BACK TO GREAT SLAVE LAKE 291 



return, and a salute that sounded like a broadside quickly 

 responded. 



As we approached the little settlement, the men, wom- 

 en, and children poured out of the three lodges, the men 

 firing their guns as rapidly as they could load, and the 

 women and children shouting. It was quite a royal re- 

 ception. The men and women fell on one another's 

 necks, and everybody shook everybody's hand, and then 

 formed a compact circle about me while they handled 

 my long hair, shook my hands, and commented on my 

 face, blackened and seamed from exposure. 



There was no meat at Beniah's lodge except a few 

 pieces of moose (some Indian must have found the animal 

 asleep and shot it!), which Beniah and I ate with great 

 relish after our constant diet on intestines and fat. 



Naturally I was very anxious to get back to Resolu- 

 tion as quickly as possible, so Beniah and I started the 

 next day at two o'clock. Meanwhile I had braced my dogs 

 up wonderfully by generous feeding, and I felt sure they 

 would go through to Resolution. That night we reached 

 the lodge of Capot Blanc, where we had left the lake 

 several weeks before. The next day we made a fire for 

 tea at the very meat cache where I had slept on my sec- 

 ond night out from Resolution, and where I had taken my 

 first lessons in Dog-Rib. I sat that noon on a rock and 

 remembered how about two months before on that same 

 spot I had set up little sticks to represent lodges, and 

 used my best efforts in the sign language in an unreward- 

 ed endeavor to learn how much farther we were going 

 that night. 



Then the Barren Ground trip was all before me ; now it 

 was of the past and there was indescribably deep con- 

 tentment in the retrospect. Two days more, with the 

 dogs going much better than I expected they would 



