Chapter 2

"Well, I don't think much of these boats," grumbled John, as he passed among them slowly.

"Don't be too rough with them," said Uncle Dick, laughingly. "Like everything else up here, they may not be the best in the world, but they do for their purpose. These scows are never intended to come back, you must remember; all they have to do is to stand the trip down, for a month or two. All the frame houses of the Far North are made out of these scows; they break them up at the ends of the trips. Our boat may be part of a church before it gets through.

"Come now, and I'll introduce you to old Adam McAdam, the builder and pump-maker." He nodded toward an old man who was passing slowly here and there among the rude craft. "This old chap is no doubt over seventy-five years old, and he must have built hundreds of these boats in his time. He makes the pumps, too, and a pump has to go with every scow to keep it from sinking at first, before the seams get swelled up."

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?"

"Well, that won't be so very fast," commented Rob, thinking of the long distances that lay ahead.

"Oh, we're not confined to scows for much more than two hundred and fifty miles," replied Uncle Dick. "At McMurray we get a steamer which carries us down-stream to Smith's Landing. That's the big and bad portage of the whole trip--that is to say, excepting the Rat Portage of five hundred miles over the Yukon. But when we get below the Smith's Landing portage we strike another Hudson's Bay Company steamer that takes us fast enough, day and night, all the way to the Arctic Circle. That's where we make our time, don't you see? These boats only get us over the rapids.

"Of course," he explained, a little later, "a few of them go on down, towed by the steamboats, because the steamboats are not big enough to carry all the freight which must go north. There are only two steamboats between us and the Arctic Circle now, barring one or two little ones which are not of much account. The scows have to carry all the supplies for the entire fur trade--trade goods, bacon, flour, and everything."

"Who's that old gentleman coming along there, Uncle Dick?" demanded Jesse, turning toward the end of the street.

"That's old Father Le Fèvre," replied his uncle. "He's the purchasing agent for all the many missions of the Catholic Church in the Far North. Each year he comes in with ten or more scows, each carrying ten tons of goods. He may go as far as Chippewyan, and then come back, or he may go on to Great Slave. I understand there are two good Sisters going even farther north this year. No one knows when they will come back, of course; they'll be teachers up among the native schools.

"Well, now you see the transport system beyond the head of the rails in the Athabasca and Mackenzie country," he continued, as, hands in pocket, he passed along among the finished and unfinished craft which still lay in the shipyard.

Outside, moored to stumps along the shore, floated a number of the rude scows, some of which even now were partially laden. The leader of the expedition pointed out to one of these.

"That's our boat yonder, young men," said he. "You'll see that she has the distinction of a name. Most scows have only numbers on them, and each post gets certain scows with certain numbers. But ours has a name--the _Midnight Sun_. How do you like that?"

"That's fine, sir!" said Rob. "And we'll see to it that she doesn't come to grief as long as we use her."

"Well, it will only be for a couple of hundred miles or so," said Uncle Dick, "but I fancy there'll be nothing slow in that two hundred miles."

"Where will we eat?" demanded John, with his usual regard for creature comforts.

"That's easy," said Rob. "I know all about that. I saw two men loading a cook-stove on one of the scows. They took it out of a canoe, and how they did it without upsetting the canoe I can't tell, but they did it. I suppose we'll cook as we go along."

"Precisely," nodded Uncle Dick. "The cook-boat is the only thing that goes under steam. The cook builds his fire in the stove just as though he were on shore. When he calls time for meals, the men from the other boats take turns in putting out in canoes and going to the cook-boat for meals. Sometimes a landing is made while they eat, and of course they always tie up at night They have certain stages which they try to make. The whole thing is all planned out on a pretty good system, rough but effective, as you will see."

"Is he a pretty good cook?" asked John, somewhat demurring.

"Well, good enough for us, if he is good enough for the others," replied his uncle. "But I'll tell you what we might do once in a while. They do say that the two good Sisters who go north with the mission brigade know how to cook better than any half-breed. I've made arrangements so that we can eat on their scow once in a while if we like."

"What's that funny business on the end of our boat?" asked Jesse, presently, pointing to a rude framework of bent poles which covered the short deck at the stern of the boat.

"That's what they call a 'bower' up in this country," said Uncle Dick. "They have some curious old English words in here, even yet. Now a bower is simply a lot of poles, like an Indian wickiup, covering the end of your boat, as you see. You can throw your blankets over it, if you like, or green willows. It keeps the sun off. Since the Hudson's Bay Company charges a pretty stiff price for taking any passenger north, it tries to earn its money by building a bower for the select few, such as we are."

"I don't think that we need any bower," said Rob, and all the other boys shook their heads.

"A little sunshine won't hurt us," said Jesse, stoutly.

