ALBERTA 



43 



sinao, tapwa, kissinao," — "It is cold, truly, it is cold." When 

 the natives drew the blankets closer upon their shivering forms 

 I felt that there was some cause for my own aches and sleep- 

 lessness. 



On the sixth day we crossed the traverse of Fisher Bay and 

 endeavored to reach Dog Head, a Company's post at the Nar- 

 rows. We walked until nearly midnight across the trackless 

 lake, directing our course by the moon, just visible through the 

 haze. We were without food and had a storm arisen would 

 have been in a dangerous predicament. We came upon a huge 

 crack in the ice, a common occurrence in lake travel in spring, 

 and searched some time in the darkness for a bridge across the 

 black ribbon of thin ice. We reached the land at last, at a point 

 only five miles from the post; not knowing where we were, we 

 camped with only enough wood to boil a kettle of tea and with 

 nothing to eat, though we had run sixty miles that day. My 

 clothing was wet with perspiration and I passed a sleepless 

 night. Soon after daybreak we reached the post and, owing to 

 the absence of the clerk, it was some time before we could have 

 our wants supplied. Our breakfast of tasteless boiled beef 

 without salt and bread without butter was heartily enjoyed. 



I ordered bread to be baked for the remainder of the trip and 

 then drowsily watched the boys roll themselves in their blank- 

 ets under the breakfast table. We all slept until late in the 

 afternoon when we pushed on to Bull Head, where we passed 

 the night in a fisherman's shanty. After six nights in the snow 

 the chilly little garret where we slept seemed oppressively 

 warm. 



We started the next morning upon a good track, expecting 

 to reach a cabin, thirty-seven miles distant, at the bottom of 

 Humbug Bay, by nightfall. A strong, penetrating wind blew 

 directly in our faces; this soon drifted the road full of soft snow 

 into which we sank to the ankles, yet all were suffering too 

 much from mal de racquette to wear snow-shoes. The tempera- 

 ture was twenty-two degrees below zero. At noon we ate our 

 lunch at an abandoned sawmill. Toward evening we met a 

 fisherman from Selkirk with whom my men were acquainted, 

 and of course they were invited to have a drink of whiskey. 

 Soon afterward a passing stranger also shared his whiskey with 

 them, with the result that one of them came dashing past me 



