the time the boat turns around to go back south again you'll see them
begin to trade. I might have bought my bluestone pipe if I'd had
time."
"I'll tell you," said Jesse. "That big fellow down there--I call him
Simon--he's got one of those bluestone pipe bowls that you told about.
He says it's old, and he wants ten dollars for it. They understand
what a dollar is; they don't trade in skins like these other tribes."
"Well, you see," said Uncle Dick, "these men all have met the
whale-boats which come around through Bering Sea. They know more about
the white men's ways than the inland tribes. As you see, they are a
much superior class of people."
"That's so," said Rob, who was just back from photographing among the
Loucheux villages located on top of the hill, timidly remote from the
Eskimos. "Those people up on the hill are about starving, and so
ragged and dirty I don't see how they live at all."
"They've got religion, just the same," said John. "I've been down
making a picture of the mission church. I bought two hymn-books for
one 'skin' each of the native preacher. Here they are, all in the
native language, don't you see? And I bought a Book of Common Prayer,
printed in Loucheux, too."
"Well, I've got three bone fish-hooks and a drill," said Jesse,
triumphantly. "I don't know whether I'll have any money left before
long. You see, it's hard to wait till the boat starts back, because
some one else might get these things before we do."
"Is any one going out?" asked Rob.
"Yes, the inspector of the Mounted Police and one man are going
out--the first time in two years," replied Jesse, proud of his
information. "Two new men that came with us are going up to Herschel
Island. There is a four-man post up here, with the barracks beyond the
trader's house. They have to travel a hundred miles or so in the
winter-time, and it's more than a hundred miles by boat from here to
Herschel Island. The Inspector of Police who is going down there told
me he was going to hire one of these Huskies to take him down in his
whale-boat."
"They tell me the old trader has not been outside for more than forty
years, or at least not more than once," added Rob to the general fund
of information. "He came from the Scotch Hebrides here when he was
young, and now he's old. He has a native Indian wife and no one knows
how many children running around up there."
"I suppose he's going to take care of the district inspector who came
down from Fort Simpson with us on the boat," ventured John, who had
made good friends with the latter gentleman in the course of the long
voyage.
"Well," said Jesse, dubiously, "it looks to me like there was going to
be a celebration of some sort. All the white men have gone up to the
trader's house, and they don't come out. I could hear some sort of
singing and going-on in there when I came by."
Rob smiled, not altogether approvingly. "It's easy to understand,"
said he. "All these people at the trading-posts wait for the boat to
come. It's their big annual jamboree, I suppose. There's many a bottle
of alcohol that's gone up the hill since this boat landed, I can
promise you that; and it's alcohol they drink up here. Some one gets
most of the Scotch whisky before it gets this far north."
"They won't let them trade whisky to the natives, though; that's
against the law of Canada," said John. "The first thing this old Simon
man down the beach asked for was whisky. As for the Loucheux, I don't
suppose they ever see any--and a good thing they don't."
"Did you see the dishpan that old girl with the blue lip had in front
of her place?" inquired Jesse, after a time. "She had taken a rock and
pounded a hole down in the hard ground. Then she poured water in
that. That's their dishpan--and I don't think they have changed the
water for a week!"
"I should say not!" said Rob. "I wouldn't want to live in that camp,
if I could help it. Did you see how they eat? They don't cook their
fish at all, but keep it raw and let it almost spoil. Then you can see
them--if you can stand it--sitting around a bowl in a circle, all of
them dipping their hands into the mess. Ugh! I couldn't stand to watch
them, even.
"There's a good-looking wall tent down the beach, though," continued
Rob, "and I don't know whether you've been there or not. There's a
white man by the name of Storkenberg there--a Scandinavian sailor that
has drifted down here from some of the boats for reasons best known to
himself. He tells me he's been among the Eskimos for quite a while.
He's married to a sort of half-breed Eskimo woman--she's almost
white--and they've got one little baby, a girl. Rather cute she was,
too."
"It's funny how people live away up here," mused Jesse. "I didn't know
so many queer things could happen this far north. Why, there seems to
be a sort of settlement here, after all, doesn't there?"
