“But it’s so far, Richard—you’re talking now about the Peace River and the Athabasca River and the Arctic Ocean—why, it seems as though the boys were going clear off the earth, and we certainly would never see them again.”
“Nonsense!” replied Uncle Dick. “The earth isn’t so big as it used to be in Sir Alexander’s time. Let them alone and they’ll come through, and be all the more men for it. There’s no particular hardship about it. I’ll go down with them in the boat to Vancouver and east with them by rail to where they take the stage up the Ashcroft trail—a wagon-road as plain as this street here. They can jog along that way as far as Quesnelles as easy as they could on a street-car in Seattle. Their men’ll get them from there by boat up the Fraser to the headwaters of the Parsnip without much more delay or much more danger, but a lot of hard work. After that they just get in their boats and float.”
“Oh, it sounds easy, Richard,” protested his sister, “but I know all about your simple things!”
“Well, it isn’t every boy I’d offer this good chance,” said Uncle Dick, turning away. “In my belief, they’ll come back knowing more than when they started.”
“But they’re only boys, not grown men like those old fur-traders that used to travel in that country. It was hard enough even for them, if I remember my reading correctly.”
“I just told you, my dear sister, that these boys will go with less risk and less danger than ever Sir Alexander met when he first went over the Rockies. Listen. I’ve got the two best men in the Northwest, as I told you. Alex Mackenzie is one of the best-known men in the North. General Wolseley took him for chief of his band of voyageurs, who got the boats up the Nile in Kitchener’s Khartoum campaign. He’s steadier than a clock, and the boys are safer with him than anywhere else without him. My other man, Moise Duprat, is a good cook, a good woodsman, and a good canoeman. They’ll have all the camp outfit they need, they’ll have the finest time in the world in the mountains, and they’ll come through flying—that’s all about it!”
“But won’t there be any bad rapids in the mountains on that river?”
“Surely, surely! That’s what the men are for, and the boats. When the water is too bad they get out and walk around it, same as you walk around a mud puddle in the street. When their men think the way is safe it’s bound to be safe. Besides, you forget that though all this country is more or less new, there are Hudson Bay posts scattered all through it. When they get east of the Rockies, below Hudson’s Hope and Fort St. John, they come on Dunvegan, which now is just a country town, almost. They’ll meet wagon-trains of farmers going into all that country to settle. Why, I’m telling you, the only worry I have is that the boys will find it too solemn and quiet to have a good time!”
“Yes, I know about solemn and quiet things that you propose, Richard!” said his sister. “But at least”—she sighed—“since their fathers want them to live in this northern country for a time, I want my boy to grow up fit for this life. Things here aren’t quite the same as they are in the States. Well—I’ll ask Rob’s mother, and John’s.”
Uncle Dick grinned. He knew his young friends would so beset their parents that eventually they would get consent for the trip he had described as so simple and easy.