals, the men from the other
boats take turns in putting out in canoes and going to the cook-boat
for meals. Sometimes a landing is made while they eat, and of course
they always tie up at night They have certain stages which they try to
make. The whole thing is all planned out on a pretty good system,
rough but effective, as you will see."
"Is he a pretty good cook?" asked John, somewhat demurring.
"Well, good enough for us, if he is good enough for the others,"
replied his uncle. "But I'll tell you what we might do once in a
while. They do say that the two good Sisters who go north with the
mission brigade know how to cook better than any half-breed. I've made
arrangements so that we can eat on their scow once in a while if we
like."
"What's that funny business on the end of our boat?" asked Jesse,
presently, pointing to a rude framework of bent poles which covered
the short deck at the stern of the boat.
"That's what they call a 'bower' up in this country," said Uncle Dick.
"They have some curious old English words in here, even yet. Now a
bower is simply a lot of poles, like an Indian wickiup, covering the
end of your boat, as you see. You can throw your blankets over it, if
you like, or green willows. It keeps the sun off. Since the Hudson's
Bay Company charges a pretty stiff price for taking any passenger
north, it tries to earn its money by building a bower for the select
few, such as we are."
"I don't think that we need any bower," said Rob, and all the other
boys shook their heads.
"A little sunshine won't hurt us," said Jesse, stoutly.
"But think of the style about it," laughed Uncle Dick, pleased to see
the hardiness of his young charges. "Well, we'll do as we like about
that. One thing, we've got to have a chance to see out, for I know you
will want to keep your eyes open every foot of the way."
"Well, I wish the breeds would hurry up and get the boats loaded,"
added Jesse, impatiently, after a while. "There's nothing doing here
worth while."
"Don't be too hard with the breeds," counseled Uncle Dick. "They're
like children, that's all. This is the best time of the year for them,
when the great fur brigade goes north. It couldn't go without them.
The fur trade in this country couldn't exist without the half-breeds
and the full-bloods; there's a half-dozen tribes on whom the revenues
of this great corporation depend absolutely.
"You'll see now the best water-men and the best trail-men in the
world. Look at these packages--a hundred pounds or better in each.
Every pound of all that stuff is to be portaged across the Smith's
Landing portage, and the Mountain Portage, and even at Grand Island,
just below here, if the water is low. They have to carry it up from
the scows to the steamboats, and from the steamboats to the shore.
Every pound is handled again and again. It's the half-breeds that do
that. They're as strong as horses and as patient as dogs; fine men
they are, so you must let them have their little fling after their old
ways; they don't know any better."
"How many of the fur posts are there in the North, Uncle Dick?" asked
Rob, curious always to be exact in all his information.
"Well, let's see," pondered Uncle Dick, holding up his fingers and
counting them off. "The first one above here is McMurray; that's one
of the treaty posts where the tribes are paid their annuities by the
Dominion government. It's two hundred and fifty-two miles from here,
and there's where we hit our first steamboat, as I told you.
"Then comes Chippewyan, on Athabasca Lake. It was founded by Sir
Alexander Mackenzie in seventeen eighty-eight, and from that time on
it has been one of the most important trading-posts of the North--in
fact, I believe it is the most important to-day, as it seems to be a
sort of center, right where a lot of rivers converge. That's four
hundred and thirty-seven miles from here. When you get that far in, my
buckos, you'll be able to say that you are away from the hated
pale-faces and fairly launched on your trip through the wildest
wilderness the world has to-day. It is a hundred miles on to Smith's
Landing--sixteen miles there of the fiercest water you ever saw in all
your lives. Wagon portage there, but sometimes the boats go through.
Fort Smith is at the other end of that portage.
"Next down is Fort Resolution, and that's seven hundred and forty-five
miles from here. Hay River is eight hundred and fifteen, and Fort
Providence nine hundred and five miles, and Fort Simpson, at the mouth
of the Liard River, is a thousand and eighty-five miles from here.
Getting along in the world pretty well then, eh?
"There are a few others as I recall them--Fort Wrigley, twelve hundred
and sixty-five miles from here, and Fort Norman, fourteen hundred and
thirty-seven miles. Now you come to Fort Good Hope, and that is right
under the Arctic Circle. It is sixteen hundred and nine miles from
here, where we are at the head of the railroads. If we are fast enough
in our journey we'll get our first sight of the Midnight Sun at Good
Hope, perhaps.
"The next post north of Good Hope is Arctic Red River, eighteen
hundred and nineteen miles; and of course you know that the last post
of the Hudson's Bay Company is Fort McPherson, on the Peel River, near
the mouth of the Mackenzie. That is rated as eighteen hundred and
nineteen miles by the government map-makers, who may or may not be
right; being an engineer myself, I'll say they must be right! In round
numbers we might as well call it two thousand miles.
"Well, that's your distance, young men, and here are the ships which
are to carry you part of the way."
"And when we get to Fort McPherson we're not half-way through, are we,
sir?" asked Rob.
"No, we're not, and if we were starting a hundred and twenty-eight
years earlier than we are, with Sir Alexander Mackenzie, we would have
to hustle to get back before the snows caught us. As it is, we'll hope
some time in July to start across the Rat Portage. That's five hundred
miles, just along the Arctic Circle, and in that five hundred miles we
go from Canadian into American territory--at Rampart House, on the
Porcupine River. Well, it's down-stream from there to the Yukon, and
then we hit our own boats--more of them, and faster and more
comfortable. I have no doubt, John, that you can get all you want to
eat on any one of a half-dozen good boats that ply on the Yukon to-day
from White Horse down to the mouth.
"Of course," he added, "this trip of ours is not quite as rough as it
would have been twenty years ago when the Klondike rush began. The
world has moved since then, as it always has moved and always will. I
suppose some time white men will live in a good deal of this country
which we now think impossible for a white man to inhabit. Little by
little, as they learn the ways of the Indians and half-breeds, they
will edge north, changing things as they go.
"But I don't want to talk about those times," he added, shrugging his
shoulders. "I'm for the wilderness as it is, and I'm glad that you
three boys and myself can see that country up there before it has
changed too much. Not that it is any country for a tenderfoot now.
You'll find it wild enough and rough enough. It has gone back since
the Klondike rush. In travel you'll see the old ways of the Hudson's
Bay Company, even although the independents have cut into their trade
a little bit. You'll see the Far North much as it was when Sir
Alexander first went down our river here.
"And as you go on I want you to study the old times, and the new times
as well. That's the way, boys, to learn things. As for me, I found out
long ago that the only way to learn about a country is not to look it
up on a map, but to tramp across it in your moccasins.
"So now," he concluded, as they four stood at the river's brink,
looking out at the long line of the scows swinging in the rapid
current of the Athabasca, "that's the first lesson. What do you think
of our boat, the _Midnight Sun_?"
"She's fine, sir!" said Rob, and the other boys, eagerly looking up
into the face of their tall and self-reliant leader, showed plainly
enough their enjoyment of the prospect and their confidence in their
ability to meet what might be on ahead.
III
THE GREAT BRIGADE
"Roll out! Roll out!" called the cheery voice of Uncle Dick on the
second morning of the stay at Athabasca Landing.
"Aye, aye, sir!" came three young voices in reply. The young
adventurers kicked off their blankets and one by one emerged through
the sleeve of the mosquito tent.
"What made you call us so early?" complained Jesse. "It's raining--it
began in the night--and it doesn't look as if it were going to stop."
"Well, that's the very good news we've been waiting for!" said Uncle
Dick. "It's been raining somewhere else as well as here. Look at the
river--muddy and rising! That means that things will begin to happen
in these diggings pretty soon now."
For experienced campers such as these to prepare breakfast in the
rain was no great task, and they hurriedly concluded their preliminary
packing. It was yet early in the day when they stood on the
river-bank, looking at the great fleet of scows of the north-bound fur
brigade as the boats now lay swinging in the stiffening current.
The river was indeed rising; the snow to the west was melting in the
rains of spring. Time now for the annual fur brigade to be off!
At the river front already there had gathered most of the motley
population of the place. Everything now was activity. Each man seemed
to know his work and to be busy about it. The Company manager had
general charge over the embarkation of the cargo, and certainly the
men under him were willing workers.
A long line of men passed over the narrow planks which lay between the
warehouses and across the muddy flats to the deep water where the
boats lay. Each man carried on his shoulders a load which would have
staggered the ordinary porter. All went at a sort of trot, so that the
cargo was being moved rapidly indeed. It was obvious that these
half-breeds, but now so lazy and roistering, were very able indeed
when it came to the matter of work, and easy to see that they were, as
Uncle Dick had said, the backbone of the fur trade of the North.
One after another a young half-breed would come hurrying down the
street, his hair close cut and his face well washed, wearing all the
finery for which he had been able to get credit, now that he had a
prospect of wages coming in erelong. The resident population joined
those idling about the warehouses and the boat-yard, for this was the
greatest event of the year for them, with one exception--that is, the
return of the much smaller brigade bearing the fur down from the
northern country. This would come in the fall. Now it was spring, and
the great fur brigade of the Company was starting north on its savage
annual journey.
Here and there among these were strange faces also to be of the
north-bound company now embarking. Good Father Le Fèvre passed among
them all, speaking to this or that man of the half-breeds pleasantly,
they having each a greeting for him in turn. This was by no means his
first trip with the brigade, and hundreds of the natives knew him.
The boys stood wondering at the enormous loads which these men carried
from the warehouses out to the boats. Here a man might have on his
back a great slab of side-meat weighing more than a hundred and fifty
pounds, and on top of that a sack of flour or so. It was not unusual
to see a slight young chap carrying a load of two or three hundred
pounds, and some of the older and more powerful men engaged in a proud
sort of rivalry among themselves, shouldering and carrying out
literally enormous loads. It was said of one of these men that he once
had carried a cook-stove weighing five hundred pounds on his back from
the boat landing up the hill to one of the posts, a distance of many
hundred yards.
"Well, at this rate," said Rob, after a time, "it won't take long
before we'll be loaded and on our way. These men are simply wonders.
Aren't they?"
Uncle Dick nodded his quiet assent.
"Our boat's getting loaded, too," said Jesse, pointing to where the
_Midnight Sun_ stood swinging in the current. "Look at them fill her
up."
It was true; the factor in charge of the embarkation-work was checking
out the cargo for each boat. Each scow had its number, and that number
was credited to a certain fur-post along the great route to the mouth
of the Mackenzie River. The supplies intended for each boat,
therefore, went into the proper boats. All the cargo intended for
Uncle Dick's party was marked in black, "M. S.," in courtesy to the
name of this boat, the _Midnight Sun_, which carried no number at all.
"We'll not go as heavily loaded as some of the others," Uncle Dick
explained, "although it is only courteous that we should take all we
can, since transportation is so hard. We need only enough to take us
to the mouth of the river and over the Rat Portage to the Yukon. Of
course we'll forget all about our boat when we get below the rapids,
but they'll tow her down alongside the steamer.
"I have told you," he went on, "that this is a starving country. Now
you can see why. They can't possibly carry into that far-away region
as much stuff as they need to eat and to wear. The Company does the
best it can, and so do all these mission men do the best they can.
"Now you see how the brigade goes north--not in birch-bark canoes, but
in scows, to-day. The scow has even taken the place of the old York
boat. That was the boat which they formerly used on the Saskatchewan
and some of these rivers for their up-stream work. It's a good deal
like a Mackinaw boat. You'll see here, too, one or two scows with
blunt ends, such as they call the 'sturgeon' nose. They tow a little
easier than the square-ended scow. But these new square-facers are
the best things in the world for going down-stream with the current."
"Hadn't we better get our packs ready?" asked Rob, methodical as ever.
"Yes," replied their leader, "you ought to get the bed rolls made up
and the tent in its bag before very long. I don't think we'll be
started a great while before sundown, but we'll get ready.
"It's enough to get ready," he continued. "Don't carry your own stuff
down to the boats."
"Why not?" asked John, curiously. "We can do it easily enough."
"Well, you're in another sort of country now," said Uncle Dick to him,
quietly. "Follow customs of the country. You must remember that the
Hudson's Bay Company is a very old monopoly, and it has its own ways.
Always it treats the natives as though they were children and it was
the Great Father. A factor is a sort of king up here. He wouldn't
think of carrying a pound of his own luggage for anything in the
world. If he began that sort of thing the natives would not respect
him as their _bourgeois_."
"_Bourgeois?_ What does that mean?" asked John, again.
"Well, about the same as boss, I suppose. It's always necessary in
dealing with ignorant and savage peoples to take the attitude that you
are the boss, and that they are to do what you tell them. If you get
too familiar or lower yourself too much with primitive people, they
don't respect you, because they think you're afraid of them.
"Now, that has always been the custom of the Hudson's Bay Company in
this work. In the old days, when things were more autocratic, when a
factor went on a journey his people picked him up and carried him into
his boat, and when he went ashore they picked him up and carried him
out again. If anybody got wet or tired or hungry be sure it wasn't the
boss!
"You see, young gentlemen, while I don't want you, of all things in
the world, ever to be snobbish, I do want you to be observant. So just
take this advice from me, and let these men do your work right at the
start. They expect it, and they will treat you all the better--and of
course you will treat them well."
"Who is that old pirate standing over there by the boat landing?"
asked Jesse, presently, pointing to a tall, dark, and sinewy man with
full black beard, who seemed to have a certain authority among the
laborers.
"That's Cap. Shott. I've told you that he was the first man who ever
ran the Grand Rapids of the Athabasca River. His real name is Louis
Faisoneure. He's seventy-seven years old, but still he likes to go
down with the brigade, part way at least.
"The quiet young man just beyond him is his son, François. He is the
real captain--or commodore, as they call it--of the brigade, and has
been for several years. He'll be the steersman on our boat, so that in
one way you might say that the _Midnight Sun_, although not a Company
boat, will pretty much be the flag-ship of the brigade this year.
They're treating us as well as they know how, and I must say we'll
have no cause to complain."
"Cap. Shott," as they nicknamed him, did indeed have a piratical look,
as John had said. He stood more than six and a half feet in his
moccasins, and was straight as an arrow, with the waist of a boy. His
face was dark, his eyebrows very heavy and black, and his dark, full
beard, his scant trousers held up with a brilliant scarf, and his
generally ferocious appearance, gave him a peculiarly wild and
outlandish look, although personally he was gentle as a child.
"Well, Cap. Shott," said Uncle Dick, approaching him, "we start
to-day, eh?"
"Mebbe so, _oui_," replied the old man. "We load h'all the boats
bimeby now. Yes, pretty soon bimeby we start, mebbe so, _oui_."
"Well," said Uncle Dick, smiling, as he turned to the boys, "that's
about as definite as you can get anything. We'll start when we start!
Just get your stuff ready to be embarked and tell the manager where it
is. It will be on board all right."
"But what makes them start so late in the day?" demanded John, who was
of an investigative turn of mind. "I should think the morning was the
right time to start."
"Not so the great fur brigade," was his answer. "Nor was it the custom
in the great fur brigades which went out with pack-trains from the
Missouri in our own old days when there were buffalo and beaver. A
short start was made on the first day, usually toward evening. Then
when camp was made everything was overhauled, and if anything had been
left behind it was not too far to send back to get it. Nearly always
it was found that something had been overlooked.
"Now that's the way we'll do here, so they tell me. We'll run down the
river a few miles, each boat as it is loaded, and then we'll make a
landing. That will give each boat captain time to look over his stuff
and his men--and, what is more, it will give each man time to run in
across country and get a few last drinks. Some of them will come back
to be confessed by their priest. Some will want to send supplies to
their families who are left behind. On one excuse or another every man
of the brigade will be back here in town to-night if we should start!
Of course by to-morrow morning they'll be on hand again bright and
early and ready for the voyage. You see, there are customs up here
with which we have not been acquainted before."
It came out precisely as Uncle Dick had said. Very late in the
afternoon--late by the clock, though not so late by the sun, which at
this latitude sank very late in the west--there came a great shouting
and outcry, followed by firing of guns, much as though a battle were
in progress. Men, hurrying and crying excitedly as they ran, went
aboard the boats. One after another the mooring-ropes were cast off.
The poles and oars did their work, and slowly, piecemeal, but in a
vast aggregate, the great Mackenzie brigade was on its way!
The first boat of the fleet, as had been predicted, ran no more than
three or four miles before it pulled ashore at a landing-place which
seemed well known to all. Here the scows came in slowly and clumsily,
but without disorder and without damage, until the entire bank for a
half-mile was turned into a sort of shipyard of its own.
Here and there men were working the little wooden pumps, because for
the first day or two the scows were sure to leak.
The boys made their own camp that night aboard the boat. At each end
was a short deck, and that in the rear offered space for their blanket
beds. Rob undertook to sleep on top of the cargo under the edge of the
great tarpaulin which covered all. They had their little Yukon stove,
which accompanied them, and on the front deck, where a box of earth
had been provided, they set this up and did their own cooking, as they
preferred.
In the morning Father Le Fèvre paddled over to them in a canoe from
his own scow.
"_Bon jour_, gentlemen!" said he. "I called to ask you if you would
not like to have breakfast with us. Sister Eloise is known for her
skill in cookery."
The leader of our little party accepted with great cheerfulness, so
that they all climbed into the canoe, and presently were alongside the
mission scow. All over the great fleet of scows everything now was
silent. Each boat had its watchman, but he alone, of all the crew,
had remained aboard.
