“It is for the present time,” said Uncle Dick. “I’ve been looking at that cataract of the Peace. There ought to be a lock or a channel cut through, so that steamboats could run the whole length from Chippewayan to the Rockies! As it is, everything has to portage there.”
“We don’t know whether to call this country old or young,” said Rob. “In some ways it doesn’t seem to have changed very much, and in other ways it seems just like any other place.”
“One of these days you’ll see a railroad down the Mackenzie, young man,” said Uncle Dick, “and before long, of course, you’ll see one across the Rockies from the head of the Saskatchewan, above the big bend of the Columbia.”
“Why couldn’t we get in there some time, Uncle Dick?” asked Jesse, who was feeling pretty brave now that they were well out of the Rocky Mountains and the white water of the rapids.
“Well, I don’t know,” said Uncle Dick, suddenly looking around. “It might be a good idea, after all. But I think you’d find pretty bad water in the Columbia if you tried to do any navigation there. Time enough to talk about that next year. Come on now, and I’ll introduce you to the factor and the people up here at the Post.”
They joined him now, and soon were shaking hands with many persons, official and otherwise, of the white or the red race. They found the life very interesting and curious, according to their own notions. The head clerk and they soon struck up a warm friendship. He told them that he had spent thirty years of his life at that one place, although he received his education as far east as Montreal. Married to an Indian woman, who spoke no English, he had a family of ten bright and clean children, each one of whom, as John soon found to his satisfaction, appreciated the Imperial Toffy which made a part of the stock of the Hudson Bay Company at that post also.
THE PORTAGE, VERMILION CHUTES, PEACE RIVER
All of these new friends of theirs asked them eagerly about their journey across the Rockies, which was a strange region to every one of them, although they had passed their lives in the service of the fur trade in the north. As usual, in short, they made themselves much at home, and asked a thousand questions difficult enough to answer. Here, as they had done at Peace River Landing, they laid in a stock of gaudy moccasins and gloves and rifle covers, all beautifully embroidered by native women in beads or stained porcupine quills, some of which work had come from the half-arctic tribes hundreds of miles north of Vermilion. They saw also some of the furs which had been sent down in the season’s take, and heard stories in abundance of the ways of that wild country in the winter season. Even they undertook to make friends with some of the half-savage sledge-dogs which were kept chained in the yard back of the Post. After this they made a journey out to the farm which the Dominion government maintains in that far-off region, and there saw, as they had been promised by Captain Saunders, wheat and rye taller than any one of them as they stood in the grain, and also vegetables of every sort, all growing or in full maturity.