LOST IN THE WOODS. 329 



then, when weather suited, I used to go out on a cariboo 

 hunt with Toraa, and from time to time we shot six or 

 eight of these deer, and hauled their carcases to camp on 

 our trebogens. 



On one of these hunts I met with a mischance, which 

 might have been attended with serious consequences. Con- 

 trary to my custom I went out alone and unprovided with 

 axe or provisions. I soon came on fresh tracks and became 

 'intensely absorbed in hunting them. After a long and 

 tedious stalk I came up to the cariboo and shot one. I 

 then for the first time remarked that the sun had become 

 obscured. Hastily cutting the liver out of the dead 

 cariboo, I endeavoured to take a line through the woods to 

 the edge "of the lake, which was at most 2 miles distant. 

 After an hour's hard walking I came upon my own tracks, 

 not 100 yards from where I had shot the deer. In fact, 

 I was lost in the woods, and the day was all but done. It 

 may be asked, "Why not have taken your own back- 

 tracks ? " Because a man who has unwittingly walked a 

 circle as I had done becomes utterly stupefied and cannot 

 distinguish out-tracks from in-tracks. This was an awk- 

 ward position, 3 feet of snow, 40 or 50 of frost, and worst 

 of all, no axe. I saw that I was doomed to spend the 

 night in the open, and I set about preparing for it with a 

 will. Fortunately I found some dead stumps and poles 

 which I managed to pull down and collect before night- 

 fall. Then I was no longer alarmed. I dug a hole in the 

 snow some 6 feet square, using a snow shoe as a shovel. 

 In this pit I lit my fire, and by its light broke fir boughs 

 for my couch. It was not quite a case this of " happy low, 

 lie down," for when I heard during that long night the 



