Robber Dogs and an Indian Council 53 



before the darkness fell upon us. To our 

 great disappointment, a wintry haze settled 

 down between us and the distant shore. 

 While we were still able to continue our 

 journey, the Indian attendants became quite 

 bewildered, and missed by some miles, the 

 place at which we wished to strike the land. 

 Darkness fell upon us before the Indian 

 running on ahead was able to announce that 

 we had reached the shore. We found that 

 we had arrived at a place where the bold, 

 high banks rose up perpendicularly from 

 the water, now of course, converted into 

 solid ice. 



After some fruitless attempts to find, a 

 place where it was possible to clamber up 

 with our dog trains into the forest above, 

 we gave up the prospect of having a decent 

 camp in the woods that night and began 

 making what preparations we could to 

 spend the night there on the ice. Fortu- 

 nately for us, the banks were of clay, and 

 the fierce storms of many summers had so 

 eaten into them, that many trees, growing 

 on the top, had had the soil so washed away 

 from the roots that they had fallen head- 

 long to the shore beneath. Here amidst the 

 snowdrifts that had accumulated and nearly 



