DOWN THE MACKENZIE 



127 



start off at a brisk trot and strain at their collars to keep up if 

 someone runs before. I had to direct mine with the whip and 

 voice alone. They were too heavily loaded to keep moving if 

 I went before them. 



In starting out in the evening, I had to wade through abroad 

 strip of slush, lying just outside the heavy shore drifts. The 

 water passed through my moccasins as easily as through a blot- 

 ter; these and the thick foot wrappings soon froze stiff, as it 

 became colder, making them heavy and anything but warm. I 

 broke through the crust into the water standing on the ice too 

 often to keep them dry by changing. I found it necessary to 

 wear more on my feet than in midwinter to avoid blistering 

 them. The snow-shoes were kept continually wet and wore 

 rapidly away upon the sharp needles of the crust, so that I had 

 to renew the foot-lacing daily. On the 12th I camped upon a 

 little patch of bare sand, the first camp not made in the snow 

 since November. That day the ring-billed gulls were seen, 

 though there was as yet no open water except upon the surface 

 of the ice. 



I lost some time at the Big Slavey Point, in skirting two deep 

 bays, looking for a passage behind the little group of four 

 islands, which I found later to lie so far off shore that no mis- 

 take need have been made. 



On the 14th a dense fog compelled me to follow the shore of 

 the broad bay west of the point, where I could have saved sev- 

 eral miles by a traverse. 



During the night of the 15th a rain fell which prevented the 

 formation of a crust and made the traveling very slow and 

 fatiguing. I fed the dogs the last fish that night, and, instead 

 of sleeping next day, pushed on until after midnight in the 

 hope of reaching the Big Island fishery. I started in the even- 

 ing across a traverse, of perhaps ten miles, to the outlet of the 

 lake where the dark line of trees was barely visible on the 

 shores of the bay, which I was crossing, lay below the northern 

 horizon. There were no landmarks whatever to guide me to 

 the fishery, and, to add to the difficult}-, the low strip of timber 

 became distorted by mirage until it seemed to be a chain of 

 distant mountains, then three lines of coast appeared one above 

 another. These merged into one again, still slowly shifting 

 until obscured by the darkness. The point which I had left 



