226 HUNTING CAMPS. 



till dawn. As the night had been very still and cold, it 

 was no surprise to us in the morning to find the still water, 

 which now became more frequent, frozen to a depth of 

 some inches. The ice was too thick to break, so we were 

 forced to cache the canoe and pursue our journey on foot. 

 It had previously been arranged that a buck-board should 

 be in waiting at a spot where a permanent camp was pitched, 

 some thirty miles closer to our hunting-ground than the 

 nearest village. Between six and seven hours' walking 

 along open hillsides brought us to the tent, about which 

 we found a number of men, among them our driver, who, 

 it appeared, had met with an accident and damaged his 

 eye in an altercation with a compatriot. We ate a hasty 

 meal, after which the driver, who seemed to be a somewhat 

 surly individual, informed me that he had no intention 

 of taking the road, and it was close upon three o'clock 

 before I overcame his reluctance. 



Leaving my French-Canadians behind at the camp, Ed 

 and I set out in the buck-board, and as, with the exception 

 of the time we had spent by the fire during the night, we 

 had been continuously on our feet for twenty-eight hours, 

 we were extremely glad of the lift. Our comfort was, alas ! 

 of very short duration, for we had not made more than 

 four miles when one of the off-side wheels became jammed 

 among the rocks and broke to pieces, and had to be replaced 

 by a green sapling. While the repairs were being executed, 

 Ed and I spied four ruffed grouse, three of which we shot. 



When we set out again with the crippled buck-board we 

 found ourselves still twenty-one miles from the nearest 

 house, to be reached in the dark over an exceedingly rough 

 forest -road, continually cut by water-courses, over which 

 pine-log bridges had been thrown some fifteen years previ- 

 ously, but most of these had been destroyed by time and 

 weather to the extent of becoming an obstruction rather 

 than a help. Our food, too, had given out, and had it not 



