462 Notes on Sport and Travel \\\ 



better for you that you were somewhere else. The 

 wind, my dear sir, the wind ! In cold countries 

 trees are as good, or better, than flannel waistcoats 

 to a man. Think of the ' nother ' of treeless 

 Nebraska, where the very air and light seem to freeze 

 and thicken ! Were it not for these sombre pines 

 how should we be able to do what we hope to do 

 before turning-in time, — get a mess of trout from 

 under the ice of the hard frozen lake ? And how 

 hard frozen no one can know till he has had to pass 

 over its wind-swept surface, uncushioned by an inch 

 of snow, in snow-shoes. It is like walking out of a 

 softly-carpeted ball-room suddenly on to a mixture 

 of gravel and broken bottles in your thinnest pumps. 

 How sheltered and calm our little camp ! Cold ? 

 Nobody feels cold. Dig a trench in the snow, two 

 or three feet deep, with your snow-shoes ; pave 

 it well with the aromatic shoots of the Canada 

 balsam. If you have brought along a bit of canvas, 

 rig it over ; if not, a few branches will do. Leave 

 your Indians to make fire and be ready to fry some 

 pork, and possibly a grouse if you have been lucky, 

 and be off to the lake. That is, if it does not blow, 

 my friend ! If it does, be contented with your pork, 

 cooked or raw (and hard frozen good salt pork raw, 

 with a cracker, is no bad thing to go to your blanket 

 with). If calm, take your wand. You had better 

 bring one along with you, as willows are scant up 

 here, and either chop a hole for yourself or reopen 

 one which some wandering white man has been 



