208 HUNTERS OF THE GREAT NORTH 



It took me but a few minutes to decide to try it. The 

 decision once made there was no time to be lost. A 

 whaleboat belonging to the Mounted Police and manned 

 by a crew of three Macpherson Indians was now in the 

 Herschel Island harbor. The police had intended to send 

 the boat to Macpherson in a few days anyway, and now 

 they said it might as well start in a few hours. It did 

 not take us even a few hours to get ready; we were 

 under sail inside of two hours, speeding eastward with 

 a fair wind. 



A whaleboat sails beautifully when well handled and 

 one of the Indians was a fair boatman. The breeze 

 slackened gradually, however, and it took us eighteen 

 hours to reach King Point, a distance of thirty-five miles. 

 I was for taking turns sleeping on the boat and keeping 

 on but the Indians pretended to know that by mid- 

 forenoon there would be a fair breeze. Accordingly, we 

 camped beside the wreck of the Bonanza shortly after 

 midnight and slept till nine o'clock. 



I had felt sure when we went into camp that the Indian 

 forecast of a breeze was based on nothing more substan- 

 tial than the desire to sleep soundly on shore. But a 

 breeze did come and with it we made the mouth of the 

 Mackenzie and got some distance up stream. After this 

 the Indians worked as hard as any one could desire. We 

 were lucky in having a sailing wind fully half the time. 

 When it dropped calm or when there was a head wind 

 we got out our tracking line. One man remained in the 

 boat to steer it and the other three of us walked along 

 the river bank, pulling on the tracking line. Thus 

 alternately sailing and tracking we reached Macpherson 

 August 1 2th, breaking the record in summer travel from 

 Herschel Island to Fort Macpherson. We had made the 



