65 



It was eleven years, Broomfield said, since he had killed 

 a deer in the summer or early fall, and it was upon 

 this rather hopeless information that Jack Wells and I 

 rowed down the bay until we came to the mouth of 

 Jack Lane's Brook to give it its full name. Here, 

 seeing some ducks and waders, we did a little shooting 

 for the pot before starting in earnest. 



A few hours later we were engaged in hauling our 

 craft up a small rapid, when we perceived a figure 

 approaching us along the north bank. It was that of a 

 very old half-breed. A white forked beard swept his 

 breast, and as we came nearer we saw that he was clad 

 from head to foot in sealskins. His name was Old Man 

 Lane, though whether it was to him or to his father 

 that the locality owed its title we did not learn. He 

 told us that he had been setting a bear-trap a mile or 

 so above, and on our return when we mentioned our 

 meeting with him we heard that, having taken a bear 

 in a trap earlier in the season, the old man, finding 

 himself without a gun, had gone steadily to work and 

 stoned the bear to death. But as we saw him crooked 

 with rheumatism he seemed to have scarcely vitality to 

 stagger over the rough ground. 



A couple of evenings later, having spent the inter- 

 vening time in the ordinary routine of travel and 

 reconnoitring, Jack Wells and I made our camp in a 

 disused lodge which must have been originally built by 

 Eskimo hunters. We had now gained a fair idea of the 

 nature of the country. Endless barrens, white, yellow, 

 and red with reindeer moss, and dotted with Arctic 

 berries, rolled away until they merged in a dim blue 

 tumult of mountains which shut in the horizon ; here 

 and there in the hollows of the hills stood little clumps 



H.C. F 



