152 A TRAMP, 



CHAPTER X. 



Trip up the River to the Mission — Ice pictures — Bad walking — On the 

 Old Fort — New scenes and bad walking — Pleasant Sunday — The 

 return — Journal — A komatik ride — Christmas gathering — Wood cut- 

 ting — Work for the evenings — Making sealskin boots, mittens, and 

 other needful and fancy work. 



Saturday the 4th. With one of the men I started to-day on a 

 tramp up the river to the Mission station, about seven miles dis- 

 tant. It seemed good to be on the move once again, although we 

 got much more of it than we had expected before the day was 

 ended. The river was frozen but a part of the distance, so we 

 were obhged to go by boat to the land at its mouth. It did not 

 take long, however, to get the boat ready, and we were soon 

 on our way. At first we rowed through the soft masses of ice that 

 coated the water everywhere around the north side of the island, 

 but finding this passage closed with ice too thick for our boat to 

 break, we retraced our way, and, fortunately, found the passage on 

 the other side clear all the distance to the land on the opposite 

 side of the bay. The ice that seriously impedes passage at this 

 season of the year is called here slob. It is a thick, consistent 

 mass of frozen salt-water that Hes in huge patches all over the sur- 

 face of the water from land to land. While in this soft condition 

 it is easily rowed through \ but the danger is, that, as the cold 

 strengthens at any time of the day or night, it is liable to congeal 

 suddenly, even at a few moments' warning, when it grows harder 

 and thicker every hour. If a boat is within it, the congealed 

 mass has at times been known to surround it so as to prevent es- 

 cape. The mass is thus too hard to allow the men to rescue their 



