272 JOURNEY TO THE SHORES 
frozen and revived by warmth, nor is it possible 
that the multitude which incessantly filled our 
ears with its discordant notes could have been 
matured in two or three days. 
The fishermen at Beaver Lake, and the other 
detached parties were ordered to return to the 
post. The expedients to which the poor people 
were reduced, to cross a country so beset with 
waters, presented many uncouth spectacles. 
The inexperienced were glad to compromise, 
with the loss of property, for the safety of their 
persons, and astride upon ill-balanced rafts with 
which they struggled to be uppermost, exhibited 
a ludicrous picture of distress. Happy were 
those who could patch up an old canoe, though 
obliged to bear it half the way on their shoulders, 
through miry bogs and interwoven willows. But 
the veteran trader, wedged in a box of skin, with 
his wife, children, dogs, and furs, wheeled tt 
umphantly through the current, and deposited his 
heterogeneous cargo safely on the shore. 
woods re-echoed with the return of their 
tenants. An hundred tribes as gaily dressed as 
any burnished natives of the south, greeted out 
eyes in our accustomed walks, and their voices, 
though unmusical, were the sweetest that eve 
saluted our ears. 
From the 19th to the 26th the snow once 
