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CHAPTEE XIII. 



LAKE NIPISIS TO BEAR LAKE. 



Nasquapee Camp Copper Fish-hook -- A Cache Caribou 

 Horns Nipisis River - Fresh Tracks A Fire on the Portage 

 Narrow Escape of the Canoes Destructiveness of Fires in the 

 Woods Desolation of Part of the Labrador Peninsula produced 

 by them Magnificent Spectacle of a Spruce Forest on fire at 

 Night Wild Fowl falling into the Flames Nipisis River 

 Sketching under Difficulties The Snow-white Rock The early 

 Morn in Labrador Silence -- Ducks A Bear Caribou - 

 Beaver smell the Fire Importance of the Caribou Its 

 Habits. 



AT the northern extremity of Lake Nipisis we came 

 to a fresh encampment, where Indians had been 

 some twenty or thirty hours before us ; we all set to work 

 to examine the tracks and endeavour to make out the 

 direction they had taken. It was decided that they had 

 come from the north, that they were going south, probably 

 to the coast, and that they were Nasquapees. I asked 

 Michel how he knew they were people belonging to his race; 

 he answered by pointing to a fish-hook made of wood and 

 copper, which he found suspended to the branch of a tree 

 near the spot where they had camped. He also pointed to a 

 cache, in which we found some clothing of caribou skins, 

 some sinews, two fish-hooks of copper, and some birch- 

 bark. We replaced all the articles, with the exception of 

 the fish-hooks, but in lieu of them I left a dozen large steel 



