The Young Alaskans in the Rockies Part 24

"It was in that way, little by little, that all this country was explored and mapped--just as John is mapping out this region now."

"It's a funny thing to me," said John, looking at one of the large folding maps which they had brought along, "how many of these rivers up here run north for quite a way and then bend south again."

"Yes, that's a peculiarity of this upper Pacific slope," said Uncle d.i.c.k. "That's the way the Columbia does. Not all Americans know the Columbia River rises near our boundary line and then runs for hundreds of miles north into Canada before it turns and swings southwest over our country to the Pacific--after reaching this very point where we are sitting now.

"Take the Fraser River, too. From the Tete Jaune Cache it swings far northwest, up to the Gis...o...b.. Portage. Then it bends just like the Columbia. You may remember the upper bend of the Fraser, for that is about where the Salmon River comes in, down which Sir Alexander Mackenzie came--and where you went in last year on your trip over the Peace River Pa.s.s."

"Oh, don't we remember that, though!" said John. "And now that you mention it, I recall that at that time we were speaking of this big bend in the Fraser."

"Yes, and the Canoe River rises in these hills, and it runs north quite a way before it bends down and comes into the Columbia, although it runs to the southeast ultimately, and not to the southwest.

"You see, these mountains are all laid out along great parallels, and the rivers have to do just as we did, hunt a way through if they want to get west. This is the pa.s.s of the Columbia where we are now, the way it has found downhill between the Selkirks and the Rockies. Always in getting through from east to west, as I have told you, men have followed the rivers up on one side and down on the other. So you can see, right on this ground, the way in which much of our history has been made."

"One thing about this sort of geography is that when you see it this way you don't forget it. And I rather like those old books which tell about the trips across the country," said John.

"Yes," said his uncle, "they are interesting, and useful as well, and it is interesting to follow their story, as we have done. If you would read _The Northwest Pa.s.sage_--Rob's book which he has just mentioned--you will see that they had even worse troubles than we, I should say, for, although they had one good guide, most of them were rank tenderfeet. They were five days getting from Jasper House up to the Yellowhead Pa.s.s, and they were a month and a half in getting from Edmonton to the Tete Jaune Cache--very much longer than we were, as you will remember.

"And worst of all--and here's what I want you to remember--they delayed so much from time to time that when they got out of this country they met all the rivers at their swollen stages. They reached the Cache in the middle of July, and that was why they found the Canoe River so swollen and dangerous near its sources. We are about a month ahead of them. And now you will see why I have been crowding so hard all along this trip--I don't want to repeat the mistakes of the earliest explorers who crossed this country, not knowing what they were to find in it. But I give them all honor, these two Englishmen, Milton and Cheadle, for making one of the best trips ever made over the Rockies, all things considered, and contributing as they did to the growth and civilization of this country. For they were among the first to have the vision of all these great developments which have come since then."

"They must have had a hard old time," said Rob, "plugging along and not knowing where they were coming out. But, then, you told us that everybody who crossed the mountains in those times had native guides."

"And so did they. At Edmonton they met a man who had been west with the emigrants the year before, who had started for the gold-fields.

This guide had taken the party right up by Cranberry Lake, where we were a few days ago, over the Albreda Pa.s.s, and down the Thompson, until he showed them what he called the Cariboo country--which none of them ever reached.

"And when they reached Jasper House they found some of Leo's people--the Rocky Mountain Shuswaps--living over there. In that way they got more directions on how to reach the Cache. There an old woman told them about the country to the west, and a man took them up to the pa.s.s into the Thompson and showed them their way down--if way it could be called. Then, when they got down toward Kamloops, they met yet other natives, and if they had not they must have starved to death, near as they were to the settlements. Left alone, these men perhaps never would have gotten even to the Yellowhead Pa.s.s. I'll warrant it was some Indian who first ran the rapids on the Columbia. Eh, Leo?"

"Maybe-so," smiled Leo, who had been listening intently to every word of this. "Injun not always 'fraid of water, some tribes."

"Well," said Uncle d.i.c.k, "I don't know whether it was courage or laziness, Leo, but certainly a great many of your people were the ones to tell the whites about the rapids on some of these bad rivers."

They all laughed heartily over this at Leo, who joined in.

"But it's true," Uncle d.i.c.k went on, "there never has been an original pa.s.sage of the Rocky Mountains made by a white man, from the time of Lewis and Clark and Mackenzie up to the modern engineers, which was not conducted, in reality, by some native who pointed out the way.

"Now here we are, with Leo and George. I trust them perfectly. Leo's map, there on the sand at the Boat Encampment, showed me that he was perfectly accurate, and that he knew the places of all the streams and rapids. So I feel no fear about our getting down the Big Bend from here with him as our guide. I'll warrant that Leo can draw a map of the river from here to Revelstoke as accurately as any professional map-maker, and name every stream and tell every rapid all the way down. In short, we furnish the grub and Leo furnishes the experience."

"We'll not furnish grub much longer," said Moise. "The flour she's getting mighty low, and not much pork now, and the tea she's 'bout gone."

"Well, what could you expect?" said Uncle d.i.c.k. "With three Injuns and an engineer to eat, we ought to have an extra boat to carry the grub--not to mention John, here, who is hungry all the time. We may have to eat our moccasins yet, young men."

"Leo says we can't get any fish yet," said John, "and we're not to stop for any more bear meat, even if we could eat it. We're not apt to get any grub right along the river either. I don't see how any one can hunt in this awful forest. It's always cold and dark, and there doesn't seem to be anything to eat there. Rob and I measured some trees by stretching out our arms, and we figured that they were thirty feet or more around, some of them. And one log we walked which paced over three hundred feet--it was so thick we couldn't crawl over it at all. That's no sort of place to hunt."

