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 Fevre, 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!