72 HUNTING CAMPS. 



the little lake, sometimes fishing in the shallow stream 

 which fed it, sometimes winging their way over it and out 

 into the blue distance towards the sea. 



But here Indians, poetical or otherwise, rarely come, 

 their hunting-ground being hundreds of miles away in the 

 neighbourhood of the George River. Sometimes in birch- 

 bark canoes they travel down out of the interior to do 

 their yearly trade at the Hudson's Bay posts of Davis 

 Inlet and North- West River. Then, having bartered their 

 furs, there follows a few days* lounging about the store. 

 The Mountaineers, or Montagnais, are no longer always 

 the picturesque figures they once were. Instead of the 

 caribou skin coats figured and painted with strange de- 

 vices, some now wear a summer garb of felt hat, trade 

 shirt, and blue jean jumpers. All that remains of the 

 ancient dress are the deerskin moccasins worked by their 

 women in their winter camps. Powder and ball, tea and 

 tobacco, a little bright-coloured finery for the women 

 (whom they never bring down to the east coast), form 

 their currency, and presently one morning, after a cere- 

 monious farewell, the birch-bark canoes are loaded and 

 their owners paddle away into the wilderness and vanish 

 for another year. They are accompanied upon their 

 journey by their hunting dogs, small and quick-footed 

 creatures quite unlike the husky in appearance. 



Day after day from all the high hills I used to search 

 for the smoke of Indian fires, as for some reason that year 

 neither the Montagnais nor the Nascaupees came in any 

 numbers to the posts. During this time it was bright, 

 windy weather ; the wind never dropped, but blew so 

 fiercely that it made the eyes ache. The same wind, had 

 we known it, was preparing the way for a tragedy to the 

 south of us. It was this pitiless wind which delayed the 

 Hubbard expedition and finally caused them to turn and 

 to attempt to struggle back through the long valley of 





