of four on the Grand Rapids who concluded to split up. So they
divided their supplies into two halves exactly, and even sawed their
boat in two, so neither party could complain that the other had not
been fair!

"Well, anyhow," he continued, as the boys laughed at this story--a
true one--"we cannot accuse any of our men here of being ill-tempered.
They are using this haul as they have for maybe a hundred years or so.
This is the Hudson's Bay Company's idea of getting its goods north.
With the use of a few hundred dollars and the labor of a few men they
could improve all these portages through here so that they could save
a week of time and hundreds of dollars in labor charges each season.
Will they do it? They will not. Why? Because they are the Hudson's Bay
Company--The Honorable Company of Adventurers of England trading into
Hudson's Bay."

"That's right. That's the trouble," said John. "I saw that name on a
little bottle which had a little cocktail in it, just about one drink,
the man said who had it. They seem to be rather proud of their name.
It went clean around the bottle."

"I suppose so," said Uncle Dick, "and they have a right to be proud in
many ways, for it covers a wonderful record. You can't call it a
record of enterprise, however, and that's why the independents are
coming in here, and going to steal the land out from under them before
very long. I could take two men and a team, and in two days' time cut
the top off this hill here at the Mountain Portage. It takes our
twenty-four men and a team four hours to get one scow up the hill. To
an American engineer that doesn't look very much like good business.
But inasmuch as it isn't all our funeral, we'll take our medicine and
won't kick--remembering what I've told you about the lessons we ought
to learn from all this.

"But now remember one thing," he went on. "In the old times, before
there was any steamboat on the Mackenzie or on the Slave River, every
bit of the fur had to go out in boats under the tracking-line. They
tell me the old tracking-path ran yonder around the promontory. A
jolly stiff pull, I'll warrant you, they had getting up through here.
But think of it--they did it not only one year, but every year for
more than a hundred years!"

Rob continued his diary more or less impatiently during the time they
lay at the Mountain Portage, but noted that on Monday, June 23d, at
seven-thirty in the evening, the work was all concluded. His notes
r