The Young Alaskans in the Rockies Part 9

Uncle d.i.c.k smiled and led the way into the thick underbrush once more.

They had a stiff climb before they reached the summit of their ridge where the timber broke away and gave them once more their splendid view out over the Miette valley and the mountains beyond. They ran rapidly down this fair slope and soon were in camp, where Moise greeted them with much joy.

"By gar!" said he, "those boy, she'll get feesh, eh? What I tole you, Monsieur Deek?"

The day was yet young, but at the earnest request of his young companions Uncle d.i.c.k consented to rest one day and allow the horses to graze, as he had promised. Therefore the boys had plenty of time that afternoon to prowl around in the neighborhood of the camp: and that night Moise, having also had abundant time to prepare his supper, offered them boiled trout, fried trout, and griddled trout, until even John at least was obliged to cry "Enough."

XI

THE Pa.s.s

It seemed to our Young Alaskans that Uncle d.i.c.k was nothing if not a hard taskmaster on the trail, for before the sun was up he was calling them out of their tents.

"Come now," he warned them; "get out of those blankets at once! You've had a good day's fishing, and now we'll have to make a good day's travel to pay up for it."

Tired from their tramp of the day before, they all groaned protestingly; but Moise also called out from his fireside, "h.e.l.lo, young mans! Suppose you'll got up and eat some more trout, eh?"

"I certainly am hungry," said John, and in their laughter at John's unfailing appet.i.te Rob and Jesse found themselves awake.

"Well, get out and get the horses, young men," said Uncle d.i.c.k, relentlessly, "and then back to breakfast while I make up the packs.

You see those three peaks on ahead? Well, we've got to get on the other side of them just as soon as we can. We can't afford to lose a minute at this time of the year, for the fords will be bad enough even as they are."

When at length their little pack-train began its slow course up the valley of the Miette all the boys turned and looked behind them to say good-by to the great valley of the Athabasca, which had served them as a highway for so long. The excitement of their new adventures, however, kept them keyed up, and certainly the dangers of the trail were not inconsiderable.

The old pa.s.s of the traders now swung away from the river, now crossed high ridges, only to drop again into boggy creek-bottoms and side-hill muskeg. Several times they had to ford the Miette, no easy thing, and at other times small streams which came down from the mountains at the right also had to be crossed. The three white peaks ahead still served as landmarks, but it was not until the second day that they reached the flat prairie through which the Miette River now wandered, broken into many little channels. Even here they found the going very soft and difficult, now impeded by down timber, or again by a rushing torrent where the ford had to be selected with the utmost care. John and Jesse were tired by the end of their second day of this hard travel; and even Rob, muddy to his knees from wading bogs, was glad when at last their leader halted.

"It's all right, boys," said Uncle d.i.c.k. "I don't want to drive you too hard, but I know perfectly well that every day counts with us now.

We've got bad country on ahead as well as bad country behind us, and we must make it through before the spring floods are on. I suppose you've noticed that all the creeks are worse late in the afternoon?

But I've waited at some of these little streams four and five days without being able to ford at all."

They pushed on up through the open prairie-like country which now lay on about them, continually a panorama of mountains unfolding before them, all strange to them. An angle of the trail seemed to shut off all the valley of the Miette from them, so that they seemed in a different world.

"When will we get to the summit, Uncle d.i.c.k?" inquired Rob, after a time, as they halted at the edge of a wide green valley in whose deep gra.s.s for a time no running stream could be seen.

Uncle d.i.c.k smiled. "We're at the summit now, you might say," said he.

"I knew you couldn't tell when we got there."

"This isn't like the Peace River Pa.s.s at all," said Rob; "it doesn't look like a pa.s.s at all, but more like a flat prairie country."

"Precisely--they call that the Dominion Prairie over yonder. But a mountain pa.s.s is rarely what it is supposed to be. Take the Tennessee Pa.s.s, for instance, down in Colorado; you'll see a wide meadow with a dull creek running through it, something like this. The deep gorges and canons are lower down in the mountains, not on top of them. What you see before you is the old Yellowhead Pa.s.s, and we are now almost at the highest point. The grade rises very little from here to the actual summit."

"Well," said John, "I never thought I'd be in a place like this in all my life. It seems a long way off from everywhere."

"It comes near being the wilderness," said his uncle. "Far north of us is the Peace River Pa.s.s, which you made last year. Just the other way is the Athabasca Pa.s.s. Yonder, south of us, is Mount Geikie, between us and the Athabasca. Over west is Mount Fitzwilliam, and across the lake from him is Yellowhead Mountain; that's the one the early traders through here used to call Mount Bingley. And on every side of us there is all kinds of country where, so far as any one knows, no white man's foot has ever trod. Northwest of the pa.s.s and north of here we don't pretend to map the country, and not one mountain in ten has got its name yet. In short, we are in the wilderness here about as much as you're apt to be in many a long day's journey, no matter where you go."

"And yet right out in there it looks like a farm meadow," said Jesse, pointing to the green flats broken with willows and poplar mottes here and there.

"Beaver out there one time, no doubt," said Uncle d.i.c.k, "and maybe even now; but sometime there will be farms in here. At least, this is the top of the mountains and the lowest pa.s.s in all the Rockies. I'll show you the actual summit when we come to it."

They sat for some time looking about them and allowing their horses to graze. All at once Rob broke the silence. "I'm going to be an engineer sometime," said he. "I believe I'd like to do locating work in wild countries like this."

"As for me," said John, "I believe I'd rather stay in the office and make maps and things."