"My poor children!" said Father Le Fèvre, smiling as he looked about
him. "They indeed are like children. Presently they will come. Then we
shall see."
Our young travelers now became acquainted with yet others of the
north-bound party. Sister Eloise, stout and good-natured, proved
herself all that had been promised as a cook.
"Yes, yes, she has gone north before," said the good Father. "But
always she has fear of the water. When we go on the rapids Sister
Eloise knits or tells her beads or reads--very hard indeed she reads
or knits or prays! She is afraid, but does not like me to know it,"
and his eye twinkled as he spoke.
"Sister Vincent de Paul goes north for the first time," he said,
smiling now at the other of the gray-habited nuns who found themselves
in these strange surroundings. "She is called to Fort Resolution, and
may stay there for some years. We do not know.
"And here," he added, pulling up by the ear a swarthy little boy who
seemed more Indian than white, "this we will call Charl'. We are
taking him back to his father, who is the factor at Resolution. His
mother is native woman, as you see, and this boy has been at Montreal
for two years at school. _Eh bien_, Charl', you will be good boy now?
If not I shall tell your papa!
"You see," he explained to the others who now for the first time were
getting some acquaintance of this mission-work, "we try to do the best
we know, and to make life easier for these people in the Far North. It
is a hard fortune that they have. Always they starve--never have they
enough. And every year the great brigade goes north so that they may
last yet another year."
Presently there came down overland to the fleet yet other men who made
part of the strange, wild company. Cap. Shott, friendly and paternal
in his way, brought on for introduction to the party the Dominion
judge, who every year goes north to settle the legal disputes which
may have arisen at the several posts for a considerable distance to
the north. The judge had with him his clerk and secretary, and there
was also a commissioner, as well as another official, a member of the
Indian Department, who was bound north to pay the tribesmen their
treaty money.
There came also the wife of a member of the Anglican Church, which, as
well as the Catholic Church, has missions all along the great waterway
almost to the Arctic Sea. So that, as may be seen, the personnel of
the brigade that year was of varied and interesting composition.
All came out as Uncle Dick and Father Le Fèvre had said--by the time
breakfast was over the half-breed boatmen began to come down at a trot
overland from the town. Few of them had slept. All of them had been
drinking most of the night. They came with their heads tied up, their
eyes red, each man looking uncomfortable, but they all went aboard and
made ready for their work. Father Le Fèvre shook his head as he looked
at them.
"Too bad, too bad, my children!" said he, "but you will not learn, you
will not learn at all. However, two days on the river and your heads
will be more clear. Providence has arranged, I presume, that there
shall be two or three days' travel between the landing and the Grand
Rapids. Else fewer of our boats would get through!"
As the scows swung out into the river, under no motive power excepting
that of the current, the men arranged themselves for the long journey,
each to suit himself, but under a loose sort of system of government.
At the long steering-sweep, made from a spruce pole twenty feet in
length, stood always the steersman, holding the scow straight in the
current. The ten tons of luggage was piled high in each scow, and all
covered with a great tarpaulin to protect the cargo of side-meat,
salt, sugar, flour, and steel traps, cloth, strouds, other rough
supplies, as well as the better stock of trade goods--prints, powder,
ball, rifles, matches, a scant supply of canned goods--and such other
additions to the original stock as modern demands instituted by the
independent traders for the most part had now made necessary in the
traffic with the tribes. That year, indeed, a few hand sewing-machines
went north, and some phonographs--things of wonder to the ignorant
native of that far-off land.
The progress of the boats, although steady, seemed very slow, and, as
there was no work to do, the men amused themselves as best they might.
There were several fiddlers in the fleet, and now and then, as the
_Midnight Sun_ swept down, well handled by the commodore, François,
they passed a scow on whose bow deck a scantily clad half-breed was
dancing to the music of the violin. Now and again across the water
came the curious droning song of the Cree steersmen, musical but wild.
The great brigade was off on its start for the long journey from the
Rockies to the icy sea, continuing one more year of the wild commerce
which had become a part of the land itself for more than a century
now.
"It's wonderful--wonderful!" said Rob, looking about him at the
strange scene on that morning of their first day of actual travel.
"I've never seen a thing more fascinating than this. I'm sure this is
going to be the best trip we've ever had.
"I tell you what," he added, a moment later, turning to the leader of
their little party, "I believe I'll try to keep a little diary for a
little while at least; it might be nice to have a few notes to refer
to. I doubt if any of us will ever make this trip again."
"An excellent idea!" said his uncle. "That's the way to get your
information soaked into your head. Write it down, and be careful what
you write. Your notes, together with John's maps, are things you will
prize very much indeed, later in life."
Rob, indeed, did fulfil his promise, beginning that very day, and
perhaps a few notes taken from his diary may be of interest, as
showing what actually happened as recorded by himself.
"_May 29th._--Off late. Ran three miles. Men went back to
town. Found sacks of sugar made a hard bed. Mosquitoes.
"_May 30th._--The grand start of the big brigade. Running
maybe four or five miles an hour. Banks getting lower.
Cottonwoods, some brûlée (burned-over forest). Supper 6 P.M.
Ran until 9.45 P.M. Damp camp.
"_May 31st._--Off at 6. In the morning men on the first boat
killed a cow moose and two calves. No game laws north of
53°. Men rejoice over meat. Eight mission scows in fleet,
which carry eight to ten tons each. Father Le Fèvre says,
except for whitefish, all northern missions would perish. At
2.15 stopped at Pelican Portage, at head of Pelican Rapids,
120 miles below the landing. Head winds yesterday, but
favorable now. Two boats collided, and one damaged. Saw two
dogs carrying packs--first pack-dogs I ever saw. Priest
baptized an Indian baby here. I suppose this is what the
brigade goes north for, in part. Lay here until 7 in the
evening, and then off for our first rapids, the Pelican.
Rough, but not so bad as Columbia Big Bend Rapids. An
eighteen-foot canoe would go through; twelve-foot doubtful.
Scows do it easily. Fast work close to the shore part of the
way. Men know their business. Some system to the brigade.
Camp at foot of rapids. Much excitement. Scows crowding one
another. Many mosquitoes.
"_June 1st, Sunday._--No travel to-day. All of the boatmen
are Catholics. The priest put up a little chapel and said
Mass. Curious scene to see all these half-savages kneeling,
hats off, on the ground. After Mass a good many of them got
their hair cut; one or two men can do barbering-work. The
judge and legal party played cards all the afternoon. John
seems to eat more than ever. A good many mosquitoes.
"_June 2d._--Off at 6, which seems regular starting-time.
Ashore for lunch 11.30. Slow and lazy work floating down,
but pleasant. Tied up at 6 for supper. Much excitement now,
as we are coming down to the head of Grand Island, where we
make the big portage. After supper made a mile or so through
shallow water among many rocks, to the head of the island.
It is low and rocky, covered with cottonwoods, should think
about a mile long, and not over half a mile wide. Very
fierce water to the left, with quiet water above. No boat
ever ran the left channel alive. Many lost here in the
Klondike; they went into that quiet and deep water on the
left and got caught. They say we will try to run the
right-hand side. Did not put up tent to-night, but slept
under mosquito tents. A hundred and sixty-five miles from
Athabasca Landing. Now we begin to feel as though we were to
see the real work."
IV
THE GRAND RAPIDS
It was much as Rob had predicted in the last entry of his diary
previously quoted. Uncle Dick hurried them through their breakfast.
"We'll see some fun to-day, boys," said he.
"How do you mean?" asked Jesse. "Are they going to try to run the
boats through?"
"They'll have to run the scows through light, so François tells me.
There isn't water enough to take them through loaded, so practically
each one will have to unship its cargo here.
"You see that wooden tramway running down the island?" He pointed
toward a crooked track laid roughly on cross-ties, the rails of wood.
"That is perhaps the least expensive railroad in the world, and the
one which makes the most money on its capital. I don't think it cost
the Company over eight hundred dollars. It couldn't be crookeder or
worse. And yet it pays for itself each year several times over, just
by the outside trade which it does!
"They built this railroad after the Klondike rush came through here.
Previous to that all the goods had to be taken over the 'short
portage'--you see that place over on the steep hillside at the right
side of the river--a mile and a half of it, and every pound of the
Company and Klondike baggage that went north had to be carried on
men's backs along that slippery footing. It was necessary to run these
rapids and to build this railroad. You will see how both ideas will
work to-day."
Some of the boats had been loaded so heavily that part of the cargo
had to be left above the shallow water--one more handling of the
freightage necessitated in the north-bound journey, but each boat,
carrying as much as could be floated, now came poling down through the
rocks to the head of the island.
The men, half in and half out of the water, began to unload this cargo
and to pile it in a great heap at the head of the wooden railroad.
There were two flat-cars, and rapidly these were loaded and pushed off
to the foot of the island, half or three-quarters of a mile. There
every pound of the baggage had to be unloaded once more, and after
that once more carried from the landing into the boats at the foot of
the island.
"Well, are they going to take the boats down on the cars, too?"
demanded Jesse.
"They have done that for others," answered Uncle Dick, "and charged
them ten dollars a boat for doing it, too. But as I said, we'll have
to run our scows down on the right-hand passage. That's the fun I was
talking about."
Rob came up to him now excitedly. "Tell me, Uncle Dick, can't I go
through--couldn't I go through with you in the very first boat?"
His uncle looked at him for a time soberly before he replied. "Well, I
don't like to mollycoddle any of you," said he, "but I'll tell you
what we'll do. We'll have to leave John and Jesse here on the island.
If François says it's safe I'll let you go through with me on the
first boat. It's no place for us to be in this country if we're going
to sidestep every little bit of risk there is. That isn't a manly
thing to do. But the other two boys will have to wait for a while.
"There's bad news," he said to Rob, a little later, aside. "Word has
just come up by canoe from the Long Rapids below here that four men
were drowned day before yesterday. They were going down to McMurray,
and although they had a native pilot they got overturned in the
rapids and couldn't get out. The Mounted Police are looking for the
bodies now."
It was with rather sober faces that our young travelers now watched
the boatmen at their portage-work, although the latter themselves were
cheerful as always, and engaged, as before, in friendly rivalry in
feats of strength. Everything was confusion, yet there was a sort of
system in it, after all, for each man was busy throughout the long
hours of the day. As a scow came in its cargo was rapidly taken out,
as rapidly piled up ashore, and quite as rapidly flung on top of the
flat-cars for transport across the great portage.
Our young adventurers saw with interest that a good many of the
boatmen were quite young, boys of fifteen, sixteen, and eighteen years
of age. Some of these latter did the full work of a man, and one
slight chap of seventeen, with three sacks of flour, and another youth
of his own weight on top of it all, stood for a time supporting a
staggering weight of several hundred pounds while Jesse fumbled with
his camera to make a picture of him.
At about eleven o'clock in the morning of the second day Uncle Dick
came to Rob and drew him aside.
[Illustration: AN ENCAMPMENT OF ESKIMOS ON THE BEACH AT FORT
McPHERSON]
"The first boat is going through," said he. "François will take it
down. It's a Company scow with about a quarter of its cargo left in.
Cap. Shott says it is all right. Are you still of a mind to go, or do
you want to stay here?"
"Not at all, sir!" rejoined Rob, stoutly. "I'll go through, of
course."
So presently they both stepped into the lightly loaded scow which lay
at the head of the island. The men consisted of the steersman,
François; a bowman, Pierre; and four oarsmen. They all were stripped
to trousers and shirts. At a word from François the boat pushed out,
the men poling it through the maze of rocks at the head of the island
to a certain point at the head of the right-hand channel where the
current steadied down over a wide and rather open piece of water.
The bowman carried in his hand a long lance-like shaft or pole, and
stood with it upon the short bow deck. At the stern of the boat there
was a plank laid across which acted as a bridge for the commodore,
François, who walked back and forward across it as he worked his great
steering-oar, which ran out at the back of the scow.
If the men had any anxiety about their undertaking, they did not show
it. François smoked calmly. It was to be noted that Cap. Shott did
not go through on the first boat, but remained on the shore. The skill
of his wild calling had been passed down to the next generation.
François at last gave a short word or so of command in Cree. The
oarsmen straightened out the boat. François motioned now to all the
occupants to keep to the side, so that he would have a clear view
ahead.
Little by little, as the current caught it, the scow began to slip on
faster and faster. By and by waves began to come up alongside, almost
to the gunwale. Rob had the vague impression that this boat was made
of astonishingly thin boards, and that the water made a great noise
upon it. Under the oars it creaked and strained and seemed very frail.
The men were silent now, but eager. François, pipe in mouth, was very
calm as he stood at the oar, his eyes fixed straight ahead.
About half-way down the side of the island came the most dangerous
part of the run. Suddenly the bowman sprang erect and cried out
something in Cree, pointing sharply almost at right angles to the
course of the boat. François gave a few quick orders and the oarsmen
swung hard upon one side. The head of the scow swung slowly into the
current. The channel here, however, passed between two great
boulders, over the lower one of which the river broke in a high white
wave. It was the duty of the steersman to swing the boat between these
giant rocks, almost straight across the course of the river, a feat of
extreme difficulty with such a craft or indeed with any craft. This
was the bad place in the channel always known as "The Turn."
It seemed to Rob as if the whole river now was eager to accomplish
their destruction. He was certain that the scow would be dashed upon
the rocks and wrecked.
It was dashed upon the rocks! The turn was not made quite
successfully, because of the too great weight of the cargo left in
this boat. With a crash the scow ran high up on the lower rock, and
lay there, half out of water, apparently the prey of the savage river.
Rob felt a hand laid upon his shoulder.
"Steady, old chap!" said Uncle Dick. "Keep quiet now. We're still
afloat."
This accident seemed to be something for which the men were not
altogether unprepared. If they were alarmed they did not show it.
There were a few quick words in Cree, to be sure, but each man went
about his work methodically. Under the orders of François they shifted
the cargo now to the floating side of the boat. All of the men except
two or three pole-men took that side also. Then, under command, with
vast heaving and prying on the part of the pole-men, to the surprise
of Rob at least, the boat began to groan and creak, but likewise to
slide and slip. Little by little it edged down into the current, until
the bow was caught by the sudden sweep of the water beyond and the
entire craft swung free and headed down once more! It seemed to these
new-comers as an extraordinary piece of river work, and such indeed it
was. A stiffer boat than this loose-built scow might have broken its
back and lost its cargo, and all its crew as well. As it was, this
boat went on down-stream, carrying safely all its contents.
Rob drew a long breath, but he would not show to the men any sign that
he had been afraid.
Here and there among the rocks the oarsmen, under the commands of the
steersman, picked their way, the lower half of the passage being much
more rapid. On ahead, the river seemed to bend sharply to the left.
Now Rob saw once more the bowman spring to his feet on his short
forward deck. Calling out excitedly, he pointed far to the left with
his shaft. Rob looked on down-stream, and there, a mile and a half
below, he saw erected against a high bank a diamond-shaped frame or
target. At this the bowman was pointing directly with his lance. It
was the target put up there after the Klondike disasters by the
Mounted Police, and indicated the course of the safe channel at the
lower end of the chute.
François, pipe in mouth, calmly swung his sinewy body against the
steering-oar. The bow of the boat crawled around to the left, far off
from the island, toward the shore, where was a toboggan-like pitch of
very fast but safe water for a distance of some hundreds of yards.
As they entered the head of this chute, the bowman still crouching
with his pole poised, it seemed to Rob that he heard shouts and cries
from the island, where, indeed, all those left behind were gathered in
a body, waiting for the first boat in the annual brigade to go
through--something of an event, as they regarded it.
But Rob's eyes were on ahead. He saw the boat hold its course straight
as an arrow toward the great target on the farther bank. With
astonishing speed it coasted down the last incline of the Grand
Rapids. Then, under the skilful handling of steersman and oarsmen, the
boat swung to the right, around a sort of promontory which extended
around the right-hand bank. Rob looked around at Uncle Dick, who was
curiously regarding him. But neither spoke, for both of them knew the
etiquette of the wilderness--not to show excitement or uneasiness in
any unusual or dangerous circumstances.
François, who had narrowly regarded his young charge, now smiled at
him.
"Dot leetle boy, she is good man," he said to Uncle Dick. "He'll is
not got some scares."
Rob did not tell him whether or not this was the exact truth, but only
smiled in turn.
"Well, here we are," said he. "But what good does it do us? There's
the foot of the island up there, three or four hundred yards away at
least. And how can we get a boat up against these rapids, I'd like to
know? Right here is where both the big chutes join. It would take a
steamboat to get up there."
François, who understood a little English, did not vouchsafe any
explanation, but only smiled, and Uncle Dick gravely motioned silence
as well. Rob could see the eyes of François fixed out midstream, and,
following his gaze, he presently saw some dark object bobbing about
out there, going slowly down-stream.
"Look, Uncle Dick!" he cried. "What's that? It looks like a seal."
The latter shook his head. "No seals in here," said he. "That must be
a log."
"So it is," said Rob. "But look at it--it's stopped now."
No one explained to him what all this meant. François sprang to his
steering-oar and gave some swift orders. The boat swung out from the
bank, and under the sweeps made straight out midstream, where the
black object now bobbed at the edge of the slack water. Rob could see
what had stopped it now--it was made fast by a long rope, which was in
turn made fast somewhere up-stream, he could not tell where.
