A Sportsman 89 



danger, and to be most cautiously approached, and 

 when travelled over should be on a line close to the 

 shore. I have often gone up the lake shores for a 

 matter of ten or twelve miles, impatient of reach- 

 ing camp, when finding the ice thinner than expected, 

 and unsafe for teams or even men on foot, had to 

 keep along the shore ice on snowshoes, drawing sleds 

 with long ropes behind. New ice is particularly 

 tenacious, and although it will crack and seam, will, 

 when no more than an inch and a half thick, readily 

 hold up a man of ordinary weight, and a man on snow- 

 shoes can safely creep along on an inch of new ice. 



The swelling and contraction of ice in changing 

 weather gives a good many curious features. One 

 day when several of us were proceeding along on 

 the ice near the lake shore for camp — there being no 

 roads through the woods, and the shores being so 

 beset with cedars, stumps, and drift that we could 

 hardly get along there with our sleds — w^e were startled 

 by a crack which sounded louder than a rifle-shot 

 near us, and looking back, we saw just behind an open 

 space in the ice, eight or ten feet wide, where we 

 had just passed, extending from the shore across the 

 lake to the other side, a mile and a half distant. Later 

 on we heard another report ahead, and when we 

 proceeded two or three miles farther, we found a 

 second opening across the lake, which, of course, we 

 had to go around. The day had come out warm and 

 sunny and caused the contraction. 



In cold weather the ice expands, and on a very cold 

 night when it is thick on the lake, you are regaled in the 

 still hours by the constant rumbling and cracking and 

 at times with sounds approaching the explosion of 



