CROSSING THE LAKE 185 



out loathing, and be strong. The Indian who has his 

 scaffold hung with Whitefish when winter comes, is 

 accounted rich. 



"And what," says the pessimist, "is the fly in all this 

 precious ointment?" Alas! It is not a game fish; 

 it will not take bait, spoon, or fly, and its finest prop- 

 erties vanish in a few hours after capture. 



The Whitefish served in the marble palaces of other 

 lands is as mere dish-water to champagne, when com- 

 pared with the three times purified and ten times in- 

 tensified dazzling silver Coregonus as it is landed on the 

 bleak shores of those far-away icy lakes. So I could 

 not say 'No' to the Indian boys when they wanted to 

 wait here, the last point at which they could be sure 

 of a catch. 



That night (22d July) five canoes and two York 

 boats of Indians landed at the narrows. These were 

 Dogribs of Chief Vital's band; all told they numbered 

 about thirty men, women, and children ; with them were 

 twenty-odd dogs, which immediately began to make 

 trouble. When one is in Texas the topic of conversa- 

 tion is, "How are the cattle?" in the Klondike, "How 

 is your claim panning out?" and in New York, "How 

 are you getting on with your novel?" On Great Slave 

 Lake you say, "Where are the Caribou?" The In- 

 dians could not tell; they had seen none for weeks, 

 but there was still much ice in the east end of the lake 

 which kept them from investigating. They had plenty 

 of dried Caribou meat but were out of tea and tobacco. 

 I had come prepared for this sort of situation, and soon 

 we had a fine stock of dried venison. 



