The Young Alaskans in the Rockies - Emerson Hough (best ereader under 100 .TXT) 📗
- Author: Emerson Hough
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“I congratulate you, young men,” said Uncle Dick, at last, as they sat silently gazing out over this tremendous landscape. “This is a man’s trip, and few enough men have made it. So far as I know, there has never been a boy here before in the history of all this valley which we see here before us.”
Rob and John began to bend over their maps, both those which they had brought with them and that which John was still tracing out upon his piece of paper.
“We can’t be far from the Boat Encampment here,” said Rob, at last.
“It’s just around the corner of the Big Bend here,” rejoined their leader. “Over yonder a few hundred yards away is the mouth of the Wood River, and the Encampment lies beyond that. That’s the end of the water trail of the Columbia going east, and the end of the land trail for those crossing the Athabasca Pass and going west. Many a bold man in the past has gone by this very spot where we now stand. There isn’t much left to mark their passing, even at the old Boat Encampment, but, if you like, we’ll go up there and have a look at the old place.”
Accordingly, they now embarked once more, and, taking such advantage of the slack water as they could, and of the up-stream wind which aided them for a time, they slowly advanced along the banks of the Columbia, whose mighty green flood came pouring down in a way which caused them almost a feeling of awe. Thus they passed the mouth of the more quiet Wood River, coming in from the north, and after a long, hard pull of it landed at last at the edge of a sharp bend, where a little beach gave them good landing-room.
Uncle Dick led them a short distance back toward a flat grassy space among the low bushes. Here there was a scattered litter of old tent-pegs and a few broken poles, now and then a tin can. Nothing else remained to mark the historic spot, which had passed from the physical surface of the earth almost as completely as the old Tête Jaune Cache. Uncle Dick turned away in disgust.
“Some trappers have camped here lately,” said he, “or perhaps some of the engineers sent out by another railroad. But, at any rate, this is the old Boat Encampment. Yonder runs the trail, and you can follow that back clear to Timbasket Lake, if you like, or to the Athabasca Pass.”
“Is this where they came in from the Saskatchewan?” demanded Rob.
“No, the old trail that way really came down the Blaeberry, very far above. I presume after they got on the west side, in the Columbia valley, they took to the trail and came down to this point just the same, for I doubt if any of them ran the Columbia much above here. Many a time old David Thompson stopped here—the first of the great map-makers, my young friends, and somewhat ahead of you, John. And Sir George Simpson, the lord of the fur-traders, came here with his Indian wife, who became a peeress of Great Britain, but who had to walk like any voyageur from here out across the Rockies. I don’t doubt old Doctor Laughlin, of Fort Vancouver, was here, as I have told you. In short, most of the great fur-traders came to this point up to about 1825, or 1826, at which time, as we have learned, they developed the upper trail, along the Fraser to the Tête Jaune Cache.”
“But didn’t any one of them ever go up the Wood River yonder?” demanded Rob. “That looks like an easy stream.”
“The engineer Moberly went up there, and crossed the Rockies to the head of the Whirlpool River on the east side,” replied Uncle Dick, “but that was in modern times—about the same time that Major Rogers discovered the Rogers Pass through the Selkirks below here, where the Canadian Pacific road crosses the Rockies. It’s a great tumble and jumble of mountains in here, my young friends, and a man’s job for any chap who picked out any pass in these big mountains here.
“Yonder”—he rose and pointed as he spoke—“east of us, is the head of the Saskatchewan—the Howse Pass is far to the south of where we stand here. Northeast of us, and much closer, is the Athabasca Pass, and we know that by following down the Athabasca we would come to Henry House and Jasper House, not far from the mouth of the Miette River.
“Now, somewhere north of here, down the west side of the mountains, came the trail from the Athabasca Pass, and it ended right here where we stand. I’ve never made that trip across the Athabasca Pass myself. That old pass, famous as it is, is in the discard now. With a railroad on each side of it, it will be visited from this time on very rarely by any man, whether he be tourist or bear-hunter. The Rockies will take back their own once more.
“But here, right where we stand, is one of those points comparable to old Fort Benton, or Laramie, on the plains below us, in our own country. This was the rendezvous, the half-way house, of scores of bold and brave men who now are dead and gone. I want you to look at this place, boys, and to make it plain on your map, and to remember it always. Few of your age have ever had the privilege of visiting a spot like this.”
Rob and Jesse busied themselves helping John with his map, and meantime Moise and the other two men were making a little fire to boil a kettle of tea.
