“Ah, yes,” he continued, smiling slightly, “I know how you feel. Whenever our preconceived and heroic notions are upset we feel a sense of disappointment. But, consider for a moment, the meaning of this matter. Here, far away in the Northland, in a remote district to which so far as known only two white men have ever penetrated, lies a mighty river flowing north into the Arctic Ocean, along the banks of which are such vast deposits of oil that it oozes through the soil and into the river to such an extent that the river in reality is a river of oil and never freezes.”
“A river of oil that never freezes, Dad?” said Jack. “Do you expect us to believe that?”
“And flowing north, too?” said Frank, whose quick mind had seized upon that point of contrariety in Nature.
Mr. Hampton smiled.
“Well, boys, it is hard to believe, I’ll admit,” he said. “Yet that this river does flow north is undoubted. That it never freezes, however, is an exaggeration. The truth is, probably, that at spots so much oil seeps into the water that soft spots are formed.
“Hitherto,” he continued, “there have been only two rivers known that flow north into the Arctic in that region—the MacKenzie and the Coppermine, along the shores of which are vast deposits of copper that some day, undoubtedly, will be opened up to exploitation. However, this other northward-flowing river in the midst of a vast oil field must now be added to the list, if the word of the lone explorer is to believed, of the one man who has been there and lived to return with the tale.”
“But I thought you said this river was known to two white men, Dad?” objected Jack.
“So I did. So I did,” declared his father. “And two there were—Cameron and Farrell. But Cameron died on the trip to the outside, and Farrell alone lived despite incredible hardships, to finally reach Edmonton with the tale. Now he, too, is gone—for he was a member of Thorwaldsson’s ‘Lost Expedition.’
“When he reached Edmonton, a thriving Canadian city, Farrell, an adventurous fellow who at one time had worked in the Southwestern oil fields as an employee of the syndicate of independent operators which once employed me there as superintendent, realized the value of his discovery and kept his mouth closed until he got in touch with Anderson, the big man of the syndicate. Anderson saw at once the importance of the find. But he also saw that Farrell’s marvelous oil field would virtually have to be rediscovered before steps to develop it could be taken. For, in struggling through to the outside, Farrell had suffered the loss of his compass, had been turned about in Winter fogs, had lain delirious for a long period in the igloo of friendly Eskimos within the Arctic Circle and, in general, had suffered so many hardships that his mind was clouded and he had no clear idea of where lay this oil field.
“Anderson, however, placed such faith in Farrell’s report that he decided to outfit an expedition to retrace the footsteps of Farrell and Cameron into the Arctic in the hope of thus once more coming upon the oil field. Inasmuch as they had gone in through Alaska, that was the way which Thorwaldsson’s expedition took.”