Young Alaskans in the Far North Part 12

"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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k was right--this is the greatest trip we've had, as sure as you're born."

"But look yonder on ahead," resumed Jesse. "What river is that we're turning into now?"

The booming whistle of the great steamer had called his attention to the fact that they were now altering their course. The _Mackenzie River_ was entering the narrow mouth of a swift stream against which it took all their power to make any headway at all.

Along the banks of this river the trees seemed to be growing taller and stronger, whether willows or spruces that lined the banks, and the sh.o.r.es themselves were bolder.

"Call Uncle d.i.c.k," said Rob. "He's writing in his room. He knows all about this, I expect."

So they called Uncle d.i.c.k 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 pa.s.s--it is only about a thousand feet above sea-level, and only about a hundred miles south of the Arctic Sea itself.

"This river here, the Peel," he continued, "no doubt offered the old traders a better building-site for a post than the big river would have done below the mouth. The Mackenzie wanders on down for a hundred miles through its delta. Of course the natives trap all through this country for a hundred miles or more, but they tell me the site of Fort McPherson is a favorite one with them, and they all know it.

Pretty soon we'll be there."

It was about 3.15 of that same day, according to Rob's diary, when at last the steamboat, after gallantly bucking the stiff current of the Peel River for some hours, pulled in at the foot of a high bank at the summit of which there was located the most northerly of all the Hudson's Bay posts, and the one with least compet.i.tion to-day--old Fort McPherson of venerable history.

On the narrow beach at the foot of the hill lay an encampment of Eskimos, their huts rudely built of hides, pieces of wall tents, and canvas stretched over tepee-like frames. Several of their whale-boats, well rigged and well cared for, lay moored to the bank. All along the beach prowled the gaunt dogs which belonged to the Eskimos, and yet other young dogs were tied to stakes so that they might not escape.

These stalwart savages, twenty or thirty of them, came now and joined the motley throng which crowded down to the boat landing. Here might be seen the grizzled old post trader who had been here for forty years, and near to him the red uniforms of a pair of Mounted Policemen who were waiting for this boat to take them back to civilization. A few others of the mounted force, one or two nondescripts, and a scattered and respectful fringe of Loucheux Indians who held back at the rear went to make up the strange throng who greeted the last and only boat of the year.

It was a great event for these far-northern dwellers when the steamer came. A great event it was, too, for these young adventurers who had gone north with the brigade, who now had seen that brigade dwindle and scatter over more than fifteen hundred miles of unknown country; and who now saw the remnant of the brigade proper, one steamboat and a scow, come to anchor here at the farthest north of the fur trade of this continent!

The boys were quickly on sh.o.r.e, 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k. "Be as indifferent as they are. About the time the boat turns around to go back south again you'll see them begin to trade. I might have bought my bluestone pipe if I'd had time."

"I'll tell you," said Jesse. "That big fellow down there--I call him Simon--he's got one of those bluestone pipe bowls that you told about.

He says it's old, and he wants ten dollars for it. They understand what a dollar is; they don't trade in skins like these other tribes."

"Well, you see," said Uncle d.i.c.k, "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 cla.s.s 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 d.i.c.k 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 pa.s.sed 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 sh.o.r.e-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.