With a swift pass of his pole the bowman caught the rope as the boat
swung near. Rapidly he pulled in the short log and made fast the rope
to the bow of the boat. The scow now swung into the current, its head
pointed up-stream, and hung stationary there, supported against the
current by some unseen power. To Rob's surprise, the oarsmen now took
in their oars.
"Well, now, what's going to happen?" he asked of Uncle Dick.
But the latter only shook his head and motioned for silence.
Slowly but steadily the scow now began to ascend the river, to breast
the white waters which came rolling down, to surmount the full force
of the current of the Athabasca River in its greatest rapids!
Rob glanced on ahead. He could see a long line of men bending under
the great rope which had been floated down to them in this curious
way. They walked inshore, steadily following the line of the railroad
track for almost a quarter of a mile, as it seemed to the other boys
who watched this proceeding ashore.
Steadily the boat climbed up the river, and now, with the aid of the
oarsmen and the steersman, it finally came to rest at a sheltered
little cove at the foot of the island, in slack water, where the
landing was good and cargo could easily be transhipped.
Rob and his older companions stepped ashore, and each smiled as he
looked at the other.
"Don't tell me, son," said Uncle Dick, "that these people don't know
their business! That's the finest thing I've ever seen in rough-neck
engineering in all my life--and I've seen some outdoor work, too."
He stood now looking up the white water down which they had come, and
at the rough hillside beyond where the old portage had lain in earlier
days.
"It's the only way it could have been done!" said he. "You see, these
fellows don't carry a pound that they don't have to, but they don't
risk losing a cargo by trying to run through with full load when the
water won't allow it. They don't get rattled and they know their
business. It's fine--fine!"
"That's what it is, sir," said Rob. "I never saw better fun in all my
life."
By this time Jesse and John came running up, and the boys fell into
one another's arms, asking a dozen questions all at once.
"Weren't you awfully scared?" said Jesse, somewhat awed at Rob's
accomplishment.
"Well," said Rob, truthfully, "I did a good deal of thinking when we
went fast on that rock out there in the middle. That was pretty bad."
"Uncle Dick," called out John, excitedly now. "Say, now, it's no fair
for Rob to go through and us others not. Can't we go with the next
boat?"
Uncle Dick stood looking at them quietly for a time, his hands in his
pockets.
"You wait awhile," said he. "There'll be forty or fifty boats going
through here. Time enough later to see whether it's safe for you two
youngsters to risk it."
V
WHITE-WATER DAYS
For three days the work of portaging on the Grand Island continued
steadily, boat after boat going down to the head of the island to
discharge, then taking the run through the channel of the right-hand
side. Some excitement was shown when in the still water at the head of
the murderous left-hand chute, which never was attempted by the
_voyageurs_, a roll of bedding with a coat tied to it was seen
floating in the current. It was supposed that somewhere up the river
an accident had occurred, but, as it was impossible to tell when or
where, no attempt was made to solve the mystery, and the labor of
advancing the brigade northward went on without further delay.
As the boys watched the river-men at their hard and heavy work, they
came more and more to respect them. Throughout long hours of
labor--and in this northern latitude the sun did not set until after
nine o'clock--there was never a surly word or a complaint heard from
any of them.
John, who seemed to care for facts and figures, began to ask about the
wages which these men received for this hard labor. He was told that
they were paid by the trip from Athabasca Landing to McMurray, which
covered the bad water to the head of steamboat transport. The
steersmen for the round trip received about eighty dollars and their
board, and the river-men forty to fifty dollars. All walked back
across country, a shorter distance than that by water. Some of the men
had along on the scows the large dogs which they used in the
winter-time, and which they now purposed to employ in packing a part
of their loads on the return journey.
John also discovered that the cargo of a scow averaged about
twenty-five hundred dollars in value, and that it would cost sometimes
almost a third of that amount to deliver the freight at its
destination. For instance, the charge of the Hudson's Bay Company for
freight from Athabasca Landing to Fort McPherson was thirteen dollars
and fifty cents per hundred pounds. For the use of the little railroad
a quarter of a mile in length on the island itself the charge to
outsiders was one dollar a ton, and ten dollars for every boat taken
across on the cars.
All the boys now began to learn more of the extreme risk and waste of
this, the north-bound transit. It was not unusual, as they learned,
for a scow to be lost with all its cargo, in which case the post for
which it was destined would need to go without supplies until the
brigade came north in the following year. Damage to goods from
wetting, damage to boats from collisions--all these things went into
the large figures of cost which were to be set against the figures of
the large gain in this commerce of the Far North.
John got many of his figures from the Hudson's Bay Company clerk, a
young man stationed here on Grand Island throughout the season, who
was very friendly to all the strangers in the country. He expressed
himself as very glad to see the brigade come north, for it was the
only interesting time in his season's work. He and one associate
remained here, cut off from the world, all through the summer season,
and he was not very happy, although, as he said, he was president and
general traffic-manager, as well as superintendent and board of
directors, of his railroad, and section boss as well. His duties were
to have general charge of the transport of cargoes at the island, and
to keep a record of the day's doings.
Boat after boat now went through, as has been said, but without
accident, although one or two hung up at The Turn, as the dangerous
passage between the two great rocks in midstream now was called by
all. Below that, as Rob expressed it, the bottom dropped out of the
river and the boat traveled very fast.
John timed some of the boats through, and found that it took about
eight minutes from the head of the eddy to the bottom of the chute.
This Rob could hardly believe, as he said that when he went through it
seemed not more than two minutes at the outside.
John and Jesse grew very grumpy over the prestige Rob had gained by
his journey through the rapids, and besought Uncle Dick to allow them
also to make the passage. Late in the third day, when most of the
boats were through, they renewed their importunities, and he finally
replied:
"Well, young men, I've about concluded to let you go through with the
last boat. François says that he has been watching you all, and
believes that you would not get 'some scares.' He says he will take
you through in your own boat, which will be the last one of the
brigade. The river has come up three or four inches since we struck
in, and he says we can run through without unshipping much, if any, of
our cargo, which doesn't amount to very much. Rob has made the trip,
and I figure now that we are all in the same boat together. Sometimes
it is necessary to be either a man or a mouse. I want to see you grow
up men. Well, are you ready now?"
All the boys gladly said that they were, Rob insisting on accompanying
the boat once more, as indeed was necessary, since there would be no
transport after that.
They took ship at the head of the island, and were tooled across the
shallow water to the head of the rapids on the farther shore. Here the
men all disembarked and sat silently along the edge of the bluff,
taking one of the pipe-smokes which make so regular a part of the
_voyageur's_ day's employment. They seemed to get some sort of comfort
out of their pipes, and almost invariably when undertaking any
dangerous enterprise a quiet smoke was a part of the preparation.
François talked to them, meantime, seeing that they were eager to
learn about the customs of this strange and wild country into which
they now were going. He told them, motioning to the steep hillside on
the right of the channel, that in the old times he used to pack stuff
across the mile-and-a-half portage there for fifty cents a hundred
pounds. It was hard work, and yet he made it pay. When they began to
portage on the island, and not along the mountain-side, he had made as
much as fifty dollars a day, for he got five dollars for taking a boat
through the rapids, or thirty dollars for running it down to Fort
McPherson; so that a season's work would bring him, in very good
years, over a thousand dollars, if he worked.
"But yong man, she spend the mon'," said he, smiling.
John set down in his book the facts and figures, the date of 1871,
which was the time when old Cap. Shott first ran a boat through the
Grand Rapids. Since that time a few other pilots had come on who
proved able to handle scows in white water. But old Cap. Shott
and his long-time friend, Louis La Vallee, were now both of them
old--"h'almost h'eighty year, she is, each of him," said François.
"Well, now," he added at length, "we will ron h'on the _rapide_."
He rose and motioned to his men, who once more took their places at
the oars, as they had in the boat which carried Rob through. Again the
bowman squatted on his short fore deck. François, the steersman,
stood on his plank walk at the handle of the great steering-oar.
Gently they pushed out from shore, the last boat of the brigade.
"Here goes the _Midnight Sun_!" cried Jesse, waving his hat.
Uncle Dick watched them closely as the boat advanced. The boys spoke
little or not at all, and John later accused Jesse of trying to pinch
a piece out of the side of the boat, he held on so tight. But not one
of them showed the white feather, nor made any trouble for the men in
their work of running the fast water.
The boat at first ran along gently, the little waves lapping along the
sides smartly, but not excitingly. Then at the end of the lower third
the water gained in speed very much. At The Turn the waves were no
doubt ten feet high. François, with a great sweep of his oar, fairly
flung the boat athwart the current here, and the passage was made with
no more than a scraping on the dangerous lower rock--the one which
Uncle Dick called Scylla. The upper one he called Charybdis.
"You'll learn what those two words mean when you go to school a little
later," said he, smiling.
Once beyond The Turn John and Jesse understood perfectly well what
Rob had meant by saying that the bottom fell out of the river. They
were excited, but had no thought of fear by the time they entered the
last chute where the scow tobogganed down to the foot of the island. A
moment later it was at rest once more in the eddy below the
promontory.
Rob explained now about the log float which had carried the rope down
to their boat when he first went through. There was, however, no
longer need for the float to carry down a line to the boat. The
brigade was through and the last scow below the island. The clerk and
his taciturn companion were left alone. They stood now, both of them,
waving their hats to the occupants of the _Midnight Sun_ as, after a
little, at the command of François, she pushed out from the eddy and
took her place in the long procession of the north-bound brigade,
every man of which now felt a sense of relief, since the most
dangerous part of the early journey, the portage of the Grand Rapids
of the Athabasca, had been safely accomplished.
The flotilla was now strung out over many miles of water, but it was
the intention to make several miles additional before stopping for the
night. In the late twilight, here strangely long and bright, Rob went
on with his notes in his diary, while John worked at his map, charting
as best he could the right-hand channel through which they had made
their exciting journey. Rob's notes later proved of interest to his
friends, as they explained very much about the journey of this
dangerous two hundred and fifty miles of the white-water transport.
"_Wednesday, June 4th._--Everybody busy all day. At 5 P.M.
most of the freight on the island, and getting loaded on
cars. Slept in the little mosquito tents. Very busy day.
"_Thursday, June 5th._--Many pictures to-day, and we all
were busy. Curious work running boats through the rapids and
getting boat back to end of island. I think that rope that
they let down to the boat is almost a quarter of a mile
long. It takes twenty men or more to haul a boat up against
the rapids, empty, of course.
"Off in the _Midnight Sun_ below the island late afternoon.
Ran the little Grand Rapids, and swung into the Second Eddy
for supper. After that ran seven miles. Camp ground very
bad. Mosquitoes getting worse.
"_Friday, June 6th._--A great many rapids to-day. The
Buffalo seems mild to us after the Grand. The Brûlé Rapids
we liked because they had some pep to them. At about 3 P.M.
we hit the Boiler Rapids, which is one of the worst. Name
because a scow was lost here that was carrying a boiler up
north. The boiler has never been recovered. Rapids full of
boulders, and in low water very bad. Not very dangerous at
this stage. Everybody was still as we went through this
place and came into what they called the Rapids of the
Drowned. They say a great many men have been drowned there,
and it certainly looked bad. These two rapids are about a
mile and a half altogether.
"Four boats were tied back because not everybody can run
these rapids. Our boat was in the lead. Then four pilots
walked back to bring through the boats which had been held
up. We made pictures of them as they came through. Supper at
5 as we floated along, and then we dropped into the Middle
Rapids and had a beautiful time.
"One or two canoes ran through with breeds. Pretty exciting.
They say few of these breeds can swim, but they don't seem
to mind that. Saw several wrecks of scows along the shores
here, and one boat upset in the middle of the rapids. Some
machinery on shore below rapids, very rusty. Begin to
understand why freight comes high. Sometimes half a cargo is
wasted or lost. No farms, no horses, no cows. A good game
country. They say the game and fish keep the white men
alive. The little boy Charl' keeps with the good Sisters. He
was scared going through the rapids, and so were they.
"On the Long Rapids, as we passed through, we saw the fresh
grave of one of the men who was drowned here the other day.
Only one body was found. Their canoe was all broken up.
"On the Crooked Rapids we saw where the men have to track
the boats going up-stream. Don't see how they keep from
falling off the bank. Below the Crooked come the Stony
Rapids, and what the boatmen call the Dive, a sudden dip
down of three or four feet. Sometimes boats ship seas.
Scenery this evening bold and interesting. Some cliffs. Fast
water all day. Camp at 8 o'clock on a good high bluff.
Mosquitoes not quite so bad. Nights cool. This ended the
most glorious day I ever spent out of doors, I believe.
"_Saturday, June 7th._--Beautiful weather. Passed cliffs
where they say there is oil. I don't know. We heard heavy
rapids below, and at 7 A.M. got into them. They call this
the Little Cascade. A ledge runs across the river. At 9
o'clock we came to one of the big jumps on the river known
as the Grand Cascade. About the worst man-trap there is in
low water, they say. We concluded to run her. Our boat goes
first. Some boats tie back to wait for our pilots. There are
three good pilots to eight boats. Many pictures of boats
running the Cascade, which drops eight or ten feet like a
mill-dam. Wonderful what these men can do with the boat.
"Now three or four small rapids which I don't mind, then at
11.45 we struck Mountain Rapids, which made little Charl'
'get some scares,' as François says. Sometimes we eat on the
boat. I asked Father Le Fèvre if he had prayed for high
water, and he said yes. Then I asked him what he did if high
water didn't come. He said, 'My son, although in that case
I prayed for high water, perhaps God likewise took another
way to show His power, and so saved us out of even greater
danger and discomfort.' He's a bird.
"The Moberly Rapids don't amount to much. We ran them at
1.30--the last on the great chain of rapids, so they say. In
about fifteen minutes we could see Fort McMurray on ahead.
Many scows were lying along the shore, mostly loaded, some
empty. Climbed up a steep hill to a fine flat on top of the
bluff. Woods all around. A fine site for a town, and the
Indians have it. The flat was covered with tepees, also some
tents. There were dogs and dogs and babies and babies
everywhere, with squaws and Indian men walking around all
dressed up in their best. The Indian agent is going to pay
their treaty money. It is only eight hundred and fifty
dollars altogether--not very much, I think. Hear a lot of
talk about lands and towns and railroads and oil.
"There are some Chippewyans here, and a lot of Crees, but
these northern Indians don't speak the Cree language. Got
my moccasins mended. Made some pictures. The _Grahame_ is
the name of the H. B. steamboat which is going to take us
down the river from here. We will tow our scow and sleep on
the steamboat. Monday morning is when we start.
"_Sunday, June 8th._--The treaty payment goes on, although
it is Sunday. Indian men sitting down on the grass before
the commissioner. He asks each one what right he has to
claim money from the Great Father, I suppose. Once in a
while he turns to the clerk and says, 'We'll give this old
duffer twenty bucks.' This doesn't look to me like very much
money. I don't think they get much help. They are poor and
dependent. If they couldn't rustle well out of doors they
all would die. Much trade finery among the natives, who
dress very bright. Several Northwest Mounted Policemen in
red-jacket uniform who go north with us on the boat. She is
going to be crowded. The judge and his party are going on
the scows.
"Well, this is the end of the scow-work for us, so it seems.
Uncle Dick thinks we will be more comfortable on the
steamer, and will see more people to talk to than if we
stuck to our own scow. We will tow her alongside. I hope
they will let us run through the Smith's Landing portage, on
the Little Slave, a hundred miles below here. I never had a
better time in my life than the first 250 miles. The
mosquitoes don't bother us quite so much. John eats a great
deal, and Jesse is getting fat. Having a bully time."
VI
ON THE STEAMBOAT
As Rob indicated in his diary, the start from McMurray was made early
on Monday morning, but the stop was long enough for the boys to gain
an idea of the importance of this busy frontier settlement. Here also
came in the Clearwater River, down which, by way of a chain of lakes,
all the brigade traffic used to come before the discovery that the
Grand Rapids themselves could be run. When it is remembered that the
start was made from Athabasca Landing on May 29th, and the arrival at
McMurray on June 7th, it will be seen that, crude as the system and
the means of transport had been, a great deal of results had been
attained. Rob figured that at the rate of two hundred and fifty miles
a week they would not get very far, but Uncle Dick pointed out that
now, since they had reached steamer transport, the journey would
advance very rapidly.
The steamboat, after its start, passed the string of scows, among
which were some boats of independent traders, and a few hardy
adventurers bound north, for what purpose they hardly knew.
The _Grahame_ advanced steadily and rapidly down-stream. Some of the
passengers excitedly tried to point out to Uncle Dick the value of the
oil-lands in this part of the world, but Uncle Dick only smiled and
said he was out for a good time, and not building railroads now.
The weather grew quite warm, and in the state-rooms the boys found
that the thermometer stood at ninety degrees. With one stop for wood
at a yard where the natives had piled up enormous quantities of
cordwood, the boat tied up after making perhaps sixty miles.
On the following day she continued her steady progress down-stream
between the green-lined shores. The banks of the river now grew lower
and lower, and by nine o'clock in the evening, at which time it still
was light, there began to show the marshes of the Peace River Delta,
one of the most important deltas in all the world. The boat ran on
into the night, and before midnight had passed the mouths of the
Quatre Fourches, or Four Forks, which make the mouth of the Peace
River.
