30 HUNTERS OF THE GREAT NORTH 



Superior, Michigan, Huron, Great Bear, Great Slave, 

 Erie, and Ontario. 



Although we had no adventures strictly on our own 

 account, we nearly had some because a small steamer be- 

 longing to the Hudson's Bay Company's chief trading 

 rival, Hislop and Nagle, had run on a sandbar. Far out 

 in the lake we met a launch which told us the news. To 

 help this ship in distress we turned in the direction of a 

 locality known to be infested with sandbars. All of us 

 were keenly on the lookout for the stranded steamer. 

 Presently we saw her, changed our course slightly and 

 steamed directly towards her, until all of a sudden we 

 realized that what we had taken for a steamer was only 

 a small log lying on a bar. 



It was my first experience with an atmospheric condi- 

 tion which is common in the North although not peculiar 

 to it. There is a certain lucidity and shimmer in the air 

 which makes it especially difficult to judge distance. If 

 you are looking for a ship far away and see a small piece 

 of driftwood near you, the bit of stick is likely to be 

 mistaken for a ship. On certain occasions since then I 

 have mistaken for a grizzly bear a spermophile (an ani- 

 mal something like a prairie dog or a hedgehog). I have 

 known of other travelers who have mistaken a white fox, 

 not much bigger than a cat, for a polar bear. Nordcn- 

 skjold tells of seeing a dark mountain with glacier-filled 

 valleys on either side and of steering his boat towards it 

 until fortunately it dived as he was just about to collide 

 with it, for it had been a walrus and the two glaciers 

 had been the tusks. 



We nearly ran aground on the sandbar towards which 

 we had been led by the piece of wood we took for a 

 steamer. We did run aground several times later and 



,fc 



