Young Alaskans in the Far North - Emerson Hough (the little red hen read aloud TXT) 📗

in, my buckos, you’ll be able to say that you are away from the hated pale-faces and fairly launched on your trip through the wildest wilderness the world has to-day. It is a hundred miles on to Smith’s Landing—sixteen miles there of the fiercest water you ever saw in all your lives. Wagon portage there, but sometimes the boats go through. Fort Smith is at the other end of that portage.

“Next down is Fort Resolution, and that’s seven hundred and forty-five miles from here. Hay River is eight hundred and fifteen, and Fort Providence nine hundred and five miles, and Fort Simpson, at the mouth of the Liard River, is a thousand and eighty-five miles from here. Getting along in the world pretty well then, eh?

“There are a few others as I recall them—Fort Wrigley, twelve hundred and sixty-five miles from here, and Fort Norman, fourteen hundred and thirty-seven miles. Now you come to Fort Good Hope, and that is right under the Arctic Circle. It is sixteen hundred and nine miles from here, where we are at the head of the railroads. If we are fast enough in our journey we’ll get our first sight of the Midnight Sun at Good Hope, perhaps.

“The next post north of Good Hope is Arctic Red River, eighteen hundred and nineteen miles; and of course you know that the last post of the Hudson’s Bay Company is Fort McPherson, on the Peel River, near the mouth of the Mackenzie. That is rated as eighteen hundred and nineteen miles by the government map-makers, who may or may not be right; being an engineer myself, I’ll say they must be right! In round numbers we might as well call it two thousand miles.

“Well, that’s your distance, young men, and here are the ships which are to carry you part of the way.”

“And when we get to Fort McPherson we’re not half-way through, are we, sir?” asked Rob.

“No, we’re not, and if we were starting a hundred and twenty-eight years earlier than we are, with Sir Alexander Mackenzie, we would have to hustle to get back before the snows caught us. As it is, we’ll hope some time in July to start across the Rat Portage. That’s five hundred miles, just along the Arctic Circle, and in that five hundred miles we go from Canadian into American territory—at Rampart House, on the Porcupine River. Well, it’s down-stream from there to the Yukon, and then we hit our own boats—more of them, and faster and more comfortable. I have no doubt, John, that you can get all you want to eat on any one of a half-dozen good boats that ply on the Yukon to-day from White Horse down to the mouth.

“Of course,” he added, “this trip of ours is not quite as rough as it would have been twenty years ago when the Klondike rush began. The world has moved since then, as it always has moved and always will. I suppose some time white men will live in a good deal of this country which we now think impossible for a white man to inhabit. Little by little, as they learn the ways of the Indians and half-breeds, they will edge north, changing things as they go.

“But I don’t want to talk about those times,” he added, shrugging his shoulders. “I’m for the wilderness as it is, and I’m glad that you three boys and myself can see that country up there before it has changed too much. Not that it is any country for a tenderfoot now. You’ll find it wild enough and rough enough. It has gone back since the Klondike rush. In travel you’ll see the old ways of the Hudson’s Bay Company, even although the independents have cut into their trade a little bit. You’ll see the Far North much as it was when Sir Alexander first went down our river here.

“And as you go on I want you to study the old times, and the new times as well. That’s the way, boys, to learn things. As for me, I found out long ago that the only way to learn about a country is not to look it up on a map, but to tramp across it in your moccasins.

“So now,” he concluded, as they four stood at the river’s brink, looking out at the long line of the scows swinging in the rapid current of the Athabasca, “that’s the first lesson. What do you think of our boat, the Midnight Sun?”

“She’s fine, sir!” said Rob, and the other boys, eagerly looking up into the face of their tall and self-reliant leader, showed plainly enough their enjoyment of the prospect and their confidence in their ability to meet what might be on ahead.

III THE GREAT BRIGADE

“

Roll out! Roll out!” called the cheery voice of Uncle Dick on the second morning of the stay at Athabasca Landing.

“Aye, aye, sir!” came three young voices in reply. The young adventurers kicked off their blankets and one by one emerged through the sleeve of the mosquito tent.

“What made you call us so early?” complained Jesse. “It’s raining—it began in the night—and it doesn’t look as if it were going to stop.”

“Well, that’s the very good news we’ve been waiting for!” said Uncle Dick. “It’s been raining somewhere else as well as here. Look at the river—muddy and rising! That means that things will begin to happen in these diggings pretty soon now.”

For experienced campers such as these to prepare breakfast in the rain was no great task, and they hurriedly concluded their preliminary packing. It was yet early in the day when they stood on the river-bank, looking at the great fleet of scows of the north-bound fur brigade as the boats now lay swinging in the stiffening current.

