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

It was a wild sight enough which they saw from their lofty perch. The great Columbia River, lately so broad and lakelike, was compressed into a narrow strip of raging white water, driven down with such force that they could see very plainly the upflung rib of the river, forced above the level of the edges by the friction on the perpendicular rock walls. From where they peered over the brink they could see vast white surges, and could even distinguish the strange, irregular swells, or boils, which without warning or regularity come up at times from the depths of this erratic river. They quite agreed that it would have been impossible for a boat to go through Revelstoke Cañon alive at the stage of the water as they saw it. Rob tried to make a photograph, which he said he was going to take home to show to his mother.

“You’d better not,” said John. “You’ll get the folks to thinking that this sort of thing isn’t safe!”

The boys stood back from the rim of the cañon after a while and waited for the others to come up with them.

“We think this one looks about as bad as anything we’ve seen, Uncle Dick,” said Rob. “A man might get through once in a while, and they say Sam Boyd and Tom Horn did make it more than once before it got them. It doesn’t look possible to me to run it.”

“The river is a lot worse than the Peace,” said John. “Of course, there’s the Rocky Mountain Cañon, which nobody can get through either way, and there isn’t any portage as bad as that on the whole Columbia Big Bend. But for number of bad rapids this river is a lot worse than the Peace.”

“Yes,” assented the others, “in some ways this is a wilder and more risky trip than the one we had last year. But we’ve had a pretty good time of it just the same, haven’t we?”

“We certainly have,” said Rob; and John and Jesse answered in the same way. “I only wish it wasn’t all over so soon,” added Jesse, disconsolately.

The boys, hardy and lighter of foot even than their companions, raced on ahead over the few remaining miles into Revelstoke town, leaving the bank of the river, which here swung off broad and mild enough once it had emerged from its cañon walls. Before them lay the town of Revelstoke, with its many buildings, its railway trains, and its signs of life and activity.

In town they all found a great budget of mail awaiting them, and concluded to spend the night at Revelstoke in order to do certain necessary writing and telegraphing. They had several letters from their people in Alaska, but none announcing any word from themselves after they had arrived at Edmonton, so that some of the letters bore rather an anxious note.

“What would it cost to send a telegram from here to Seattle, and a cablegram up the coast, and then by wireless up to the fort near Valdez?” inquired Rob. “That ought to get through to-morrow, and just two or three words to let them know we were out safe might make them all feel pretty comfortable. It’s a good thing they don’t know just what we’ve been through the last few days.”

“Well, you go down to the station and see if it can be done,” said Uncle Dick, “and I’ll foot the bill. Get your berths for the next Transcontinental west to Vancouver, and reserve accommodations for Moise and me going east. Leo and George, I’m thinking, will want to wait here for a while; with so much money as he has as grizzly premiums and wages, Leo is not going to leave until he has seen something of the attractions of this city. In fact, I shouldn’t wonder if he got broke here and walked back up to O’Brien’s and took his boat there up the Columbia. They always get back home some way, the beggars, and I’ll warrant you that when we all go to the Tête Jaune Cache by rail, a couple of years from now, we’ll see Leo and George waiting for us at the train as happy as larks!”

“I wonder if my pony’ll be there too?” said John.

“He will, unless something very unusual should happen to him. You’ll find the word of an Indian good; and, although Leo does not talk much, I would depend on him absolutely in any promise that he made. We will have to agree that he has been a good man in everything he agreed to do, a good hunter and a good boatman.”

“We may go in there and have a hunt with him some time after the road comes through,” said Rob. “In fact, all this northern country will seem closer together when the road gets through to Prince Rupert. Why, that’s a lot closer to Valdez than Vancouver is, and we could just step right off the cars there and get off at Leo’s, or even go up to Yellowhead Lake and get another goat.”

“Or find the place where John fell off the raft,” added Jesse, laughing.

“Or go on across to where Uncle Dick may be working, one side or other of the summit. I wish he didn’t have to go back to Edmonton, and could come on home with us now. But we can tell them all about it when we get home.”

“Where’d you like to go the next time, if you had a chance, Rob?” asked John.

“There are a lot of places I’d like to see,” said Rob. “For one thing, I’ve always wanted to go down the Mackenzie and then over the Rat portage to the Yukon, then out to Skagway—that’d be something of a trip. Then I’ve always had a hankering to go up the Saskatchewan and come up over the Howse Pass. And some day we may see the Athabasca Pass and the trail above the Boat Encampment. The railroads have spoiled a lot of the passes south of there, but when you come to read books on exploration you’ll find a lot of things happened, even in the United States, in places where the railroads haven’t gone yet. We’ll have to see some of those countries sometime.”

“How is your map coming on, John?” inquired Uncle Dick, a little later, when once more they had met in their room at the hotel.

“I’ve got this one almost done,” said John.