aptain Saunders that they really had a dead moose ready to be brought
aboard the latter beamed his satisfaction.

"That's better than bear meat for me!" said he. "We'll just lie here
while the boys go out and bring in the meat."

"Now," said Rob to his friends, as, hot and dusty, they turned to
their rooms to get ready for dinner, "I don't know what you other
fellows think, but it seems to me we've killed about all the meat
we'll need for a while. Let's wait now until we see Uncle Dick--it
won't be more than a day or so, and we've all had a good hunt."

XXX

FARTHEST NORTH

As they had been told, our travelers found the banks of their river at
this far northern latitude much lower than they had been for the first
hundred miles below the Landing. Now and again they would pass little
scattered settlements of natives, or the cabin of some former
trading-station. For the most part, however, the character of the
country was that of an untracked wilderness, in spite of the truth,
which was that the Hudson Bay Company had known it and traded through
it for more than a century past.

By no means the most northerly trading-posts of the great fur-trading
company, Fort Vermilion, their present destination, seemed to our
young friends almost as though it were at the edge of the world.
Their journey progressed almost as though they were in a dream, and
it was difficult for them to recall all of its incidents, or to get
clearly before their minds the distance back of them to the homes in
far-off Alaska, which they had left so long ago. The interest of
travelers in new land, however, still was theirs, and they looked
forward eagerly also to meeting the originator of this pleasant
journey of theirs--Uncle Dick Wilcox, who, as they now learned from
the officers of the boat, had been summoned to this remote region on
business connected with the investigation of oil-fields on the
Athabasca River, and had returned as far as Fort Vermilion on his
way out to the settlements.

When finally they came within sight of the ancient post of Fort
Vermilion, the boys, as had been the case in such other posts as they
previously had seen, could scarcely identify the modest whitewashed
buildings of logs or boards as really belonging to a post of the old
company of Hudson Bay. The scene which they approached really was a
quiet and peaceful one. At the rim of the bank stood the white
building of the Company's post, or store, with a well-s