"He must have been quite a man, old Alexander Mackenzie," John added.

"Yes," said Rob. "As you know, he came back to Athabasca and started
up the Peace River in seventeen ninety-three, and was the first man to
cross to the Pacific. We studied him over in there. But he went
up-stream there, and we came down. That's much easier. It will be
easier going down this river, too, which was his first great
exploration place.

"Now," he continued, "we'll be going down-stream, as I said, almost
two thousand miles to the mouth of that river. Uncle Dick says we'll
be comfortable as princes all the way. We'll have big scows to travel
in, with everything fixed up fine."

"Here," said Jesse, putting his finger on the map hesitatingly, "is
the place where it says 'rapids.' Must be over a hundred miles of it
on this river, or even more."

"That's right, Jess," commented John. "We can't dodge those rapids
yet. Uncle Dick says that the new railroad in the North may go to Fort
McMurray at the foot of this great system of the Athabasca rapids.
That would cut out a lot of hard work. If there were a railroad up
there, a fellow could go to the Arctics almost as easy as going to New
York."

"I'd rather go to the Midnight Sun now," said Rob. "There's some
trouble about it now, and there's some wilderness now between here and
there. It's no fun to do a thing when it's too easy. I wouldn't give a
cent to go to Fort McPherson, the last post north, by any railroad."

John was still poring over the map, which lay upon the rude boards of
the platform, and he shook his head now somewhat dubiously. "Look
where we'll have to go," he said, "and all in three months. We have to
get back for school next fall."

"Never doubt we can do it," said Rob, stoutly. "If we couldn't, Uncle
Dick would never try it. He's got it all figured out, you may be sure
of that, and he's made all his arrangements with the Hudson's Bay
Company. You forget they've been going up into this country for a
hundred years, and they know how long it takes and how hard it is.
They know all about how to outfit for it, too."

"The hardest place we'll have," said John, following his map with his
finger now almost to the upper edge, "is right here where we leave the
Mackenzie and start over toward the Yukon, just south of the Arctic
Ocean. That's a whizzer, all right! No railroad up in there, and I
guess there never will be. That's where so many of the Klondikers were
lost, my fat