74 LAKE SUPERIOR. 



While passing this island, two canoes came in sight from the op- 

 posite direction, evidently making a wide traverse for the Pic. They 

 passed rapidly along under sail too far off to be spoken, but we had 

 no doubt that it was Gov. Simpson of the Hudson's Bay Company, 

 who was expected at the Pic on his annual tour. We afterwards 

 learned that this conjecture was correct, and that he arrived about 

 eight o'clock that evening, thus making in three hours (for it was 

 about five when we passed them,) what we had taken all day for. 



The Governor is much noted for his rapid travelling. On one 

 occasion he is said to have dined one day at the Sault, and break- 

 fasted the next at Michipicotin, a distance of one hundred and twenty 

 miles. We encamped this evening on a most picturesque rocky islet 

 near the shore, where we slept on natural beds of solid moss and 

 huckleberry bushes, a foot deep. 



July 15/i. Rain early this morning, but cleared away cold, with 

 an autumnal sky and high wind. We passed the Slate Islands, high 

 and blue, at the distance of seven or eight miles, and ran into a 

 cove, at the bottom of which opened what seemed to be a well-ordered 

 lawn, with balsam firs and larches judiciously disposed at intervals. 

 In landing, the rich green grass turned out to be bear-berry, and 

 the soil mere sand, which the bear-berry loves, but which accounted 

 for the scantiness of trees. 



The woods were crossed and recrossed in every direction by rabbit 

 (or rather hare) paths, and we saw some trails that some of us fan- 

 cied might be caribous', with many tracks of a dog or wolf. Caribous 

 are found all through this region, but not in great abundance. An 

 Indian who passed last winter on Isle St. Ignace, killed twenty-five 

 caribous in the course of the winter, and was thought to have done 

 very well. We saw here, for the first time, Parus hudsonicus, in 

 company with a number of its cousins, the chickadees, from which it 

 was to be distinguished only by its brown head, its slenderer and 

 higher note, and a slight difference in habit, fluttering more about the 

 ends of the twigs. 



We made a long stay here, and some of the men amused themselves 

 with lighting a fire, which unfortunately ran along the ridge of the 

 beach, and, in spite of their utmost exertions, marched with a broad 

 front into the woods. It was an exciting spectacle, the eagerness of 



