THE FREEZE-UP 118 



and all the following day a snowstorm raged. . . . 

 Winter had come. 



Thereafter for many days land and water were 

 binding in iron ice-grip. Night after night the 

 unspeakable silence of the great snowland was 

 broken by the awesome, re-echoing sound of 

 rending ice as frozen surfaces strained and con- 

 tracted relentlessly, and split from end to end 

 in the all-powerful grip of zero weather. Re- 

 peatedly, nightly, the eerie sound broke on the 

 near shores to disturb a lone man's slumbers, 

 and passed, with rise and fall of key, boom boom 

 booming, away into the level distance of the 

 outer lake, to die in desolate cryings. 



By the end of October the land was in the grasp 

 of deep winter, which would rule for five to six 

 months unremittingly. 



But winter had been late in coming, for the 

 Indians at Fort Du Brochet say this was the 

 most open Fall they had experienced in the past 

 eight years. Be that as it may and I had come 

 to be dubious of all Indian records of time 

 winter had come, and with it the Caribou. 



On November 4, late in the evening, an excited 

 Indian brought news that Caribou had been seen. 

 They had been encountered, north of Fort Lu 

 Brochet, coming from the east, and crossing 

 the Cochrane River. He told me, " Plenty deer ; 

 to-morrow we kill, and have plenty meat." 

 " Would I go ? " he asked, to my astonishment, 

 while he drank strong tea with me and smoked a 

 pipe. 



Now in my experience the Indians (I mean the 