The river was indeed rising; the snow to the west was melting in the rains of spring. Time now for the annual fur brigade to be off!

At the river front already there had gathered most of the motley population of the place. Everything now was activity. Each man seemed to know his work and to be busy about it. The Company manager had general charge over the embarkation of the cargo, and certainly the men under him were willing workers.

A long line of men passed over the narrow planks which lay between the warehouses and across the muddy flats to the deep water where the boats lay. Each man carried on his shoulders a load which would have staggered the ordinary porter. All went at a sort of trot, so that the cargo was being moved rapidly indeed. It was obvious that these half-breeds, but now so lazy and roistering, were very able indeed when it came to the matter of work, and easy to see that they were, as Uncle Dick had said, the backbone of the fur trade of the North.

One after another a young half-breed would come hurrying down the street, his hair close cut and his face well washed, wearing all the finery for which he had been able to get credit, now that he had a prospect of wages coming in erelong. The resident population joined those idling about the warehouses and the boat-yard, for this was the greatest event of the year for them, with one exception—that is, the return of the much smaller brigade bearing the fur down from the northern country. This would come in the fall. Now it was spring, and the great fur brigade of the Company was starting north on its savage annual journey.

Here and there among these were strange faces also to be of the north-bound company now embarking. Good Father Le Fèvre passed among them all, speaking to this or that man of the half-breeds pleasantly, they having each a greeting for him in turn. This was by no means his first trip with the brigade, and hundreds of the natives knew him.

The boys stood wondering at the enormous loads which these men carried from the warehouses out to the boats. Here a man might have on his back a great slab of side-meat weighing more than a hundred and fifty pounds, and on top of that a sack of flour or so. It was not unusual to see a slight young chap carrying a load of two or three hundred pounds, and some of the older and more powerful men engaged in a proud sort of rivalry among themselves, shouldering and carrying out literally enormous loads. It was said of one of these men that he once had carried a cook-stove weighing five hundred pounds on his back from the boat landing up the hill to one of the posts, a distance of many hundred yards.

“Well, at this rate,” said Rob, after a time, “it won’t take long before we’ll be loaded and on our way. These men are simply wonders. Aren’t they?”

Uncle Dick nodded his quiet assent.

“Our boat’s getting loaded, too,” said Jesse, pointing to where the Midnight Sun stood swinging in the current. “Look at them fill her up.”

It was true; the factor in charge of the embarkation-work was checking out the cargo for each boat. Each scow had its number, and that number was credited to a certain fur-post along the great route to the mouth of the Mackenzie River. The supplies intended for each boat, therefore, went into the proper boats. All the cargo intended for Uncle Dick’s party was marked in black, “M. S.,” in courtesy to the name of this boat, the Midnight Sun, which carried no number at all.

“We’ll not go as heavily loaded as some of the others,” Uncle Dick explained, “although it is only courteous that we should take all we can, since transportation is so hard. We need only enough to take us to the mouth of the river and over the Rat Portage to the Yukon. Of course we’ll forget all about our boat when we get below the rapids, but they’ll tow her down alongside the steamer.

“I have told you,” he went on, “that this is a starving country. Now you can see why. They can’t possibly carry into that far-away region as much stuff as they need to eat and to wear. The Company does the best it can, and so do all these mission men do the best they can.

“Now you see how the brigade goes north—not in birch-bark canoes, but in scows, to-day. The scow has even taken the place of the old York boat. That was the boat which they formerly used on the Saskatchewan and some of these rivers for their up-stream work. It’s a good deal like a Mackinaw boat. You’ll see here, too, one or two scows with blunt ends, such as they call the ‘sturgeon’ nose. They tow a little easier than the square-ended scow. But these new square-facers are the best things in the world for going down-stream with the current.”

“Hadn’t we better get our packs ready?” asked Rob, methodical as ever.

“Yes,” replied their leader, “you ought to get the bed rolls made up and the tent in its bag before very long. I don’t think we’ll be started a great while before sundown, but we’ll get ready.

“It’s enough to get ready,” he continued. “Don’t carry your own stuff down to the boats.”

“Why not?” asked John, curiously. “We can do it easily enough.”

“Well, you’re in another sort of country now,” said Uncle Dick to him, quietly. “Follow customs of the country. You must remember that the Hudson’s Bay Company is a very old monopoly, and it has its own ways. Always it treats the natives as though they were children and it was the Great Father. A factor is a sort of king up here.