Young Alaskans in the Far North by Emerson Hough (ereader android .txt) đź“•
"Well, that's hard to say," replied his elder relative. "I'd like to start to-morrow morning. It all depends on the stage of the water. If a flood came down the Athabasca to-morrow you'd see pretty much every breed in that saloon over there stop drinking and hurry to the scows."
"What's that got to do with it?" asked John.
"Well, when the river goes up the scows can run the Grand Rapids, down below here, without unloading, or at least without unloading everything. If the river is low so that the rocks stand out, the men have to portage every pound of the brigade stuff. 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 thos
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“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 ashore. 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 Dick 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 shore. The delay was not very long, for now, after finishing 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 assembled 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 impassable 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 Fèvre, 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 Dick 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 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!
“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 cocktail 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 Dick, “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. But think of it—they did it not only one year, but every year for more than a hundred years!”
Rob continued his diary more or less impatiently during the time they lay at the Mountain Portage, but noted that on Monday, June 23d, at seven-thirty in the evening, the work was all concluded. His notes ran:
“We are off. Fort Smith is next. Fast water. Pilot Boniface in bow. River very wide below the Mountain Rapids, and wanders very much—every which way. Shallow so the boats have trouble. They say no one could run the big water below Pelican Island off to the right. Crossed the river in a wide circle. Could hear roar of heavy rapids on both sides. Boniface says if the water was high we would run the big rapids on the left straight through, but we cannot do it now. Our channel is crooked like a double letter S, and I don’t see how he follows it. It takes fancy steering.
“We are following what they call the old Hudson’s Bay channel. This carries us to the right-hand side of the river, and it looks a mile or two across. Storm came up and we got wet. Over to the left we could see lights. They said it was the steamboat Mackenzie River lying at her moorings at Fort Smith. Jolly glad to get done with this work.
“Dark and wet and late. Went on board steamboat. Quite a post here. A good many strangers besides the Company people. Well, here we are at the head of the Mackenzie River, or the Big Slave, as they call it here. I’m pretty glad.”
VIII ON THE MACKENZIEThe three young companions stood in the bright sunlight on the high bank of Fort Smith at the foot of which lay the steamer which was to carry them yet farther on their northwest journey. About them lay the scattered settlements at the foot of the Grand Traverse between the Slave and the Mackenzie. Off to the right, along the low bed of the river, lay the encampment of the natives, waiting for the “trade” of the season. Upon the other hand were the log houses of the Company employees, structures not quite so well built, perhaps, as those at Chippewyan, but adapted to the severity of this northern climate.
At the foot of the high embankment, busy among the unloaded piles of cargo which had been traversed from the disembarkment point of Smith’s Landing, trotted in steady stream the sinewy laborers, the same half-breeds who everywhere make the reliance of the fur trade in the upper latitudes. They were carrying now on board the Mackenzie River, as the steamboat was named, the usual heavy loads of flour, bacon, side-meat, sugar, trade goods, all the staples of the trade, not too expensive in their total.
There were to be seen also the human flotsam and jetsam of this northern country—miners, prospectors, drifters, government employees, and adventurers—all caught here as though in the cleats of a flume, at this focusing-point at the foot of the wild northern waters.
“John,” said Jesse, at last, as he drew a full breath of warm yet invigorating air, “how is your map coming along?”
“Pretty well,” replied John. “I’ve got everything charted this far. Look here how I’ve put down our journey through the rapids of the Slave River; we zigzagged all about. I put down the rocks and the biggest headlands, so I think I’ve got it pretty close to correct. I wonder how we ever got through there, and how the old Company men first went through.”
“Two boats came through directly over the big rapids which we didn’t dare tackle,” said Rob. “They were tenderfeet, and they don’t know to this day how lucky they were.”
“Well, we were lucky enough, too,” said John, “for in spite of our bad omens at Chippewyan, everything has come through fine. Here we are, all ready for our last great swing to the North. Look here on the map, fellows—I always thought that the Mackenzie River ran straight north up to the Arctic Ocean, but look here—if you start from where we are right now, and follow the Great Slave River on out through Great Slave Lake, you’ll find it runs almost as much west as it does north. It
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