“That’s the idea,” nodded his older adviser. “But really these insect pests are the great drawback of this entire northern country. Perhaps they will keep the settlers out as much as anything else. Fur-traders and trappers and travelers like ourselves—they can’t stop for them, of course. We’ll take our chances like Sir Alexander Mackenzie—eh, boys?”
“I’m not afraid,” said Jesse.
“Nor I,” added John.
And indeed they finished their evening meal, which they cooked for themselves, in fairly comfortable surroundings; and in their mosquito-proof tent they passed an untroubled night, each in the morning declaring that he had slept in perfect comfort.
“We’ll leave the tents standing for a while,” said Uncle Dick, “until we know just when we are going to embark. The brigade may pull out any day now. We’ll have warning enough so that we can easily get ready. But come on now and we’ll go over to the boat-yard,” he added. “It’s time we began to see about our own boat and to get our supplies ready for shipping.”
They followed him through the straggling town down to the edge of the water-front, where the Athabasca, now somewhat turbulent in the high waters of the spring, rolled rapidly by.
Here there was a rude sort of lumber-yard, to all appearance, with the addition of a sort of rough shipyard. Chips and shavings and fragments of boards lay all about. Here and there on trestles stood the gaunt frames of what appeared to be rough flatboats, long, wide, and shallow, constructed with no great art or care. There was no keel to any one of these boats, and the ribs were flimsily put together.
“Well, I don’t think much of these boats,” grumbled John, as he passed among them slowly.
“Don’t be too rough with them,” said Uncle Dick, laughingly. “Like everything else up here, they may not be the best in the world, but they do for their purpose. These scows are never intended to come back, you must remember; all they have to do is to stand the trip down, for a month or two. All the frame houses of the Far North are made out of these scows; they break them up at the ends of the trips. Our boat may be part of a church before it gets through.
“Come now, and I’ll introduce you to old Adam McAdam, the builder and pump-maker.” He nodded toward an old man who was passing slowly here and there among the rude craft. “This old chap is no doubt over seventy-five years old, and he must have built hundreds of these boats in his time. He makes the pumps, too, and a pump has to go with every scow to keep it from sinking at first, before the seams get swelled up.”