224 On the trail of vanishing birds 



below 40F. on the fifth of June, it reached a high of 88 on 

 the eleventh. We sweltered and fought mosquitoes, deer flies, and 

 the first of the miserable little black flies. 



Finally, having been advised that no helicopter was in that 

 end of the country, we broke camp on the morning of June 17 

 and began our carry down the Sass. We would have to come out 

 the best way we could. Even with the reduced weight of our 

 supplies the assembled gear filled the little sixteen-foot canoe to 

 overflowing. There was barely room for me and one paddle in the 

 stern, and my two companions were glad to walk the shore. That 

 trip down the lower Sass will long be remembered by all of us. 

 From our camp site to the open and unobstructed waters of the 

 Little Buffalo is only an airline distance of about one and a half 

 miles, but it took us thirteen hours of backbreaking labor to get 

 there! We estimated that the actual distance we traveled along the 

 bends of the river was approximately 4.5 times airline, or close 

 to seven miles, but the real key to the situation was in the forty 

 log jams and beaver dams. Some we cut through and tore out, 

 others we detoured by making portages. Somehow, by nine o'clock 

 that night we had all our gear ashore at a camp site on the Little 

 Buffalo, the same spot where we had bedded down when first at- 

 tempting to move up the Sass on May 25-26. "We're practically 

 moving backwards," Ray observed. 



We still had the Grand Detour portage to cover, but four 

 packers were sent out from Fort Smith to meet us halfway across, 

 at Long Slough, and on the evening of the twentieth we were 

 once more on the banks of the Slave River, where Captain Billy 

 McNeil met us with the government boat Buffalo. Thus we were 

 brought back to Fort Smith, a dirty, bearded, and sorry crew, after 

 twenty-nine futile and frustrating days of trying to reach the nest- 

 ing grounds of the whooping crane. 



As we sat down to breakfast under Louie's attentive eye at the 

 Hotel Mackenzie, we had to admit that we were licked. The only 

 thing to be done, it seemed, was give it up until next season. 



But fate was only playing games with us! Later that morning 

 we were met at District Headquarters by Ward Stevens. He was 

 waving a piece of paper in his hand, a radiogram that had just 



