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ON THE LOWER TELZOA. Ill 



During the whole of the 25th our course continued to 

 be westerly and north-westerly, and because of this we 

 began to feel anxious. We had now passed the latitude 

 of Baker Lake, where, acording to information obtained 

 from the Eskimos, we were expecting the river to take 



s. Instead of drawing nearer to it, we were heading 

 away toward the Back or Great Fish River, which dis- 

 charges its waters into the Arctic Ocean, and was, on 

 our present course, distant only two days' journey. 



Towards evening, however, a marked change was ob- 



rved in the character of the river. The banks grew 

 lower and consisted of soft, coarse-grained sandstone. 

 The water became shallow and the channel broadened 

 out into a little lake, containing numerous shoals and 

 low islands of sand. Just beyond this, much to our 

 surprise and pleasure, we suddenly came upon abund- 

 ance of drift-wood not little sticks of willow or 

 ground birch, but the trunks of trees six or eight inches 

 diameter, as heavy as two men could carry. No 

 wing trees were to be seen in the district, nor had 

 we seen any during the previous three or four hundred 

 miles of our journey. At first, therefore, the occurrence 

 of the wood seemed unaccountable, but the theory soon 

 suggested itself that we must be close to the confluence 

 of some other stream flowing through a wooded country. 

 No other could account for its existence in this remote 

 region, and accordingly this theory was borne out by the 

 discovery, within a short distance, of a river as large as 

 the Telzoa, flowing in from the westward and with it 

 mingling its dark-colored waters. 



The abundance and condition of the drift-wood, which 

 was not badly battered, would indicate that upon the 



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