The Greatest Works of Emerson Hough – 19 Books in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Emerson Hough
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— that’s one apiece! Did each of you get one, fellows?”
The three boys now shook hands all around, and for a long time they chatted gaily together, telling one another the many exciting incidents of their hunt. They all agreed that certainly they were the luckiest young hunters that ever had gone after grizzlies.
“I don’t know how you all feel about it now,” said Rob, finally, “but for my part I would be content to run straight on down and not stop for any more hunting. I’ve been watching my water-mark here, and this river has risen almost a foot in the last twenty-four hours. That means that the snows are beginning to go on the upper snow-fields. We’ve had a big hunt, so let’s take out the rest of it in a big run on the old Columbia — they say that’s worse than grizzlies.”
The others assented to this readily enough, for, wet, tired, and successful as they were, they welcomed the thought of a night’s rest and a journey in the boats, which, taking one thing with another, they knew would be easier than climbing after grizzlies in the mountains.
They all slept soundly that night in their mosquito-proof tent, and in the morning were much refreshed. All bore a hand in breaking the camp and loading the boats, and early in the day they were once more off in their swift journey down the mountain river. The river itself seemed to have changed almost overnight. From being mild and inoffensive it now brawled over its reefs and surged madly through its cañons. Many times they were obliged to go ashore and line down some of the bad water, and all the time, when running, the paddlers were silent and eager, looking ahead for danger, and obliged constantly to use care with the paddles to dodge this rock or to avoid that stretch of roaring water. There was no accident, however, to mar their progress, and they kept on until in the afternoon they reached a place where the valley seemed to flatten and spread, a wide and beautiful mountain prospect opening out before them. After a time, at the head of a long stretch of water, as both boats were running along side by side, they saw suddenly unfold before them the spectacle of a wide, green flood, beyond which rose a wedgelike range of lofty mountains, the inner peaks of which were topped with snow.
“La Grande Rivière!” exclaimed Moise; and Leo turned his head to shout: “Ketch ’um Columby!”
“Yes, there’s the Columbia, boys,” said Uncle Dick. And the three young hunters in the boat waved their hats with a shout at seeing at last this great river of which they had heard so much, and which had had so large a place in their youthful dreams.
Steadily the boat swept on down the stained and tawny current of their smaller river, until they felt beneath them the lift of the green flood of the great Columbia, here broken into waves by the force of an up-stream wind. Uncle Dick called out an order to the lead-boat. Soon they all were ashore on a little beach near the mouth of the Canoe River, each feeling that now at last a great stage of their journey had been completed, and that another yet as great still lay before them.
XXIV
THE BOAT ENCAMPMENT
Our party of adventurers were now in one of the wildest and most remote regions to be found in all the northern mountains, and one perhaps as little known as any to the average wilderness goer — the head of the Big Bend of the Columbia River; that wild gorge, bent in a half circle, two hundred miles in extent, which separates the Selkirks from the Rockies. There are few spots on this continent farther from settlements of civilized human beings.
To the left, up the great river, lay a series of mighty rapids, impossible of ascent by any boat. Nearly a hundred miles that way would have been the nearest railroad point, that on the Beaver Mouth River. Down-stream to the southward more than a hundred miles of water almost equally dangerous lay before them. Back of them lay the steep pitch of the Canoe River, down which they had come. Before them reared the mighty wedge of the Selkirks, thrusting northward. Any way they looked lay the wilderness, frowning and savage, and offering conditions of travel perhaps the most difficult to be found in any part of this continent.
“I congratulate you, young men,” said Uncle Dick, at last, as they sat silently gazing out over this tremendous landscape. “This is a man’s trip, and few enough men have made it. So far as I know, there has never been a boy here before in the history of all this valley which we see here before us.”
Rob and John began to bend over their maps, both those which they had brought with them and that which John was still tracing out upon his piece of paper.
“We can’t be far from the Boat Encampment here,” said Rob, at last.
“It’s just around the corner of the Big Bend here,” rejoined their leader. “Over yonder a few hundred yards away is the mouth of the Wood River, and the Encampment lies beyond that. That’s the end of the water trail of the Columbia going east, and the end of the land trail for those crossing the Athabasca Pass and going west. Many a bold man in the past has gone by this very spot where we now stand. There isn’t much left to mark their passing, even at the old Boat Encampment, but, if you like, we’ll go up there and have a look at the old place.”
Accordingly, they now embarked once more, and, taking such advantage of the slack water as they could, and of the up-stream wind which aided them for a time, they slowly advanced along the banks of the Columbia, whose mighty green flood came pouring down in a way which caused them almost a feeling of awe. Thus they passed the mouth of the more quiet Wood River, coming in from the north, and after a long, hard pull of it landed at last at the edge of a sharp bend, where a little beach gave them good landing-room.
Uncle Dick led them a short distance back toward a flat grassy space among the low bushes. Here there was a scattered litter of old tent-pegs and a few broken poles, now and then a tin can. Nothing else remained to mark the historic spot, which had passed from the physical surface of the earth almost as completely as the old Tête Jaune Cache. Uncle Dick turned away in disgust.
“Some trappers have camped here lately,” said he, “or perhaps some of the engineers sent out by another railroad. But, at any rate, this is the old Boat Encampment. Yonder runs the trail, and you can follow that back clear to Timbasket Lake, if you like, or to the Athabasca Pass.”
“Is this where they came in from the Saskatchewan?” demanded Rob.
“No, the old trail that way really came down the Blaeberry, very far above. I presume after they got on the west side, in the Columbia valley, they took to the trail and came down to this point just the same, for I doubt if any of them ran the Columbia much above here. Many a time old David Thompson stopped here — the first of the great map-makers, my young friends, and somewhat ahead of you, John. And Sir George Simpson, the lord of the fur-traders, came here with his Indian wife, who became a peeress of Great Britain, but who had to walk like any voyageur from here out across the Rockies. I don’t doubt old Doctor Laughlin, of Fort Vancouver, was here, as I have told you. In short, most of the great fur-traders came to this point up to about 1825, or 1826, at which time, as we have learned, they developed the upper trail, along the Fraser to the Tête Jaune Cache.”
“But didn’t any one of them ever go up the Wood River yonder?” demanded Rob. “That looks like an easy stream.”
“The engineer Moberly went up there, and crossed the Rockies to the head of the Whirlpool River on the east side,” replied Uncle Dick, “but that was in modern times — about the same time that Major Rogers discovered the Rogers Pass through the Selkirks below here, where the Canadian Pacific road crosses the Rockies. It’s a great tumble and jumble of mountains in here, my young friends, and a man’s job for any chap who picked out any pass in these big mountains here.
“Yonder” — he rose and pointed as he spoke — “east of us, is the head of the Saskatchewan — the Howse Pass is far to the south of where we stand here. Northeast of us, and much closer, is the Athabasca Pass, and we know that by following down the Athabasca we would come to Henry House and Jasper House, not far from the mouth of the Miette River.
“Now,