"They have to live through the winter," smiled John, "if they don't
go back on that boat. It will be here for a few days, and when she
turns back it's all off for a full year."
"There's an independent trader with a boat-load of furs which he is
going to take out over the Rat Portage and into the Yukon, the same
way that we are going," volunteered John, also after a little. "I've
been down talking with him. He says it will take ten days from here to
the summit, the best we can do, and as to when we can start no one can
tell. Uncle Dick told me we would have to wait for our supplies until
the general annual jamboree cooled down a little bit. Then we will get
our canoe off the boat and rig her up."
Jesse stood with his hands in his pockets, looking about the motley
scene surrounding them. "I don't care much for the fur trade," said
he, slowly, after a time. "It looks all dirty, and it's a cruel thing.
I don't like to trap things, anyhow, very much any more since I got
older. Besides, it doesn't look nice to me. These people are so poor
they can barely live from one year to the next, and the Company could
have changed that in a hundred years if it had wanted to."
"Well, there's the mission-work among them even here," commented Rob.
"That gives them a little bit more life. They learn how to read a
little bit sometimes, and they get to using the needle better than
they did before. It helps them make things they can sell--moccasins
and bead-work--don't you think?"
"Huh!" said Jesse. "Much money they get out of that. When that boat's
gone their market's gone for the full year, isn't it? No, I don't like
it. Of course I'm glad we've come up here and seen all this--I
wouldn't have missed it for the world. But now I know more about the
great fur companies than I ever did before. Old ones or new ones, they
all look alike to me, and I don't like them."
"Well," said Rob, "if everything was just the way we left it back
home, there wouldn't be any fun in going traveling anywhere in the
world. It's the strangeness of this and the wildness that make it
interesting, isn't it?
"And we _are_ in a strange, wild country," he continued. "Where else
can you go in all the world and find as many new and out-of-the-way
places as this? From where we stand here you can go over east into a
country that no white man knows about. We have passed beyond the place
where Sir John Franklin was lost. If you go southwest you can get to
Dawson, maybe--there's the tombstones of the four Mounted Policemen
who tried to get across from Dawson and didn't. I've got a photograph
of their tombstones; the men just hauled them up the hill with dogs
to-day and put them up not more than an hour ago.
"And then," he went on, "north of here runs the Arctic, with who knows
what beyond the shore-line. South and west of the place where we will
cross the Canadian and American line there's a lot of country no man
knows much about. And everywhere you looked as we came through, east
and west of the big river, there was country that was mapped, but with
really little known of it. The Liard has been mapped, but that's all
you can say about it. The only way to travel through this country is
on the rivers, and when you are on one of these rivers you don't have
much time to see beyond the banks, believe me."
"Well, it's kept me mighty busy with my little old map," said John,
"changing directions as much as we have. I wanted to ask you, Rob,
whether I've got the distances all right. Why not check up on the
jumps in our whole journey from the start to here, where we are at the
end of the trail?"
"All right," said Rob, and produced his own memorandum-book from his
pocket. "I've got the distances here, the way they were given to me by
the government men:
"From Athabasca Landing to Pelican Portage was one hundred and twenty
miles; to the Grand Rapids, one hundred and sixty-five miles; to
McMurray, two hundred and fifty-two miles; to Chippewyan, four hundred
and thirty-seven miles; to Smith's Landing, five hundred and
thirty-seven miles; to Fort Smith, below the portage, five hundred and
fifty-three miles; to Fort Resolution on Great Slave Lake, seven
hundred and forty-five miles; to Hay River, eight hundred and fifteen
miles; to Fort Providence, nine hundred and five miles; to Fort
Simpson, ten hundred and eighty-five miles; to Fort Wrigley, twelve
hundred and sixty-five miles; to Fort Norman, fourteen hundred and
thirty-seven miles; to Fort Good Hope, sixteen hundred and nine miles;
to Arctic Red River, eighteen hundred and nineteen miles; to Fort
McPherson, eighteen hundred and ninety-nine miles. That's the way we
figured it out at first, and I guess it's about as accurate as any one
can tell," he concluded.
