Young Alaskans in the Far North Part 11

The boat remained at Good Hope all too short a time to suit them, because all our young travelers were anxious to go to the top of a certain hill, from which it was said they could have a view of the Midnight Sun, which had disappeared behind the ridge of the hills back of the fort itself. Indeed, one of the crew ascended this eminence, and claimed that he had made a photograph of the Midnight Sun. Certainly, all of the boys were able to testify that it was still light at four o'clock in the morning, for they had remained up that late, eagerly prowling around through the curious and interesting scenes of the far-northern trading-post.

So wearied were they by their long experience afoot on the previous day that on the morning of July 7th they slept a little later than usual, although their total hours of rest were no more than two or three. Uncle d.i.c.k was before them on the deck this time, and reproached them very much when they appeared.

"Well, young men," said he, "did you feel any heavy jar, or hear a dull, sickening thud, some time about half an hour or an hour ago?"

"You don't mean that we've pa.s.sed the Circle, do you, Uncle d.i.c.k?"

queried John.

"We certainly have. I don't know just where it was. It's seven-thirty o'clock now, and somewhere between here and Fort Good Hope we crossed the Arctic Circle!"

"I can't believe it!" said Rob. "Why, look, the weather is perfectly fine, and there isn't any ice to be seen. On the other hand, there are plenty of mosquitoes. What's more, just back at Fort Good Hope we have seen that they can raise things in their gardens. I would never have believed these things about this northern country if I had not seen them myself."

Through the soft, mild light of the sub-Arctic morning the great steamboat churned on her north-bound way. At ten o'clock they pa.s.sed an Indian village which they were told was called Chicago--no doubt named by some of the Klondikers who were practically cast away here twenty years earlier. John put it down on his map under that name, as indeed it is charted in all the authentic maps of that upper region.

They were told that a good number of Indians come here to make their winter hunt.

An uneventful day, during which the boat logged a great many miles in her steady progress, was pa.s.sed, until at ten o'clock they tied up at the next to the last of the Hudson's Bay posts on the Mackenzie River, known as Arctic Red River, located at sixty-seven degrees and thirty minutes north lat.i.tude.

"Oh, look, look, fellows!" exclaimed John, as they pulled into the landing here. "Now we're beginning to get some real stuff! I feel as though we were pretty near to the end of the world. Look yonder!"

He pointed to where, along the beach at the foot of the bluff, there lay two encampments of natives.

"Look at the difference in the boats!" exclaimed John, running to the side of the boat. "There are whale-boats with sails, something like those we saw out on the Alaska coast. What are they, Uncle d.i.c.k?"

"Those are Eskimos, my young friend," said their leader, "and what you see there are indeed whale-boats. The Huskies come up the river this far to trade with the other Indians, and with the white men at this post. This is about as far as they come. They get their boats in trade from the whale-ships somewhere along the Arctic. As John says, this is really a curious and interesting scene that you see.

"Over yonder, I think, are the Loucheux. I don't think they are as strong and able a cla.s.s of savages as the Huskies. At least, that's what the traders tell me."

"Well, they've got wall tents, anyway," said Jesse, who was fixing his field-gla.s.ses on the encampments. "Where did they get them? From the traders, I suppose. My, but they look ragged and poor! I shouldn't wonder if they were about starved."

By this time the boat was coming to her landing, and the boys hurried ash.o.r.e to see what they could find in this curious and interesting encampment.

There were two trading-posts at Arctic Red River--the Hudson's Bay Company post, and that of an independent trading company, both on top of the high bluff and reached by a stairway which ran part way up the face.

Some of the tribesmen from the encampment now hurried down to meet the boat--tall and stalwart Eskimos in fur-trimmed costumes which the boys examined with the greatest of interest and excitement, feeling as they did that now indeed they were coming into the actual North of which they had read many years before.

"Uncle d.i.c.k is right," said Rob. "These Eskimos are bigger and stronger than any of the Indians we have seen. I don't think the women are so bad-looking, either, although the children look awfully dirty."

"It's like Alaska, isn't it?" said John. "Look at the parkies they wear, even here in the summer-time. That's just like the way Alaska Indians and white men dress in the winter-time."

"Well," said Jesse, "maybe that's the only clothes they've got. I'll warrant you they have on their best, because this is the great annual holiday for them, when the Company boat comes in."

Rob looked at his watch. "Twelve o'clock!" said he. "I can't tell whether the sun is up yet or not, because it is so cloudy. Anyhow, we can say that we are now under the Midnight Sun, can't we?--because here we are right among the Eskimos."

Uncle d.i.c.k joined them after a while, laughing. "Talk about traders!"

said he. "No Jew and no Arab in the world would be safe here among these Huskies! They are the stiffest traders I ever saw in my life.

You can't get them to shade their prices the least bit on earth.

"These boats," he continued, "are crammed full of white-fox skins and all sorts of stuff--beaver, marten, and mink--and some mighty good fur at that. But those people haven't seen any white men's goods for at least a year, and yet they act as if they hadn't an intention in the world of parting with their furs. Look here," he continued, holding out his hand.

The boys bent over curiously to see what he had.

"Stone things," said John. "What are they?"

