316 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



Fires were soon lighted, and a few tents pitched here 

 and there. As one looked down from the high bank 

 upon the busy scene below, where all was cheerful 

 bustle, the hum of voices, the noise of the axe chop- 

 ping Avood, and now and then the crashing sound of a 

 falling tree, one realised how quickly the solitude of 

 the forest is transformed into life by the presence of 

 man, endowed as he is with so many wants. Th^ 

 climate was that of the south of Europe ; and as the 

 sun set beyond a horizon of water, one might have 

 imagined one's self in some Grecian island looking 

 out upon the Mediterranean, the beach covered with 

 the crews and boats of a corsair fleet. 



Reveille sounded next morning ere it was light ; 

 and after a hurried breakfast, we once more em- 

 barked, steering about S."W. for the mouth of the 

 Eed Eiver. Lake Winnipeg is 264 miles long by 

 about 35 miles in breadth, and has an area of 9000 

 square miles. It drains about 400,000 square miles 

 of country. Its average depth is not more than from 

 6 to 8 feet ; and those who have navigated it for many 

 years say it is filling up more and more every year. 

 Owing to this shallowness, a little wind soon raises a 

 very heavy sea, the waves being so high at times for 

 days together that no boats can venture on it. Many 

 of the detachments in rear were thus detained at Fort 

 Alexander and in the neighbourhood of Elk Island. 



As we approached the mouths of Eed Eiver, the 

 water became so shallow at places that many of our 



