There was plenty of time given to the passengers at this landing to visit the boats and encampments of the natives, so that our young investigators were able to obtain considerable information about the methods of the country.
They went aboard one whale-boat and discovered that its owner, a stalwart Husky, had brought in a hundred marten and a hundred mink, and half as many white-foxes and lynx. He explained that he was going to buy another whale-boat of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and that he had to pay yet seventy marten, besides all this other fur, in order to get his boat, which would be delivered to him next year. The boys figured that he was paying about twenty-five hundred dollars for an ordinary whale-boat, perhaps thirty years old, and, inquiring as to the cost of such a boat along the coast, found that it rarely was more than about three or four hundred dollars new!
“Well,” said Rob, “I can begin to see how there’s money in this fur business, after all. A sack of flour brings twenty-five dollars here. A cup of flour sells for one ‘skin,’ or fifty cents. These people, Huskies and all, know the value of matches, and they jolly well have to pay for them. I’ve been figuring, and I find out that the traders make about five thousand per cent. profit on the matches they sell in the northern country. Everything else is in proportion.”
Uncle Dick grinned at them as they bent over their books or notes. “Well,” he said, “you remind me of the methods of old Whiteman, a trader out in the western country where I used to live. People used to kick on what he charged for needles and thread, and he always pointed out to them that the freight in that western country was very heavy indeed. I suppose that’s the answer of the Hudson’s Bay Company to the high cost of living among the Eskimos.”
“How much farther north are we going, Uncle Dick?” asked Rob, suddenly. “I mean, how soon do we leave the steamboat?”
“Quicker than you will like,” said he. “This is the next to the last stop that we’ll make. On ahead eighty miles is good old Fort McPherson, on the Peel River, and that is as far as we go. From this time on you can make the memorandum on your photographs and your notes in your diary that you are working under the Midnight Sun and north of the Arctic Circle!”
“I didn’t think we would ever be here!” said John, drawing a long breath. “My, hasn’t it been easy, and hasn’t it been quick? I can hardly realize that we have got this far away from home in so little a while.”
“Yes,” said Rob, “when we were back there loafing around on the portages and in some of the more important stops I began to think we were going to be stranded up here in the winter-time. Well, maybe we’ll get through yet, Uncle Dick. What do you think?”
“Maybe so,” replied Uncle Dick. “And now, if you’ve got your pictures all fixed up, I think you’d better turn in. You’ve got to remember that you sleep by the clock up here, and not by the sun.”