54 THE DRAMA OF THE FORESTS 



incident, however, reminds me of what once happened to an 

 Indian woman and her eight-year-old daughter when they were 

 gathering moss about a mile from their camp on the shore of 

 Great Slave Lake. They were working in a muskeg, and the 

 mother, observing a clump of gnarled spruces a little way off, 

 sent her daughter there to see if there were any berries. In- 

 stead of fruit the child found a nice round hole that led into a 

 cavern beneath the roots of the trees that stood upon the little 

 knoll; and she called to her mother to come and see it. On 

 kneeling down and peering within, the mother discovered a 

 bear inside, and instantly turning about, hauled up her skirt 

 and sat down in such a way that her figure completely blocked 

 the hole and shut out all light. Then she despatched her child 

 on the run for camp, to tell Father to come immediately with 

 his gun and shoot the bear. 



To one who is not versed in woodcraft, such an act displays 

 remarkable bravery, but to an Indian woman it meant no such 

 thing, it was merely the outcome of her knowledge of bears, for 

 she well knew that as long as all light was blocked from the 

 hole the bear would lie still. Rut perhaps you wonder why she 

 pulled up her skirt. To prevent it from being soiled or torn? 

 No, that was not the reason. Again it was her knowledge of 

 bears that prompted her, for she knew that if by any strange 

 chance the bear did move about in the dark, and if he did 

 happen to touch her bare figure — for Indian ladies never wear 

 lingerie — the bear would have been so mystified on encountering 

 a living thing in the dark that he would make never another 

 move until light solved the mystery. However, Father came 

 with a rush, and shot the bear, and the brute was a big one, too. 



During the rest of the afternoon we found the current quite 

 slack and therefore, making better headway, we gained Caribou 

 Lake about an hour before sundown; and on finding a fair wind 

 beneath a clear sky that promised moonlight, it was decided 

 to sail as far down the lake as the breeze would favour us, and 



