“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 thecontractor’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 Landingmust 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 leasta 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 BayCompany—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 SlaveRiver, 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 theold 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 steamboatMackenzie Riverlying 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.”
“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 theold 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 steamboatMackenzie Riverlying 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.”
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-breedswho everywhere make the reliance of the fur trade in the upper latitudes. They were carrying now on board theMackenzie 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; butthis 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 3p.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 steamboatSt. 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. Haveto 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 9p.m.We could have gone on, but the Hudson’s Bay always waits if it gets a chance.“Sunday, June 29th.—TheSt. Marieand theCaribou, an independent trading-boat, both sighted. Both probably will beat us in to Resolution.“Monday, June 30th.—Loafed anotherday. 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 itsvalue. 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 InspectorFitzgerald, 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 isleft 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 Smithword 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 theSt. 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.’Inconnuis the real name for this fish. The first Frenchvoyageurswho 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 boatcaptain says he has seen one weighing sixty-three pounds.“Our steamer left at 1a.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 shoresof 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 andoffthe squaw—for she was wearing them when he bought them. They say the trade situation here is bad—too much competition. Independents sometimespay 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 3p.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. Somefarms 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 FortSmith, 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 4p.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 wanderedthis 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 andstretched 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 thebluff. 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 infive 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!”
“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 3p.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 steamboatSt. 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. Haveto 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 9p.m.We could have gone on, but the Hudson’s Bay always waits if it gets a chance.
“Sunday, June 29th.—TheSt. Marieand theCaribou, an independent trading-boat, both sighted. Both probably will beat us in to Resolution.
“Monday, June 30th.—Loafed anotherday. 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 itsvalue. 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 InspectorFitzgerald, 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 isleft 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 Smithword 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 theSt. 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.’Inconnuis the real name for this fish. The first Frenchvoyageurswho 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 boatcaptain says he has seen one weighing sixty-three pounds.
“Our steamer left at 1a.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 shoresof 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 andoffthe squaw—for she was wearing them when he bought them. They say the trade situation here is bad—too much competition. Independents sometimespay 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 3p.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. Somefarms 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 FortSmith, 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 4p.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 wanderedthis 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 andstretched 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 thebluff. 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 infive 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!”
Of the motley assemblages which thronged the capacity of the steamerMackenzie Riverour 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-Articday 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, andRob 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 greatextent 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 Antelfrom 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. “Nowwe’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 havemy 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 themto 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-foxesand 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.”
“
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 theywere now altering their course. TheMackenzie Riverwas 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 hundredmiles 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 pairof 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 againyou’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 anda 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 FortSimpson 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 hardground. 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. “Thatgives 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 wearein 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 youcan 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 hisown 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,” saidhe, “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 ithad 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!