“I don’t know about a dugout, Moise,” said Rob. “There may be bad water below here.”
“No, not very bad water,” said Moise. “I’ll ron heem on steamboat many tam! But those dugout she’ll been good boat, too. I s’pose she’ll been twenty foot long an’ carry thousand pound all right.”
“Well,” Rob answered, “that will do us as well as a steamboat. I wonder why the old voyageurs never used the dugout instead of the birch-bark—they wouldn’t have had to mend it so often, even if they couldn’t carry it so easily.”
“I’ll tell you, fellows,” said Jesse, who was rather proud of his overland trip by himself, “the fur trade isn’t what it used to be. At those posts you don’t see just furs and traps, and men in blanket-coats, and dog-trains. In the post here they had groceries, and axes, and calico dresses, and hats, just like they have in a country store. I peeked in through the windows.”
Alex smiled at them. “You see,” said he, “you’ve been looking at pictures which were made some time ago perhaps. Or perhaps they were made in the winter-time, and not in the summer. At this season all the fur packets have gone down the trail, and they don’t need dog-trains and blanket-coats. You ought to come up here in the winter-time to get a glimpse of the old scenes. I’ll admit, though, that the fur-posts aren’t what they were when I was a boy. You can get anything you like now, from an umbrella to a stick of toffy.”
“Where?” asked John, suddenly, amid general laughter.
“The toffy? I’m sure we’ll find some at Peace River Landing, along with plows and axes and sewing-machines, and all that sort of thing!”
“But the people pay for them all with their furs?” inquired Rob.
“For the most part, yes. Always in this part of the country the people have lived well. Farther north the marten have longer fur, but not finer than you will find here, so that they bring just as good prices. This has always been a meat country—you’ll remember how many buffalo and elk Mackenzie saw. Now, if the lynx and the marten should disappear, and if we had to go to farming, it still would be the ‘Land of Plenty,’ I’m thinking—that’s what we used to call it. If we should go up to the top of these high banks and explore back south a little bit, on this side of the Smoky, you’d see some of the prettiest prairies that ever lay out of doors, all ready for the plow. I suppose my people some time will have to use the plow too.”