The Young Alaskans in the Rockies, Emerson Hough [nonfiction book recommendations txt] 📗

Peace River Pass. The traders used to bring a good deal of buckskin through here, and sometimes this was called the Leather Pass.

“Now you boys are going down the Columbia River on the latter part of your journey. You heard Swift say he came up the Columbia. Well, that was part of the old highway between the two oceans. In 1814 a canoe brigade started up the Columbia from the Pacific coast. Gabriel Franchere was along, and he made a journal about the trip. So we know that as early as May 16 in 1814 they had got to the Athabasca River. He mentions the Roche Miette, which we dodged by fording the river, and he himself forded in order to escape climbing it. He speaks of the Rocky Mountain House, but that was the same as Jasper House. You must remember, however, he did not cross here, but went down the Athabasca south of that big mountain you see over yonder, Mt. Geikie.

“Sir George Simpson and a party of traders came up the Columbia in 1826, but they also crossed the Athabasca Pass. They named a little lake in there the Committee’s Punch Bowl, and it has that name to this day. They stopped at Henry House, and at Jasper House, lower down at Brule Lake. The first record of which I know of a crossing made here where we are was by George McDougall in 1827. He mentions the Tête Jaune Cache as being ‘freshly discovered.’ I presume it was found a year before.

“A great many men crossed the Athabasca Pass, but not so many took the Yellowhead route. Even as late as 1839 the traders preferred the Athabasca Pass to this one. Father de Smet took that route in 1846. I shouldn’t wonder if the mountain called Pyramid Mountain was the one originally called De Smet Mountain.

“There was an artist by the name of Paul Kane that crossed west by the Athabasca Pass in 1846. In those days the Yellowhead Pass was little used. It came into most prominence after the Cariboo Diggings discoveries of gold. Parties came out going east as early as 1860 from the gold-mines. About that time Sir James Hector was examining all this country, and he named a lot of it, too. More than a hundred and fifty miners went west through this pass in ’62 bound for the Cariboo Diggings. They didn’t stop to name anything, you may be sure, for they were in a hurry to get to the gold; but in 1863 Viscount Milton and Dr. Cheadle went across here and wrote a book about it which is very useful even yet. They named a lot of mountains. I don’t know who named that wonderful peak Mount Robson, but it was named after Premier Robson of British Columbia in 1865.

“Nobody knows much about this country, for the early travelers did not make many maps or journals. But about 1872 they began to explore this country with a view to railway explorations, and from that time on it has been better known and more visited, although really very few persons have ever been right where we are sitting now.”

“Well,” said Rob, thoughtfully, after a time, “after all, the best way to learn about a country is to go and see it yourself. You can read all about it in books, but still it looks different when you come to see it yourself.”

“Wait till I get my map done,” said John, “and many a time after this we’ll talk it all over, and we can tell on the map right where we were all the time.”

“Well, you’re at the summit now at this camp,” said Uncle Dick. “Yonder to the east is Miette water. Over yonder is the Fraser. It’s downhill from here west, and sometimes downhill rather faster than you’ll like. We’ve come a couple of hundred miles on our journey to the summit here, and in a little more than fifty more we’ll be at the Tête Jaune Cache. That’s on the Fraser—and a wicked old river she is, too.”

“How’s the trail between here and there, Uncle Dick?” asked Jesse, somewhat anxiously.

“Bad enough, you may depend.”

“And don’t we get any more fishing?”

Uncle Dick smiled. “Well, I’ll tell you,” said he; “we’ll probably not have a great many chances for trout as good as we’ll have to-morrow. It’s only two or three miles from here to Yellowhead Lake, and I think we’ll find that almost as good a fishing-place as Rainbow Lake was the other day.”

XII THE WILDERNESS

“

It’s cold up here, just the same,” said Jesse, when he rolled out of his blanket early on the following morning, “and the woods and mountains make it dark, too, on ahead there. Somehow the trees don’t look just the same to me, Uncle Dick.”

“They’re not the same,” said Uncle Dick, “and I am glad you are so observing. From here on the trees’ll get bigger and bigger. They always are, on the Pacific side of the Rocky Mountains. The east side is far more dry and barren. When you get down into the Columbia valley or the Fraser country you’ll see Douglas firs bigger than you ever thought a tree could grow.”

“Yes, and devil’s-club, too,” said Rob. “I stepped on one just a little while ago, and it flew up and hit me on the knee.”

Uncle Dick laughed. “You’ll see devil’s-club aplenty before you get done with this trip,” said he. “In fact, I will say for all this upper country, it doesn’t seem to have been laid out for comfort in traveling. The lower Rockies, in our country, say in Wyoming and Colorado, are the best outdoor countries in the world. It’s a little wet and soft up here sometimes, although, fortunately, we’ve had rather good weather.

