Young Alaskans in the Far North

by Emerson Hough

In the early evening his little flotilla pushed off, with few regrets at leaving Smith’s Landing behind. On the left lay the dangerous and treacherous falls of the Priest Rapids, so called by reason of the loss there of a Catholic priest and a companion years ago. The boats, however, were rowed in slack water across above these big falls, then took two fast chutes upon the farther side. After this smart water the commodore of the little fleet pulled in to portage the Cassette Falls, that tremendous cascade of the Slave River which so terrifies the ordinary observer when first he sees its enormous display of power. There are perhaps few more terrifying spectacles of wild water, even including the Whirlpool Rapids at Niagara.

That night our party lay in bivouac, and were up early in the work of the portage. All the goods had to be unloaded and all the scows were hauled up the steep bank by means of a block and tackle. Once up the bank, the team, which had been brought along in one of the scows and forced to climb up the bank, were hitched to a long rope, and with the aid also of men tugging at the ropes they rapidly hauled the boat over the high and rocky ground which made the portage—a distance of some four hundred yards in all.

It was about four o’clock that afternoon when the boats had finished this first portage and had been again loaded below the sharp drop at the farther end.

The boys continually hung about the men in this curious and interesting work, and plied Belcore with many questions. He explained to them that the Cassette Falls are on one of four or five different channels into which the Slave River breaks hereabouts. Many of these chutes could not be run at all, nor could a boat be lined down through them by any possibility. In spite of all this, as he explained, one or two boats of ignorant prospectors actually had found their way down the rapids of the Slave, preserved by Providence, as Belcore piously affirmed.

After the Cassette Portage there came a curve in the rapid run of water where a canoe hardly could have lived, as the boys thought, then five miles of very slow water where all the men had to row, the Slave River being nothing if not freakish in its methods hereabouts. At times far to the left, through the many tree-covered islands, the boys could see the fast channel of the Slave River proper, a tremendous flood pouring steadily northward to the Arctic Sea.

Belcore said the drop of the Slave was two hundred feet in the entire length of the portage, but the government estimate is a hundred and sixty-five feet.

“Well,” said John, doing a little figuring on the margin of his map, “we’re going downhill pretty fast, it seems to me, as we go north. The Grand Rapids drop only fifty-five feet. From Athabasca Landing to McMurray there is a drop of eight hundred and sixty feet in the two hundred and fifty-two miles. That’s going some. And here we drop a hundred and sixty-five feet in about sixteen miles. It’s no wonder the water gets rough sometimes.”

Belcore pointed out to them, far to the left, late that evening, the Middle Rapids, whose heavy roar they could hear coming to them across the distance. They could not really see these rapids, as they bore off to the right to make the second portage. The pilot found his way without any chart through a maze of slack water and blind channels hidden among the islands. Belcore told them that no one knew all of the Slave River at this point, but that the Indians remembered the way they had been following, which their fathers and their fathers’ fathers had handed down to them in the traditions of the tribes.

At this second portage, or traverse, the goods were carried across by the wagon and team, the boats meantime making two portages in a quarter of a mile. At the last run of the boats the men stopped calmly no more than fifty yards above a chute which would have wrecked any craft undertaking to make the run through.

For yet another day the block-and-tackle work on the scows, the horse-and-wagon labor with the goods, continued. The boats were sometimes hauled over wide ridges of rough rocks, till the wonder was that they held together at all. There was one ancient craft, a York boat of earlier times, which the Company was taking through, and this, being stiffly built with a keel, was badly strained and rendered very leaky by the time it got through the rude traverse of the rocky portage. The men took tallow and oakum and roughly calked the seams of this boat, so that it was possible to get it across the river to Fort Smith eventually. A wagon-tire came off, which left the wagon helpless. The half-breeds did not complain, but carried its load on their own backs.