IOA. 



ON SNOW-SHOES TO THE BARREN GROUNDS 



trees were budding. The ptarmigan had doffed his winter 

 plumage for the more sombre one of summer. Birds were 

 chirping, frogs were croaking in the water-holes, and the 

 river was a great rushing stream, carrying the ice rapidly 



MY LUGGAGE *A ROUTE FROM FORT SMITH TO THE LANDING 

 One of the Transport Outfits and William the Interpreter, a Full-blooded Loucheaux Indian 



away or piling it into huge masses along the banks. Spring 

 was in evidence on every side. And it was all so very 

 strange and pleasing so hard to realize that such an 

 utter transformation had been enacted in my absence. 



I got off my horse and stretched out on the high river- 

 bank and smoked my pipe in the contentment given by 

 the satisfaction of knowing my Barren Grounds trip was 

 completed, and that I had accomplished what I had been 

 told I could not. 



At about five o'clock I rode into the landing to find 

 the dugout a heavy one, thirty feet long by two feet 

 eight inches wide amidships, but of excellent shape for up- 

 current work against the banging of ice and for " track- 



