rmit" to any one going into that country,
so that each traveler might legally take a gallon of liquor for
"medicinal purposes." Sometimes a white trader or employee would be
allowed to import each year a gallon of liquor on a "permit." The
captain told one instance, more gruesome than amusing, which had just
happened that week. A man at Smith's Landing had ordered his annual
gallon of liquor, but meantime he had died. As he could not use the
liquor, the question arose to whom did it belong. That was decided, so
he said, by a game of cards in the warehouse on the bank. That the
contents of the dead man's liquor-case found use was easy enough to
see.

The tales regarding the mosquitoes at Smith's Landing proved more than
true. Our young travelers found that the best of their mosquito dope
was of little or no avail, so that they wore headnets and long gloves
almost always.

By this time they had learned to manage their sleeping-tents so that
they could keep out the insects at night, and lost but little sleep,
even amid the continual howling of the dogs and the carousing of the
half-drunken population of the place.

Meantime, albeit slowly, the cargoes of the scows and of the steamer
were being portaged by wagon over the sixteen miles of flat timbered
country. This work went on for nearly a week. It was Thursday, June
19th, when Uncle Dick announced to Rob and John and Jesse that now
they would be off for the exciting enterprise of taking their boat
down the rapids of the Slave. Johnny Belcore, as the freight
contractor was named, had finally secured a Cree pilot who knew the
ancient channel, used time out of mind by the Hudson's Bay boats which
risked this dangerous passage. He agreed to take the _Midnight Sun_
across the portage for fifty dollars, and to charge seventy-five cents
for each hundred pounds of freight. During the short season of the
brigade's passage north, at which time most of the amateurs and
independents were crowding northward, Belcore made a very considerable
amount of money. Our party, however, thought his charges entirely
reasonable, and, indeed, would not, for any money, have foregone the
pleasure of running these redoubtable rapids. They learned now that
three other scows were going through also. Belcore had his team on one
of these, and had brought along twenty-seven men to man the boats, to
handle the team, etc.

In the early evening his little flotilla pushed off, with few regrets
at leavin