d Hope is Arctic Red River, eighteen
hundred and nineteen miles; and of course you know that the last post
of the Hudson's Bay Company is Fort McPherson, on the Peel River, near
the mouth of the Mackenzie. That is rated as eighteen hundred and
nineteen miles by the government map-makers, who may or may not be
right; being an engineer myself, I'll say they must be right! In round
numbers we might as well call it two thousand miles.

"Well, that's your distance, young men, and here are the ships which
are to carry you part of the way."

"And when we get to Fort McPherson we're not half-way through, are we,
sir?" asked Rob.

"No, we're not, and if we were starting a hundred and twenty-eight
years earlier than we are, with Sir Alexander Mackenzie, we would have
to hustle to get back before the snows caught us. As it is, we'll hope
some time in July to start across the Rat Portage. That's five hundred
miles, just along the Arctic Circle, and in that five hundred miles we
go from Canadian into American territory--at Rampart House, on the
Porcupine River. Well, it's down-stream from there to the Yukon, and
then we hit our own boats--more of them, and faster and more
comfortable. I have no doubt, John, that you can get all you want to
eat on any one of a half-dozen good boats that ply on the Yukon to-day
from White Horse down to the mouth.

"Of course," he added, "this trip of ours is not quite as rough as it
would have been twenty years ago when the Klondike rush began. The
world has moved since then, as it always has moved and always will. I
suppose some time white men will live in a good deal of this country
which we now think impossible for a white man to inhabit. Little by
little, as they learn the ways of the Indians and half-breeds, they
will edge north, changing things as they go.

"But I don't want to talk about those times," he added, shrugging his
shoulders. "I'm for the wilderness as it is, and I'm glad that you
three boys and myself can see that country up there before it has
changed too much. Not that it is any country for a tenderfoot now.
You'll find it wild enough and rough enough. It has gone back since
the Klondike rush. In travel you'll see the old ways of the Hudson's
Bay Company, even although the independents have cut into their trade
a little bit. You'll see the Far North much as it was when Sir
Alexander first went down our river here.

"And as you go on I want you to study the old times, and the