at the
rendezvous. The _Jaybird_ was the first boat to be loaded, the men
getting her down the steep bank with small delay and taking a rapid
run of a couple of miles or so down the river soon thereafter. After a
little time they concluded to wait for the other men who had gone down
the river-bank to secure the dugout of an old Indian, who, it seems,
was known as Picheu, or the Lynx.

"I don't know about a dugout, Moise," said Rob. "There may be bad
water below here."

"No, not very bad water," said Moise. "I'll ron heem on steamboat many
tam! But those dugout she'll been good boat, too. I s'pose she'll been
twenty foot long an' carry thousand pound all right."

"Well," Rob answered, "that will do us as well as a steamboat. I
wonder why the old _voyageurs_ never used the dugout instead of the
birch-bark--they wouldn't have had to mend it so often, even if they
couldn't carry it so easily."

"I'll tell you, fellows," said Jesse, who was rather proud of his
overland trip by himself, "the fur trade isn't what it used to be.
At those posts you don't see just furs and traps, and men in
blanket-coats, and dog-trains. In the post here they had groceries,
and axes, and calico dresses, and hats, just like they have in a
country store. I peeked in through the windows."

Alex smiled at them. "You see," said he, "you've been looking at
pictures which were made some time ago perhaps. Or perhaps they were
made in the winter-time, and not in the summer. At this season all the
fur packets have gone down the trail, and they don't need dog-trains
and blanket-coats. You ought to come up here in the winter-time to get
a glimpse of the old scenes. I'll admit, though, that the fur-posts
aren't what they were when I was a boy. You can get anything you like
now, from an umbrella to a stick of toffy."

"Where?" asked John, suddenly, amid general laughter.

"The toffy? I'm sure we'll find some at Peace River Landing, along
with plows and axes and sewing-machines, and all that sort of thing!"

"But the people pay for them all with their furs?" inquired Rob.

"For the most part, yes. Always in this part of the country the people
have lived well. Farther north the marten have longer fur, but not
finer than you will find here, so that they bring just as good prices.
This has always been a meat country--you'll remember how many buffalo
and elk Mackenzie saw. Now, if the lynx and the marten should
disappear, and if we had to go to farming,