“Now,” said Alex, at last, as he steered in along shore, “I think we’ll stop and take a look around.”
They had been expecting the entrance to the actual gorge of the river now for the last three or four miles, for they had passed into the wide space, six or eight hundred yards in extent, described as lying above the cañon entrance, where the river, falling through a narrow passageway in the rocks, is condensed to a quarter of its average width.
The fatigue of the steady travel of the trip now began to show its effect upon them all, and the boys were quite ready to go into camp. Rob and John undertook to prepare the supper, and soon were busy arranging a little fireplace of stone, while Alex climbed up the bank to do some prospecting farther on.
“How does it look, Alex?” inquired Rob, when he finally returned. Alex waved a hand as a sign of his ignorance. “Hills and woods,” said he. “Not so much spruce, but some pine and poplars, and plenty of ‘bois picard’—what you call ‘devil’s club’ on your side of the Rockies. I didn’t know it grew this far east. I don’t see how Mackenzie’s men got up from below with a thirty-foot birch-bark,” he added, after a time. “They must have come through something on this course, because they could not have taken the water very much below here, that’s sure.”
“Is there any trail at all, Alex?” asked John.
“We’ve landed almost at the trail—just enough to call a trail for a foot man. It isn’t used much to-day, that’s sure. Pretty steep. Sandy farther up.”
“Could we carry the boat through, do you think?” Rob looked anxiously up at the lofty bank which rose above them. Perhaps there was a little trace of stubbornness in Rob’s make-up, and certainly he had no wish to abandon the project at this stage.
“We might edge her up the bank a little at a time,” said Alex, “snubbing her up by the line. I suppose we could pass it from stump to stump, the same as voyageurs had to with their big birch-barks sometimes.”
“We’ll get her up somehow to-morrow,” said Rob, “if you say it’s possible.”
“Then there’ll be some more hills,” smiled Alex; “eight or ten or twelve miles of rough country, I suppose.”