you are, safe and sound.
You'll have to be getting out of here before long, though, in order to
make Valdez in time for your fall school--you'd be running wild if I
left you on the trail any longer.

"The boat will be going back to the Landing in a couple of days, I
suppose," he added after a time, as he gathered their hands in his and
started along the path up the steep bank; "but there are a few things
here you ought to see--the post and the farms and grains which they
have--wonderful things in their way. And then I'll try to get Saunders
to fix it so that you can see the Vermilion Chutes of the Peace
River."

"I know right where that is," said Rob, feeling in his pocket for his
map--"about sixty miles below here. That's the head of navigation on
the Peace, isn't it?"

"It is for the present time," said Uncle Dick. "I've been looking at
that cataract of the Peace. There ought to be a lock or a channel cut
through, so that steamboats could run the whole length from
Chippewayan to the Rockies! As it is, everything has to portage
there."

"We don't know whether to call this country old or young," said Rob.
"In some ways it doesn't seem to have changed very much, and in other
ways it seems just like any other place."

"One of these days you'll see a railroad down the Mackenzie, young
man," said Uncle Dick, "and before long, of course, you'll see one
across the Rockies from the head of the Saskatchewan, above the big
bend of the Columbia."

"Why couldn't we get in there some time, Uncle Dick?" asked Jesse, who
was feeling pretty brave now that they were well out of the Rocky
Mountains and the white water of the rapids.

"Well, I don't know," said Uncle Dick, suddenly looking around. "It
might be a good idea, after all. But I think you'd find pretty bad
water in the Columbia if you tried to do any navigation there. Time
enough to talk about that next year. Come on now, and I'll introduce
you to the factor and the people up here at the Post."

They joined him now, and soon were shaking hands with many persons,
official and otherwise, of the white or the red race. They found the
life very interesting and curious, according to their own notions. The
head clerk and they soon struck up a warm friendship. He told them
that he had spent thirty years of his life at that one place,
although he received his education as far east as Montreal. Married to
an Indian woman, who spoke no English, he had a family of ten bright
a