HAP. xni. DESTRUCTIVENESS OF FIRES IN THE WOODS. '205 



with his usual presence of mind, moved all the baggage to 

 the edge of the river on to a little beach of sand, where 



O 



it would be safe from the advancing fire. The voyageurs, 

 as soon as they had relieved themselves of their bur- 

 den, threw themselves on the ground in a state of utter 

 exhaustion. We crouched low to let the hot smoke and 

 ashes pass over us, and in ten minutes more the air was 

 clear above ; but far in advance, following the banks of 

 the river, the fire roared and hissed through the moss 

 until it reached the borders of a lake, through which our 

 course lay. The same fire continued to burn for several 

 days, for we saw the smoke when more than thirty miles 

 away ; but its onward progress had been arrested by the 

 wet moss of the forest bordering Lake lash-ner-nus-kow, 

 into which we entered late in the afternoon of the 29th. 

 The Indians generally exercise great caution in putting 

 out their fires before they leave a camp during the 

 summer season, but notwithstanding their carefulness in 

 this respect, most disastrous conflagrations not unfre- 

 quently take place. It is a common practice with a party 

 of Indians to make a large smoke on a hill or mountain 

 when they wish to discover the whereabouts of their 

 friends ; this is answered by those of whom they are in 

 search with another smoke, and it sometimes happens 

 that the fires thus made spread over the country and 

 cause a most lamentable destruction of forest trees and 

 moss, thus consuming the food of the caribou on which 

 the Indians depend for their subsistence. A few days 

 later we had a painful proof of the awful change in the 

 features of a country produced by wide-spreading fires, 

 and there appears to be little reason to doubt that a very 



