Emerson Hough

“ They are good travelers already, better than many a man; they have made the Peace River and the Saskatchewan, have run the Big Rapids of the Columbia, and have killed their Kadiak bear in southwest Alaska. I knew what they were or I never would have taken on this trip in their company. I fancy”—and he smiled—“that they did better than many a tenderfoot who came over the Rat Portage twenty years ago.”
“No doubt, no doubt!” replied the archdeacon. “I join you in your pride that you are all Americans, like myself. I, too, am something of an explorer, as I may say modestly. ”

“ Uncle Dick 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! ”

“ Of course you understand that a ‘skin’ is not a skin at all, but simply a unit of value. Sometimes a trader will give an Indian a bowlful of bullets representing the total value in ‘skins’ of the fur which he has brought in. Each one of those bullets will be a ‘skin.’ The Indian doesn’t know anything about dollars or cents, and indeed very little of value at all. You have to show him everything in an objective way. So when the Indian wants to trade for white men’s goods, he asks for his particular bowl of bullets—which, child-like, he has left with the trader himself. ”

“ John now noted on his map that this river, the outlet of Lake Athabasca, which received the combined floods of the Peace and the Athabasca, was known as the Slave River, or sometimes the Little Slave River.
As had been the Athabasca all the way down, this river was very much discolored and stained by the high waters of the spring.
“Now, young men,” said Uncle Dick to his charges as they stood on the fore deck of the steamer in the hot sun of midafternoon, “you can say that you are getting into the real wilderness. It runs every way you can look—west, north, south, and east. ”

“ Some of the tribesmen from the encampment now hurried down to meet the boat—tall and stalwart Eskimos in fur-trimmed costumes which the boys examined with the greatest of interest and excitement, feeling as they did that now indeed they were coming into the actual North of which they had read many years before.
“Uncle Dick is right,” said Rob. “These Eskimos are bigger and stronger than any of the Indians we have seen. I don’t think the women are so bad-looking, either, although the children look awfully dirty.” ”

“ Steadily the boat climbed up the river, and now, with the aid of the oarsmen and the steersman, it finally came to rest at a sheltered little cove at the foot of the island, in slack water, where the landing was good and cargo could easily be transhipped.
Rob and his older companions stepped ashore, and each smiled as he looked at the other.
“Don’t tell me, son,” said Uncle Dick, “that these people don’t know their business! That’s the finest thing I’ve ever seen in rough-neck engineering in all my life—and I’ve seen some outdoor work, too.” ”

“ It’s always necessary in dealing with ignorant and savage peoples to take the attitude that you are the boss, and that they are to do what you tell them. If you get too familiar or lower yourself too much with primitive people, they don’t respect you, because they think you’re afraid of them.
“Now, that has always been the custom of the Hudson’s Bay Company in this work. In the old days, when things were more autocratic, when a factor went on a journey his people picked him up and carried him into his boat, and when he went ashore they picked him up and carried him out again. ”

“ That’s the lesson of this great North. It’s the roughest country in the world. As you know, there is an old saying among the fur-traders that no man has ever whipped the North.
“I was thinking more especially about the dogs,” he added, nodding toward the luggage on which the boys were sitting.
“And what do you mean about the dogs, Uncle Dick?” asked Jesse.
“Well, those are the beggars that will steal you blind. They’ll eat anything they can swallow and some things they can’t. I’ve had them eat the heels off a pair of boots, and moccasins are like pie for them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Uncle Dick has been talking with the captain of our boat about the Nahanni River, which comes down here through a notch in the mountains. The Indians go up to the North Nahanni, portage across to the South Nahanni, run down to the Liard River, and come down it to the Mackenzie. This is a trip no white man has ever taken. It must be a wild country in there. John is honest with his map, so he just marks this place ‘Unknown.’ Prospectors have gone up the Liard to the Nahanni. The geologists say there is no chance for gold in there. ”

“ But they talked the same language, and in my opinion they had about as much religion then as they have now.”
“What’s that boat out there with a sail on it?” demanded Rob, after a time, pointing to a small craft which was moored near by.
“Goodness only knows,” replied Uncle Dick. “There are all sorts of fool adventurers in the world, and they take all sorts of fool chances. I have heard that there are a half-dozen prospectors in that schooner, going north, they don’t know where nor why. ”

“ It is possible that a railroad north from Athabasca Landing might for a time prove profitable. I do not myself believe to any extent in the agricultural possibilities of that upper country. A few men will be able to subsist there. Some grain can be raised in many of the valleys of that upper country. The seasons are, however, so short, and the difficulties of permanent settlement so many, that while in my estimation the railroad would be a benefit for a time to a few individuals, it would not be a profitable permanent enterprise far to the northward of its present terminus. ”

