219 We find terra incognita* 



mere half-dozen trees to great piles of logs and down timber, criss- 

 crossed and interwoven in a patchwork that it would be impossible 

 to remove except with dynamite. And even then, many of the 

 logs would simply float off downstream on the high water and form 

 other jams below. In a word, to say that the Sass is not navigable 

 is putting it mildly. We would have to portage almost the entire 

 distance, and this would be a backbreaking and uncertain task. 



We were now on the first horn of a many-horned dilemma. Our 

 radio transmitter could not be heard in Fort Smith, but we could 

 hear them all right, and that night we listened to Ward Stevens 

 calling us to advise that Pat Carey would be flying over us the next 

 day to check our progress. Unable to explain our situation and not 

 wanting an alarm to be broadcast when they failed to find us up 

 the Sass, we decided to head for the mouth of the Little Buffalo 

 and try to reach the radio station at Fort Resolution. Setting out 

 early the next morning we ran downstream on a high river, and 

 were at the mouth in eleven and a half hours, ordinarily a two-day 

 trip by canoe. There we found the ice still fairly solid on Great 

 Slave Lake, and Chipewyans that were stranded with their families 

 and sled dogs at the Indian village on the east bank told us that 

 it was impossible to get through to Resolution with a loaded canoe 

 because of the ice piled along the lake shore. The next day, which 

 was the twenty-eighth, we persuaded an Indian to carry a message 

 to Resolution for us, and he reached that settlement shortly after 

 5 P.M., returning that same night, a round trip of thirty-two miles, 

 much of it on foot through ice-cold water. We then sat back to 

 wait. 



Our trip down the Little Buffalo was enlivened by the multi- 

 tudes of birds along the banks and in the water. Bob Stewart 

 counted 53 species and even listed individual numbers, many of 

 them from the songs or call notes. There were spotted sandpipers, 

 green-winged teal, shovelers, golden-eyes, buffleheads, scaup, pin- 

 tails, Canada geese, kingfishers, phoebes, white-throated and white- 

 crowned sparrows, and many others. Bob listed a total of 63 Ten- 

 nessee warblers from their songs alone. Everywhere on the upper 

 reaches there were beaver, but as we came closer to the mouth 

 these became scarce and a few muskrats were seen. Seton wrote: 



