EXPEDITION TO THE LAURENTIAN HILLS. 195 



verse fish-pole ; and then you spread the Wankets on the raf- 

 ters, and fasten tlieui by piiming them to the transverse pole 

 and to each other at the middle edo;es. 



" N. B. — Beware of exposing cotton fixings of any kind to 

 the contingencies of a great open fire, with the winds busy 

 and the sparks flying." 



The third day of the voyage, about noon, we reached the 

 open waters of Salmon Lake, and never was a sight more 

 welcome to tired travellers. 



SALMON LAKE 



Is a beautiful sheet of water, six or eight miles lono- and 

 from one to two miles wide. So far as we explored, we found 

 it surrounded by an unbroken wilderness, excepting two small 

 clearings formerly made by trappers and two deserted shan- 

 ties. Two miles from where we located, there was a lumber 

 shanty and a company engaged in the lumber business. 



HOW WE LIVED AT SALMON LAKE. 



This is told in a letter written by one of the party, as 



follows : — 



"At Bob Holland's old Shanty, ) 

 " Salmon Lake, C. W., October 21, 1865. ( 



" Dear Friends, — Human society is, after all, but a great 

 human body. The head and trunk and vital organs may be 

 repi'esented by the civilized and enlightened portions of man- 

 kind, — those portions where intercommunication is the most 

 close and continuous, where the moving forces are generated, 

 and the highest workings of thought and feeling are developed 

 and educated. But this great human body stretches its hands 

 and feet out into the wilderness, where only the Indian, the 

 pioneer, the trapper, and the lumberman are to be found ; and 

 where hardihood, and battle with the elements, the forests, and 

 the animals are tiie required and the prominent facts of life. 

 Here the circulating fluids move slowly, the lines of communi- 

 cation are far between, and the cuticle is thick and tough. The 

 pulsations of the great heart are felt, but they are minute and 

 feeble. The railroad has afar off given place to the stage- 



