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Then I was in Revillons', looking at their cheaper furs, and in a store where they supply especially light hand-sleds, snowshoes, and patent cooking cans. We must have these things good, and I estimate they'll cost about six hundred dollars." "Six hundred dollars will make a big hole in our capital."
The weather was too bitterly cold for hunting. Even the wild animals seemed not to go about any more than their wants required. So Mallory and I decided to buy some more meat from the Indians, and get them to go with us back to our lumbering station and help to carry the game on hand-sleds, which we could do with comparative ease on the river.
But he had Potts on his side. When the New Year opened, the trail was in capital condition. On the second of January two lots of Indians passed, one with dogs hauling flour and bacon for Benham, and the other lot without dogs, dragging light hand-sleds. Potts said restlessly: "After all, they can do it." "So can we if we've a mind to," said Mac. "Come on, then."
He pictured to himself a high, rough bank leading down to the water; but as not even Bill's daring imagination would have represented the gamesome beasts as employing toboggans or hand-sleds, he thought it must be rather bumpy and uncomfortable work coasting over the roots and rocks on one's own unprotected anatomy.
Three seized the ropes and began to drag the bobs back toward the hill. The rest fell in, trudging behind. But already from the group at the top, confused by distance, other swift black objects at spaced intervals had detached and came hurtling down. Some of them were bob-sleds; others hand-sleds carrying but a single passenger. Bobby stood by the gate post watching them.
The poor settlers had to make frequent trips of from fifty to one hundred miles with hand-sleds or toboggans, through the wild woods and on the ice, to procure a precarious supply of food for their famishing families. Among those who settled at St. Anns at this time was Lodewick Fisher, who had seen nearly seven years service in Col. Van Buskirk's battalion of the New Jersey Volunteers.
The hand-sleds employed, were of a size and construction suited to the dimensions of those that used them; and, as a matter of course, there was no New Yorker that had not learned how to govern the motion of one of these vehicles, even when gliding down the steepest descent, with the nicest delicacy and greatest ease.
I do not speak as the ignorant. I have in my day travelled many hundreds of miles on the ice; but I've done it in the season when the trail's at its best, with dogs, my son, and with tried native servants." "I know it is pleasanter that way, but " "Pleasanter? It is the way to keep alive." "But the Indians travel with hand-sleds." "For short distances, yes, and they are inured to the climate. You?
It was not until then that any one noticed that the two swarthy sailors had recovered and departed, taking with them the blankets and bottle of rum which had been employed in reviving them. The skipper swore mightily at this discovery, knocked a few of his men about, then had the chests of gold stowed on two hand-sleds and set out for home in full force and at top speed.
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