"But think of the style about it," laughed Uncle Dick, pleased to see the hardiness of his young charges. "Well, we'll do as we like about that. One thing, we've got to have a chance to see out, for I know you will want to keep your eyes open every foot of the way."

"Well, I wish the breeds would hurry up and get the boats loaded," added Jesse, impatiently, after a while. "There's nothing doing here worth while."

"Don't be too hard with the breeds," counseled Uncle Dick. "They're like children, that's all. This is the best time of the year for them, when the great fur brigade goes north. It couldn't go without them. The fur trade in this country couldn't exist without the half-breeds and the full-bloods; there's a half-dozen tribes on whom the revenues of this great corporation depend absolutely.

"You'll see now the best water-men and the best trail-men in the world. Look at these packages--a hundred pounds or better in each. Every pound of all that stuff is to be portaged across the Smith's Landing portage, and the Mountain Portage, and even at Grand Island, just below here, if the water is low. They have to carry it up from the scows to the steamboats, and from the steamboats to the shore. Every pound is handled again and again. It's the half-breeds that do that. They're as strong as horses and as patient as dogs; fine men they are, so you must let them have their little fling after their old ways; they don't know any better."

"How many of the fur posts are there in the North, Uncle Dick?" asked Rob, curious always to be exact in all his information.

"Well, let's see," pondered Uncle Dick, holding up his fingers and counting them off. "The first one above here is McMurray; that's one of the treaty posts where the tribes are paid their annuities by the Dominion government. It's two hundred and fifty-two miles from here, and there's where we hit our first steamboat, as I told you.

"Then comes Chippewyan, on Athabasca Lake. It was founded by Sir Alexander Mackenzie in seventeen eighty-eight, and from that time on it has been one of the most important trading-posts of the North--in fact, I believe it is the most important to-day, as it seems to be a sort of center, right where a lot of rivers converge. That's four hundred and thirty-seven miles from here. When you get that far 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. He wouldn't think of carrying a pound of his own luggage for anything in the world. If he began that sort of thing the natives would not respect him as their _bourgeois_."

"_Bourgeois?_ What does that mean?" asked John, again.

"Well, about the same as boss, I suppose. 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. If anybody got wet or tired or hungry be sure it wasn't the boss!

"You see, young gentlemen, while I don't want you, of all things in the world, ever to be snobbish, I do want you to be observant. So just take this advice from me, and let these men do your work right at the start. They expect it, and they will treat you all the better--and of course you will treat them well."

"Who is that old pirate standing over there by the boat landing?" asked Jesse, presently, pointing to a tall, dark, and sinewy man with full black beard, who seemed to have a certain authority among the laborers.

"That's Cap. Shott. I've told you that he was the first man who ever ran the Grand Rapids of the Athabasca River. His real name is Louis Faisoneure. He's seventy-seven years old, but still he likes to go down with the brigade, part way at least.

"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. They're treating us as well as they know how, and I must say we'll have no cause to complain."

"Cap. Shott," as they nicknamed him, did indeed have a piratical look, as John had said. He stood more than six and a half feet in his moccasins, and was straight as an arrow, with the waist of a boy. His face was dark, his eyebrows very heavy and black, and his dark, full beard, his scant trousers held up with a brilliant scarf, and his generally ferocious appearance, gave him a peculiarly wild and outlandish look, although personally he was gentle as a child.

"Well, Cap. Shott," said Uncle Dick, approaching him, "we start to-day, eh?"

"Mebbe so, _oui_," replied the old man. "We load h'all the boats bimeby now. Yes, pretty soon bimeby we start, mebbe so, _oui_."

"Well," said Uncle Dick, smiling, as he turned to the boys, "that's about as definite as you can get anything. We'll start when we start! Just get your stuff ready to be embarked and tell the manager where it is. It will be on board all right."

"But what makes them start so late in the day?" demanded John, who was of an investigative turn of mind. "I should think the morning was the right time to start."

"Not so the great fur brigade," was his answer. "Nor was it the custom in the great fur brigades which went out with pack-trains from the Missouri in our own old days when there were buffalo and beaver. A short start was made on the first day, usually toward evening. Then when camp was made everything was overhauled, and if anything had been left behind it was not too far to send back to get it. Nearly always it was found that something had been overlooked.

"Now that's the way we'll do here, so they tell me. We'll run down the river a few miles, each boat as it is loaded, and then we'll make a landing. That will give each boat captain time to look over his stuff and his men--and, what is more, it will give each man time to run in across country and get a few last drinks. Some of them will come back to be confessed by their priest. Some will want to send supplies to their families who are left behind. On one excuse or another every man of the brigade will be back here in town to-night if we should start! Of course by to-morrow morning they'll be on hand again bright and early and ready for the voyage. You see, there are customs up here with which we have not been acquainted before."