194 FROM OLD FORT BAY TO THE RIVER. 



well say quite, impossible to guide them. They will start off in any 

 direction of their own accord, perhaps towards the very opposite 

 side of the bay, and it is not until the first rush is over, and they 

 have somewhat abated their eagerness, that the driver's guiding 

 words are heeded at all. At last the head dog minds the voice 

 and gradually turns into the right track, when the others follow 

 a little behind, and the trip is really begun. It was thus with us, 

 when at five minutes past eight o'clock we started off in the face 

 of a good cool breeze from the north, in a clear air, with a bright 

 sun shining on us from an almost perfectly cloudless sky, for our 

 trip to the eastward. 



The road from Old Fort Bay to the river, the same which I had 

 gone over in komatik and on foot so many times, was not changed 

 much this morning ; of course one would hardly expect it to change, 

 except by accumulation or disappearance of snow and the thawing 

 and freezing anew of the ice of the bay. The same level platform 

 of thick ice (broken only on the sides of the bay near the foot of 

 the hills, while its surface by a slight recent thaw was covered with 

 innumerable sharp needles of ice pointing upward occasioned by 

 a smart frost in the midst of the thaw, rendering the going anything 

 but good for the dogs' feet) spread before us for about a mile and a 

 half to the first portage, or path over the low hills, to the nearest 

 pond over which one is obliged to travel. As we rode through this 

 long, narrow cleft of the hills, I could not but think of the mighty 

 force that had here been at work for centuries to render the place 

 what it is ; as also of the process by which indentations were made 

 that left a succession of peaks separated by partial valleys on either 

 side, from the mouth of the bay to the bottom, and extending for- 

 ward and inward in successive chains far into the interior ; and of 

 the gorges and individual shape of each crest, bending gently 

 down to the water from the upper end of the bay, while ending 

 generally in rather abrupt, low, and yet often nearly perpendicular 

 cliffs or cliff-like rocks on each side. Then the probable agency 

 in polishing the rocks, often quite smooth, and in rounding off the 



