GREATEST FUR COMPANY OF THE WORLD 265 



the rising sun. With his snow-shoes he digs away the snow at the 

 roots of trees to get down to the moss. Moss grows from the roots 

 of trees on the shady side — that is, the north. And simplest of 

 all, demanding only that a wanderer use his eyes — which the 

 white man seldom does — the limbs of the northern trees are most 

 numerous on the south. The trapper may be waylaid by storms, 

 or starved by sudden migration of game from the grounds to which 

 he has come, or run to earth by the ravenous timber-wolves that pur- 

 sue the dog teams for leagues ; but the trapper with Indian blood 

 in his veins will not be lost. 



One imminent danger is of accident beyond aid. A young 

 Indian hunter of Moose Factory set out with his wife and two 

 children for the winter hunting-grounds in the forest south of James 

 Bay. To save the daily allowance of a fish for each dog, they did 

 not take the dog teams. When chopping, the hunter injured 

 his leg. The wound proved stubborn. Game was scarce, and 

 they had not enough food to remain in the lodge. Wrapping 

 her husband in robes on the long toboggan sleigh, the squaw placed 

 the younger child beside him and with the other began tramp- 

 ing through the forest drawing the sleigh behind. The drifts 

 were not deep enough for swift snow-shoeing over under- 

 brush, and their speed was not half so speedy as the hunger that 

 pursues northern hunters like the Fenris Wolf of Norse myth. 

 The woman sank exhausted on the snow and the older boy, nerved 

 with fear, pushed on to Moose Factory for help. Guided by the 

 boy back through the forests, the fort people found the hunter dead 

 in the sleigh, the mother crouched forward unconscious from cold, 

 stripped of the clothing which she had wrapped round the child 

 taken in her arms to warm with her own body. The child was 

 alive and well. The fur traders nursed the woman back to 

 life, though she looked more like a withered creature of eighty 

 than a woman barely in her twenties. She explained with a 

 simple unconsciousness of heroism that the ground had been 

 too hard for her to bury her husband, and she was afraid to 



