156 BETWEEN THE MISSION AND OLD FORT. 



we were yet quite early in the season, we walked over a freshly 

 frozen yet perfectly solid surface in the direction in which we were 

 going. 



We had hardly rounded the turn before one of the fellows, 

 whose eyes had in this case been sharpened by expectancy, espied 

 the fresh tracts of the ptarmigan in the snow of the left bank of 

 the river ; but of course the birds had long since gone. Un- 

 doubtedly they were not far off, though we had no time to hunt 

 them up. We continued our walk, therefore, enjoying the clear, 

 cool, and healthy air while drinking in the unusual sights, at least 

 to me, of hummocks and hillocks rising in the distance, one above 

 another, and stretching one beyond another, with varying gorges, 

 and again solid walls of granite, into the distance beyond. After 

 travelling an hour with such views constantly presented to us on 

 either hand, we passed a little ridge of ground and came to another 

 so-called lac sale, a bend in the river almost converted into a lake 

 by the stricture at its mouth. Passing over the frozen surface of 

 the lake we came to another ridge which, passed, brought us again 

 to water — this time a pond. A succession of two or three of 

 these ponds crossed by low, narrow ridges of rising ground brought 

 us to the head of the eastern arm of Old Fort Bay, which we 

 found barely frozen, and for the most part a terrible mixture of 

 broken ice, rocks, and water. We had great difficulty in getting 

 from the ice to the shore, as the cracks were large, and very wide ; 

 but we succeeded in doing so at last, when we found ourselves at 

 the foot of a large, heavy ridge of hills which extended for the 

 remainder of the distance between us and our destination, varying 

 from four to five hundred feet in height, and by no means easy to 

 ascend. Had it been high tide our way would have certainly led 

 over these hills, as their perpendicular faces towards the water 

 would have rendered walking in that direction entirely out of the 

 question ; while the way would have been picked out only with the 

 greatest of care in the dusk of evening, in which we would walk 

 among spruce thickets, over stones, and down steep declivities, 

 quite dangerous indeed in the daytime. 