"No, not for anything unless it was a porcupine," said Uncle d.i.c.k. "We may have to come to that. But even with a little grub we can last for a hundred miles or so, can't we? Can't we make forty or fifty miles a day, Leo?"

Leo laughed and shook his head. "Some day not make more than ten or twelve mile," said he.

"Well, I know that there's a good deal of slack water for quite a way below here. At least, I have heard that that is the case. So for a time, if we don't meet bad head-winds, we can put a good deal of this country back of us."

"Could any one walk along these banks and get out to the settlements at all if he were left alone in here?" inquired Rob.

"One can do a great deal if he has to," said Uncle d.i.c.k. "But I hope none of us will ever have to try to make the railroad on foot from here. There isn't any trail, and very often the banks are sheer rock faces running into the river. Get behind such a hill, and you're on another slope, and the first thing you know you're clear away from the river and all tangled up. But, still, men have come up here one way or another. On the other side, there used to be a sort of pack-horse trail from Revelstoke up to the Selkirk gold-mines. There are two or three creeks which are still worked along the Big Bend of the Columbia. When we engineers have all done our work it will be easier to get in here than it is to-day."

"Well, I'm going to be an engineer some day," said Rob, firmly, once more. "I like this work."

"Well, you're all going to bed now at once," said Uncle d.i.c.k. "We must hurry on down to-morrow, for, unless I am mistaken, this roily water of the Canoe means that the spring rise has begun earlier than it should."

XXVI

DOWN THE COLUMBIA

They did hurry to embark on the next morning, and, as Uncle d.i.c.k had predicted, for many miles the river was much more mild, although the current was steady and strong. They had run perhaps four hours when they came to the mouth of a creek which Leo and George said was called either Nagel Creek or End Creek, they did not know which. They went ash.o.r.e for a time at a little unfinished log cabin which had been started perhaps two years before by some unknown person or persons.

"That way," said Leo, "up creek ten mile, fine bear country; plenty caribou too. S'pose we hunt?"

"Certainly not," said Uncle d.i.c.k. "It would take us a day to hunt and another day to get back. What do you say about that, boys?"

"Well," said Rob, "of course we'd like to hunt a little more, but I don't myself much like the thought of walking out of this country with a pack on my back and nothing to eat but a little flour. Besides, I've a feeling that this river is rising all the time now."

"She'll rise five inch last night," said Moise. "I'll mark heem on the stick."

"Yes," said Uncle d.i.c.k, "the June rise is going to chase us out, that's sure. All those great snow-fields which you see up there on the Selkirks and the Rockies have got to melt and come right down here where our boat is now. So, Leo, you and George go on ahead--we'll run late to-night and make forty miles to-day, at least, if we can. How far are we from Revelstoke?"

"S'pose 'bout hunderd mile," said Leo. "Long way."

"Not long if it was all clear water like this. But it isn't. A pack-train on an unknown trail is one thing, but a boat on an unknown river is something mighty different. As I've told you, every foot of rise changes the river absolutely in the narrows. Therefore all I can allow you for lunch to-day is a piece of bannock--and we'll eat that as we run."

They found milder water now for twenty-five miles, and made steady progress. The wind had shifted a little bit, and Rob managed to get a.s.sistance out of it by rigging a sail from a corner of the tent. This brought the lead-boat ahead so steadily that Leo and George protested and made Rob take down his sail. But soon the long reach of slack water was pa.s.sed. More and more they could hear, coming up-stream from perhaps a mile ahead, the low, sullen roar of rapids.

The water began to set faster and faster, and seemed each mile to a.s.sume more and more malicious habits. Great boils, coming up from some mysterious depth, would strike the boat as though with a mighty hammer so hard as to make the boys look around in consternation. At times they could see the river sink before them in a great slide, or basin, a depression perhaps two hundred feet across, with white water at its edges. Deep boils and eddies came up every now and then without warning, and sometimes the boat would feel a wrench, as though with some mighty hand thrust up from the water. Their course was hardly steady for more than a moment or so at a time, and the boats required continual steering. In fact, it seemed to them that never was there a stream so variable and so unaccountable as this they were now descending.

"She's worse than the Peace River, a whole lot," said Rob; and all the boys agreed with him. In fact, by this time all of them were pretty well sobered down now, for they could see that it was serious work which lay ahead of them. Now and again Uncle d.i.c.k would see the boys looking at the black forests which covered these slopes on each side of the river, foaming down between the Selkirks and the Rockies.

Late in the afternoon they pa.s.sed a little settlement of a few cabins, where a discolored stream came down into the river through a long sluice-box whose end was visible.

"This Howard's camp," shouted Leo. "Them mans wash gold here. Some mans live there now."

Two or three men indeed did come to the bank and wave an excited greeting as the boats swept by. But there was no going ash.o.r.e, for directly at this place a stretch of rapids demanded the attention of every one in the boats.

And still Uncle d.i.c.k urged the Indians of the first boat to go on as far as they could that night. They ran until almost dark, and made camp on the top of a high bank on the left side of the river where once an old lumber camp had been. Here they found the breeze good and the mosquito nuisance much diminished.

"How far now to Revelstoke, Leo?" inquired Uncle d.i.c.k, as they sat at their frugal supper that night.

"Maybe-so forty mile, maybe-so sixty," said Leo.

"Can we make it in one day?"