[Illustration: _Captain Hendriksen (left) and Engineer Johnson (right)_]
WHETHER it's because of the climate or because the hearts of those
in the West are big, we know not, but the fact is recognized that no
branch of the Company's service gives a heartier handshake and welcome
to the Company's employees than does Vancouver retail. When Captain
Hendriksen and Engineer Johnson dropped in recently after spending six
years in the frozen north, they were royally welcomed here as brothers
in the H.B.C.
Captain Hendriksen and Engineer Johnson operate the H.B.C. gas schooner
"Fort McPherson," a boat of fifty tons which, together with the "Ruby"
left Vancouver in 1914 to carry provisions to the Company's Western
Arctic posts together with lumber and materials for the building of a
post at Herschel and Baillie Islands.
Fair weather and good luck attended the expedition until it reached
Point Barrow where ice was encountered and they were compelled to fall
back to Tellar Point, a hundred miles north of Nome, Alaska, before
returning south, where the cargo of the "Ruby" was discharged and the
"Fort McPherson" beached for the Winter. In July, 1915, the "Ruby"
returned from the south, picked up her cargo again, and with the
schooner "Fort McPherson," set sail for Herschel Island, arriving there
in August, 1915.
Since August, 1915, the Company has opened seven fur trade posts in
the Western Arctic, the first being at Herschel Island; then followed
one at Baillie Island, two hundred fifty miles east of Herschel and
since then others have been established at Kittigazuit, Aklavick, Fort
Thomson, Three Rivers, Kent's Peninsula and Shingle Point.
The "Fort McPherson" is the Company's supply boat which during the
Summer distributes the goods sent to Herschel Island and to the small
posts in the Arctic.
Captain Hendriksen and Engineer Johnson are on their way to Winnipeg
on vacation. During their leave of absence, the "Fort McPherson" will
remain at Kittigazuit. It is the Captain's intention to continue this
trip to the home of his aged mother who is about to celebrate her
centenary in Denmark, and whom he has not seen for thirty years.
The journey to the coast was, as they term it, an uneventful one, being
the same kind of an experience they are accustomed to and which is part
of the daily round of all the Company's employees in the Arctic. But to
us it reads like a fairy tale.
Imagine, if you will, two men starting on a twelve hundred mile "mush"
from Herschel Island to Fairbanks in a sleigh drawn by four large
"huskies."
The frozen country they traversed is broken only by the remains
of a once great forest, an ice-locked lagoon, horizons bounded by
irridescent glaciers whose tips pierce the sky--and over all the
sparkling arctic sunshine flooding the wide plains which stretch away
to the Mystery of the World. In their long hike they met no human
being except one roving band of Indians. But they saw immense herds of
cariboo, many moose, and now and then a cinnamon or grizzly bear. And
all the while, the thermometer ranged from 47 to 70 degrees below zero.
At night they rested under the canopy of the stars in a small tent
perched impertinently in one of earth's most awful and majestic
solitudes.
Picture to yourself the long trail, the occasional pause in the
wilderness to stalk and kill a cariboo or moose for food to replenish
the larder of the voyageurs and their faithful dogs.
Their journey lasted for forty days. Arctic blizzards crossed their
path. These stout hearted men, however, were able to make their way
through to seaboard and embark for civilization for the first time
since before the great war.