2 88 ON SNOW-SHOES TO THE BARREN GROUNDS 



pression only in "tea oolc" (no tea). We stopped there 

 to brew Beniah a generous kettle of tea, and then went 

 on, travelling down a chain of lakes all that day, and I 

 was positively delirious with joy at being able to look on 

 any side and see living green trees. The weather in the 

 woods was so much warmer than that to which we had 

 become inured that I discarded my heavy capote in trav- 

 elling during the day, and on the second night cut the 

 blanket off my sleeping-robe. It was such a comfort to 

 sit up at night around the fire, instead of being obliged 

 to turn in without any fire, and shiver instead of sleep ! 



For four days we journeyed over the roughest country 

 I had yet seen. As I look back on it now I do not see 

 how we ever got the sledges and the dogs across it. We 

 travelled on a chain of lakes for the first day, but on the 

 second went across the hills, and thereafter, until we reached 

 Slave Lake, there was no rest for dogs or men. Why 

 we did not break our sledges in pieces I do not know ; as 

 it was, most of the heads were broken, and nothing re- 

 mained of the runners. We took the sledges over places 

 where there was a sheer drop of from six to ten feet, and 

 the going all the time was over rocks standing on end, 

 over dead timber, and occasionally over swamps. 



We were all using pushing-poles to help the dogs, and 

 even so they were scarcely able to crawl. There was more 

 pushing than pulling of those sledges from the time we 

 reached timber. The three musk-ox heads on my sledge 

 made a heavy load, and I began to fear I should get 

 neither heads nor dogs back to Slave Lake. We were 

 all, men and dogs, completely worn, and every time we 

 "spelled" threw ourselves flat. 



The sun had grown very warm, and the tops of the 

 rocks were pretty generally bare. Occasionally we saw lit- 

 tle streams of trickling water, and then ensued a scramble 



