ARCTIC TEMPERATURES AND EXPLORATION. 655 



better it burns that is our experience. But by no means can you 

 make a fire of it burn more than half an hour without replenish- 

 ing. In consequence of this, no attempt was made to keep fires 

 burning at night. An hour after we were in bed the temperature 

 inside the tent was the same as that outside. At no time was the 

 temperature inside the tent raised high enough to thaw out the 

 ground, which would only have given rise to wet feet without 

 adding to our comfort. 



A regular record of temperature was kept during the winter. 

 Our thermometer was a standard spirit one graduated to 62 F., 

 and had been tested at the Toronto Observatory. The record is 

 on file in the Dominion Crown Lands Office. From the 1st of 

 November the temperature fell in a series of remarkably regular 

 jumps that is, there would be three days of cold, then a few 

 days of slightly higher temperature, then another three days of 

 cold, and so on, each drop being colder than the last. This went on 

 with unbroken regularity until the third week in January, when 

 it began to rise again in the same way and with equal steadiness. 



On Christmas day the weather was beautiful, still and cloud- 

 less, and the thermometer stood just at zero. I spent the day in 

 making a pair of snowshoe frames, out of white birch, which 

 was plentiful round the camp, my tools being an axe and an 

 Indian crooked knife, which is nothing but a one-handed draw 

 knife, shaped much like a farrier's knife. I worked all day with 

 the door of the tent wide open, in my shirt sleeves, and bare- 

 handed ; and from 9 A. M. to 3 P. M. there was no fire in the stove. 

 I slipped on my coat at noon when I was eating my dinner, but 

 took it off again immediately after. The men spent most of the 

 day lounging about the camp in their shirt sleeves, smoking and 

 skylarking. 



The second week in January we received word that Mrs. 

 Abrey was in Battleford waiting to join us in camp. She had 

 come from Toronto and had traveled across the open country in 

 the mail sleigh from Qu'appelle to Battleford via Duck Lake and 

 Carleton. Mr. Abrey immediately left with two horses and cari- 

 oles (i. e., toboggans with raised sides of rawhide), and one half- 

 breed. He carried no tent. The distance to Battleford from our 

 camp was over a hundred miles, through an open country, with 

 here and there clumps of small poplar and birch. 



I went on with the line, and the third day after Mr. Abrey left 

 us reached the shore of Frog Lake, a few years later the scene of 

 a horrible massacre. The next morning the cook came bustling 

 in with the breakfast, his shirt sleeves as usual rolled up above 

 his elbows. 



" The bottom's dropped out of the thermometer/' he said with 

 a laugh. 