John was setting down these figures and doing a little figuring on the
margin of his paper. "We left on May twenty-ninth," said he, "and got
here July eighth--forty days into two thousand miles--that makes fifty
miles a day we've averaged, including all the stops. You see that
fifty miles a day, kept up, gets you into the thousands in time,
doesn't it? After we struck the steamboat we began to raise the
average."
"Well," said Jesse, looking off to the dull-brown slopes of the
tundra-covered mountains which lay to the westward, "if what that
trader-man told me is true, we'll slow down considerably before we get
to the top of that pass in the Rockies yonder."
They were all sitting on the crest of the bluff of Fort McPherson
landing, where a long log slab, polished by many years of use, had
been erected as a sort of lookout bench for the people who live the
year around at Fort McPherson.
"What time is it, Rob?" asked Jesse, suddenly.
Rob pulled out his watch. "It's eleven-thirty," said he. "Get the
cameras, boys! Here's a good place for us, right here at the end of
the bench. It's almost midnight. Look over there!"
The three of them looked as he pointed. The Midnight Sun of the Arctic
hung low on the horizon, but not lower now than it had been for some
time. Its rays, reflected from the surface of the Peel River just
beyond, shone with a pale luster such as they had never before known.
With some sort of common feeling which neither of them could have
explained, each of the three boys took off his cap and laid it on the
bench beside him as he stood looking at that strange spectacle given
to so few travelers to see--the unsinking Midnight Sun!
XI
THE MIDNIGHT SUN
It was two o'clock in the morning. There had been no night. The sun
had not sunk at all beyond yonder dark, ragged fringe of the
spruce-trees marking the horizon. Not even the lower edge of its disk
had been broken by the top of the tallest spruce-tree. Yes, for one of
the few remaining nights of that year it had been given to our young
travelers to see the Midnight Sun at its lowest point.
It was a strange sun, so it seemed to them all. After it had sunk far
off to the left of the Peel River it seemed to hang there for a time,
and then to go, not in the arc of a circle, but almost in a line
parallel with the level of the earth plane, passing with considerable
rapidity from left to right in its course. Its reflection upon the
water of the Peel River, very noticeable at first, changed until by
and by there was no reflection left at all and it had passed off
across the spruce forest upon the right bank of the river. There again
it seemed to hang, as in its upward course it began to forsake its
semi-contact with the level of the earth's sphere. For these few days
at this latitude it would make its circle in what Rob called the
northwest corner of the heavens, striving to give these poor natives
who live in that land some sort of compensation for the terrible
sunless nights of the immeasurable Arctic winter.
Our young adventurers, be sure, had lost no time in this fine
opportunity for photography--an opportunity given to very few
travelers of any age or climate at this particular spot; for since the
great Klondike rush had straggled through, broken and failing, twenty
years before, few white persons indeed had ever stood upon these
shores.
"Run, Jesse, to our tent upon the beach!" called out John. "I'm out of
films. Get all we've got. We'll have to try and try again, so as to be
sure we're not missing anything."
"That's right," said Rob. "We don't know much about this light. It's
soft and faint, but it seems to cut the film, after all, as near as I
can tell. I'm going to make all sorts of times--from three seconds and
five seconds and ten seconds up to twenty and thirty seconds; and
with each of these times that I give it I'm going to use a different
stop. Somewhere, some of us will get a picture, I'm sure of that."
"Well," said John, looking at Jesse's hurrying form as he scurried
down the steep path to their tent upon the beach, "it would be too bad
to come this far and then fail."
It may be added that the boys did not fail, for certainly they brought
out from their trip what then were known as the best amateur negatives
ever made in that latitude; and of all the trophies of their northern
trips they have prized none so much as these pictures of their own, of
that strange spectacle of the great, mysterious North.
