“Yes,” said Rob, “they’ve pretty much followed the trail of the old fur-traders.”
“Didn’t they come by water a good way up here?” asked John.
Rob answered by pulling out of his pocket a long piece of heavy paper, a map which they three had worked over many days, laying out for themselves in advance the best they knew how the route which they were to follow and the distances between the main points of interest. “Now, look here,” said he, “and you’ll see that for once we are at a place where the old voyageurs had to leave their boats and take to the land. We’re going to cross the Rockies at the head of the Athabasca River, but you see it runs away northeast from its source at first, at least one hundred miles north of Edmonton. That used to be called Fort Augustus in the old days, and the voyageurs went all the way up there from Montreal by canoe. Sometimes they followed the Saskatchewan from there. That brought them into the Rockies away south of here. They went over the Kootenai Plains there, and over the Howse Pass, which you know is between here and Banff.”
“I know,” said Jesse, eagerly. “Uncle Dick told us they used to go down the Blaeberry Creek to the Columbia River.”
“Exactly; and there was a way they could go near the Wood River to the Columbia River. For instance, here on the map is a place near the head of the Big Bend of the Columbia. That’s the old Boat Encampment, of which the old histories tell so much.”
“You don’t suppose we’ll ever get there?” said John, doubtfully. “It looks a long ways off from here.”
“Of course we will,” said Rob, firmly. “When we’ve pushed up to the head of the Athabasca River and gone over the Yellowhead Pass it will all be downhill. We’ll go fast when we hit the rivers running south. And we’ll come in but a little way from the Boat Encampment, which was a rendezvous for all the old traders who crossed by the Saskatchewan trail below us. But, you see, we’ll be taking a new way; and I agree with Jess that it will be about the best trip we ever had.”
“Those old fur-traders were great fellows to travel, weren’t they?” said Jesse, looking curiously at the deep-worn, ancient trail which ran close by their camp.