MAKING READY FOR THE BARREN GROUNDS 157 



to make the trip. There were dogs and an interpreter and 

 a driver to engage, moccasins and duffel and mittens and 

 strouds to make, and a heavy caribou-fur capote and win- 

 ter-caribou robe for sleeping to secure. Nobody appeared 

 to enter upon the task with much zest, and every one 

 shook his head and warned me against the trip. All 

 agreed that it was an impossible undertaking, and Gaudet 

 used his utmost persuasion to induce me to delay my de- 

 parture until the usual time of the musk-ox hunt. 



The Indians time their hunting trips to the Barren 

 Grounds (they never go there except after musk-ox) with 

 the movement of the caribou i. c., the early summer, 

 about the last of April or first part of May, when the cows 

 begin their migration from the woods to the Arctic Ocean, 

 and in the early autumn, September and October. 



Caribou are absolutely necessary to the penetration of 

 the Barren Grounds, because of the impossibility of either 

 obtaining a sufficient supply of provisions to last out the 

 trip, or carrying them if such were to be had. This I find 

 to be the most difficult thing for my hunting friends to 

 comprehend. They have asked me if an adequate supply 

 could not be carried in from the railroad to Resolution. 

 Possibly so, but it would have to be done a year in ad- 

 vance, and then by the Hudson's Bay Company steamer 

 and flatboats. 



Assuming that such a supply had been laid in at Reso- 

 lution, I cannot see, because of the scarcity of dog trains, 

 that the hunter would be much better off than before, un- 

 less of course time was no object, and he was prepared to 

 make one preliminary journey into the Barrens to cache 

 the provisions at different points en route, and willing to 

 remain in the country a year or two. Pike made one hunt 

 in the best and easiest way by making a previous trip into 

 the Barrens solely for the purpose of killing and caching 



