C Ihe Ladies c cu. V'VVAN - History and Classics, Department of

XXIITHE LADIES, THE GWICH'IN, AND THE RAT(2) are promised to tourists at an approximate cost of $400 return. Indians,"feasting, dancing and jollification among them," might be seen at FortSimpson, while the arrival at Aklavik "brings us in direct contact with the Eskimoin all his native ruggedness and simplicity" (6). (No doubt a similar sort ofbrochure would have proclaimed the attractions of a voyage on the Yukon Riverin similarly appealing and jocularly racist terms.) For seekers of solitude, suchvoyages by steamboat were necessary means to an end, but it is difficult to imagineeither Vyvyan or Dorrien Smith travelling from England merely to sit on a sternwheelerfor several weeks. No conventional transportation over the Divide wasavailable, so it cannot be known for certain if they would have chosen to make thecanoe trip had there been an alternative. What is clear is that Vyvyan's search forthe North of Robert Service's poetry prompted forays from the steamer and outof the settlements at every opportunity. She stated her view clearly in her bookafter the canoe trip: "an onlooker's life is no life at all" (176).THE RATWhat about the "malignant" Rat, as Vyvyan apprehensively calls it in her book(39, I08)? The highlight and great challenge of their journey, it owes its Englishname to the fur trade era's interest in its bounty of muskrat. In 1851, the 9,000muskrats traded at Fort McPherson represented twenty-nine per cent of theHBC's total in the Mackenzie district (Anderson II/24/1853; cited in Krech,"Interethnic" IIO). Canoeing upriver is hardly anyone's idea of a trip worthcrossing half the world to undertake, and the women encountered no shortage ofindividuals willing to predict disaster if they attempted it. But ignorance is a greatscaremongerer. Less well and accurately known than it deserves to be, the RatRiver is the lone manageable Canadian canoe route across the Cordillera, thatsystem of mountain ranges extending the length of the Americas. Flowing out ofMcDougall Pass-a nick in the Richardson Mountains merely 317 metres (1,040ft) in altitude-its westernmost reach lies near the headwaters of the Little BellRiver, a tributary of the Bell and, in turn, the Porcupine and Yukon rivers. TheGwich'in names for the Rat emphasize this aspect of it; they are, alternatively,Ddhah zhlt han ("River through the mountains") or Ddhah zhlt gwandak ("Mountainin-through";GSCI no. I). "Nowhere else in North America," wrote arcticcanoeist Eric Morse, "is it as short and easy to pass over the main continental