It was late that night, or early that morning, when at length they
closed their labors with the cameras, all fairly content. Uncle Dick
had left them to their own devices, feeling that if they got
results--as he felt sure they would--they would feel all the more
proud for having done so without the advice and aid of one older than
themselves. Indeed, he was beginning more and more to trust these
young lads to their own devices. Himself occupied with matters of
business which kept him very largely about the government office--as
might have been called the log barracks of the Northwest Mounted
Police which made the only representative of the law in that far-off
land--he for some time after the landing of the boat allowed the boys
to shift pretty much for themselves, with what results we have seen.
They had pitched their tent farther down the beach than the lowest
Eskimo hut, and had in this case put up the great mosquito tent, which
stood eight feet high and had windows like a house. Into this, late
that night, they now crawled, one after another, through the sleeve of
the tent.
"My!" exclaimed Jesse, "I never saw such mosquitoes in my life as
these little black fellows! There are simply clouds of them all along
the beach here, and they follow you wherever you go."
They all stood up inside the tent before preparing for bed in their
blanket rolls.
"Take your socks, fellows," said Rob. "We'll have to kill every one in
the tent, or they won't let us sleep to-night. Jesse's right; these
little fellows bite worse than anything I've seen yet. I vow, when I
came into the tent they almost scared me when they lit on my head and
neck!"
"That trader and his wife didn't seem to mind them so much," said
John, scratching his own neck rather seriously. "She's a white woman,
too--Norwegian, I think some one told me--at least she speaks somewhat
broken. She's a nice woman, too, and I don't see how she stands it up
in this country."
"Her husband told me this is their third winter in the North,"
answered Rob. "They say it takes two or three years to get used to
these things, and then you sort of quiet down and get resigned."
"Or else you die!" grumbled John. "We don't know how many people there
are that don't get resigned."
"How long is the boat going to be here yet, Rob?" queried Jesse,
sitting up on his bed and unlacing his moccasins.
"Until the jamboree is ended and all the fur is bought from the
Huskies," replied Rob, seriously. "Maybe two or three days yet--I
don't know. There'll be plenty of time for us to look around a bit
to-morrow, and even later. Meantime, Uncle Dick has got to get the
supplies ready for our canoe. We're a long ways from home yet. We're
not going back when the steamer goes, young chaps; you'd better
remember that!"
"Huh! Who cares?" said Jesse, contemptuously, pulling his blanket over
his head. "I'm not afraid. We'll get through somehow."
As Rob had said, they had ample time the next day to look about them
in this strange and interesting environment into which they had now
come. The unloading of the boat went on steadily, the slow stream of
breeds, stooping under their heavy loads, passing up the steep bluff
from the boat landing to the trading-post. The boys had time to prowl
along the beach and watch the natives run their nets, and even pursue
their native art of hunting; for that morning, hearing shots from the
bank, they looked out to see a half-dozen native kayaks hurrying to a
point out in the river where a black object bobbing up was seen now
and then. It was, in fact, a beaver which had been spied. On the bank
a half-breed was shooting at it with a rifle, while the Huskies were
crowding around, endeavoring to spear it when it came to sight. At
last a lucky shot from the rifleman brought an end to the chase. A
Husky drove a spear into the body of the dead beaver, and they came
ashore with it, all of them shouting and singing and flinging up their
paddles or their spear-shafts as they raced ahead.
"Look at those boats," said Rob, always observant. "In the last five
hundred miles we have seen the birch-bark canoe change into a kayak,
haven't we?"
"That's right," said John. "First there was the Cree canoe, with the
high bow and stern rolling in--much as you could see in Canada
anywhere. Then, as the trees got smaller, birch bark scarcer, in the
Dog Rib and Rabbit country, the boats got narrower. I wouldn't have
liked to get into one. But they didn't waste any bark rolling the ends
in; the ends came up sharp, as in the kayak."
"Yes, and at Arctic Red River," said Jesse, remembering, "they had
just a little deck--not much of a one. And now here they are made out
of skin and decked all over except a little hole in the middle."
"And if you'll look at these Eskimos," said Rob, again, "and then
think of how those Chippewyans looked, you'll have to admit that they
both have the same look and that they both look Japanese. I saw
Chippewyans that looked like Japs to me, and that was 'way south of
here. I suppose maybe some writers are correct, and that a good many
of the tribes, if not all of them, came across the Bering Sea once
upon a time, long ago."
