The Young Alaskans on the Trail Part 7

"All right!" sang out Moise. "We'll go plenty slow."

"Now," said Alex to John and Jess as he paddled along slowly and steadily; "I want to tell you something about running strange waters in a canoe. Riding in a canoe is something like riding a horse. You must keep your balance. Keep your weight over the middle line of the canoe, which is in the center of the boat when she's going straight, of course. You'll have to ease off a little if she tilts--you ride her a little as you would a horse over a jump. Now, look at this little rough place we're coming to--there, we're through it already--you see, there's a sort of a long V of smooth water running down into the rapid. Below that there's a long ridge or series of broken water.

This rapid will do for a model of most of the others, although it's a tame one.

"In this work the main thing is to keep absolutely cool. Never try a bad rapid which is strange to you without first going out and getting the map of it in your mind. Figure out the course you're going to take, and then hang to it, and don't get scared. When I call to you to go to the right, Mr. John, pull the boat over by drawing it to your paddle on that side--don't try to push it over from the left side. You can haul it over stronger by pulling the paddle against the water. Of course I do the reverse on the stern. We can make her travel sidewise, or straight ahead, or backward, about as we please. All of us canoemen must keep cool and not lose our nerve.

"Well, I'll go on--usually we follow the V down into the head of a rapid. Below that the highest wave is apt to roll back. If it is too high, and curls over too far up-stream, it would swamp our boat to head straight into it. Where should we go then? Of course, we would have to get a little to one side of that long, rolling ridge of white water. But not too far. Sometimes it may be safer to take that big wave, and all the other waves, right down the white ridge of the stream, than it is to go to one side."

"I don't see why that would be," said Jesse. "I should think there would be the most dangerous place for a canoe."

"It is, in one way," said Alex. "Or at least you're surer to s.h.i.+p water there. But suppose you are in a very heavy stream like the Fraser or the Columbia. At the foot of the chute there is very apt to be some deep swells, or rolls, coming up from far down below. Besides that, there's very apt to be a strong eddy setting up-stream just below the chute, if the walls are narrow and rocky. Now, that sort of water is very dangerous. One of those big swells will come up under a boat, and you'd think a sledge-hammer had hit her. Nothing can stop the boat from careening a little bit then. Well, suppose the eddy catches her bow and swings her up-stream. She goes up far enough, in spite of all, so that her nose gets under some white water coming down. Well, then, she swamps, and you're gone!"

"I don't like this sort of talk," said Jesse. "If there's any place where I could walk I'd get out."

"I'm telling you now about bad water," said Alex, "and telling you how to take care of yourself in case you find yourself there. One thing you must remember, you must travel a little faster than the current to get steerageway, and you must never try to go against your current in a rapid--the water is stronger than all the horses you ever saw. The main thing is to keep cool, to keep your balance, and sometimes not to be afraid of taking a little water into the boat. It's the business of the captain to tell whether it's best to take the ridge of water at the foot of the chute or to edge off from it to one side. That last is what he will do when there are no eddies. All rapids differ, and of course in a big river there may be a dozen different chutes. We always go ash.o.r.e and look at a rapid if we think it's dangerous.

"Now, you hear that noise below us," he added, "but don't be alarmed.

Don't you see, Moise and Rob are already past it? I'll show you now how we take it. Be steady, John, and don't paddle till I tell you. On your right a little!" he called out an instant later. "That's it! So.

Well, we're through already!"

"Why, that was nothing," said Jesse. "It was just as smooth!"

"Exactly. There is no pleasanter motion in the world than running a bit of fast water. Now, there was no danger in this, and the only trouble we had was just to get an inch or so out of the way of that big rock which might have wrecked us. We always pick a course in a rapid which gives us time to turn, so that we can dodge another rock if there's one on ahead. It usually happens pretty fast. You'll soon learn confidence after running a few pieces of white water, and you'll learn to like it, I'm sure."

Moise had turned his boat ash.o.r.e to see the second boat come through, and after a moment Alex joined him at the beach, the canoes being held afloat by the paddles as they sat.

"She comes down fast, doesn't she, fellows?" asked Rob.

"I should say so!" called John. "I don't see how they ever got a big boat up here at all."

"Well, Sir Alexander says that this was part of the worst water they found," said Rob. "Sometimes they had to pull the boat up by hanging on to the overhanging trees--they couldn't go ash.o.r.e to track her, they couldn't get bottom with their setting-poles, and of course they couldn't paddle. Yet we came down like a bird!"

The boats dropped on down pleasantly and swiftly now for some time, until the sun began to sink toward the west. A continually changing panorama of mountain and foothill s.h.i.+fted before them. They pa.s.sed one little stream after another making down from the forest slopes, but so rapid and exhilarating was their movement that they hardly kept track of all the rivers and creeks which came in. It was late in the evening when they heard the low roar of a rapid far on ahead. The men in the rear boat saw the _Mary Ann_ slacken, pause, and pull off to one side of the stream.

"That must be the big rapid which Fraser mentions," commented John.

