IV
THE GRAND RAPIDS
It was much as Rob had predicted in the last entry of his diary previously quoted. Uncle Dick hurried them through their breakfast.
“We’ll see some fun to-day, boys,” said he.
“How do you mean?” asked Jesse. “Are they going to try to run the boats through?”
“They’ll have to run the scows through light, so François tells me. There isn’t water enough to take them through loaded, so practically each one will have to unship its cargo here.
“You see that wooden tramway running down the island?” He pointed toward a crooked track laid roughly on cross-ties, the rails of wood. “That is perhaps the least expensive railroad in the world, and the one which makes the most money on its capital. I don’t think it cost the Company over eight hundred dollars. It couldn’t be crookeder or worse. And yet it pays for itself each year several times over, just by the outside trade which it does!
“They built this railroad after the Klondike rush came through here. Previous to that all the goods had to be taken over the ‘short portage’—you see that place over on the steep hillside at the right side of the river—a mile and a half of it, and every pound of the Company and Klondike baggage that went north had to be carried on men’s backs along that slippery footing. It was necessary to run these rapids and to build this railroad. You will see how both ideas will work to-day.”
Some of the boats had been loaded so heavily that part of the cargo had to be left above the shallow water—one more handling of the freightage necessitated in the north-bound journey, but each boat, carrying as much as could be floated, now came poling down through the rocks to the head of the island.