62 The Musk-ox 



when all is frozen. One day's hunting is about 

 like another. There is nothing to kindle the 

 eye of the nature lover. In winter it is like 

 travelling over a great frozen sea; in summer 

 it is a great desolate waste of moss and lichen, 

 dotted with lakes and rock-topped ridges, which 

 observe no one or special form of direction. 

 There is a black moss that the Indians sometimes 

 burn if they can find it dry enough, and a little 

 shrub that furnishes a bitter tea if the tea of civili- 

 zation has run out. Nearly all of the lakes have 

 fish, and a hunter ought really, with experience 

 and judgment, to go in and out in summer time 

 without suffering any excessive starvation. War- 

 burton Pike, who has studied the Barren Grounds 

 in summer time more thoroughly than any other 

 man living, reports spots covered with wild 

 flowers that grow to no height but in compara- 

 tive profusion and some beauty. 



The distance you make in a summer day of 

 Barren Grounds travel may depend entirely on 

 your inclination, for with the fish and the moving 

 caribou you are fairly well assured against hunger, 

 and the weather is comparatively warm and per- 

 mits of lingering along the route. It is quite 

 another story in the winter, for then food is always 



