demanded Uncle Dick of her. "And
where can you find three sounder lads in Valdez than these we're
talking about now?"

"But it's so _far_, Richard--you're talking now about the Peace River
and the Athabasca River and the Arctic Ocean--why, it seems as though
the boys were going clear off the earth, and we certainly would never
see them again."

"Nonsense!" replied Uncle Dick. "The earth isn't so big as it used to
be in Sir Alexander's time. Let them alone and they'll come through,
and be all the more men for it. There's no particular hardship about
it. I'll go down with them in the boat to Vancouver and east with them
by rail to where they take the stage up the Ashcroft trail--a
wagon-road as plain as this street here. They can jog along that way
as far as Quesnelles as easy as they could on a street-car in
Seattle. Their men'll get them from there by boat up the Fraser to the
headwaters of the Parsnip without much more delay or much more danger,
but a lot of hard work. After that they just get in their boats and
float."

"Oh, it _sounds_ easy, Richard," protested his sister, "but I know all
about your simple things!"

"Well, it isn't every boy I'd offer this good chance," said Uncle
Dick, turning away. "In my belief, they'll come back knowing more than
when they started."

"But they're only boys, not grown men like those old fur-traders that
used to travel in that country. It was hard enough even for them, if I
remember my reading correctly."

"I just told you, my dear sister, that these boys will go with less
risk and less danger than ever Sir Alexander met when he first went
over the Rockies. Listen. I've got the two best men in the Northwest,
as I told you. Alex Mackenzie is one of the best-known men in the
North. General Wolseley took him for chief of his band of _voyageurs_,
who got the boats up the Nile in Kitchener's Khartoum campaign. He's
steadier than a clock, and the boys are safer with him than anywhere
else without him. My other man, Moise Duprat, is a good cook, a good
woodsman, and a good canoeman. They'll have all the camp outfit they
need, they'll have the finest time in the world in the mountains, and
they'll come through flying--that's all about it!"

"But won't there be any bad rapids in the mountains on that river?"

"Surely, surely! That's what the men are for, and the boats. When the
water is too bad they get out and walk around it, same as you walk
around a mud puddle in the street. W