N the seventh of July, 

 1893, I l an ded at 

 Fort Rae, an isolated 

 and insignificant sta- 

 tion kept by a chief 

 trader of the Hud- 

 son's Bay Company. 

 Rae lies sixty miles 

 north of the main 

 body of the Great Slave Lake, and about 

 nine hundred miles north of the last rail- 

 way point. The main object of my jour- 

 ney to the Far North was to obtain 

 musk-ox for museum specimens. I had 

 chosen Rae as my headquarters ; as it is 

 the nearest post to the Barren Ground, 

 which occupies the northeastern portion 

 of the continent beyond a line drawn 

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