Young Alaskans in the Far North Part 8

Uncle d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k. "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 d.i.c.k 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 ash.o.r.e 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 d.i.c.k?"

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 d.i.c.k 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 pa.s.sage. 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 pa.s.sage 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 Ca.s.sette 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 Ca.s.sette 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 Ca.s.sette 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 oak.u.m 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 d.i.c.k 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 ash.o.r.e. 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 d.i.c.k 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 sh.o.r.e. The delay was not very long, for now, after finis.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sembled 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 impa.s.sable 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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 Bay Company--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 c.o.c.ktail 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 d.i.c.k, "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 Slave River, 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.