"And I'm going to be a merchant," said Jesse, "and I'll ship things over your road when you get it built."

"That reminds me," said Uncle d.i.c.k, "you young men have not brought up your own map of the country we have crossed over. You are only using the maps that you could make or buy ready-made. Now, John, suppose you be official map-maker for the party and take your notes from day to day."

"Pshaw! What do I know about making a map?" said John.

"Well, you can do as well as an Indian; and let me tell you an Indian can make a pretty good map with nothing but a stick and a smooth place in the sand."

"How could I tell how far it was from one place to another?" inquired the newly elected map-maker.

"We can't tell so very well, as we are now traveling. Of course, when engineers go out in a party they measure every mile by a chain, and know just how far they have come. The old trappers used to allow three or four miles an hour for their pack-horses in a country like this.

Sometimes an engineer carries what is called a pedometer in his pocket, which tells him how far he has walked. Maybe you did not know that instrument was invented by Thomas Jefferson over a hundred years ago? Suppose you allow twenty or twenty-five miles a day, at most, for our travel. Now you have your compa.s.s, and, though you don't try to put in every little bend in the trail or in the valley, you take the courses of all the long valleys and the general directions from one peak to another. Thus between your compa.s.s and your pack-train you will have to do the best you can with your map, because we have no scientific instruments to help us."

"All right," said John. "I'll make my notes the best I can, and every night we'll try to bring up the map. It'll be fine to have when we get back home to show our folks, won't it?"

"Well, I'll help you all I can," said Uncle d.i.c.k. "You remember the two big streams that run into the Miette back of us, where we made the fourth ford of the Miette? Well, that is just about eight miles from the Athabasca River. If we had not lost so much time with the horses bogging down we ought to have been in here yesterday instead of to-day, for now we are at Deer Creek, and that is only fourteen miles in a straight line from the Athabasca. This prairie between the forks of Deer Creek is called Dominion Prairie. The valley is soft and marshy for a couple of miles beyond the Dominion Prairie, as you can see from the way the trail runs over the edges of the ridges. The grade is a little bit steeper for three miles west of Dominion Prairie. The width of the marsh or meadow in here is about half a mile to a mile. At the last crossing of the Miette, three miles west of Dominion Prairie, the Miette is just a little stream with many branches. Now note very well the last one of these branches. That points out the true summit of Yellowhead Pa.s.s. Perhaps this very summer, if there is high water, some of the drainage water will run west from this marsh into the Fraser River, while some of it will run east into the Miette and the Athabasca."

"Then how far have we come up the Miette all together, Uncle d.i.c.k?"

inquired John, his pencil in his mouth.

"Only about seventeen miles, but they have been rather hard ones. We have climbed about four hundred feet all together in total elevation, but a great deal more than that if we count all the little ridges we have crossed over. Now do you think you can get your directions from your compa.s.s and make your map from these figures?"

"I'll try my best," said John.

"Well, come ahead," said Uncle d.i.c.k. "It isn't far from here to the place we call the top of the hill."

Surely enough, after a little more scrambling progress they pulled up beside a little square stump, or post, to which Uncle d.i.c.k pointed silently.

"I helped set that," said he, "and, believe me, it meant some work.

Well, do you see the figures on it? Three, seven, two, o--that's how high we are above the level of the sea, and this is the lowest of all the mountain pa.s.ses. It is a little over three thousand five hundred miles between the Atlantic and the Pacific on this railway line, and this is the highest point on the whole line. Believe me, my young friends, you are at rather an interesting place right here--so interesting that if you don't mind we'll forget the short day's travel for the last few days and make our day's camp right here."

Nothing loath, the entire party a.s.sisted in hunting out a suitable camping-spot not far from the actual summit where gra.s.s and water were to be found and a fairly good place for the tents.

John was much excited with his first attempt at map-making; and all the boys, impressed by the interesting nature of the place in which they were encamped, plied the leader of the party with many questions.

"I was thinking," said Rob, "that the Yellowhead Pa.s.s was one of the earliest ones found, but 1826 is not so very early, is it?"

"Not so very," said Uncle d.i.c.k. "I told you how this pa.s.s came to be discovered. Well, as a matter of fact, none of these routes across the mountains were so useful after the big fur companies had established posts on the Pacific coast. This pa.s.s was used more than the Peace River Pa.s.s. The traders used to bring a good deal of buckskin through here, and sometimes this was called the Leather Pa.s.s.

"Now you boys are going down the Columbia River on the latter part of your journey. You heard Swift say he came up the Columbia. Well, that was part of the old highway between the two oceans. In 1814 a canoe brigade started up the Columbia from the Pacific coast. Gabriel Franchere was along, and he made a journal about the trip. So we know that as early as May 16 in 1814 they had got to the Athabasca River.

He mentions the Roche Miette, which we dodged by fording the river, and he himself forded in order to escape climbing it. He speaks of the Rocky Mountain House, but that was the same as Jasper House. You must remember, however, he did not cross here, but went down the Athabasca south of that big mountain you see over yonder, Mt. Geikie.

"Sir George Simpson and a party of traders came up the Columbia in 1826, but they also crossed the Athabasca Pa.s.s. They named a little lake in there the Committee's Punch Bowl, and it has that name to this day. They stopped at Henry House, and at Jasper House, lower down at Brule Lake. The first record of which I know of a crossing made here where we are was by George McDougall in 1827. He mentions the Tete Jaune Cache as being 'freshly discovered.' I presume it was found a year before.