“From now on,” he continued, “you’ll see a change in the vegetation. You can still see the fireweed—it seems a universal plant all the way from the Saskatchewan to the Peace River and west even to this prairie here. That and the Indian paint—that red flower which you all remember—is common over all the north country. Then there is a sort of black birch which grows far up to the north, and we have had our friends the willows and the poplars quite a while. Now we’ll go downhill into the land of big trees and devil’s-club.”

“So that’s the last of the Yellowhead Pass for this trip,” said Rob, turning back, as within the hour after they had arisen they were in saddle once more for the west-bound trail.

“Yes,” said Uncle Dick, “one of the most mysterious of all the passes. I often wonder myself just what time it was that old Jasper Hawse first came through here.”

“Was it really named after him, and who was he?” inquired John.

“Some say he was an Iroquois Indian who had red hair—in which case he must have been part white, I should say. Others say he was a Swede. Yet others say that ‘Tête Jaune,’ or ‘Yellowhead,’ was an old Indian chief who had gray hair. Now, I’ve seen a few white-haired Indians—for instance, old White Calf, down in the Blackfoot reservation—and their hair seems rather yellow more than pure white when they are very old. At any rate, whoever the original Tête Jaune was, we are bound now for his old bivouac on the Fraser, fifty miles below, the Tête Jaune Cache.

“Every man who wants to do mountain exploring has heard of the Tête Jaune Cache on the Fraser River. It has been one of the most inaccessible places in the Rockies. But now it will be easy to get there in a year or so, and I am sure on this beautiful Yellowhead Lake just ahead of us somebody will put up a hotel one day or other, and they will make trails around in these mountains and kill all these goats and bear.”

“How far is it down to the lake?” inquired Jesse, pushing up his riding-pony alongside the others.

“About half an hour,” replied his uncle. “Not too good a trail, and about a hundred feet drop from the summit down.”

Surely enough, they had gone but a little distance over the winding and difficult blazed route when they came out into an open spot whence they could see Yellowhead Lake lying before them. It was a lovely sheet of water about four miles long, with bold mountains rising on either side.

“Now, young men,” said their leader, as they paused, “we’ll not take the liberties with these mountains that some of the earlier travelers did. We’ll call that big mountain on the south side of the lake Mount Fitzwilliam. On the north side is old Bingley, but I presume we’d just as well call it Yellowhead Mountain now. Some called it Mount Pelee, but we’ll call it Yellowhead, because it seems too bad the pass and mountain should not have the same name from the same man—whoever he was. That’s the guardian of the pass from this side, at any rate. It looks as though it shut up the pass, because, you see, it bends around the foot of the mountain. I’ve climbed that mountain in my time—none too easy a job. In that way you can see the headwaters of the Fraser River, and glaciers twenty miles south of here. From the top of Yellowhead you can see Mount Geikie, although we are past it now.”

“When are we going to do our fishing?” inquired John, in his practical fashion.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” said his uncle; “if you’ll be good and travel steadily, we’ll make camp at the side of this lake and fish this afternoon.”

“Agreed,” said John; “go ahead.”

They found it not so easy to go ahead as might have been supposed, for the trail passed through some very rough and troublesome country, made the worse by burned timber which had blown down. At last, however, they made their way along the northwest shore and neared the narrows at the lower end of the lake. Here they found a low peninsula jutting out into the lake, where there was a little grass and good clean footing as well as the fine shade of some tall pines.

“Here we are,” said the leader of the party; and soon they had off-saddled and the horses were grazing, while the others prepared for the bivouac.

“Now, if we had a boat,” said Rob, “I believe we would get some trout in this lake, and good ones, too.”

“They’re here, all right,” said Uncle Dick, “as I can testify, but boats don’t grow in the Rocky Mountains this high up. You’ll have to try it from the shore.”

“But could we not make a raft? I see some pretty good cedar timber lying along here. And I’ve got some hay-wire in my war-bag—I never travel without it.” Rob was eager.

“And a very good thing it is to have in camp, too. Well, try your raft if you like, but be careful.”

All three of the young Alaskans, more experienced than most boys of their age in outdoor work, now fell at the task of making themselves a raft or float. Soon they had half a dozen cedar logs lying side by side in the shallow water, their limbs trimmed off closely with the axes. Under Rob’s instructions they now lashed two crosspieces on top of the logs, using the wire to bind them fast to each. So in the course of half an hour they had quite a substantial raft ready for use. Securing a couple of long poles to use as push-poles, they set boldly out into the shallow bay that lay before them. They took only one rod along, assigning to John the task of doing the