BACK TO GREAT SLAVE LAKE 289 



for a drink. And when we rested we sought the bare rocks 

 and sat on them, or hunted the hollows to drink deeply of 

 the melted snow-water. One day, I remember, as I slaved 

 with my shoulder against the pushing-pole I heard a bird 

 note, and it seemed so strange and so sweet I stopped, 

 hoping I might hear it again. Later, as we neared Slave 

 Lake, the little snowbirds flitted about, to my great de- 

 light, for it was the first of bird life I had seen since leaving 

 the pert whisky-jack, otherwise known as "camp robber" 

 or moosebird, at Lac la Biche. 



On the fifth day, after reaching the timber's edge, at 

 about three o'clock in the afternoon, from a huge bowlder 

 we sighted Great Slave Lake. I could not possibly have 

 felt a deeper, keener joy if, as I stood on top that big rock, 

 New York instead of Slave Lake had been revealed to 

 me. No one can understand what it means to return to 

 familiar ground after an absence in such barrenness as the 

 Barren Grounds. 



Hugging the shore of a bay, which was open in the cen- 

 tre, we came out on Great Slave Lake at five o'clock, and 

 the first human being we saw was an ancient Indian dame, 

 moaning over a sledge that held the emaciated remains of 

 her dead baby. A little farther on we came upon a camp 

 of Indian men and women. Some of the women were 

 the wives of the musk-ox hunters who had but a day or 

 so before started on their spring hunt, and the men were 

 largely those that are not sufficiently courageous nor 

 skilled to venture into the Barren Grounds for its boreal 

 rover. 



We camped that night close to the Indians, and I went 

 out on a skirmish to get something for my dogs to eat. I 

 still had four or five days' travel to Resolution, and I was 

 much afraid my dogs would not last, and I wished very 

 much to take them back to Gaudet, who had been so 

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