The boys wondered at the great marshes which now they saw, and Uncle
Dick explained to them that here was one of the greatest wild-fowl
breeding-grounds in all the world.
"If there were any way in the world for sportsmen to get up here,"
said he, "this country would soon be famous, for it certainly is a
wilderness. Here is where the natives shoot wild geese for their
winter's meat. And as for ducks, there is no numbering them."
Every one sat on the decks of the boat late at night, and we may rest
assured that the boys were on hand when finally the _Grahame_ swung to
her moorings along the rocky shore of historic Fort Chippewyan.
In the morning they went ashore eagerly and gazed with wonderment over
the wild scene which lay all about. The point where they landed was a
rocky promontory. Before it lay high, rocky islands, among which ran
the channels of the two great rivers which here met in the great
waters of Athabasca Lake.
"Just to think," said Rob to his friends, "this post here was founded
a hundred and forty-three years ago. My, but I'd have liked to have
been with old Sir Alexander at that time! He ought to have a monument
here, it seems to me, or some sort of tablet; but there isn't a thing
to tell about his having found this place or done anything
extraordinary."
"I wonder how much these natives here are going to get in the way of
treaty money," said John, as he saw the commissioner again putting up
his tent with the flag of his country above it. "There are a lot of
canoes coming in from everywhere, so they say--fifty Cree boats from
their camp. They tell me that the Crees and Chippewyans don't mix any
too well. I think the Crees have got them scared when it comes to
that."
"Well, these dogs have got me scared," complained Jesse. "I never saw
so many dogs in all my life. And there isn't a cow anywhere in the
world, nor even a goat or sheep."
"They have to have these dogs in the winter-time, you understand,"
said John, paternally. "They pull as much as a team of horses would in
the snow."
"Yes, and they eat as much as a horse would," said Jesse. "The bacon
for Fort Resolution was unloaded here last night, and the dogs ate up
more than a ton of it; there's nothing left there except a lot of
paper and pieces of canvas! I'll bet it's the first time these dogs
here ever had a square meal in their lives!"
"I don't know about that," said Rob, laughing. "Look over yonder." He
pointed to where an Indian woman sat on the ground, cleaning a lot of
fish. Around her squatted a circle of gaunt, wolfish creatures which
seemed ready to devour her and her fish alike.
Uncle Dick joined their group as they wandered around, and explained
such things as they did not understand.
"This is one of the greatest posts of all the fur trade," said he. "It
is the center, as you have learned, of a lot of the native tribes in
this part of the world. It ships from here an enormous amount of fur
which the traders collect. The independent traders are breaking in
here now, but the natives learn to catch more and more fur, so it
seems. I suppose in time it will be exterminated. Then the natives
will go, too.
"Over yonder is a tombstone, but not any monument for Sir Alexander.
It tells about the life-history of an old factor who lived here for so
long in this wilderness. It's all old, old, old--older almost than any
city in the United States, or at least older than a great many of our
considerable cities. But you would think this was at the beginning.
There are the natives, and there are the dogs, just as they were when
Sir Alexander came through. Perhaps they didn't have so much calico
then. Of course they didn't have repeating-rifles then, and surely not
steel traps. But they talked the same language, and in my opinion they
had about as much religion then as they have now."
"What's that boat out there with a sail on it?" demanded Rob, after a
time, pointing to a small craft which was moored near by.
"Goodness only knows," replied Uncle Dick. "There are all sorts of
fool adventurers in the world, and they take all sorts of fool
chances. I have heard that there are a half-dozen prospectors in that
schooner, going north, they don't know where nor why.
"Well, at least we can say we're in the North here," he added. "They
get just nine mails a year at Chippewyan, about four mails in and the
rest of them go out. In the summer-time mail service runs about once a
month.
"They say they did have a horse in here two years ago, and that it ran
off, and they did not find it for two years. They had a team at Fort
McMurray, and it was lost, too. I wouldn't call this a good horse
country myself! No, it's a fur country and an Indian country. That's
why it's interesting to us, isn't it?"
"Well," said John, "we ought to get some pictures of the treaty
payments to the Indians to show our folks back home how they live up
here. I wish I had brought along twice as many rolls of film as I've
got. I never get tired of making pictures of dogs and Indians."
"Well, when you are photographing Indians study Indians, too," said
Uncle Dick. "Most people look at Indians just as an object of
curiosity, but he may be quite a fellow, even so. For instance, there
are these Crees sitting over there in the grass before the flag,
waiting for their treaty money. They flock by themselves, quite
distinct from the Chippewyans; they don't camp within three miles of
each other. As you know, the Crees are of the Algonquin family. They
have pushed west all the way from eastern Canada, following the fur
trade. They have followed up the Red River and down the Athabasca, and
they have overrun all the intervening tribes and elected themselves
chiefs and bosses pretty much. You may call the Cree half-breed the
mainstay of all the northern fur trade.
"But now," he added, "we are getting beyond the country even of the
Crees. Here at Chippewyan is the farthest north of the Cree so far.
Now we are going to find a lot of other different tribes."
The boys passed here and there along the rocky shore among the
villages of the natives and among the stoutly built log houses of the
fur-post itself. Here and there a woman was sitting in front of her
tent, trying to operate one of the little cheap hand sewing-machines
which had been brought on for the first time that year. In another
tent strange sounds came which seemed familiar to the boys. They
discovered that a proud family had purchased a cheap phonograph, and
under the instruction of one of the clerks was proceeding to produce
what is sometimes called melody. These things, however, did not
interest the young adventurers so much as the more primitive scenes of
the native life.
Here they saw a boatman fresh from his nets, with half a boat-load of
fish still alive, throw out some of the live fish, among them a number
of pickerel, or Great Northern Pike, to his dogs, which sat waiting on
the shore for his arrival. A dog would seize a five-pound fish by the
head, kill it, and eat it outright, bones and all.
"They never get enough to eat," said John. "They're hungry all the
time."
"Well," said Jesse, laughing, "that's the same way with you, isn't it,
John?"
"That's all right," said John, testily. "I'm growing, that's why I eat
so much. But as for you, Jesse, you'd better keep away from these
dogs. Do you know what I heard? It was old Colin Frazer, the
fur-trader, told me. He said there was a child killed last winter out
on the ice by dogs, and they ate it up, every bit. You see, it had on
a caribou coat, and it was alone at the time. The dogs killed it and
ate it. Sometimes they eat little dogs, too. They'll eat anything and
never get enough. But I suppose they have to have dogs here the same
as they have to have Indians, else they could have no fur trade."
"The old trader up at the post is mighty crusty, it seems to me,"
complained Jesse, after a time. "He won't let me go up in the
fur-loft, where he keeps his silver-gray foxes and all that sort of
thing, to make any pictures. What's the reason he won't?"
Rob smiled as he answered: "The Hudson's Bay Company is a big monopoly
and it keeps its own secrets. You'll have to ask a good many questions
before you find out much about its business. And if you should try to
buy even one skin of an ermine or a marten or a fox or a mink in here,
you couldn't do it. They wouldn't sell you anything at all. Perhaps
some of the independent traders who are coming in might sell you some
furs for yourself--at a very good price. But the old Company stands
pat and runs its affairs the way it used to. It doesn't tell its
secrets."
The boys stood, hands in pockets now, toward the close of their
interesting day at Chippewyan, looking in silence at the squared logs
of the whitewashed Company buildings. A certain respect came into
their minds.
"It's old," said John, after a time. "They don't seem to rustle very
much now, but they have done things--haven't they?"
VII
THE WILD PORTAGE
According to Rob's diary, it was on Friday, June 13th, that the
steamer _Grahame_ left the ancient trading-post of Chippewyan on the
rocky shores of Athabasca Lake. Rob also made the curious entry that
as the boat left shore two ravens flew across its bow, and that the
Indians and half-breeds were very much distressed over what they
considered a bad omen. Uncle Dick and his two companions, Jesse and
John, laughed with Rob at this, and, indeed, no ill fortune seemed to
attend them.
By this time the great brigade had begun to thin and scatter. Several
scows were unloaded and left at Chippewyan. Yet others were despatched
for the post at the eastern side of the lake. The legal party and the
Indian Commissioner now parted company with our travelers. But
occasionally, as the steamer swept away from the high and bold shores
on which the old trading-post lay, and passed the vast marshes where
the wild-fowl nest in millions every year, they found in the main
current of the river scattered odds and ends of river traffic, now and
then a brigade scow, or the shapeless boat of some prospector going
north, he knew not how or where.
Continually, however, the impression of the deepening of the
wilderness fell upon our party as they pushed on steadily down-stream
between the low timbered banks of the river. John now noted on his map
that this river, the outlet of Lake Athabasca, which received the
combined floods of the Peace and the Athabasca, was known as the Slave
River, or sometimes the Little Slave River.
As had been the Athabasca all the way down, this river was very much
discolored and stained by the high waters of the spring.
"Now, young men," said Uncle Dick to his charges as they stood on the
fore deck of the steamer in the hot sun of midafternoon, "you can say
that you are getting into the real wilderness. It runs every way you
can look--west, north, south, and east. From where we are now, draw a
circle large as you like, and you will embrace in it thousands of
miles of country which no man really knows. Trust not too much even in
the Dominion maps. I'd rather trust John's map, here, because he
doesn't have to guess."
"Well," said John, looking up from his own work with his papers, "it
doesn't seem such a very wild trip now, traveling along on the
steamboat. It might as well be along the Alaska shore, or even on the
Hudson River--if the things we had to eat were better."
"Never you mind about all that," rejoined his uncle. "If you want to
see wild work with a thrill to it, you shall have all you care for
within the next few days. To-morrow we'll be at Smith's Landing, which
marks the sixteen-mile portage of the Slave River. I suppose in there
you'll see the wildest water in the world, so far as boating is
concerned. I'll warrant you you'll think you are in the wilderness
when you see the Cassette Falls and any of a hundred others between
Smith's Landing and the Mountain Portage. I've been talking with the
boat captain about those things."
Rob looked up from the book which he was reading. "It says," remarked
he, "that Sir Alexander Mackenzie knew all this country as far down as
the big portage here."
"Quite likely," replied Uncle Dick. "The truth is that all of this
early exploration which comes down to us in history was perhaps not
so difficult as it sounds. There is continual trading back and
forward among the Indian tribes, even when they are hostile to one
another. Sir Alexander no doubt heard from each of these various
tribes all about their country as far north as the next tribe. Then
that tribe in turn could give him advice and guidance. So he was
passed on, much as Lewis and Clark were, or Major Long, or Captain
Pike, in our own explorations. Nearly all the time he had a native
guide to tell him what he might expect on ahead.
"One thing sure," he added, "from all they tell me about the rapids of
the Slave at Smith's Landing, he would have had a hard time if he had
run directly into the big current at the head of the falls without any
warning. But I suppose for hundreds of years the natives hereabouts
have known about those falls, and naturally that would be the first
thing they would tell any new man in the country."
It was seven o'clock in the evening of June 14th, at the end of a cold
and dull day's travel, that the boys found themselves in the Big Eddy
along the bank of the post known as Smith's Landing. This spot is
directly above the Great Falls of the Slave River, and marks the place
for unloading of the cargoes of the boats which must be portaged
across the sixteen miles of land, or taken down by the hazardous
passage through the rapids themselves.
As the boat with its warning whistle drew up alongside the shore there
thronged down to the side of the landing the usual crowd of natives, a
few white men, many half-breeds, and countless dogs. On the bank above
stood the usual row of whitewashed buildings which marked the Hudson's
Bay post, not very many in all, even counting the scattered cabins of
the population which had drawn in about this upper post.
"Two things you will observe here," said the leader of our young
adventurers. "Smith's Landing has a sidewalk, and Smith's Landing also
has a team of horses! You may mark this place as farthest north for
the domestic horse--you will not see another one north of here. They
have to have this team to get the goods across by wagon. Sometimes,
too, they track a scow over, I believe, although the road is not very
good."
"Well, how did they come to have that sidewalk?" asked John, pointing
to the narrow and unimportant strip of walk which lay in front of one
of the warehouses.
Uncle Dick smiled. "The captain of the boat told me that they wanted
some telephone-poles to string a wire from here across to Fort Smith,
over the portage. So the wise authorities of the Company had Montreal
send out enough square-sawed four-inch joists to make poles for fifty
miles of telephone--and right in a country where there are better
telephone-poles than you could get at Montreal! So they were all
brought through, with what trouble you can imagine, since you have
seen the sort of transport they must have had coming this far. The
factor could not use them all, so he put up a few and laid the others
in the form of a sidewalk. I'll say it's lasting, at least!
"As for those horses, however," he continued, "we'll take a crack at
them ourselves if we have luck. You've been complaining that things
are not exciting enough, and I propose to give you a touch of life.
After we get done our work here--that is to say, after everybody has
drunk up all the Scotch whisky that has come north on this boat--we'll
be getting on about our business. We'll take our scow through.
"I'm going to contract with old Johnny Belcore, the traffic-handler
here, to take our boat and an extra scow around through the rapids of
the Slave River. You'll see he'll ship his horses along to use on the
portages, and there'll be more than one of them. It would take a lot
of men to track one of these boats up the bank and along a mile or so
of dry ground. They tell me that he uses rollers and pulls the boats
by horse power. So, as that is one more example of the way the brigade
gets its goods north, we'll use that, if only for the sake of our own
information."
"That'll be fine," said Rob. "I'd much rather do that than climb on
top of a lumber-wagon and ride across sixteen miles of muskeg. If we
did that we'd miss all the excitement of seeing the Big Rapids of the
Slave. I've been reading about them. You're right, this is perhaps as
bad boat water as any actually used by men."
"Do you suppose it is worse than the White Horse Rapids up on the head
of the Yukon?" asked John, looking up.
Uncle Dick laughed at this. "Son," said he, "the White Horse Rapids
could be lost a thousand times here in the falls of the Slave River,
and no one would know where they went. Those rapids got their
reputation through the stories of tenderfeet, for the most part. They
don't touch the Grand Rapids of the Athabasca, and the Grand Rapids
don't touch the Slave. She drops a hundred and sixty-five feet in
sixteen miles! You can figure what that means, and if you can't figure
it we'll see it with our own eyes."
"I read once in some sort of a magazine story," said Rob, "that the
Peace River buffalo herd is somewhere up in this country, and that
when people want to find out about it they go to Smith's Landing."
"That's true," said Uncle Dick. "That somewhat mythical herd has been
under the more or less mythical charge of the Dominion government in
here for some time. It isn't worth while for us to make a trip out to
see it; that is usually done by parties who are going back from here.
Nor do we care to see the celebrated Dominion government reindeer herd
which is out on the promontory of the Mountain Portage below here.
"I understand there were about a dozen of these reindeer once, but
most of them got into the river and swam across. The last report was
that the keeper of this herd had only one reindeer left, and he was
sitting tight, with several Lapland dogs which had been sent out by
the government!"
"The trouble with people that run things," said Rob, judicially, "is
that sometimes they don't know about the things they are running."
"Well, I don't see why they sent reindeer up into the caribou
country," said Jesse. "Of course I'm only a boy, but I can't see why
they do that."
Uncle Dick grinned. "We may see a good many things we can't understand
before we get done with the trip. But all the same we'll have a good
time finding out.
"You may sleep ashore to-night, young men," he said, later,
"for perhaps you would rather not lie in your berths on the boat.
The captain tells me that Smith's Landing is famous for its
mosquitoes--they are supposed to be worse here than anywhere else
on earth."
"Well, that's saying a good deal," said John. "I didn't know there
were so many mosquitoes in all the world. What makes them, anyhow, and
what do they have them for, Uncle Dick?"
That gentleman only shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands.
"It's all in the game," said he. "You must learn not to kick. Look at
the half-breeds all around. How hard their life is, and what
punishment they have to take all the time. Well, they don't kick. One
great lesson of this trip ought to be to take your medicine and be
game and quiet as well."
The boys did not find the stop at Smith's Landing of special
interest, for there was so much drunkenness among all the population
that they became quite disgusted at the sloth and noisiness of it all.
They learned through the captain that while liquor is not allowed to
be sold generally at the Hudson's Bay posts, among natives, the
government does allow a "permit" to any one going into that country,
so that each traveler might legally take a gallon of liquor for
"medicinal purposes." Sometimes a white trader or employee would be
allowed to import each year a gallon of liquor on a "permit." The
captain told one instance, more gruesome than amusing, which had just
happened that week. A man at Smith's Landing had ordered his annual
gallon of liquor, but meantime he had died. As he could not use the
liquor, the question arose to whom did it belong. That was decided, so
he said, by a game of cards in the warehouse on the bank. That the
contents of the dead man's liquor-case found use was easy enough to
see.
The tales regarding the mosquitoes at Smith's Landing proved more than
true. Our young travelers found that the best of their mosquito dope
was of little or no avail, so that they wore headnets and long gloves
almost always.
By this time they had learned to manage their sleeping-tents so that
they could keep out the insects at night, and lost but little sleep,
even amid the continual howling of the dogs and the carousing of the
half-drunken population of the place.