"What they call 'labrets,'" said his uncle, taking up one of the little articles. "They make them out of stone, don't you see?--with a groove in the middle. If you will look close at some of these Eskimo women, or even men, you will find that they have a hole through their lower lip, and some of them wear this little 'labret.' Here also are some made out of walrus ivory."

"Well, now I know what it was I saw that tall Husky had in his face awhile ago," said John. "Something was sticking through his lower lip, and I know now it was the gla.s.s stopper of a bottle of Worcester sauce."

Uncle d.i.c.k laughed. "Correct!" said he. "I saw the same fellow, and, now that you mention it, I gave him three dollars for that gla.s.s stopper from the bottle! I don't suppose any one will believe the story, but it's true.

"If you get a chance to trade any of these Huskies out of one of their pipes, do it, boys," said he, "especially if you can get one of the old bluestone pipe bowls. Pay as much as five dollars for it--which would be ten 'skins' up here. I don't suppose you could find one for a hundred dollars anywhere in the museums of our country, for they are very rare. I have my eye on one, and I hope before we get out of this northern country to close a trade for it, but the old fellow is mighty stiff."

"You say that five dollars is ten 'skins' up here, Uncle d.i.c.k,"

commented Rob. "At Fort Smith and Fort Simpson a 'skin' was only thirty cents--three to the dollar."

"That custom varies at the different posts," was Uncle d.i.c.k's reply.

"Of course you understand that a 'skin' is not a skin at all, but simply a unit of value. Sometimes a trader will give an Indian a bowlful of bullets representing the total value in 'skins' of the fur which he has brought in. Each one of those bullets will be a 'skin.'

The Indian doesn't know anything about dollars or cents, and indeed very little of value at all. You have to show him everything in an objective way. So when the Indian wants to trade for white men's goods, he asks for his particular bowl of bullets--which, child-like, he has left with the trader himself. The traders are, however, honest.

They never cheat the Indian, in that way at least. So the trader hands down the bowl of bullets. The Indian sees what he wants on the shelves behind the counter, and the trader holds up as many fingers as the value is in 'skins.' The Indian picks out that many bullets from his bowl and hands them to the trader, and the trader hands him his goods.

"You can see, therefore, that the Indian's bowlful of bullets in this country would not buy him as much fur as he would have gotten farther down the river. At the same time, this is farther north, and the freight charges are necessarily high. Perhaps there is just a little in the fact that compet.i.tion of the independents is not as keen here as it is farther to the south!

"But whatever be the price of a 'skin,'" Uncle d.i.c.k went on, somewhat ruefully, "these Huskies take it out of us cheechackos when we come in. We pa.s.sed the last of the Slavies at Fort Good Hope. Now we are among the Loucheux. But these Huskies run over the Loucheux as if they were not there."

There was plenty of time given to the pa.s.sengers at this landing to visit the boats and encampments of the natives, so that our young investigators were able to obtain considerable information about the methods of the country.

They went aboard one whale-boat and discovered that its owner, a stalwart Husky, had brought in a hundred marten and a hundred mink, and half as many white-foxes and lynx. He explained that he was going to buy another whale-boat of the Hudson's Bay Company, and that he had to pay yet seventy marten, besides all this other fur, in order to get his boat, which would be delivered to him next year. The boys figured that he was paying about twenty-five hundred dollars for an ordinary whale-boat, perhaps thirty years old, and, inquiring as to the cost of such a boat along the coast, found that it rarely was more than about three or four hundred dollars new!

"Well," said Rob, "I can begin to see how there's money in this fur business, after all. A sack of flour brings twenty-five dollars here.

A cup of flour sells for one 'skin,' or fifty cents. These people, Huskies and all, know the value of matches, and they jolly well have to pay for them. I've been figuring, and I find out that the traders make about five thousand per cent. profit on the matches they sell in the northern country. Everything else is in proportion."

Uncle d.i.c.k grinned at them as they bent over their books or notes.

"Well," he said, "you remind me of the methods of old Whiteman, a trader out in the western country where I used to live. People used to kick on what he charged for needles and thread, and he always pointed out to them that the freight in that western country was very heavy indeed. I suppose that's the answer of the Hudson's Bay Company to the high cost of living among the Eskimos."

"How much farther north are we going, Uncle d.i.c.k?" asked Rob, suddenly. "I mean, how soon do we leave the steamboat?"

"Quicker than you will like," said he. "This is the next to the last stop that we'll make. On ahead eighty miles is good old Fort McPherson, on the Peel River, and that is as far as we go. From this time on you can make the memorandum on your photographs and your notes in your diary that you are working under the Midnight Sun and north of the Arctic Circle!"

"I didn't think we would ever be here!" said John, drawing a long breath. "My, hasn't it been easy, and hasn't it been quick? I can hardly realize that we have got this far away from home in so little a while."

"Yes," said Rob, "when we were back there loafing around on the portages and in some of the more important stops I began to think we were going to be stranded up here in the winter-time. Well, maybe we'll get through yet, Uncle d.i.c.k. What do you think?"

"Maybe so," replied Uncle d.i.c.k. "And now, if you've got your pictures all fixed up, I think you'd better turn in. You've got to remember that you sleep by the clock up here, and not by the sun."

X

FARTHEST NORTH