U4 ON SNOW-SHOES TO THE BARREN GROUNDS 



letter to Gaudet, the Hudson's Bay Company officer in 

 charge, asking him to send after Beniah, who would very 

 likely be hunting in the woods six or eight days' journey 

 from Slave Lake. Meanwhile he was organizing a wood- 

 bison hunt with Henry Toke Munn, an Englishman, who 

 had been in the country a year, and made a summer and 

 an autumn trip into the Barrens, with the hard luck of 

 bringing out only a musk-cow head, after a most trying 

 experience, and they would be glad to have rne join them. 

 This accorded with my plans nicely, for I had intended 

 making a bison-hunt, and it could now be accomplished 

 without loss of time an important consideration while 

 Beniah was being found and brought to Resolution. 

 Consequently an " express " was despatched to Resolu- 

 tion, and pending the return of Munn, who was in the 

 woods trapping, and would be back the following day, I 

 rested while " Me " told me of the country and its people 

 and its life, which he has learned so well in his twenty 

 years' residence. 



