“Well, I don’t see why they sent reindeer up into the caribou country,” said Jesse. “Of course I’m only a boy, but I can’t see why they do that.”
Uncle Dick grinned. “We may see a good many things we can’t understand before we get done with the trip. But all the same we’ll have a good time finding out.
“You may sleep ashore to-night, young men,” he said, later, “for perhaps you would rather not lie in your berths on the boat. The captain tells me that Smith’s Landing is famous for its mosquitoes—they are supposed to be worse here than anywhere else on earth.”
“Well, that’s saying a good deal,” said John. “I didn’t know there were so many mosquitoes in all the world. What makes them, anyhow, and what do they have them for, Uncle Dick?”
That gentleman only shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands. “It’s all in the game,” said he. “You must learn not to kick. Look at the half-breeds all around. How hard their life is, and what punishment they have to take all the time. Well, they don’t kick. One great lesson of this trip ought to be to take your medicine and be game and quiet as well.”
The boys did not find the stop at Smith’s Landing of special interest, for there was so much drunkenness among all the population that they became quite disgusted at the sloth and noisiness of it all. They learned through the captain that while liquor is not allowed to be sold generally at the Hudson’s Bay posts, among natives, the government does allow a “permit” to any one going into that country, so that each traveler might legally take a gallon of liquor for “medicinal purposes.” Sometimes a white trader or employee would be allowed to import each year a gallon of liquor on a “permit.” The captain told one instance, more gruesome than amusing, which had just happened that week. A man at Smith’s Landing had ordered his annual gallon of liquor, but meantime he had died. As he could not use the liquor, the question arose to whom did it belong. That was decided, so he said, by a game of cards in the warehouse on the bank. That the contents of the dead man’s liquor-case found use was easy enough to see.
The tales regarding the mosquitoes at Smith’s Landing proved more than true. Our young travelers found that the best of their mosquito dope was of little or no avail, so that they wore headnets and long gloves almost always.
By this time they had learned to manage their sleeping-tents so that they could keep out the insects at night, and lost but little sleep, even amid the continual howling of the dogs and the carousing of the half-drunken population of the place.
Meantime, albeit slowly, the cargoes of the scows and of the steamer were being portaged by wagon over the sixteen miles of flat timbered country. This work went on for nearly a week. It was Thursday, June 19th, when Uncle Dick announced to Rob and John and Jesse that now they would be off for the exciting enterprise of taking their boat down the rapids of the Slave. Johnny Belcore, as the freight contractor was named, had finally secured a Cree pilot who knew the ancient channel, used time out of mind by the Hudson’s Bay boats which risked this dangerous passage. He agreed to take the Midnight Sun across the portage for fifty dollars, and to charge seventy-five cents for each hundred pounds of freight. During the short season of the brigade’s passage north, at which time most of the amateurs and independents were crowding northward, Belcore made a very considerable amount of money. Our party, however, thought his charges entirely reasonable, and, indeed, would not, for any money, have foregone the pleasure of running these redoubtable rapids. They learned now that three other scows were going through also. Belcore had his team on one of these, and had brought along twenty-seven men to man the boats, to handle the team, etc.