The Greatest Works of Emerson Hough – 19 Books in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Emerson Hough
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over, I believe, although the road is not very good.”
“Well, how did they come to have that sidewalk?” asked John, pointing to the narrow and unimportant strip of walk which lay in front of one of the warehouses.
Uncle Dick smiled. “The captain of the boat told me that they wanted some telephone-poles to string a wire from here across to Fort Smith, over the portage. So the wise authorities of the Company had Montreal send out enough square-sawed four-inch joists to make poles for fifty miles of telephone — and right in a country where there are better telephone-poles than you could get at Montreal! So they were all brought through, with what trouble you can imagine, since you have seen the sort of transport they must have had coming this far. The factor could not use them all, so he put up a few and laid the others in the form of a sidewalk. I’ll say it’s lasting, at least!
“As for those horses, however,” he continued, “we’ll take a crack at them ourselves if we have luck. You’ve been complaining that things are not exciting enough, and I propose to give you a touch of life. After we get done our work here — that is to say, after everybody has drunk up all the Scotch whisky that has come north on this boat — we’ll be getting on about our business. We’ll take our scow through.
“I’m going to contract with old Johnny Belcore, the traffic-handler here, to take our boat and an extra scow around through the rapids of the Slave River. You’ll see he’ll ship his horses along to use on the portages, and there’ll be more than one of them. It would take a lot of men to track one of these boats up the bank and along a mile or so of dry ground. They tell me that he uses rollers and pulls the boats by horse power. So, as that is one more example of the way the brigade gets its goods north, we’ll use that, if only for the sake of our own information.”
“That’ll be fine,” said Rob. “I’d much rather do that than climb on top of a lumber-wagon and ride across sixteen miles of muskeg. If we did that we’d miss all the excitement of seeing the Big Rapids of the Slave. I’ve been reading about them. You’re right, this is perhaps as bad boat water as any actually used by men.”
“Do you suppose it is worse than the White Horse Rapids up on the head of the Yukon?” asked John, looking up.
Uncle Dick laughed at this. “Son,” said he, “the White Horse Rapids could be lost a thousand times here in the falls of the Slave River, and no one would know where they went. Those rapids got their reputation through the stories of tenderfeet, for the most part. They don’t touch the Grand Rapids of the Athabasca, and the Grand Rapids don’t touch the Slave. She drops a hundred and sixty-five feet in sixteen miles! You can figure what that means, and if you can’t figure it we’ll see it with our own eyes.”
“I read once in some sort of a magazine story,” said Rob, “that the Peace River buffalo herd is somewhere up in this country, and that when people want to find out about it they go to Smith’s Landing.”
“That’s true,” said Uncle Dick. “That somewhat mythical herd has been under the more or less mythical charge of the Dominion government in here for some time. It isn’t worth while for us to make a trip out to see it; that is usually done by parties who are going back from here. Nor do we care to see the celebrated Dominion government reindeer herd which is out on the promontory of the Mountain Portage below here.
“I understand there were about a dozen of these reindeer once, but most of them got into the river and swam across. The last report was that the keeper of this herd had only one reindeer left, and he was sitting tight, with several Lapland dogs which had been sent out by the government!”
“The trouble with people that run things,” said Rob, judicially, “is that sometimes they don’t know about the things they are running.”
“Well, I don’t see why they sent reindeer up into the caribou country,” said Jesse. “Of course I’m only a boy, but I can’t see why they do that.”
Uncle Dick grinned. “We may see a good many things we can’t understand before we get done with the trip. But all the same we’ll have a good time finding out.
“You may sleep ashore to-night, young men,” he said, later, “for perhaps you would rather not lie in your berths on the boat. 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. One great lesson of this trip ought to be to take your medicine and be game and quiet as well.”
The boys did not find the stop at Smith’s Landing of special interest, for there was so much drunkenness among all the population that they became quite disgusted at the sloth and noisiness of it all. They learned through the captain that while liquor is not allowed to be sold generally at the Hudson’s Bay posts, among natives, the government does allow a “permit” to any one going into that country, so that each traveler might legally take a gallon of liquor for “medicinal purposes.” Sometimes a white trader or employee would be allowed to import each year a gallon of liquor on a “permit.” The captain told one instance, more gruesome than amusing, which had just happened that week. A man at Smith’s Landing had ordered his annual gallon of liquor, but meantime he had died. As he could not use the liquor, the question arose to whom did it belong. That was decided, so he said, by a game of cards in the warehouse on the bank. That the contents of the dead man’s liquor-case found use was easy enough to see.
The tales regarding the mosquitoes at Smith’s Landing proved more than true. Our young travelers found that the best of their mosquito dope was of little or no avail, so that they wore headnets and long gloves almost always.
By this time they had learned to manage their sleeping-tents so that they could keep out the insects at night, and lost but little sleep, even amid the continual howling of the dogs and the carousing of the half-drunken population of the place.
Meantime, albeit slowly, the cargoes of the scows and of the steamer were being portaged by wagon over the sixteen miles of flat timbered country. This work went on for nearly a week. It was Thursday, June 19th, when Uncle Dick announced to Rob and John and Jesse that now they would be off for the exciting enterprise of taking their boat down the rapids of the Slave. Johnny Belcore, as the freight contractor was named, had finally secured a Cree pilot who knew the ancient channel, used time out of mind by the Hudson’s Bay boats which risked this dangerous passage. He agreed to take the Midnight Sun across the portage for fifty dollars, and to charge seventy-five cents for each hundred pounds of freight. During the short season of the brigade’s passage north, at which time most of the amateurs and independents were crowding northward, Belcore made a very considerable amount of money. Our party, however, thought his charges entirely reasonable, and, indeed, would not, for any money, have foregone the pleasure of running these redoubtable rapids. They learned now that three other scows were going through also. Belcore had his team on one of these, and had brought along twenty-seven men to man the boats, to handle the team, etc.
In the early evening his little flotilla pushed off, with few regrets at leaving Smith’s Landing behind. On the left lay the dangerous and treacherous falls of the Priest Rapids, so called by reason of the loss there of a Catholic priest and a companion years ago. The boats, however, were rowed in slack water across above these big falls, then took two fast chutes upon the farther side. After this smart water the commodore of the little fleet pulled in to portage the Cassette Falls, that tremendous cascade of the Slave River which so terrifies the ordinary observer when first he sees its enormous display of power. There are perhaps few more terrifying spectacles of wild water, even including the Whirlpool Rapids at Niagara.
That night our party lay in bivouac, and were up early in the work of the portage. All the goods had to be unloaded and