Meantime, albeit slowly, the cargoes of the scows and of the steamer
were being portaged by wagon over the sixteen miles of flat timbered
country. This work went on for nearly a week. It was Thursday, June
19th, when Uncle Dick announced to Rob and John and Jesse that now
they would be off for the exciting enterprise of taking their boat
down the rapids of the Slave. Johnny Belcore, as the freight
contractor was named, had finally secured a Cree pilot who knew the
ancient channel, used time out of mind by the Hudson's Bay boats which
risked this dangerous passage. He agreed to take the _Midnight Sun_
across the portage for fifty dollars, and to charge seventy-five cents
for each hundred pounds of freight. During the short season of the
brigade's passage north, at which time most of the amateurs and
independents were crowding northward, Belcore made a very considerable
amount of money. Our party, however, thought his charges entirely
reasonable, and, indeed, would not, for any money, have foregone the
pleasure of running these redoubtable rapids. They learned now that
three other scows were going through also. Belcore had his team on one
of these, and had brought along twenty-seven men to man the boats, to
handle the team, etc.
In the early evening his little flotilla pushed off, with few regrets
at leaving Smith's Landing behind. On the left lay the dangerous and
treacherous falls of the Priest Rapids, so called by reason of the
loss there of a Catholic priest and a companion years ago. The boats,
however, were rowed in slack water across above these big falls, then
took two fast chutes upon the farther side. After this smart water the
commodore of the little fleet pulled in to portage the Cassette Falls,
that tremendous cascade of the Slave River which so terrifies the
ordinary observer when first he sees its enormous display of power.
There are perhaps few more terrifying spectacles of wild water, even
including the Whirlpool Rapids at Niagara.
That night our party lay in bivouac, and were up early in the work of
the portage. All the goods had to be unloaded and all the scows were
hauled up the steep bank by means of a block and tackle. Once up the
bank, the team, which had been brought along in one of the scows and
forced to climb up the bank, were hitched to a long rope, and with the
aid also of men tugging at the ropes they rapidly hauled the boat over
the high and rocky ground which made the portage--a distance of some
four hundred yards in all.
It was about four o'clock that afternoon when the boats had finished
this first portage and had been again loaded below the sharp drop at
the farther end.
The boys continually hung about the men in this curious and
interesting work, and plied Belcore with many questions. He explained
to them that the Cassette Falls are on one of four or five different
channels into which the Slave River breaks hereabouts. Many of these
chutes could not be run at all, nor could a boat be lined down through
them by any possibility. In spite of all this, as he explained, one or
two boats of ignorant prospectors actually had found their way down
the rapids of the Slave, preserved by Providence, as Belcore piously
affirmed.
After the Cassette Portage there came a curve in the rapid run of
water where a canoe hardly could have lived, as the boys thought, then
five miles of very slow water where all the men had to row, the Slave
River being nothing if not freakish in its methods hereabouts. At
times far to the left, through the many tree-covered islands, the
boys could see the fast channel of the Slave River proper, a
tremendous flood pouring steadily northward to the Arctic Sea.
Belcore said the drop of the Slave was two hundred feet in the entire
length of the portage, but the government estimate is a hundred and
sixty-five feet.
"Well," said John, doing a little figuring on the margin of his map,
"we're going downhill pretty fast, it seems to me, as we go north. The
Grand Rapids drop only fifty-five feet. From Athabasca Landing to
McMurray there is a drop of eight hundred and sixty feet in the two
hundred and fifty-two miles. That's going some. And here we drop a
hundred and sixty-five feet in about sixteen miles. It's no wonder the
water gets rough sometimes."
Belcore pointed out to them, far to the left, late that evening, the
Middle Rapids, whose heavy roar they could hear coming to them across
the distance. They could not really see these rapids, as they bore off
to the right to make the second portage. The pilot found his way
without any chart through a maze of slack water and blind channels
hidden among the islands. Belcore told them that no one knew all of
the Slave River at this point, but that the Indians remembered the
way they had been following, which their fathers and their fathers'
fathers had handed down to them in the traditions of the tribes.
At this second portage, or traverse, the goods were carried across by
the wagon and team, the boats meantime making two portages in a
quarter of a mile. At the last run of the boats the men stopped calmly
no more than fifty yards above a chute which would have wrecked any
craft undertaking to make the run through.
For yet another day the block-and-tackle work on the scows, the
horse-and-wagon labor with the goods, continued. The boats were
sometimes hauled over wide ridges of rough rocks, till the wonder was
that they held together at all. There was one ancient craft, a York
boat of earlier times, which the Company was taking through, and this,
being stiffly built with a keel, was badly strained and rendered very
leaky by the time it got through the rude traverse of the rocky
portage. The men took tallow and oakum and roughly calked the seams of
this boat, so that it was possible to get it across the river to Fort
Smith eventually. A wagon-tire came off, which left the wagon
helpless. The half-breeds did not complain, but carried its load on
their own backs.
"Well," said Rob to John, as they stood apart at one time, watching
this wild labor, "Uncle Dick was right. We are in the wilderness now.
This is a land of chance--every fellow has to take his risks without
grumbling, and his work, too. I like to see these men work; they are
so strong."
"They tell me that they are not going to drag all the scows across,"
said John. "They're going to try to run that bad chute below our
landing with a couple of scows. The men say it takes too long to wagon
them across, and they would much rather take the chance."
"Fine!" said Rob. "We'll go make some pictures of them as they go
through."
"Hurry on, then," rejoined John, "and get Jesse. We ought to get some
fine pictures there. I've been down and seen that place, and the water
drops higher than the roof of a house and goes through a narrow place
where you could touch both sides with the oars."
It was indeed as they had said--the half-breeds, careless ever of
danger, and willing only to work when work was necessary, actually did
run two scows down the narrow chute of the Middle Rapids. The boys,
cameras in hand, did their best to make pictures of the event, and
stood hardly breathing as they saw the boats go down the toboggan-like
incline between two great boulders which the poles of the boatmen
touched on either side.
As the scow struck the level water at the foot of this chute or
cascade, her bow was submerged for almost a third of the length, and
the men in front were wet waist-high. She still floated, however, as
she swung into the strong current below, and the men with shouts of
excitement rowed and poled her ashore. To them it seemed much better
to take a half-hour of danger than a half-day of work. As a matter of
fact, both boats came through not much the worse for wear, and perhaps
not as badly damaged as they would have been if dragged on the rollers
across the rocky hillside.
"Well, boys," said Uncle Dick to them, as at length he found them
returning from this exciting incident, "it's time to eat again. It
ought to please you, John. These men have to work so hard that they
are fed four times a day. This is meal Number Four we're going to have
now."
John laughingly agreed to this, and soon their party were seated
cross-legged, with their tin plates, around the stove which the
contractor's cook had set up on the shore. The delay was not very
long, for now, after finishing the second portage of the boats, the
men fell to and slid the last of the scows down a twenty-five-foot
bank and once more into the current of the stream.
The next great labor of this short but strenuous sixteen miles was, so
they were informed, to come at the Mountain Portage, a spot historic
in all the annals of the north-bound Hudson's Bay traffic.
The boats, now assembled safely and once more reloaded, followed their
leader through a number of blind channels which caused the boys to
marvel, across the Slave River to the left, rowed up in slack water
for a time, and at last dropped down below the Pelican Rapids. Now,
under the excited cries of the pilot, the men rowed hard. The boats
crossed the full flood of the Slave River for a mile and a half, then
slipped down on fast water, using the eddies beautifully, and at last
dropped into the notch in a high barrier which seemed to rise up
directly ahead of them. Off to the right, curving about the great
promontory, foamed the impassable waters known as the Mountain Rapids.
All the north-bound freight which was not traversed by wagon across
Smith's Landing must be carried on manback over the Mountain Portage.
The hill which rose up from the riverside was crossed by a sandy road
or track, the eminence being about a hundred and fifty feet on the
upper side and perhaps two hundred feet on the lower.
Of course here every boat had to be unloaded once more. A little
settlement of tents and tarpaulins and mosquito bars rapidly arose. It
was a rainy camp that night, and most of the men slept drenched in
their blankets, but in the morning they arose without complaint to
begin their arduous labor of packing tons of supplies across this high
and sandy hill.
The party here was joined by a group of four prospectors who had
brought their scows in some way down this far by the aid of a pilot
not accredited by the traders. All these boats, therefore, had to take
turns at the Landing in the discharge of their cargoes. As to the
mission scows and Father Le Fèvre, they were left far behind, nor were
they heard from for some time.
"The wonder is to me that there isn't more trouble and quarreling on
this far-off trail," said Rob to Uncle Dick as they stood watching the
men toiling up the sandy slope under their heavy burdens, each man
carrying at least a hundred pounds, some of them twice that. "I
should think every one would lose his temper once in a while."
Uncle Dick smiled at this remark. "They do sometimes," said he,
"although I think there is no country in the world so good for a man's
temper as this northern wilderness. A fellow just naturally learns
that he has got to keep cool. But the parties like the Klondike
tenderfeet were always quarreling among themselves. I heard of one
party of four on the Grand Rapids who concluded to split up. So they
divided their supplies into two halves exactly, and even sawed their
boat in two, so neither party could complain that the other had not
been fair!
"Well, anyhow," he continued, as the boys laughed at this story--a
true one--"we cannot accuse any of our men here of being ill-tempered.
They are using this haul as they have for maybe a hundred years or so.
This is the Hudson's Bay Company's idea of getting its goods north.
With the use of a few hundred dollars and the labor of a few men they
could improve all these portages through here so that they could save
a week of time and hundreds of dollars in labor charges each season.
Will they do it? They will not. Why? Because they are the Hudson's Bay
Company--The Honorable Company of Adventurers of England trading into
Hudson's Bay."
"That's right. That's the trouble," said John. "I saw that name on a
little bottle which had a little cocktail in it, just about one drink,
the man said who had it. They seem to be rather proud of their name.
It went clean around the bottle."
"I suppose so," said Uncle Dick, "and they have a right to be proud in
many ways, for it covers a wonderful record. You can't call it a
record of enterprise, however, and that's why the independents are
coming in here, and going to steal the land out from under them before
very long. I could take two men and a team, and in two days' time cut
the top off this hill here at the Mountain Portage. It takes our
twenty-four men and a team four hours to get one scow up the hill. To
an American engineer that doesn't look very much like good business.
But inasmuch as it isn't all our funeral, we'll take our medicine and
won't kick--remembering what I've told you about the lessons we ought
to learn from all this.
"But now remember one thing," he went on. "In the old times, before
there was any steamboat on the Mackenzie or on the Slave River, every
bit of the fur had to go out in boats under the tracking-line. They
tell me the old tracking-path ran yonder around the promontory. A
jolly stiff pull, I'll warrant you, they had getting up through here.
But think of it--they did it not only one year, but every year for
more than a hundred years!"
Rob continued his diary more or less impatiently during the time they
lay at the Mountain Portage, but noted that on Monday, June 23d, at
seven-thirty in the evening, the work was all concluded. His notes
ran:
"We are off. Fort Smith is next. Fast water. Pilot Boniface
in bow. River very wide below the Mountain Rapids, and
wanders very much--every which way. Shallow so the boats
have trouble. They say no one could run the big water below
Pelican Island off to the right. Crossed the river in a wide
circle. Could hear roar of heavy rapids on both sides.
Boniface says if the water was high we would run the big
rapids on the left straight through, but we cannot do it
now. Our channel is crooked like a double letter S, and I
don't see how he follows it. It takes fancy steering.
"We are following what they call the old Hudson's Bay
channel. This carries us to the right-hand side of the
river, and it looks a mile or two across. Storm came up and
we got wet. Over to the left we could see lights. They said
it was the steamboat _Mackenzie River_ lying at her moorings
at Fort Smith. Jolly glad to get done with this work.
"Dark and wet and late. Went on board steamboat. Quite a
post here. A good many strangers besides the Company people.
Well, here we are at the head of the Mackenzie River, or the
Big Slave, as they call it here. I'm pretty glad."
VIII
ON THE MACKENZIE
The three young companions stood in the bright sunlight on the high
bank of Fort Smith at the foot of which lay the steamer which was to
carry them yet farther on their northwest journey. About them lay the
scattered settlements at the foot of the Grand Traverse between the
Slave and the Mackenzie. Off to the right, along the low bed of the
river, lay the encampment of the natives, waiting for the "trade" of
the season. Upon the other hand were the log houses of the Company
employees, structures not quite so well built, perhaps, as those at
Chippewyan, but adapted to the severity of this northern climate.
At the foot of the high embankment, busy among the unloaded piles of
cargo which had been traversed from the disembarkment point of Smith's
Landing, trotted in steady stream the sinewy laborers, the same
half-breeds who everywhere make the reliance of the fur trade in the
upper latitudes. They were carrying now on board the _Mackenzie
River_, as the steamboat was named, the usual heavy loads of flour,
bacon, side-meat, sugar, trade goods, all the staples of the trade,
not too expensive in their total.
There were to be seen also the human flotsam and jetsam of this
northern country--miners, prospectors, drifters, government employees,
and adventurers--all caught here as though in the cleats of a flume,
at this focusing-point at the foot of the wild northern waters.
"John," said Jesse, at last, as he drew a full breath of warm yet
invigorating air, "how is your map coming along?"
"Pretty well," replied John. "I've got everything charted this far.
Look here how I've put down our journey through the rapids of the
Slave River; we zigzagged all about. I put down the rocks and the
biggest headlands, so I think I've got it pretty close to correct. I
wonder how we ever got through there, and how the old Company men
first went through."
"Two boats came through directly over the big rapids which we didn't
dare tackle," said Rob. "They were tenderfeet, and they don't know to
this day how lucky they were."
"Well, we were lucky enough, too," said John, "for in spite of our bad
omens at Chippewyan, everything has come through fine. Here we are,
all ready for our last great swing to the North. Look here on the map,
fellows--I always thought that the Mackenzie River ran straight north
up to the Arctic Ocean, but look here--if you start from where we are
right now, and follow the Great Slave River on out through Great Slave
Lake, you'll find it runs almost as much west as it does north. It
lurches clear over toward Alaska, although it's all on British
ground."
Jesse expressed his surprise at seeing so many "common-looking
people," as he called it, up here in the fur country, where he had
expected to find only gaudily dressed traders and trappers; but Rob,
who had observed more closely, explained some of this to him.
"A good many of these people," he said, "are simply drifters who
intend to live any way they can. They make a sort of fringe on the
last thrust of west-bound settler folk; there is always such a wave
goes out ahead of the permanent settlers.
"Not that they can settle this country permanently. They tell me that
they raise potatoes even north of here, and, as you know, they raise
fine wheat at Chippewyan; but this will never be an agricultural
country. No, it's the country of the fur trade--always has been, and I
hope and believe always will be."
"Well," said John, drawing himself up to his full height, "I'm for a
little more excitement. It's getting slow here, watching the people
load the boats."
As to what did happen in the way of interest to our travelers, Rob's
diary will serve as well as anything to explain their experiences for
the next few days:
"_Tuesday, June 24th._--Not quite a month out from Athabasca
Landing. Have come 553 miles. Steamboat now for the rest of
the way north. She is a side-wheeler, pretty big, with
several berths and a dining-room. I think she will be pretty
well crowded.
"More dogs here. To-day three or four big huskies ate up a
little Lapland dog puppy which one of the men had brought
along to take home with him. They broke through the bars of
the crate and hauled out the puppy and ate him alive! Don't
like the looks of them after dark.
"There is a mission school here. The Church people are
against fur-hunting. I don't see what else the natives can
do. If you wanted to buy any fur here you would have to go
to the independents and pay a big price. This place had very
little to eat left in it when we got here. Not much fish
just now, as the river is too high. The cargo of the mission
scows is not over the portage yet. Some people of the
Anglican Church go north with us, too, also four Northwest
Mounted Police, who go to Fort McPherson and Herschel
Island. They relieve others who will go out. Lonesome life,
I should think.
"_Wednesday, June 25th._--Loaded and got off 3 P.M. They
call this the Big Slave, then Mackenzie River, but I can't
see why it isn't just the same river that starts back in the
Rocky Mountains. Passed the little steamboat _St. Marie_.
The bishop of this country is on it, also many Indians. Our
boat asked him if the ice was out of Great Slave Lake, and
he says yes. Tied up very late at night.
"_Thursday, June 26th._--Have seen no game. The banks are
low and very monotonous. Not very pretty. Most people are
playing cards on the boat. No one to talk to but ourselves.
Have to slow up because the head wind is filling the scows
with water.
"There is very little darkness now, even at midnight,
although there is a sort of sunset even yet.
"_Friday, June 27th._--Tied up twelve miles from Resolution,
in delta of the Slave River. Low marshes all around. Some
men on the boat, traders and others, took canoe and paddled
over to the post.
"_Saturday, June 28th._--This is my birthday. If I were home
might have a cake or something. Other boys and Uncle Dick
very nice to me. Went out into the lake, but did not dare to
chance the waves, so came back in the channel. Our captain
is uneasy because he is afraid the independent traders will
get into Resolution before we do. Some competition even
here. Wind dropped at 9 P.M. We could have gone on, but the
Hudson's Bay always waits if it gets a chance.
"_Sunday, June 29th._--The _St. Marie_ and the _Caribou_, an
independent trading-boat, both sighted. Both probably will
beat us in to Resolution.
"_Monday, June 30th._--Loafed another day. Other boats
passed out at night. We started out late. Pulled the nose
out of our sturgeon nose scow and she began to settle. All
that the men and three pumps could do to keep her from
sinking. Got her in shallow water at last and tried to patch
her up. This was the Fort Nelson cargo, and it is ruined.