“Why did they stop here?” asked John, after a time, busy with his pencil. “Couldn’t they get any farther up?”
Uncle Dick pointed to the jutting end of the shore which hid the bend of the river from view above them. “You know that river, Leo?” said he.
Leo spread out his hands wide, with a gesture of respect.
“Me know ’um,” said he. “Plenty bad river. Me run ’um, and my Cousin George. And Walt Steffens—he live at Golden, and Jack Bogardus, his partner, and Joe McLimanee, and old man Allison—no one else know this river—no one else ron ’um. No man go up Columby beyond here—come down, yes, maybe-so.”
“Last year,” said Uncle Dick, “when I came in from the Beaver Mouth I saw a broken boat not far below Timbasket Lake. Whose was it?”
“My boat,” grinned Leo. And George also laughed. “We bust up boat on rock, lose flour, tea, everything. We swim out, and walk trail down to here, swim Wood River, and go up Canoe River, fifty mile. Two day we’ll not got anything to eat.”
“Well, I don’t see how they got up these streams at all,” said John.
“Joe McLimanee he come this far from Revelstruck,” said Leo. “Take him twenty-nine day, not on high water.”
“Then there must be bad rapids below here,” said John.
“Yes,” said his uncle, “and, as I went up the Canoe myself from here, I’ve never seen that part of this river, but they say that at the time of the big gold excitements a generation ago, when the miners tried to get out of this country, they took to rafts. The story is that a hundred and sixty-five men of that stampede were drowned in one year on the Death Rapids.”
Leo picked up a stick and began to make a map on the sand, showing the Big Bend of the Columbia and some of its side-streams.
“You start Beaver Mouth,” said he, “all right, till you come on Surprise Rapids—all at once, right round bend. Surprise Rapids, him very bad. Much portage there. Very bad to get boat through even on line. Portage three mile there, maybe-so.
“Here was old man Brinkman, his rapid—not so bad, but bad enough for to scare old man Brinkman, so they name it on him, ‘Brinkman’s Terror.’
“Here is what Walt Steffen calls ‘Double Eddy’—bad place sometam in high water. Bime-by we come on Lake Timbasket, up there, maybe thirty mile, maybe-so.”
Leo made a tracing of the outline of the lake, then followed his scratch in the sand on around.
“Now begin Twenty-six Mile Rapid, all bad—Gordon Rapids here, Big Eddy here, Rock Cañon here. Now we come on Boat Encampment. This way Revelstruck. Death Rapids here; Priest Rapids down here; and then Revelstruck Cañon; him bad, very bad, plenty man drown there, too. That five miles from Revelstruck; we get out and walk there.
“Now here”—and he pointed on his sand map—“is Boat Encampment. Right around corner there is one of most bad places on whole river.”
“But you’ve been through, Uncle Dick. Tell us about it.”
“Yes, I came through once last year, and that’s enough for me,” said Uncle Dick. “That’s the Rock Cañon and the Grand Eddy. Leo has shown it all pretty plainly here. I don’t want to make that trip again, myself. But when we got to Lake Timbasket we didn’t any of us know how bad it was going to be—the old trapper who acted as our guide had never been through when the water was high. But when we got at the head of the Twenty-six Mile Rapids, below Lake Timbasket, it was like the bottom had dropped out of things, and we had to go through, for we couldn’t get back.
“Of course, we could line sometimes, and many of the chutes we did not attempt. The first day below Timbasket we made about ten miles, to a camp somewhere below the Cummins Creek chute. We could hear the water grinding—it sounded like breaking glass—all night long, right near the place where we slept, and it kept me awake all night. I suppose it is the gravel down at the bottom of the deep water. Then there were growlings and rumblings—the Indians say there are spirits in the river, and it sounded like it.
“There was one Swede that the trapper told us of, who started through the Cummins Rapids on a raft and was wrecked. He got ashore and walked back to the settlements. He had only money enough left to buy one sack of flour, then he started down the river again. From that day to this he has never been heard of, and no one knows when or where he was drowned.
“We passed one big boulder where the trapper said the name of another Swede was cut on the rock by his friends who were wrecked with him near by. I believe they were some miners trying to get out of this country in boats. That man’s body was never found, for the Columbia never gives up her dead. We saw Leo’s broken boat, as I told you; and on the shores of Lake Timbasket we found the wrecks of two other boats, washed down. You see, this wild country has no telegraph or newspaper in it. When a man starts down the Big Bend of the Columbia he leaves all sort of communication behind him.
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