“They look pretty small to me,” demurred Jesse.
“They’re bigger than the skin boats that we had among the Aleuts last year,” ventured John. “Besides, I’ve noticed a good deal depends on the way you handle a boat.”
“Not everybody has boats as good as these,” admitted Jesse.
“Yes,” said John, “it must have cost Uncle Dick a lot of money to get them up here from the railroad. Sir Alexander Mackenzie traveled in a big birch-bark when he was here—ten men in her, and three thousand pounds of cargo besides. She was twenty-five feet long. Uncle Dick told me the Indians have dugouts farther down the river, but not very good ones. I didn’t think they knew anything about birch-bark so far northwest, but he says all their big journeys were made in those big bark canoes in the early days.”
“Well, I’m guessing that our boats will seem pretty good before we get through,” was Rob’s belief, “and they’ll pay for themselves too.”
All the boys had been reading in all the books they could find telling of the journeys of the old fur-traders, Alexander Mackenzie, Simon Fraser, and others, through this country. Rob had a book open in his lap now.
“How far can we go in a day?” asked Jesse, looking as though he would be gladder to get back home again than to get farther and farther away.
“That depends on the state of the water and the speed of the current,” said the older boy. “It’s no trouble to go fifty miles a day straightaway traveling, or farther if we had to. Some days they didn’t make over six or eight miles going up, but coming down—why, they just flew!”
“That wouldn’t take us long to go clear through to where Uncle Dick is.”