460 Notes on Sport and Travel vn 



there was ' somewhere around ' (how astonishing it is 

 what an infinity of tracks a very small number of 

 beasts will make where they are where they like to 

 be !), that we lingered till one night came a stern and 

 nipping frost, and we had to ' git.' And so we got. 

 We managed two or three lakes well enough where 

 there was a decent current ; but at last we arrived at 

 a larger one where there was none, and the ice fast. 

 By dint of hard work we broke our way to the shore, 

 hauled up our birch-barks, and took to the ice with 

 as much plunder as we could carry. 



Ice is one of the most delightful of natural pro- 

 ducts when you have a pair of skates on, and an 

 admiring circle of spectators to excite you into 

 developing your most exquisite ' vines ' ; but when 

 you have to walk on thin ice in battered moose-hide 

 moccasins, laden, as in my case, with three heavy 

 rifles and a banjo (not my own, even), you might 

 prefer something softer. I did get something softer, 

 for I went in, rifles, banjo, and all. Still, we all got 

 out again somehow, but the banjo was voiceless for 

 ever. Having to walk several miles to settlements 

 in a stinging Nova Scotia frost is not the pleasantest 

 thing in the world. My only consolation was that 

 I, in this so-called nineteenth century, was able to 

 imagine what the sensations of a dismounted knight 

 in a particularly tight suit of armour must have been 

 in the — what shall we say ? — early sixteenth. When 

 we reached ' settlements ' I saw a man ' supping 

 sowens,' which I had read of in Scottish poetry. It 



