A HUNTER'S CAMP-FIRES 



shore. For several hours white men and Eskimos, weighted 

 down by sleds and heavy loads of baggage, toiled up the bed 

 of a steep canon, the dogs carefully picking their way over the 

 broken rocks in our rear. Then, passing through a cleft in the 

 mountains, we travelled for hours through wide, stony valleys, 

 dotted here and there with frozen lakes. In one of these valleys 

 the straggling procession approached to within two hundred 

 yards of a cow caribou, accompanied by a bull, which carried a 

 fine set of antlers now freed from the velvet. These animals 

 circled around in front of our party for some time before they 

 trotted out of sight over a snow-covered ridge ahead. During 

 this march we saw several small bands of three or four of these 

 caribou in the distance, but were unable to secure meat, as 

 nobody had cared to burden himself with a rifle. We also 

 occasionally flushed flocks of the Greenland ptarmigan {La- 

 gopus rupestus reinhardti), which fluttered up before us to 

 light on near-by rocks, spreading their tails and cackling with 

 excitement and alarm. 



Later on during this march, we reached the borders of a 

 long, narrow, frozen lake which extended as far as the eye could 

 reach. The surface of this lake was covered thickly with 

 millions of upright ice crystals as thick as blades of grass, as 

 sharp as needles, and of the size of ordinary nails. Our thick 

 sealskin boots crunched these, but our dogs, after scrambling 

 over the ice for several yards, simply flattened themselves out 

 and howled with the pain resulting from lacerated, bleeding 

 feet. The Eskimos immediately produced small sealskin boots 

 from their kits and lashed them on the feet of the dogs, enabling 

 them to cross the ice without further injury. However, there 

 was one team of these animals not so equipped, and it was 

 necessary for the drivers to carry them on their shoulders to 

 the rocks beyond. When we reached the shores of the next 

 lake of this description, several miles beyond, it happened that 

 another member of the party and myself had fallen somewhat 



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