"Very likely," said Alex. "Well, anyhow, we might as well pull in here and make our camp for the night. We've made a good day's work for a start at least."

"I shouldn't wonder if it was a hundred miles from where we started down to the outlet of the McLeod River," began Rob again, ever ready with his maps and books. "I think they call it the Pack River now.

There is a sort of wide place near there, where the Mischinsinclia River comes in from the east, and above that ten or fifteen miles is the Misinchinca River, on the same side. I don't know who named those rivers, but we haven't pa.s.sed them yet, that's sure. Then down below the mouth of the McLeod is the Nation River, quite a good stream, I suppose, on the west side. The modern maps show another stream called the Manson still farther. I don't know whether Mackenzie knew them by these names, or whether we can tell them when we see them, but it's all the more fun if we can't."

VII

AROUND THE CAMP-FIRE

The point at which they ended their day's voyage was a long sand-pit projecting out from the forest and offering a good landing for the canoes. They were glad enough to rest. Moise and Alex, who had paddled steadily all the afternoon, stepped out on the beach and stretched themselves.

"Let's go back into the woods," said Jesse. "We can't sleep on these hard little rocks--we can't even drive the tent-pegs here."

"Well, Mr. Jess," said Alex, "if you went back into the woods I think you'd come back here again--the mosquitoes would drive you out. If you notice, the wind strikes this point whichever way it comes. In our traveling we always camp on the beaches in the summer-time when we can."

"Besides," added Rob, "even if we couldn't drive the tent-pins, we could tie the ropes to big rocks. We can get plenty of willows and alders for our beds, too, and some pine boughs."

The long twilight of these northern lat.i.tudes still offered them plenty of light for their camp work, although the sun was far down in the west. Alex, drawing his big buffalo knife, helped the tired boys get ready their tent and beds, but he smiled as he saw that to-night they were satisfied with half as many boughs as they had prepared on their first night in camp.

"I don't suppose," said Rob, "that Sir Alexander and his men made very big beds."

"No, I'm afraid not," replied Alex. "On the contrary, the canoemen always broke camp about four o'clock in the morning, and they kept going until about seven at night. Fifteen hours a day in and out of the water, paddling, poling, and tracking, makes a man so tired he doesn't much care about what sort of bed he has."

While the others were getting the tent ready Moise was busy making his fire and getting some long willow wands, which he now was making into a sort of frame.

"What's that for, Moise?" asked Jesse.

"That's for dry those feesh you boys'll got this morning. Fine big trouts, three, four poun', an' fat. I'll fix heem two, three, days so he'll keep all right."

"But we couldn't stay here two or three days," said John.

"We might do worse," replied Alex. "This isn't a bad camping place, and besides, it seems to me good country to make a little hunt, if we care to do that."

"It certainly would be a fine place for beaver," said Rob, "if it weren't against the law to kill them."

"Yes, or other things also--bear or bighorns, I should think very likely."

"I suppose there isn't any law against killing bears," said Rob, "but how about bighorns? I thought they were protected by law."

"We'll talk about that after a while," Alex answered. "Of course, no one would want to kill beaver at this time of year, no matter what the law was, because the fur is not good."

"I see by Sir Alexander's journal," continued Rob, "that it must have been along in here that they saw so much beaver work. There are plenty of dams even now, although it's a hundred years later than the time he came through."

"I suppose when we get down farther there are fewer creeks," said John, "and the rocks and trees are bigger. I don't know just where we are now, because the trees are so thick a fellow can't see out."

"Well," went on Rob, bringing out his map, and also that which was found in his copy of _Mackenzie's Voyages_, "it must have been just about in here that Mackenzie met the first Indians that he saw in this country--the ones who told him about the carrying place, and about the big river and the salt water beyond it. They were the Indians who had iron spears, and knives, and things, so that he knew they had met white men off to the west. They had a big spoon which Mackenzie says was made out of a horn like the buffalo horn of the Copper Mine River.

I suppose Mackenzie called the musk-ox buffalo, and very likely he never had seen a mountain-sheep."

"That's right," said Alex, "those Injuns used to make big spoons out of the horns of the mountain-sheep--all the Injuns along the Rockies always have done that. It seems strange to me that Mackenzie didn't know that, although at that he was still rather a new man in the north."

"You never have been in here yourself, have you, Alex?" asked John.

"No, and that's what is making the trip so pleasant for me. I'm having a good time figuring it out with you. I know this river must run north between those two ranges of mountains, and it must turn to the east somewhere north of here. But I've never been west of Fort St. John."

"I don't like the look of this river down there," said Jesse, stepping to the point of the bar, and gazing down the stream up which came the sullen roar of heavy rapids.

"Those rapeed, she'll been all right," said Moise. "Never fear, we go through heem all right. To-morrow, two, three, day we'll go through those rapeed like the bird!"

"We can walk around them, Jesse, if we don't want to run them," said Rob, rea.s.suringly. "Of course it's rather creepy going into heavy water that you don't know anything about--I don't like that myself.