Boat covered with smeared calico and blankets and everything
else, hung up to dry. Pretty mess they will have at Fort
Nelson--but this is all they'll have for another year!
Nobody seems to care.
"_Tuesday, July 1st._--Anchored off Fort Resolution, and
went ashore. Indian tepees all over the beach. Hundreds of
dogs. Two trading-posts here, a mission school, and a
church. Mixed scenes, mostly savage. There is a York boat
down from Fort Rae. Says they are starving there. Plenty of
fish here. Hudson's Bay boat lost in this race. Independent
goods are now eighty miles farther down the river than we
are. Left a Mounted Policeman and a scientist here. No
Mounted Policeman ever had a horse up here.
"They say that the damaged cargo in the Fort Nelson boat
will lose half its value. Fort Nelson is up the Liard
River, and it takes twenty-five days of tracking from the
mouth of the Liard in the Mackenzie.
"As we go down the edge of the Great Slave Lake--the big
river runs through it--everything is quiet and the sky is
bright. Once in a while we see a belt of clear water now.
Have been on muddy water ever since we started out at
Athabasca Landing. Fort Resolution as we leave it under the
morning sun makes a pretty picture.
"All sorts of people on the boat. One Oxford man, an
interpreter and Indian agent, and his five breed children.
Another ex-Indian agent who is going north with the last of
the treaty payments. These old-timers in the north country
tell us all kinds of stories. Wish I had time to put them
down. People up here get about one mail a year. One winter
mail comes across the mountains from Dawson. They say a mail
goes into Fort McPherson from Dawson every winter, too.
Three years ago four members of the Mounted Police were lost
trying to make it across from McPherson to Dawson. Their
names were Inspector Fitzgerald, Constables Taylor and
Kenny, and Carter, a special constable. They all starved.
They are buried at Fort McPherson. Their guide was Carter,
and he got lost. The inspector of the Mounted Police who is
to go to Fort Herschel was in the Boer War, in Africa, far
south of the Equator.
"Uncle Dick tells me that the names of the tribes through
which we will pass on our big journey are, first, the Crees,
who go as far north as McMurray and Chippewyan; then the
Great Chippewyan people, scattered here over a big country;
then the Dog Ribs, the Yellow Knives, the Slavies, the
Mountain Slavies, the Rabbit or Hare people, the Loucheux,
and the Eskimos. The Loucheux and the Eskimos lap over along
the southern edge of the Arctic. We are among the Dog Ribs
here. Their canoes are very small, made out of spruce and
birch bark, and so narrow you would not think they could
float anything at all. That's as big as they can get the
bark up here.
"Now we begin to see sledges and snow-shoes and meat-racks.
They have to put everything up high so the dogs can't get
them. Dried fish everywhere, or what is left of the last
winter's supply. Looks like we were in the North at last.
Father Le Fèvre told me that at Chippewyan they put up over
a hundred thousand 'pieces of fish'--that means a whole fish
each--every year for the people and the dogs.
"English mission at Hay River has seventy scholars. They are
put in red coats. They live on fish and potatoes. We leave
at Hay River the wife of the Anglican minister. There are
two young ladies stationed there also. The minister's wife
had been gone for two years--outside, as we call it in
Alaska. Found a garden here, quite a potato-field, also
fresh pie-plant, lettuce, and radishes, all big enough to
eat on July 1st. Many fat dogs. Don't know whether the
natives eat these or not. This country under the Arctic
Ocean is different from what we thought it was--not so cold,
and more civilized in some ways.
"Our ex-Indian agent leaves us here to pay treaty money. A
young teacher leaves us also here for the Anglican mission.
We find here, much to our wonder, on one of the little
mission steamboats which beat us out from Fort Smith word
from the two good Sisters with whom we traveled on the scows
up to Fort McMurray. One was left at Chippewyan and one at
Resolution. Here also is the judicial party which we left
back at Fort McMurray. They have come down on the _St.
Marie_. We say good-by here to Father Le Fèvre. Several
church dignitaries about here. The Anglican Church seems
more prominent here than at most of the posts.
"I went out with an Indian boy here to run his nets, and we
took out an awful lot of fish--one lake trout of
thirty-three and a half pounds, and one of twenty-five
pounds, five fine whitefish, and four fish that I never saw.
The boy called them 'connies.' _Inconnu_ is the real name
for this fish. The first French _voyageurs_ who saw this
fish did not know what it was, so they called it 'unknown.'
It looks something like a salmon and something like a
sucker. Its mouth is rather square. Its flesh is something
like that of a whitefish, and it is used a great deal as
food. We don't like any fish as well as the whitefish right
along. They tell me a lake trout has been caught here
weighing forty-four and a half pounds. The boat captain
says he has seen one weighing sixty-three pounds.
"Our steamer left at 1 A.M., but when well under way
remembered that it had forgotten the mail-bags! So we turned
around and went back. If we had not done so the people north
of here would not have had any mail this year. The Hudson's
Bay Company has funny ways.
"_Wednesday, July 2d._--Off for Fort Providence. Running
better, for scows are lighter loaded now. In the morning
came into Beaver Lake, which they say is the head of the
true Mackenzie, not at Fort Smith. I suppose the lower point
is more correct; at least the other map-makers say so, in
spite of what John believes. But it's all one river.
"Many ducks, and this seems a breeding-ground. A great many
islands. Shores are broken. The river or lake is about
three-quarters of a mile to three miles wide. At 2.40 in the
afternoon we got into what they call the Mackenzie River
proper. It is only about a half to three-quarters of a mile
wide. It is bold and clearer than the other waters we have
been traveling on.
"Late in the evening reached the shores of Fort Providence,
a very sightly spot. The mission school formed their
red-clad girls in a platoon on the bank, waiting for us.
Every girl had her hands folded in front of her. The boys
were in ranks, too. They wore a gray uniform. The balcony of
the building back of them was filled with the older girls
and with the Sisters in a dark sort of uniform. All the
flags were flying. The sun was very bright. This made a
striking picture. Crowds of Indians came and sat on the
bank, waiting for us to land. A good many tepees on the flat
ground. There is a mission garden in a stockade, the best
garden we have yet seen. Here there are many onions,
potatoes, rhubarb, and a hedge of rose-bushes--a very
beautiful sight in this far land, and one I did not think we
would find.
"A good many men on the boat are trading with the Indians
for bead-work. A pair of moccasins is worth from a dollar to
a dollar and a half. One man bought the leggings of a squaw
and _off_ the squaw--for she was wearing them when he bought
them. They say the trade situation here is bad--too much
competition. Independents sometimes pay three hundred
dollars for a silver-gray fox, which is only worth a hundred
and twenty-five. The people here are Slavies, and are not
much good. The post was out of goods when we got in, and had
mighty little fur to send out, too. Indian village starving,
living on rabbits and dried fish. No fish running now. These
people seem a lazy lot.
"At Fort Resolution there were Chippewyans, Dog Ribs,
Slavies, and Yellow Knives, all mixed. At Hay River there
were Dog Ribs and Slavies. At Providence they are all
Slavies, and the Indian commissioner says they are the worst
lot on the whole river. Independent traders very angry here
because their clerks have not made any money.
"_Thursday, July 3d._--On the Mackenzie. Reached the 'head
of the line'--that is, the country where they have to track
boats on the line. At 3 P.M. reached the mouth of the Liard,
which seemed as big as the Peace River. It comes in on the
left. A grand scene here. On ahead is Fort Simpson on a very
high bluff--the most picturesque spot we have seen yet on
this trip. They say they once had electric lights here, but
not now. Some farms and gardens, much to our surprise.
Frost comes about September 1st. They all say there will be
a city here some time. Maybe, but I wouldn't like to live
there.
"Slavies at this post. Two villages, very wild and
barbarous-looking. A great many fine canoes. The life is
very wild about us here. One canoe comes in loaded down with
rabbits which they have shot along the shores. Much gaudy
clothing and savage finery now. Every one wears moccasins.
One woman here does fine porcupine-quill work. She is Mrs.
McLeod, and is the daughter of Old-man Firth, who is the
factor at Fort McPherson, so they say. She is the wife of
the factor at Fort Nelson, and knows how to trade.
Quill-work costs a lot.
"At this point we lost the wife of an Indian trader who had
come this far north with us, also two Mounted Policemen, the
ex-Indian agent and his family, a preacher and his son, and
several others. The boat company is getting lighter now.
"There was a scow-load of supplies for treaties to be used
up the Liard River. Now we find that the Hudson's Bay
Company has left all this stuff at Fort Smith, away behind
us! This shows what sort of transport it is. The Northwest
Mounted Police grub, due last April, is not here yet. No
wonder this is a starving country. It is very wild and
interesting around here. John and Jesse and I are having a
splendid time. This is the best trip we ever had.
"We had a bishop on board here. We boys talked quite a while
with the post factor. He says there are many records written
in the Company books here which go back seventy-five years
and more. We bought a few things here which we thought we
could take along with us.
"_Friday, July 4th._--It looked funny to see the British
flag, and not the Stars and Stripes, to-day. We three boys
celebrated, just the same--we went out in the woods and shot
off our rifles several times. Weather is beautiful, soft,
and warm. Made many photographs. The river here is about a
mile wide.
"We left at 4 P.M., and soon stopped to take on wood. Ran
till 8 o'clock before we could begin to see the outlines of
the Nahanni Mountains. Suppose they are a spur of the great
Rockies wandered this far away from home. A veil of smoke
seems to hang over them. We boys could not sleep very well,
and were up till 1 o'clock looking at the scenery. Uncle
Dick has been talking with the captain of our boat about the
Nahanni River, which comes down here through a notch in the
mountains. The Indians go up to the North Nahanni, portage
across to the South Nahanni, run down to the Liard River,
and come down it to the Mackenzie. This is a trip no white
man has ever taken. It must be a wild country in there. John
is honest with his map, so he just marks this place
'Unknown.' Prospectors have gone up the Liard to the
Nahanni. The geologists say there is no chance for gold in
there.
"_Saturday, July 5th._--Fort Wrigley at 7.35 in the morning.
One independent post besides the H. B. post. A good deal of
fur in these two posts, and some very fine fox skins. The
marten seem rather yellow, the lynx good, beaver and bear
good. We saw one wolverine skin here, a good many mink, and
one otter skin. This otter skin was not cased, as we fixed
them in Alaska, but was split and stretched like a beaver
skin. They say the Indians do that way with their otter
here. Did not stop long at this post, as we are beginning to
hurry now.
"It is a strange thing to us that we have not seen any game
on all this trip. No one has seen a moose since the one that
was killed above the Grand Rapids of the Athabasca. I
suppose the game country is back in farther. The Indians get
plenty of moose for their leather-work.
"In the evening we came to Fort Norman, which marks the
entry of the Bear River. I should call that the gate of
another land of mystery--up in there somewhere Sir John
Franklin perished. They say the white Eskimos are
descendants of some of his men. They say a man was taken
captive by the Indians up in there, and lived with them
several years, and then got out. He lives now somewhere in
Saskatchewan.
"At 9.45 we saw a burning bank on the Mackenzie River. It is
said to have burned forty-five years. It was in some sort of
tar sand, of which we have seen a good deal on our journey.
Tied up at 10 o'clock. There is a whole village of Mountain
Indians here at the foot of the bluff. A wild sight. The
tepees are pitched very close together. Hundreds of dogs.
Children are eating and running around everywhere. The boat
whistled, and the dogs all ran off up the hill and the
children screamed. They say that five years ago these wild
Indians left this place and went across the mountains to the
Stuart River to trade. They brought back Yukon stoves for
their tents, the same as they have up in Alaska. They came
down the Gravel River here in skin boats. Their birch-bark
canoes look like Eskimo kayaks. They have a short deck fore
and aft, and sharply slanting stem and stern posts. The bow
does not curve back.
"Fort Norman is on a high bluff. The H. B. Company has put
in some stairs. Not very many buildings, very little goods,
and little fur. We did some trading with the Indians for
trinkets. There is an Anglican church here, a very small
building. The little bell rang, and our bishop started over
to hold services. It was said that these Indians who had
come back from the Stuart River wanted to go to church
again, so this service was held for them. It was the first
time in five years in this church. There was a wedding
there to-night, they tell me, and several children were
christened, three or four years of age. One child was named
Woodrow Wilson Quasinay. We did it for a joke, but the
parents thought it was a fine name! He was four years old,
and very dirty, and cried a good deal when he got his name.
"We are getting to where the sun does not stay down very
long. The bishop read his services to-night by the natural
light of the window. With the bishop's consent we made a
flash-light picture of this scene in the church. Then there
was Holy Communion. The services were not done when the
whistle of the boat blew and everybody had to run to get on
board. The captain scolded the bishop for being so late!
This is a funny country, I think.
"This closes a week which has been quite full of events, I
think. Jesse and John very happy. The pictures around us
seem more savage. We are getting into the Far North of which
we have read so much. It is fine!"
IX
UNDER THE ARCTIC CIRCLE
Of the motley assemblages which thronged the capacity of the steamer
_Mackenzie River_ our three young companions were usually the first to
arise in the morning. Morning, however, had come by this time to be a
relative term, for the steady progress into the northern latitudes had
now brought them almost under the Midnight Sun, so that there was but
a brief period of darkness at any hour of the night. On the morning of
July 6th they stood conversing on the fore deck, looking down the vast
river as it passed between its bold and broken shores.
"Well," said Rob to the others, "here we are, not quite forty days out
from our start, and we have come more than sixteen hundred miles
already! We're beginning to add now to our daily mileage, traveling
this way day and night."
"Well, even at this rate," rejoined John, "I am not sure that I see
how we will get out of this northern country inside of our three
months' schedule. If we don't, we'll have to pass the winter, won't
we?"
Jesse looked a little bit gloomy at this idea. To tell the truth, he,
the youngest of the party, was at times just a little homesick. The
country through which they passed seemed so stupendous, so awesome, as
almost to oppress the spirits of those not used to it.
"Cheer up! Jess," said Rob, clapping him on the shoulder. "There will
be something happening now before long. We're almost up to the Arctic
Circle, and to-day, if I'm not mistaken, we run into the best scenery
on the Mackenzie River, what they call the Ramparts. The captain was
telling me about it yesterday."
They did not, however, reach this portion of their voyage until very
late in the evening, when they arrived at the head of that long and
gentle bit of water called the Sans Sault Rapids. The river here was
about a mile wide, but offered no bad chutes. The captain told them
that it only took eight minutes to run through, but that the time
coming up with the steamboat usually had averaged one and
three-quarter hours.
The strange, luminous twilight of the sub-Artic day continued until
midnight. It was, indeed, after eleven o'clock when the steamer struck
that narrow shut-in of the Mackenzie River where the great flood,
compressed between high and rocky shores, runs steadily and deep for a
very considerable distance. Above the actual beginning of the narrower
channel lay a great, deep pool, many hundreds of yards wide, while at
the right hand of its lower extremity sprang up a bald white rock face
of limestone.
So sharp was the bend of the great river here that at the turn it
seemed as though the river itself had come to an end or had dropped
out of sight. The walls on the left seemed perhaps a trifle higher,
ranging in height from one hundred to a hundred and eighty feet, the
crest in places broken into crenelated turrets.
"Well," said Rob, "this is the celebrated run of the Ramparts. I must
confess I am disappointed. I think the Yukon beats this in a great
many places. They may tip this off as a big attraction for tourists,
but it's too far to come for the show, in my estimation."
John, busy charting the channel on his map, nodded his head in
affirmation. "How wide do you think it is here, Rob?" he asked, and
Rob was obliged to ask some of the boat officials as to that. They
told him that the river was from three hundred to five hundred yards
wide at this place, and that there were two great bends in the six
miles of the run between the shut-in walls.
"How far is it to the Arctic Circle, Uncle Dick?" demanded Jesse of
their leader when finally he came on deck after finishing his work in
his state-room.
The latter rubbed his chin for a time before he could reply. "Well,"
said he, "I don't know just where it is, but it's somewhere on ahead
of Fort Good Hope, and we'll strike Fort Good Hope now just beyond the
foot of the Ramparts. We'll say that some time in the night we'll pass
the Circle."
"Hurrah for that!" exclaimed Rob, and the other boys also became
excited.
"What does the Circle look like?" asked Jesse, with much interest.
"Well," replied his uncle, "I don't think it looks like anything in
particular. But I think we'll feel the bump when we run over it in the
night. I can assure you of that. Also I can assure you that, once you
get above it, at the end of our northern journey, you'll see a country
different from any you have seen. You hardly realize, no doubt, the
great extent of this tremendous run from the Rockies to the sea."
Meantime the boat had been continuing its progress steadily. It
required about forty-five minutes to complete the run of the bolder
part of the shores known as the Ramparts. Once below, there was to be
seen, even in the faint midnight light, the scattered buildings of
that far-northern post known as Good Hope.
The boys, with all the rest of the passengers, went ashore here and
prowled about the curious old place, examining with much interest the
mission school, the church, and the garden. Rob was able to make a
picture of the interior of the church, putting his camera on a pile of
hymn-books and making a long-time exposure.
The post trader told him later something of the history of this
curious building which for some time had stood here upon the utmost
borders of civilization.
