242 
NATURE 
[ Fan. 11, 1883 
the animal with snow shoes.” In June, one was cap- 
tured, and the Doctor named the species Lepus bairdii. 
The animal seemed limited to that small Alpine territory. 
But one specimen was secured, and no more was heard 
of this hare until 1872, when Dr. Hayden and party were 
in that region in the months of August and September. 
At this time five specimens of Baird’s hare were obtained 
by Mr. C. Hart Merriam, the naturalist to the Hayden 
Survey. Of these four were adult males, and all had 
large teats and udders full of milk. The hair round the 
nipples was wet, and stuck to them, showing that they 
had just been suckling their young. To make all certain, 
resort was had to dissection, when the sex was demon- 
strated. Not only did Mr. Merriam make dissection, 
but also Dr. Josiah Curtis, a naturalist of the United 
States Geological Survey, with the same result. In the 
face of such testimony disbelief would seem discourtesy.”’ 
NOTES FROM THE LETTERS OF CAP1AIN 
DAWSON, R.A. IN COMMAND OF THE 
BRITISH CIRCUMPOLAR EXPEDITION‘ 
Fuly 30, Fort Chipewyan, on Lake Athabasca 
ates practically incessant travel since leaving Eng- 
land, at last I find myself condemned to a week’s 
rest, as there are no boats going to Port Rae until the 
Mackenzie River boats return. But here we are in the 
lap of luxury ; we get bread, butter, and milk, which we 
have not tasted for ages, to say nothing of the novel 
experience of sleeping under a roof and on a bed. I 
have had a most delightful journey, but it all seems like 
a dream to look back to: my memory is a kaleidoscope of 
pine trees, rapids, lakes, and golden sunrises and sunsets. 
Down stream we travel day and night. At sunset the 
boats are lashed together, and then the crew go to sleep. 
It is very nice drifting down in the silence amongst the 
pines, but-bed-time comes at last. I then roll myself in a 
blanket, lie down, and look at the stars till I fall asleep. 
At sunrise I wake to find the crew on the shore, boiling 
their kettle, and a cup of tea is very refreshing. My 
blanket and my hair, too, I find dripping wet with dew 
when I wake. 
At noon or so we land, and cook more tea, and make 
breakfast usually off pemmican, which is composed of 
buffalo flesh dried and pounded, and put in a leather bag 
with grease poured over it. It is not nice, but it supports 
life. When we have such a luxury as flour, it is baked 
into cakes in a frying-pan. We get into the boat again, 
and eat our breakfast whiist drifting down stream. Bye- 
and-bye the current becomes more rapid, and at last we 
see the river disappearing in a cloud ofspray. Here isa 
Portage, so the boats pull to shore and the cargo is 
landed. Thecrew then return. I take my place in the 
boat, and after each man has laid aside his pipe, settled 
himself in his seat, and got a good grip of his oar, we 
shove off and dash into the rapid as fast as twelve oars 
can take us, with shouts of “ Hurrah! boys!” (the only 
English words the Indians know) and “ekwa,” a Cree 
word, meaning “Come on.” The guide or steersman stands 
on a seat in the stern steering the boat with a long oar— 
a picturesque figure, with his long black hair waving 
behind him. In a moment we are among the rapids, 
and seem to sink into a mass of foam, from which we 
emerge sideways, and are carried towards a projecting 
rock. Wild exclamations in French from the guide! 
the bow oarsman seizes a pole, and sends the boat off, 
and then we spin down the tail of the rapids, not without 
one or two bumps that make the whole frame of the boat 
quiver. The whole distance, a mile or two, is done in 
two or three minutes, and it is not bad fun. After the 
boats have run the rapids it is dinner-time, and then the 
crew set to work to carry the cargo over the portage—a 
work of two or three hours. In some places the boats 
* Continued from p. 105. 
themselves have to be hauled across on rollers, which is 
pretty hard work. We continue our way down stream, 
stopping about 4 o’clock for tea, and at sunset reach another 
Portage. Here we camp, and in a very skort time the 
tents are pitched, a tree felled to make a camp-fire, and 
kettles singing thereon. Supper and bed-time make up 
the day. Such is a fair specimen of a day’s river travel- 
ling. With a fair wind we sail, especially on the lakes. 
The crews are Chipewyans ; their language is chiefly 
made up of clicks and gurglings in the throat, and differs 
altogether from Sioux, Cree, and the other languages 
spoken further south. 
A Roman Catholic priest here showed me a Chipewyan 
grammar and dictionary that they have composed. There 
are over sixty sounds in the language, so they have to 
invent additional letters. There is something Asiatic in 
the appearance of these Indians, with their small mous- 
tache and tufts of hair on their chin, quite unlike the 
Indian of the plain. They are Roman Catholic. 
After leaving Portage la Loche, on July 24, the first 
day’s journey took us down to the Terre Blanche falls ; 
here we had to haul the boats over a small hill, as the 
river is a succession of falls and rapids for about half a 
mile; a very pretty place, the river runs between lime- 
stone cliffs, crowned with pine trees, and all stained 
bright orange colour with lichen. 
On the 28th we reached the Athabasca, a splendid 
river, usually half a mile in width, sometimes more. Its 
course is pretty straight to the north, so we often had a 
view of some fifteen miles or so down the valley. 
On the 29th, having a fair wind, we made a hundred 
miles. We met two lots of Indians ; from the first we got 
some moose, the first fresh meat we had tasted for a long 
time, and from the others we got some raspberries and 
asketoon berries, which were very refreshing. 
As we drifted down the river, the pines began to give 
place to poplar, the poplar to willow, and the willow to 
reeds, till at last we saw Lake Athabasca before us, a 
rocky coast to the north, and to the east water as far as 
the eye could reach, 
A fresh breez> took us across the lake in two hours, 
and we received a hospitable welcome at this place, 
together with all sorts of luxuries that had become quite 
strange to us. 
This is quite a large place ; there are about a dozen 
houses, two churches, two bishops, a sisterhood, and 
some missionaries. The country is rocky, and most 
desolate. To the south and west the great lake stretches 
away to the horizon, and the land view is composed of 
hills of reddish granite, no soil, plants growing here and 
there out of occasional crevices, and a few stunted firs 
scatiered about. There are woods in the valleys, but the 
trees are of no size. No sound breaks the stillness but 
the weird cry of the loon, a sort of maniacal laugh that 
is almost a wail; and the solitude is heightened by the 
reflection, that for 1000 miles north, south, east, and west 
all is wilderness. 
Towards the lake the view is pretty, as there are many 
islands covered with pines. 
The weather is cooler than it has been, I am glad to 
say. For days we had the thermometer at 85° and 86°, 
and even higher ; but though hot, the summers are short, 
and I think that of this year is over. The mosquitos, at 
any rate, are beginning to disappear, and now the climate 
is nearly perfect, like the best English summer weather. 
August 5.—There was a fine aurora last night: a cur- 
tain of flame seemed to descend from the sky nearly 
overhead and right across the sky, and after waving about 
for a few moments, died away again. Yesterday I went 
to see the Roman Catholic Mission; they have quite a 
pretty church, which has been built some thirty years. I 
was also taken to see the sisters, of whom there are six. 
They all seemed very flourishing, and have a very nice 
| house. 
