NARRATIVE. 69 



was strewn with lichens, in large tufts or clods, often eight to ten 

 inches deep by eighteen inches to two feet across ; a few armfuls of 

 this made a very comfortable bed. After the sunset faded, the 

 moon shone out brilliantly, and we sat on the edge of the slope talk- 

 ing of many things, long after our men were snoring comfortably 

 under the shelter of the canoes below. 



July ll/i. Daylight showed us that our plateau was a niche cut 

 in the rock, which rose steeply and with great regularity from all 

 sides, fringed and covered with trees. We rounded the point of 

 Otter Head, so called from an upright parallelogram of rock, (hav- 

 ing, however, so far as I could see, no particular resemblance to the 

 head of an otter,) resting on the top of the point, and, joining the 

 " Dancing Feather " at breakfast time, we put ashore and decided 

 to wait for the bateau. On the way a solitary Indian, excessively 

 dirty and ragged, came off in his canoe to sell us fish, and turned 

 out to be the brother-in-law of one of our men, a very decent-look- 

 ing Canadian Frenchman. 



The woods here also carpeted with moss, and sprinkled with Linnoea 

 and bunch-berry ; here also we found very few flies, and began 

 to give some credence to the assertion of some of the men, that they 

 disappear towards the end of this month. Perhaps the change of 

 temperature may render them sluggish, for we had now crossed the 

 48th degree of latitude, and the greatest heat of summer, in these 

 northern regions coinciding more nearly with the solstice, was now 

 past. 



One of my companions and myself making the circuit of a muddy 

 pond, formed by the damming up of a small stream by the lake beach, 

 incautiously attempted to return through a patch of burnt arbor 

 vitses. It is difficult to persuade one's self at a short distance that 

 these burnt places are so impracticable as they really are, even though 

 one may have had full experience of them before. You can see 

 through the trees every where, and the ground is plainly visible 

 among the stumps. But when fairly engaged, you find the fallen 

 trunks are piled together in such wild confusion that you seldom touch 

 the ground at all, but are obliged to get along squirrel fashion (only 

 not so quickly and easily), by climbing and jumping from one log to 

 another. Moreover the effect of the fire is not at all uniform ; some 