"You see all the decorations and frescoes of the church, just like
those in a cathedral of the Old World," said he. "It was all done by a
young priest known as Brother Antel, now gone to his rest. The church
was built thirty years ago by Bishop Clute, of Little Slave Lake, who
brought up Brother Antel from that lower mission. The altar is
considered an astonishing thing to be found here, almost directly
under the Arctic Circle."
They all stood with their hats off in this curious and interesting
structure of the Far North, hardly being able to realize that they
were now so far beyond the land where such things ordinarily are seen.
"The decorations are fine and the frescoes splendid," said Jesse to
John, as they passed outside the door, "but I don't see why Father
Antel has the angels playing on the mandolin. I didn't know they had
mandolins that long ago."
"Never mind about that, Jesse," said Rob, reprovingly. "You mustn't
make light of anything of the kind. You must remember that these
Slavie Indians, who are the only people who come here for services,
are most impressed by pictures which they can see and understand. I
suppose it's all right. At any rate, it's an astonishing thing to find
such a church away up here, even if it had angels listening to an H.
B. phonograph."
The boat remained at Good Hope all too short a time to suit them,
because all our young travelers were anxious to go to the top of a
certain hill, from which it was said they could have a view of the
Midnight Sun, which had disappeared behind the ridge of the hills
back of the fort itself. Indeed, one of the crew ascended this
eminence, and claimed that he had made a photograph of the Midnight
Sun. Certainly, all of the boys were able to testify that it was still
light at four o'clock in the morning, for they had remained up that
late, eagerly prowling around through the curious and interesting
scenes of the far-northern trading-post.
So wearied were they by their long experience afoot on the previous
day that on the morning of July 7th they slept a little later than
usual, although their total hours of rest were no more than two or
three. Uncle Dick was before them on the deck this time, and
reproached them very much when they appeared.
"Well, young men," said he, "did you feel any heavy jar, or hear a
dull, sickening thud, some time about half an hour or an hour ago?"
"You don't mean that we've passed the Circle, do you, Uncle Dick?"
queried John.
"We certainly have. I don't know just where it was. It's seven-thirty
o'clock now, and somewhere between here and Fort Good Hope we crossed
the Arctic Circle!"
"I can't believe it!" said Rob. "Why, look, the weather is perfectly
fine, and there isn't any ice to be seen. On the other hand, there are
plenty of mosquitoes. What's more, just back at Fort Good Hope we have
seen that they can raise things in their gardens. I would never have
believed these things about this northern country if I had not seen
them myself."
Through the soft, mild light of the sub-Arctic morning the great
steamboat churned on her north-bound way. At ten o'clock they passed
an Indian village which they were told was called Chicago--no doubt
named by some of the Klondikers who were practically cast away here
twenty years earlier. John put it down on his map under that name, as
indeed it is charted in all the authentic maps of that upper region.
They were told that a good number of Indians come here to make their
winter hunt.
An uneventful day, during which the boat logged a great many miles in
her steady progress, was passed, until at ten o'clock they tied up at
the next to the last of the Hudson's Bay posts on the Mackenzie River,
known as Arctic Red River, located at sixty-seven degrees and thirty
minutes north latitude.
"Oh, look, look, fellows!" exclaimed John, as they pulled into the
landing here. "Now we're beginning to get some real stuff! I feel as
though we were pretty near to the end of the world. Look yonder!"
He pointed to where, along the beach at the foot of the bluff, there
lay two encampments of natives.
"Look at the difference in the boats!" exclaimed John, running to the
side of the boat. "There are whale-boats with sails, something like
those we saw out on the Alaska coast. What are they, Uncle Dick?"
"Those are Eskimos, my young friend," said their leader, "and what you
see there are indeed whale-boats. The Huskies come up the river this
far to trade with the other Indians, and with the white men at this
post. This is about as far as they come. They get their boats in trade
from the whale-ships somewhere along the Arctic. As John says, this is
really a curious and interesting scene that you see.
"Over yonder, I think, are the Loucheux. I don't think they are as
strong and able a class of savages as the Huskies. At least, that's
what the traders tell me."
"Well, they've got wall tents, anyway," said Jesse, who was fixing his
field-glasses on the encampments. "Where did they get them? From the
traders, I suppose. My, but they look ragged and poor! I shouldn't
wonder if they were about starved."
By this time the boat was coming to her landing, and the boys hurried
ashore to see what they could find in this curious and interesting
encampment.
There were two trading-posts at Arctic Red River--the Hudson's Bay
Company post, and that of an independent trading company, both on top
of the high bluff and reached by a stairway which ran part way up the
face.
Some of the tribesmen from the encampment now hurried down to meet the
boat--tall and stalwart Eskimos in fur-trimmed costumes which the boys
examined with the greatest of interest and excitement, feeling as they
did that now indeed they were coming into the actual North of which
they had read many years before.
"Uncle Dick is right," said Rob. "These Eskimos are bigger and
stronger than any of the Indians we have seen. I don't think the women
are so bad-looking, either, although the children look awfully dirty."
"It's like Alaska, isn't it?" said John. "Look at the parkies they
wear, even here in the summer-time. That's just like the way Alaska
Indians and white men dress in the winter-time."
"Well," said Jesse, "maybe that's the only clothes they've got. I'll
warrant you they have on their best, because this is the great annual
holiday for them, when the Company boat comes in."
Rob looked at his watch. "Twelve o'clock!" said he. "I can't tell
whether the sun is up yet or not, because it is so cloudy. Anyhow, we
can say that we are now under the Midnight Sun, can't we?--because
here we are right among the Eskimos."
Uncle Dick joined them after a while, laughing. "Talk about traders!"
said he. "No Jew and no Arab in the world would be safe here among
these Huskies! They are the stiffest traders I ever saw in my life.
You can't get them to shade their prices the least bit on earth.
"These boats," he continued, "are crammed full of white-fox skins and
all sorts of stuff--beaver, marten, and mink--and some mighty good fur
at that. But those people haven't seen any white men's goods for at
least a year, and yet they act as if they hadn't an intention in the
world of parting with their furs. Look here," he continued, holding
out his hand.
The boys bent over curiously to see what he had.
"Stone things," said John. "What are they?"
"What they call 'labrets,'" said his uncle, taking up one of the
little articles. "They make them out of stone, don't you see?--with a
groove in the middle. If you will look close at some of these Eskimo
women, or even men, you will find that they have a hole through their
lower lip, and some of them wear this little 'labret.' Here also are
some made out of walrus ivory."
"Well, now I know what it was I saw that tall Husky had in his face
awhile ago," said John. "Something was sticking through his lower lip,
and I know now it was the glass stopper of a bottle of Worcester
sauce."
Uncle Dick laughed. "Correct!" said he. "I saw the same fellow, and,
now that you mention it, I gave him three dollars for that glass
stopper from the bottle! I don't suppose any one will believe the
story, but it's true.
"If you get a chance to trade any of these Huskies out of one of their
pipes, do it, boys," said he, "especially if you can get one of the
old bluestone pipe bowls. Pay as much as five dollars for it--which
would be ten 'skins' up here. I don't suppose you could find one for a
hundred dollars anywhere in the museums of our country, for they are
very rare. I have my eye on one, and I hope before we get out of this
northern country to close a trade for it, but the old fellow is mighty
stiff."
"You say that five dollars is ten 'skins' up here, Uncle Dick,"
commented Rob. "At Fort Smith and Fort Simpson a 'skin' was only
thirty cents--three to the dollar."
"That custom varies at the different posts," was Uncle Dick's reply.
"Of course you understand that a 'skin' is not a skin at all, but
simply a unit of value. Sometimes a trader will give an Indian a
bowlful of bullets representing the total value in 'skins' of the fur
which he has brought in. Each one of those bullets will be a 'skin.'
The Indian doesn't know anything about dollars or cents, and indeed
very little of value at all. You have to show him everything in an
objective way. So when the Indian wants to trade for white men's
goods, he asks for his particular bowl of bullets--which, child-like,
he has left with the trader himself. The traders are, however, honest.
They never cheat the Indian, in that way at least. So the trader hands
down the bowl of bullets. The Indian sees what he wants on the shelves
behind the counter, and the trader holds up as many fingers as the
value is in 'skins.' The Indian picks out that many bullets from his
bowl and hands them to the trader, and the trader hands him his
goods.
"You can see, therefore, that the Indian's bowlful of bullets in this
country would not buy him as much fur as he would have gotten farther
down the river. At the same time, this is farther north, and the
freight charges are necessarily high. Perhaps there is just a little
in the fact that competition of the independents is not as keen here
as it is farther to the south!
"But whatever be the price of a 'skin,'" Uncle Dick went on, somewhat
ruefully, "these Huskies take it out of us cheechackos when we come
in. We passed the last of the Slavies at Fort Good Hope. Now we are
among the Loucheux. But these Huskies run over the Loucheux as if they
were not there."
There was plenty of time given to the passengers at this landing to
visit the boats and encampments of the natives, so that our young
investigators were able to obtain considerable information about the
methods of the country.
They went aboard one whale-boat and discovered that its owner, a
stalwart Husky, had brought in a hundred marten and a hundred mink,
and half as many white-foxes and lynx. He explained that he was going
to buy another whale-boat of the Hudson's Bay Company, and that he had
to pay yet seventy marten, besides all this other fur, in order to get
his boat, which would be delivered to him next year. The boys figured
that he was paying about twenty-five hundred dollars for an ordinary
whale-boat, perhaps thirty years old, and, inquiring as to the cost of
such a boat along the coast, found that it rarely was more than about
three or four hundred dollars new!
"Well," said Rob, "I can begin to see how there's money in this fur
business, after all. A sack of flour brings twenty-five dollars here.
A cup of flour sells for one 'skin,' or fifty cents. These people,
Huskies and all, know the value of matches, and they jolly well have
to pay for them. I've been figuring, and I find out that the traders
make about five thousand per cent. profit on the matches they sell in
the northern country. Everything else is in proportion."
Uncle Dick grinned at them as they bent over their books or notes.
"Well," he said, "you remind me of the methods of old Whiteman, a
trader out in the western country where I used to live. People used to
kick on what he charged for needles and thread, and he always pointed
out to them that the freight in that western country was very heavy
indeed. I suppose that's the answer of the Hudson's Bay Company to the
high cost of living among the Eskimos."
"How much farther north are we going, Uncle Dick?" asked Rob,
suddenly. "I mean, how soon do we leave the steamboat?"
"Quicker than you will like," said he. "This is the next to the last
stop that we'll make. On ahead eighty miles is good old Fort
McPherson, on the Peel River, and that is as far as we go. From this
time on you can make the memorandum on your photographs and your notes
in your diary that you are working under the Midnight Sun and north of
the Arctic Circle!"
"I didn't think we would ever be here!" said John, drawing a long
breath. "My, hasn't it been easy, and hasn't it been quick? I can
hardly realize that we have got this far away from home in so little a
while."
"Yes," said Rob, "when we were back there loafing around on the
portages and in some of the more important stops I began to think we
were going to be stranded up here in the winter-time. Well, maybe
we'll get through yet, Uncle Dick. What do you think?"
"Maybe so," replied Uncle Dick. "And now, if you've got your pictures
all fixed up, I think you'd better turn in. You've got to remember
that you sleep by the clock up here, and not by the sun."
X
FARTHEST NORTH
"Look!" cried Rob to his two companions as they stood on the far deck
of the steamboat. "Look yonder!"
He was pointing on ahead through the low-hanging mist and drizzling
rain which had marked the last few hours of their last day of
steamboat travel.
"What is it?" demanded Jesse, also crowding toward the bow.
"I know. It's the Rockies!" cried John. "Uncle Dick told me that those
mountains were the most northerly spur of the Rocky Mountains. It's
where they go farthest north. So, fellows, we've been somewhere,
haven't we? Uncle Dick was right--this is the greatest trip we've had,
as sure as you're born."
"But look yonder on ahead," resumed Jesse. "What river is that we're
turning into now?"
The booming whistle of the great steamer had called his attention to
the fact that they were now altering their course. The _Mackenzie
River_ was entering the narrow mouth of a swift stream against which
it took all their power to make any headway at all.
Along the banks of this river the trees seemed to be growing taller
and stronger, whether willows or spruces that lined the banks, and the
shores themselves were bolder.
"Call Uncle Dick," said Rob. "He's writing in his room. He knows all
about this, I expect."
So they called Uncle Dick and asked him about the new river.
"Yes," said he, "this is the Peel River. It comes down out of the
Rockies, as you see. You are now pretty near to the upper end of the
whole entire Rocky Mountain system. We are going to cross the most
northerly part of the Rockies, and the lowest pass--it is only about a
thousand feet above sea-level, and only about a hundred miles south of
the Arctic Sea itself.
"This river here, the Peel," he continued, "no doubt offered the old
traders a better building-site for a post than the big river would
have done below the mouth. The Mackenzie wanders on down for a hundred
miles through its delta. Of course the natives trap all through this
country for a hundred miles or more, but they tell me the site of
Fort McPherson is a favorite one with them, and they all know it.
Pretty soon we'll be there."
It was about 3.15 of that same day, according to Rob's diary, when at
last the steamboat, after gallantly bucking the stiff current of the
Peel River for some hours, pulled in at the foot of a high bank at the
summit of which there was located the most northerly of all the
Hudson's Bay posts, and the one with least competition to-day--old
Fort McPherson of venerable history.
On the narrow beach at the foot of the hill lay an encampment of
Eskimos, their huts rudely built of hides, pieces of wall tents, and
canvas stretched over tepee-like frames. Several of their whale-boats,
well rigged and well cared for, lay moored to the bank. All along the
beach prowled the gaunt dogs which belonged to the Eskimos, and yet
other young dogs were tied to stakes so that they might not escape.
These stalwart savages, twenty or thirty of them, came now and joined
the motley throng which crowded down to the boat landing. Here might
be seen the grizzled old post trader who had been here for forty
years, and near to him the red uniforms of a pair of Mounted
Policemen who were waiting for this boat to take them back to
civilization. A few others of the mounted force, one or two
nondescripts, and a scattered and respectful fringe of Loucheux
Indians who held back at the rear went to make up the strange throng
who greeted the last and only boat of the year.
It was a great event for these far-northern dwellers when the steamer
came. A great event it was, too, for these young adventurers who had
gone north with the brigade, who now had seen that brigade dwindle and
scatter over more than fifteen hundred miles of unknown country; and
who now saw the remnant of the brigade proper, one steamboat and a
scow, come to anchor here at the farthest north of the fur trade of
this continent!
The boys were quickly on shore, running around with their cameras
among the savages. They found the Huskies, as they always were called,
a much more imposing tribe than any of the Indians they had seen. The
men were taller and more robust, more fearless and self-respecting,
even arrogant in their deportment. The women were a strapping lot.
Some of them wore the blue line tattoo on the lower lip, showing them
to be married women; others, young girls not uncomely to look upon.
All were clad in the fur garments of the North, even though it now
was summer-time, the date of their arrival being July 8th. Over the
fur garments most of them wore a dirty cotton covering, supposedly to
keep their fur garments clean. The women usually slipped their arms
out of the sleeves of their loose, chemise-like jackets, so that with
their double coverings it was sometimes difficult to tell where they
kept their hands.
To the surprise of the boys, the Eskimos insisted on receiving money
or presents of some kind before they would allow themselves to be
photographed. They were willing to trade, but, as their Uncle Dick had
warned them, they proved to be most avaricious traders. A "labret" of
ivory or even of wood they valued at four or five dollars--or asked so
much as that at first. A bone-handled drill, made of a piece of seal
rib with a nail for a point to the drill, was priced accordingly. A
pair of mukluks, or native seal boots, was difficult to find at all,
while as for the furs with which their boats were crowded they
professed indifference whether or not any one purchased them.
"Wait awhile," said Uncle Dick. "Be as indifferent as they are. About
the time the boat turns around to go back south again you'll see them
begin to trade. I might have bought my bluestone pipe if I'd had
time."
"I'll tell you," said Jesse. "That big fellow down there--I call him
Simon--he's got one of those bluestone pipe bowls that you told about.
He says it's old, and he wants ten dollars for it. They understand
what a dollar is; they don't trade in skins like these other tribes."
"Well, you see," said Uncle Dick, "these men all have met the
whale-boats which come around through Bering Sea. They know more about
the white men's ways than the inland tribes. As you see, they are a
much superior class of people."
"That's so," said Rob, who was just back from photographing among the
Loucheux villages located on top of the hill, timidly remote from the
Eskimos. "Those people up on the hill are about starving, and so
ragged and dirty I don't see how they live at all."
"They've got religion, just the same," said John. "I've been down
making a picture of the mission church. I bought two hymn-books for
one 'skin' each of the native preacher. Here they are, all in the
native language, don't you see? And I bought a Book of Common Prayer,
printed in Loucheux, too."
"Well, I've got three bone fish-hooks and a drill," said Jesse,
triumphantly. "I don't know whether I'll have any money left before
long. You see, it's hard to wait till the boat starts back, because
some one else might get these things before we do."
"Is any one going out?" asked Rob.
"Yes, the inspector of the Mounted Police and one man are going
out--the first time in two years," replied Jesse, proud of his
information. "Two new men that came with us are going up to Herschel
Island. There is a four-man post up here, with the barracks beyond the
trader's house. They have to travel a hundred miles or so in the
winter-time, and it's more than a hundred miles by boat from here to
Herschel Island. The Inspector of Police who is going down there told
me he was going to hire one of these Huskies to take him down in his
whale-boat."
