XXX
FARTHEST NORTH
As they had been told, our travelers found the banks of their river at this far northern latitude much lower than they had been for the first hundred miles below the Landing. Now and again they would pass little scattered settlements of natives, or the cabin of some former trading-station. For the most part, however, the character of the country was that of an untracked wilderness, in spite of the truth, which was that the Hudson Bay Company had known it and traded through it for more than a century past.
By no means the most northerly trading-posts of the great fur-trading company, Fort Vermilion, their present destination, seemed to our young friends almost as though it were at the edge of the world. Their journey progressed almost as though they were in a dream, and it was difficult for them to recall all of its incidents, or to get clearly before their minds the distance back of them to the homes in far-off Alaska, which they had left so long ago. The interest of travelers in new land, however, still was theirs, and they looked forward eagerly also to meeting the originator of this pleasant journey of theirs—Uncle Dick Wilcox, who, as they now learned from the officers of the boat, had been summoned to this remote region on business connected with the investigation of oil-fields on the Athabasca River, and had returned as far as Fort Vermilion on his way out to the settlements.
When finally they came within sight of the ancient post of Fort Vermilion, the boys, as had been the case in such other posts as they previously had seen, could scarcely identify the modest whitewashed buildings of logs or boards as really belonging to a post of the old company of Hudson Bay. The scene which they approached really was a quiet and peaceful one. At the rim of the bank stood the white building of the Company’s post, or store, with a well-shingled red roof. Beyond this were some houses of the employés. In the other direction was the residence of the factor, a person of considerable importance in this neighborhood. Yet farther up-stream, along the bank, stood a church with a little bell; whereas, quite beyond the scattered settlement and in the opposite direction there rose a tall, two-story building with projecting smoke-stack. Rob inquired the nature of this last building, which looked familiar to him.
“That is the grist-mill,” said Captain Saunders to him. “You see, we raise the finest wheat up here you’ll find in the world.”
“I’ve heard of it,” said Rob, “but I couldn’t really believe it, although we had good vegetables away back there at Peace River Landing.”
“It’s the truth,” said Captain Saunders; “yonder is the Company’s wheat-field, a hundred acres of it, and the same sort of wheat that took the first prize at the Centennial, at your own city of Philadelphia, in 1876. I’ll show you old Brother Regnier, the man who raised that wheat, too. He can’t speak any English yet, but he certainly can raise good wheat. And at the experimental farm you shall see nearly every vegetable you ever heard of.”
“I don’t understand it,” said Rob; “we always thought of this country as being arctic—we never speak of it without thinking of dog-trains and snowshoes.”
“The secret is this,” said Captain Saunders. “Our summers are short, but our days are very long. Now, wheat requires sunshine, daylight, to make it grow. All right; we give it more hours of sunshine in a month than you do in a month in Dakota or Iowa. The result is that it grows quicker and stronger and better, as we think. It gets ripe before the nights become too cold. This great abundance of sunlight is the reason, also, that we raise such excellent vegetables—as I’m sure you will have reason to understand, for here we always lay in a supply for our return voyage. I am thinking, however,” added the captain, presently, as the boat, screaming with her whistle, swung alongside of her landing-place, “that you’ll see some one in this crowd here that you ought to know.”