Moise nodded. “I’ll onderstan’ that,” said he. “Sometime man get tired.”
“But you see now, Moise, why we wanted to come down here and go over this same ground and not to take the easy portage trail into Lake McLeod.”
“All same to me,” smiled Moise. “I’ll don’ care.”
“Of course, if we wanted to go through the easiest way,” assented Rob, “it would be simpler to go up through McLeod Lake. But you see, that’s something of a way above here. Finlay found that lake after Mackenzie came across, and they had a fort up there when Fraser came through eighteen years later. The Indians used to come to that fort and tell about the salt water somewhere far to the west. They had brass and iron which they had got of white men somewhere on the Pacific—that was more than a hundred years ago. Fraser wanted to get across to the Pacific, but he followed the old Mackenzie trail across here. He started at the Rocky Mountain portage and went up into McLeod Lake, and stopped there for a while. But he didn’t start west and northwest, by way of Stuart Lake. Instead of that, he followed Mackenzie’s journal, just as we’re doing. He came into the little creek which leads into these lakes—where we’ll go down pretty soon. He came right across this lake, not a mile from where we’re sitting. Then he met Indians in here, who told him—just as Moise has told us—that the best and easiest way to get across would have been by way of McLeod Lake—the very place he had come from.”
“Well,” said Jesse, “I agree with Moise. It would be easier to go where we could have wagons or carts or something to take the boats over. Everything looks mighty wild in here.”
“Certainly, Jess,” said John, “that’s why we’re here. I expect that portage trail up there is just like a road.”
“Fur-traders made it first,” smiled Alex, “and then the miners used it. That was the way white men came into the country east of the Rockies, in the far North.”
“How long ago was that?” asked John.
“There were a great many miners all along the Fraser as early as 1857. Ten years later than that, they came up the big bend of the Columbia. Many men were killed on the rapids in those days. But they kept on pushing in, and in that way they learned all these old trails. I expect some Fraser uncle or other of Moise’s has been across here many a time.”
“Seex feet high, an’ strong like a hox,” smiled Moise, nodding his head. “Heem good man, my onkle, yes, heem.”