I2 o EXPLORATIONS IN THE FAR NORTH 



were all too much fatigued to cut much brush, and fell asleep 

 in a little hole scooped in the snow, before a few logs which 

 made such an uncomfortably hot fire that we did not enjoy it 

 as we had anticipated. But we would no longer have to sleep 

 upon snow or flat rocks, we would not have to sleep with our 

 moccasins and frozen blanket footings next our bodies to dry 

 them, and at noonday we could have tewoh to quench our thirst. 



After five hours' rest we were awakened by Jimmie, who 

 reminded us that there was nothing to eat, and that we must 

 push rapidly on. My load weighed over five hundred pounds, 

 and the dogs were getting pitifully weak. I pushed on the 

 sled and carried a load on my back to assist them. We were 

 three days in reaching the camps. We only rested five hours 

 at night and then hurried on again, as the teams were failing 

 rapidly for want of food. On the twenty-eighth day the first 

 signs of a thaw appeared; the snow softened just enough to 

 cause it to stick to our snow-shoes, so that it made them heavy 

 to carry, and, worse still, lumps of ice would accumulate every 

 few minutes which soon blistered the bottoms of our feet over 

 the entire surface. 



On the last two days before reaching the camps the heavy 

 snow-shoes caused the mal de racquette to reappear, which made 

 it simply torture to move; yet we were now in the woods, 

 where the soft snow required heavier work in the management 

 of the sleds. 



At two in the afternoon of the twenty-ninth day we reached 

 the vicinity of the camping place from which we had started, 

 and fired several rounds to announce our arrival. 1 A few 

 minutes later we dashed into — a deserted camp. The lodges 

 were gone, the snow had drifted over their sites. Their skele- 

 ton poles offered a dreary welcome to us as, tired, hungry, and 

 disappointed, we turned away in no pleasant humor to follow 

 the track along which a line of slanting poles indicated the 

 direction of departure. We were upon an old, hard track from 

 which the sled frequently overturned into the soft snow on 



1 The Indians about the Great Slave Lake still follow the custom of fir- 

 ing their guns at the time of arrival at, or at departure from, the trading sta- 

 tions, or their own larger camps as in this instance. I witnessed this cere- 

 mony several times at both Rae and Resolution. Compare Mackenzie, 

 "We were saluted at our departure with some vollies of small arms, which 

 we returned." Journal, p. 18. 



