138 A JOURNEY TO THE 



1771. told me that Keelshies had promised to ioin us in a few days, 



May. jj,. 1,- ^ . , , . •*, , ^ 



and dehver the thmgs to me with his own hand. 



24th. The twenty-fourth proved bad and rainy weather, so that 

 we only walked about seven miles, when finding a few blasted 

 stumps of trees, we pitched our tents. It was well we did so, 

 for toward night we had excessively bad weather, with loud 

 thunder, strong lightning, and heavy rain, attended with a 

 very hard gale of wind from the South West ; toward the 

 next morning, however, the wind veered round to the North 

 West, and the weather became intensely cold and frosty. 

 We walked that day about eight miles to the Northward, 

 when we were obliged to put up, being almost benumbed with 

 cold. There we found a few dry stumps, as we had done the 

 day before, which served us for fewel.* 



26th. [102] The weather on the twenty-sixth was so bad, with 



places about two hundred feet above the lake, and for the most part they pre- 

 sent a bare, desolate appearance, especially on the easterly shore where few 

 trees of any kind can be seen. 



" Such small groves as were found are shown on the map, but on the westerly 

 side, about ten miles from the south end, the shore is quite well timbered with 

 small spruce, and they continue northerly, although thinly scattered, for a 

 distance of twenty miles, eight miles farther north than the last grove on the 

 east shore. There the woods cease entirely." (Report on an Exploratory 

 Survey between Great Slave Lake and Hudson Bay. By J. W. Tyrrell. Ann. 

 Report, Dept. of the Interior, Ottawa, 1901. App. 26, Part III., pp. 17-18.)] 



* I have observed, during my several journies in those parts, that all the 

 way to the North of Seal River the edge of the wood is faced with old withered 

 stumps, and trees which have been blown down by the wind. They are mostly 

 of the sort which is called here Juniper, but were seldom of any considerable 

 size. Those blasted trees are found in some parts to extend to the distance of 

 twenty miles from the living woods, and detached patches of them are much 

 farther off; which is a proof that the cold has been increasing in those parts 

 for some ages. Indeed, some of the older Northern Indians have assured me, 

 that they have heard their fathers and grandfathers say, they remembered the 

 greatest part of those places where the trees are now blasted and dead, in a 

 flourishing state ; and that they were remarkable for abounding with deer. It 

 is a well-known fact, that many deer are fond of frequenting those plains where 

 the juniper trees abound near barren grounds, particularly in fine weather 

 during the Winter ; but in heavy gales of wind they either take shelter in the 

 thick woods, or go out on the open plains. The Indians, who never want a 

 reason for any thing, say, that the deer quit the thin straggling woods during 