"Uncle Dick is going to get a couple of Indian boys here, Loucheux, to
help us up to the divide," said John. "He told me that to-day. He's
out of patience with the delay here and crazy to get started, but he
couldn't get any supplies. The Hudson's Bay say that they lost a scow
somewhere which ought to have come in here and didn't come. The
Northwest Mounted Police claim that all their bacon is missing. The
Indians say they are starving and have to have something for their
children. How we'll get beans enough to carry us across Uncle Dick
can't say."
"Well, leave it to Uncle Dick," said Jesse. "I know he'll fix it all
right some way, and we'll get through, too."
"That's the talk, Jesse," said Rob, slapping a hand on his shoulder.
"You've got more nerve than you had when you started, and you weigh
ten pounds more, too. I'll warrant that you'll be the lead dog on the
tow-line going up the Rat."
Thus occupied, they passed the time all too rapidly. In the late
evening of their second day the boys noticed a strange hurrying among
all the population at the crest of the bluff and on the beach below.
Some sort of warning seemed to be in the air; an instant later it
became audible in the deep, booming whistle of the steamboat which lay
moored below.
The _Mackenzie River_, last unit of the modern fur brigade, was ready
to turn back from her farthest north and take up her weary way once
more, bucking the tremendous current of the Mackenzie River for more
than a thousand miles to the southward.
Again and again the whistle's echoes rang along the steep shore, and
here and there whites and natives, all the tribesmen, every unit of
the motley population of the place, hurried down to the landing, until
the narrow beach was packed. Men shouted and waved to others now gone
aboard the boat. The two red-clad police officers now going back home
smiled their pleasure at the thought of the long journey that lay
ahead of them; whereas the two who took their place stood looking upon
them somewhat ruefully, but bravely as they might, facing their own
two years of exile, during which they would never again see a white
face until they themselves were relieved. A few Huskies now came
hurriedly, offering bargains in their coveted white-fox skins, and
some of the great Arctic mink which had not yet all been traded even
by the shrewd district agent who had come north with the steamer to
see after this particular portion of the territory of his Company,
always so prolific in good furs.
[Illustration: HUSKY FLEET--FORT MCPHERSON]
Men joked and chaffed each other here and there across the narrow
strip of water. Dogs howled each time the whistle blast rang out. A
few enthusiasts on the top of the bank wasted precious ammunition in a
salute. A few cronies drank a parting stirrup cup out of their scant
remaining alcoholic stores. Yonder the Eskimos now began to man their
whale-boats for their long voyage to the Arctic Sea. The women were
packing up their own supplies now, herding the dogs together, pulling
the kayaks up on the decks of the sailing-schooners. The great event
of the year was coming to its close and camp was breaking. Now the
head of the brigade, this unit farthest north, must begin its long and
laborious passage southward once more against the current. As it
had brought north such store as was possible of bulky goods, now it
carried back, tight packed in its hold, the bales of the precious fur,
so much less bulky than the goods which had been brought north, and so
far more valuable.
The old trader, gray, grizzled, and taciturn, who had done his Company
the service of accumulating all this store of fur, stood leaning
against the beam of the great fur-press which but now had been busy in
baling the precious white-fox fur, the mink and marten, of this great
and solitary country of the North. He would not again see a civilized
face until that time in the following year, if he still were living
then. He made no comment, nor did the swarthy men of his immediate
command who stood about him, grim and taciturn, and disdaining to show
the emotion of a salute to the passing crew of the _Mackenzie River_.
But at last the conclusion of all these partings came. All the
government men and Company men who were going out went on board ship.
The bell jingled under the hand of the captain in his pilot-house
above. The strong-armed breeds hauled in the gang-plank, and with a
parting shrill salute the steamer began to swing her nose into the
current of the Peel.
Majestically she turned about to pick up the current for her brief run
down that stream to the great river which she was now to ascend. The
boys on the bank plied their cameras as she swung midstream, and
worked them yet further as the Eskimo whale-boats fell in her wake.