LET US GO AFIELD 



were told that sixteen miles below, at the foot of 

 the rapids, we should surely find the inconnu; but 

 though we oiled up our guns and prepared for the 

 "imminent deadly breach," we did not see the said 

 inconnu according to schedule. 



"You'll see one before long if you keep on going 

 north," said the captain of our steamboat. 



We did not see him, however, though we kept on 

 going north. We passed into Great Slave Lake and 

 inquired at Fort Resolution whether the inconnu 

 had come so far south on its annual migration, but 

 there was nothing doing either there or at Fort 

 Rae, according to the best obtainable reports. We 

 had, in fact, arrived at Hay River where there is 

 no hay before, by the merest accident, I first met 

 an actual inconnu. 



In all this time on the river steamboat we had 

 been, as one may say, almost on the point of mutiny 

 over the kippered herring and tinned salmon which 

 made a good part of the bill of fare. At Hay River, 

 in a fit of desperation, I chartered an Indian boy 

 and rowed about four miles to run some nets which 

 he or someone else owned, and which might or 

 might contain some fish, not as yet, in tin 

 cans. 



Arrived there, the said Indian youth casually 

 began to unload from the nets into the boat a bunch 



70 