"They tell me the old trader has not been outside for more than forty
years, or at least not more than once," added Rob to the general fund
of information. "He came from the Scotch Hebrides here when he was
young, and now he's old. He has a native Indian wife and no one knows
how many children running around up there."
"I suppose he's going to take care of the district inspector who came
down from Fort Simpson with us on the boat," ventured John, who had
made good friends with the latter gentleman in the course of the long
voyage.
"Well," said Jesse, dubiously, "it looks to me like there was going to
be a celebration of some sort. All the white men have gone up to the
trader's house, and they don't come out. I could hear some sort of
singing and going-on in there when I came by."
Rob smiled, not altogether approvingly. "It's easy to understand,"
said he. "All these people at the trading-posts wait for the boat to
come. It's their big annual jamboree, I suppose. There's many a bottle
of alcohol that's gone up the hill since this boat landed, I can
promise you that; and it's alcohol they drink up here. Some one gets
most of the Scotch whisky before it gets this far north."
"They won't let them trade whisky to the natives, though; that's
against the law of Canada," said John. "The first thing this old Simon
man down the beach asked for was whisky. As for the Loucheux, I don't
suppose they ever see any--and a good thing they don't."
"Did you see the dishpan that old girl with the blue lip had in front
of her place?" inquired Jesse, after a time. "She had taken a rock and
pounded a hole down in the hard ground. Then she poured water in
that. That's their dishpan--and I don't think they have changed the
water for a week!"
"I should say not!" said Rob. "I wouldn't want to live in that camp,
if I could help it. Did you see how they eat? They don't cook their
fish at all, but keep it raw and let it almost spoil. Then you can see
them--if you can stand it--sitting around a bowl in a circle, all of
them dipping their hands into the mess. Ugh! I couldn't stand to watch
them, even.
"There's a good-looking wall tent down the beach, though," continued
Rob, "and I don't know whether you've been there or not. There's a
white man by the name of Storkenberg there--a Scandinavian sailor that
has drifted down here from some of the boats for reasons best known to
himself. He tells me he's been among the Eskimos for quite a while.
He's married to a sort of half-breed Eskimo woman--she's almost
white--and they've got one little baby, a girl. Rather cute she was,
too."
"It's funny how people live away up here," mused Jesse. "I didn't know
so many queer things could happen this far north. Why, there seems to
be a sort of settlement here, after all, doesn't there?"
"They have to live through the winter," smiled John, "if they don't
go back on that boat. It will be here for a few days, and when she
turns back it's all off for a full year."
"There's an independent trader with a boat-load of furs which he is
going to take out over the Rat Portage and into the Yukon, the same
way that we are going," volunteered John, also after a little. "I've
been down talking with him. He says it will take ten days from here to
the summit, the best we can do, and as to when we can start no one can
tell. Uncle Dick told me we would have to wait for our supplies until
the general annual jamboree cooled down a little bit. Then we will get
our canoe off the boat and rig her up."
Jesse stood with his hands in his pockets, looking about the motley
scene surrounding them. "I don't care much for the fur trade," said
he, slowly, after a time. "It looks all dirty, and it's a cruel thing.
I don't like to trap things, anyhow, very much any more since I got
older. Besides, it doesn't look nice to me. These people are so poor
they can barely live from one year to the next, and the Company could
have changed that in a hundred years if it had wanted to."
"Well, there's the mission-work among them even here," commented Rob.
"That gives them a little bit more life. They learn how to read a
little bit sometimes, and they get to using the needle better than
they did before. It helps them make things they can sell--moccasins
and bead-work--don't you think?"
"Huh!" said Jesse. "Much money they get out of that. When that boat's
gone their market's gone for the full year, isn't it? No, I don't like
it. Of course I'm glad we've come up here and seen all this--I
wouldn't have missed it for the world. But now I know more about the
great fur companies than I ever did before. Old ones or new ones, they
all look alike to me, and I don't like them."
"Well," said Rob, "if everything was just the way we left it back
home, there wouldn't be any fun in going traveling anywhere in the
world. It's the strangeness of this and the wildness that make it
interesting, isn't it?
"And we _are_ in a strange, wild country," he continued. "Where else
can you go in all the world and find as many new and out-of-the-way
places as this? From where we stand here you can go over east into a
country that no white man knows about. We have passed beyond the place
where Sir John Franklin was lost. If you go southwest you can get to
Dawson, maybe--there's the tombstones of the four Mounted Policemen
who tried to get across from Dawson and didn't. I've got a photograph
of their tombstones; the men just hauled them up the hill with dogs
to-day and put them up not more than an hour ago.
"And then," he went on, "north of here runs the Arctic, with who knows
what beyond the shore-line. South and west of the place where we will
cross the Canadian and American line there's a lot of country no man
knows much about. And everywhere you looked as we came through, east
and west of the big river, there was country that was mapped, but with
really little known of it. The Liard has been mapped, but that's all
you can say about it. The only way to travel through this country is
on the rivers, and when you are on one of these rivers you don't have
much time to see beyond the banks, believe me."
"Well, it's kept me mighty busy with my little old map," said John,
"changing directions as much as we have. I wanted to ask you, Rob,
whether I've got the distances all right. Why not check up on the
jumps in our whole journey from the start to here, where we are at the
end of the trail?"
"All right," said Rob, and produced his own memorandum-book from his
pocket. "I've got the distances here, the way they were given to me by
the government men:
"From Athabasca Landing to Pelican Portage was one hundred and twenty
miles; to the Grand Rapids, one hundred and sixty-five miles; to
McMurray, two hundred and fifty-two miles; to Chippewyan, four hundred
and thirty-seven miles; to Smith's Landing, five hundred and
thirty-seven miles; to Fort Smith, below the portage, five hundred and
fifty-three miles; to Fort Resolution on Great Slave Lake, seven
hundred and forty-five miles; to Hay River, eight hundred and fifteen
miles; to Fort Providence, nine hundred and five miles; to Fort
Simpson, ten hundred and eighty-five miles; to Fort Wrigley, twelve
hundred and sixty-five miles; to Fort Norman, fourteen hundred and
thirty-seven miles; to Fort Good Hope, sixteen hundred and nine miles;
to Arctic Red River, eighteen hundred and nineteen miles; to Fort
McPherson, eighteen hundred and ninety-nine miles. That's the way we
figured it out at first, and I guess it's about as accurate as any one
can tell," he concluded.
John was setting down these figures and doing a little figuring on the
margin of his paper. "We left on May twenty-ninth," said he, "and got
here July eighth--forty days into two thousand miles--that makes fifty
miles a day we've averaged, including all the stops. You see that
fifty miles a day, kept up, gets you into the thousands in time,
doesn't it? After we struck the steamboat we began to raise the
average."
"Well," said Jesse, looking off to the dull-brown slopes of the
tundra-covered mountains which lay to the westward, "if what that
trader-man told me is true, we'll slow down considerably before we get
to the top of that pass in the Rockies yonder."
They were all sitting on the crest of the bluff of Fort McPherson
landing, where a long log slab, polished by many years of use, had
been erected as a sort of lookout bench for the people who live the
year around at Fort McPherson.
"What time is it, Rob?" asked Jesse, suddenly.
Rob pulled out his watch. "It's eleven-thirty," said he. "Get the
cameras, boys! Here's a good place for us, right here at the end of
the bench. It's almost midnight. Look over there!"
The three of them looked as he pointed. The Midnight Sun of the Arctic
hung low on the horizon, but not lower now than it had been for some
time. Its rays, reflected from the surface of the Peel River just
beyond, shone with a pale luster such as they had never before known.
With some sort of common feeling which neither of them could have
explained, each of the three boys took off his cap and laid it on the
bench beside him as he stood looking at that strange spectacle given
to so few travelers to see--the unsinking Midnight Sun!
XI
THE MIDNIGHT SUN
It was two o'clock in the morning. There had been no night. The sun
had not sunk at all beyond yonder dark, ragged fringe of the
spruce-trees marking the horizon. Not even the lower edge of its disk
had been broken by the top of the tallest spruce-tree. Yes, for one of
the few remaining nights of that year it had been given to our young
travelers to see the Midnight Sun at its lowest point.
It was a strange sun, so it seemed to them all. After it had sunk far
off to the left of the Peel River it seemed to hang there for a time,
and then to go, not in the arc of a circle, but almost in a line
parallel with the level of the earth plane, passing with considerable
rapidity from left to right in its course. Its reflection upon the
water of the Peel River, very noticeable at first, changed until by
and by there was no reflection left at all and it had passed off
across the spruce forest upon the right bank of the river. There again
it seemed to hang, as in its upward course it began to forsake its
semi-contact with the level of the earth's sphere. For these few days
at this latitude it would make its circle in what Rob called the
northwest corner of the heavens, striving to give these poor natives
who live in that land some sort of compensation for the terrible
sunless nights of the immeasurable Arctic winter.
Our young adventurers, be sure, had lost no time in this fine
opportunity for photography--an opportunity given to very few
travelers of any age or climate at this particular spot; for since the
great Klondike rush had straggled through, broken and failing, twenty
years before, few white persons indeed had ever stood upon these
shores.
"Run, Jesse, to our tent upon the beach!" called out John. "I'm out of
films. Get all we've got. We'll have to try and try again, so as to be
sure we're not missing anything."
"That's right," said Rob. "We don't know much about this light. It's
soft and faint, but it seems to cut the film, after all, as near as I
can tell. I'm going to make all sorts of times--from three seconds and
five seconds and ten seconds up to twenty and thirty seconds; and
with each of these times that I give it I'm going to use a different
stop. Somewhere, some of us will get a picture, I'm sure of that."
"Well," said John, looking at Jesse's hurrying form as he scurried
down the steep path to their tent upon the beach, "it would be too bad
to come this far and then fail."
It may be added that the boys did not fail, for certainly they brought
out from their trip what then were known as the best amateur negatives
ever made in that latitude; and of all the trophies of their northern
trips they have prized none so much as these pictures of their own, of
that strange spectacle of the great, mysterious North.
It was late that night, or early that morning, when at length they
closed their labors with the cameras, all fairly content. Uncle Dick
had left them to their own devices, feeling that if they got
results--as he felt sure they would--they would feel all the more
proud for having done so without the advice and aid of one older than
themselves. Indeed, he was beginning more and more to trust these
young lads to their own devices. Himself occupied with matters of
business which kept him very largely about the government office--as
might have been called the log barracks of the Northwest Mounted
Police which made the only representative of the law in that far-off
land--he for some time after the landing of the boat allowed the boys
to shift pretty much for themselves, with what results we have seen.
They had pitched their tent farther down the beach than the lowest
Eskimo hut, and had in this case put up the great mosquito tent, which
stood eight feet high and had windows like a house. Into this, late
that night, they now crawled, one after another, through the sleeve of
the tent.
"My!" exclaimed Jesse, "I never saw such mosquitoes in my life as
these little black fellows! There are simply clouds of them all along
the beach here, and they follow you wherever you go."
They all stood up inside the tent before preparing for bed in their
blanket rolls.
"Take your socks, fellows," said Rob. "We'll have to kill every one in
the tent, or they won't let us sleep to-night. Jesse's right; these
little fellows bite worse than anything I've seen yet. I vow, when I
came into the tent they almost scared me when they lit on my head and
neck!"
"That trader and his wife didn't seem to mind them so much," said
John, scratching his own neck rather seriously. "She's a white woman,
too--Norwegian, I think some one told me--at least she speaks somewhat
broken. She's a nice woman, too, and I don't see how she stands it up
in this country."
"Her husband told me this is their third winter in the North,"
answered Rob. "They say it takes two or three years to get used to
these things, and then you sort of quiet down and get resigned."
"Or else you die!" grumbled John. "We don't know how many people there
are that don't get resigned."
"How long is the boat going to be here yet, Rob?" queried Jesse,
sitting up on his bed and unlacing his moccasins.
"Until the jamboree is ended and all the fur is bought from the
Huskies," replied Rob, seriously. "Maybe two or three days yet--I
don't know. There'll be plenty of time for us to look around a bit
to-morrow, and even later. Meantime, Uncle Dick has got to get the
supplies ready for our canoe. We're a long ways from home yet. We're
not going back when the steamer goes, young chaps; you'd better
remember that!"
"Huh! Who cares?" said Jesse, contemptuously, pulling his blanket over
his head. "I'm not afraid. We'll get through somehow."
As Rob had said, they had ample time the next day to look about them
in this strange and interesting environment into which they had now
come. The unloading of the boat went on steadily, the slow stream of
breeds, stooping under their heavy loads, passing up the steep bluff
from the boat landing to the trading-post. The boys had time to prowl
along the beach and watch the natives run their nets, and even pursue
their native art of hunting; for that morning, hearing shots from the
bank, they looked out to see a half-dozen native kayaks hurrying to a
point out in the river where a black object bobbing up was seen now
and then. It was, in fact, a beaver which had been spied. On the bank
a half-breed was shooting at it with a rifle, while the Huskies were
crowding around, endeavoring to spear it when it came to sight. At
last a lucky shot from the rifleman brought an end to the chase. A
Husky drove a spear into the body of the dead beaver, and they came
ashore with it, all of them shouting and singing and flinging up their
paddles or their spear-shafts as they raced ahead.
"Look at those boats," said Rob, always observant. "In the last five
hundred miles we have seen the birch-bark canoe change into a kayak,
haven't we?"
"That's right," said John. "First there was the Cree canoe, with the
high bow and stern rolling in--much as you could see in Canada
anywhere. Then, as the trees got smaller, birch bark scarcer, in the
Dog Rib and Rabbit country, the boats got narrower. I wouldn't have
liked to get into one. But they didn't waste any bark rolling the ends
in; the ends came up sharp, as in the kayak."
"Yes, and at Arctic Red River," said Jesse, remembering, "they had
just a little deck--not much of a one. And now here they are made out
of skin and decked all over except a little hole in the middle."
"And if you'll look at these Eskimos," said Rob, again, "and then
think of how those Chippewyans looked, you'll have to admit that they
both have the same look and that they both look Japanese. I saw
Chippewyans that looked like Japs to me, and that was 'way south of
here. I suppose maybe some writers are correct, and that a good many
of the tribes, if not all of them, came across the Bering Sea once
upon a time, long ago."
"Uncle Dick is going to get a couple of Indian boys here, Loucheux, to
help us up to the divide," said John. "He told me that to-day. He's
out of patience with the delay here and crazy to get started, but he
couldn't get any supplies. The Hudson's Bay say that they lost a scow
somewhere which ought to have come in here and didn't come. The
Northwest Mounted Police claim that all their bacon is missing. The
Indians say they are starving and have to have something for their
children. How we'll get beans enough to carry us across Uncle Dick
can't say."
"Well, leave it to Uncle Dick," said Jesse. "I know he'll fix it all
right some way, and we'll get through, too."
"That's the talk, Jesse," said Rob, slapping a hand on his shoulder.
"You've got more nerve than you had when you started, and you weigh
ten pounds more, too. I'll warrant that you'll be the lead dog on the
tow-line going up the Rat."
Thus occupied, they passed the time all too rapidly. In the late
evening of their second day the boys noticed a strange hurrying among
all the population at the crest of the bluff and on the beach below.
Some sort of warning seemed to be in the air; an instant later it
became audible in the deep, booming whistle of the steamboat which lay
moored below.
The _Mackenzie River_, last unit of the modern fur brigade, was ready
to turn back from her farthest north and take up her weary way once
more, bucking the tremendous current of the Mackenzie River for more
than a thousand miles to the southward.
Again and again the whistle's echoes rang along the steep shore, and
here and there whites and natives, all the tribesmen, every unit of
the motley population of the place, hurried down to the landing, until
the narrow beach was packed. Men shouted and waved to others now gone
aboard the boat. The two red-clad police officers now going back home
smiled their pleasure at the thought of the long journey that lay
ahead of them; whereas the two who took their place stood looking upon
them somewhat ruefully, but bravely as they might, facing their own
two years of exile, during which they would never again see a white
face until they themselves were relieved. A few Huskies now came
hurriedly, offering bargains in their coveted white-fox skins, and
some of the great Arctic mink which had not yet all been traded even
by the shrewd district agent who had come north with the steamer to
see after this particular portion of the territory of his Company,
always so prolific in good furs.
[Illustration: HUSKY FLEET--FORT MCPHERSON]
Men joked and chaffed each other here and there across the narrow
strip of water. Dogs howled each time the whistle blast rang out. A
few enthusiasts on the top of the bank wasted precious ammunition in a
salute. A few cronies drank a parting stirrup cup out of their scant
remaining alcoholic stores. Yonder the Eskimos now began to man their
whale-boats for their long voyage to the Arctic Sea. The women were
packing up their own supplies now, herding the dogs together, pulling
the kayaks up on the decks of the sailing-schooners. The great event
of the year was coming to its close and camp was breaking. Now the
head of the brigade, this unit farthest north, must begin its long and
laborious passage southward once more against the current. As it
had brought north such store as was possible of bulky goods, now it
carried back, tight packed in its hold, the bales of the precious fur,
so much less bulky than the goods which had been brought north, and so
far more valuable.
The old trader, gray, grizzled, and taciturn, who had done his Company
the service of accumulating all this store of fur, stood leaning
against the beam of the great fur-press which but now had been busy in
baling the precious white-fox fur, the m
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