“ The old man proved pleasant enough, and with a certain pride showed them all about these rude craft of the fur trade. Each boat appeared to be about fifty feet in length and nearly twenty in width, the carrying capacity of each being about ten tons.
“Of course you know, my lads,” said the old man, “a scow goes no faster than the river runs. Here’s the great oar—twenty feet it is in length—made out of a young tree. The steersman uses that to straighten her up betimes. But there’s nothing to make the boat run saving the current, do ye mind?” ”

“ 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 Grand Rapids are bad, let me tell you that! It is only within the last fifty years that any one has ever tried to run them. I’ll show you the man who first went through—an old man now over seventy; but he was a young chap when he first tried it. Well, he found that he could get through, so he tried it over again. He and others have been guiding on those rapids ever since. That cuts off the old Clearwater trail from here to Fort McMurray, which used to be their old way of getting north.
“So now you see,” he continued, “why these breeds like high water. It means less work for them. ”

“ 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 Dick?”
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. ”

“ The quiet young man just beyond him is his son, François. He is the real captain—or commodore, as they call it—of the brigade, and has been for several years. He’ll be the steersman on our boat, so that in one way you might say that the Midnight Sun, although not a Company boat, will pretty much be the flag-ship of the brigade this year. ”

“ The dogs killed it and ate it. Sometimes they eat little dogs, too. They’ll eat anything and never get enough. But I suppose they have to have dogs here the same as they have to have Indians, else they could have no fur trade.”
“The old trader up at the post is mighty crusty, it seems to me,” complained Jesse, after a time. “He won’t let me go up in the fur-loft, where he keeps his silver-gray foxes and all that sort of thing, to make any pictures. What’s the reason he won’t?”
Rob smiled as he answered: “The Hudson’s Bay Company is a big monopoly and it keeps its own secrets. ”

“ I don’t like to clean them any more, and I don’t like to smell them when they are cooking in the kettle.”
“You’re not the first man in the North to get tired of rabbits,” said Uncle Dick. “For a day or two they are all right, but there is really very little strength in the meat. They are, however, the main prop of the fur trade in the North, and the mainstay of the savage population as well. Except for rabbits, all these natives would starve to death in the winter-time. They have almost nothing to eat from one season to the next after the caribou have gone by.” ”

“ Everything was confusion, yet there was a sort of system in it, after all, for each man was busy throughout the long hours of the day. As a scow came in its cargo was rapidly taken out, as rapidly piled up ashore, and quite as rapidly flung on top of the flat-cars for transport across the great portage.
Our young adventurers saw with interest that a good many of the boatmen were quite young, boys of fifteen, sixteen, and eighteen years of age. ”

“ Here we come to White Horse, and there we shall take the railroad over the Skagway Pass, where so many men had such awful times trying to get from the salt water into the Yukon Valley.
“I don’t think I’ll write any more notes, because when you get to a railroad everybody knows about it all anyhow. John and Jesse and I feel pretty blue, after all. Our trip is the same as done when we get to White Horse, and we are sorry. When we once know we can get home all safe, we sort of feel homesick for the rivers and mountains, too. ”

“ A good many men on the boat are trading with the Indians for bead-work. A pair of moccasins is worth from a dollar to a dollar and a half. One man bought the leggings of a squaw and off the squaw—for she was wearing them when he bought them. They say the trade situation here is bad—too much competition. Independents sometimes [Pg 125] pay three hundred dollars for a silver-gray fox, which is only worth a hundred and twenty-five. The people here are Slavies, and are not much good. The post was out of goods when we got in, and had mighty little fur to send out, too. ”

“ I never get tired of making pictures of dogs and Indians.”
“Well, when you are photographing Indians study Indians, too,” said Uncle Dick. “Most people look at Indians just as an object of curiosity, but he may be quite a fellow, even so. For instance, there are these Crees sitting over there in the grass before the flag, waiting for their treaty money. They flock by themselves, quite distinct from the Chippewyans; they don’t camp within three miles of each other. As you know, the Crees are of the Algonquin family. They have pushed west all the way from eastern Canada, following the fur trade. ”

“ That, let me say, is the typical individual remedy for mosquitoes in this country. Of course, when we are out on railroad work, map-making and writing and the like, we have to have something bigger and better than that. That sort of little tent is only for the single night. No doubt we’ll use them ourselves, traveling along on the scows, because it is a good deal of trouble to put up a big wall tent every night.
“The distances in this country are so big,” he added, after a time, explaining, “that every one travels in a hurry and spends no unnecessary work in making camp. ”