RAMPART HOUSE ON THE PORCUPINE RIVER
Great news greeted us on our arrival here. Some hunters had come in from the mountains to the North bearing a report that the caribou had arrived. They had already shot eleven and could have had many more but that they were short of ammunition. It was pleasant to see how this information cheered up the poor natives. Instead of the sad and hopeless expression which had characterised nearly every one we had heretofore met, all now looked happy in anticipation of what was to come. The words which we had so often heard and which meant “short of meat,” were now changed to “plenty caribou,” the latter spoken in English.
Old John Quatlot spoke more English than I ever thought him capable of, as he made me understand that he was going to leave his canoe here and that he and Jacob would go back to their home over the mountains, where they would be sure to meet the caribou and lay in a winter’s supply of meat.
Right glad was I to leave him in such a cheerful mood. Surely, if there is anything in the law of compensation, such a noble disposition as his deserved some recompense. I have long contended that there is just as great a diversity of character in individuals in savage as in civilised life, and this ignorant Loucheaux Indian possessed qualities that would adorn the life of the best in any society. As I bade him good-bye he took my hand in his and said that I would go away off to my home in the south while he would return to his at “Old Crow”; that by-and-by he would die and I would die, and that then we would make a long journey through the air; that finally we would meet, and the Great Spirit would join our hands again. Such simple childlike faith, coupled with such a warmth of feeling, was almost sublime.
CHAPTER X
From Rampart House to Fort Yukon : In Alaska : With Dan Cadzow’s Party.
Having rested two days at Rampart House I hired a half breed with a row boat and started down stream at noon on August 4 and immediately crossed the 141st meridian and entered Alaska. We will now be under the flag of the United States for several hundred miles. It was a great relief to have a boat in which I could move about freely without any danger of upsetting it. Taking a seat in the stern I steered, and paddled also when I wished, while my man and a boy, whom he engaged, did the rowing.
About 5 P.M., at a distance of some twenty-seven miles, we passed the site of Old Rampart House, now abandoned, and at ten miles farther down we saw a tent on the beach, which proved to belong to a party of United States Geological Surveyors in charge of a Mr. Kindle of Washington, D.C. We camped here for the night and greatly enjoyed the company of our American cousins. We at once felt that, though still in this Arctic wilderness we had left behind us the misery and want as well as the dull monotony of semi-civilised life.
Starting the next morning at nine o’clock we soon left the Upper Ramparts of the Porcupine, those walls of rock which had enclosed the river for the last forty or fifty miles. The current was strong, and, though we camped earlier than usual on account of rain, we must have gone at least forty miles in eight hours’ time.
The next morning, August 6, we left camp at seven o’clock and soon entered the Lower Ramparts, which extended for only five miles but were very beautiful. After this the country becomes level, the banks get lower, and the river widens considerably. The timber, principally of spruce, improves, resembling in size that growing along the Peel at McPherson.