DOWN THE MACKENZIE 



127 



start off at a brisk trot and strain at their collars to keep up if 

 someone runs before. I had to direct mine with the whip and 

 voice alone. They were too heavily loaded to keep moving if 

 I went before them. 



In starting out in the evening, I had to wade through a broad 

 strip of slush, lying just outside the heavy shore drifts. The 

 water passed through my moccasins as easily as through a blot- 

 ter; these and the thick foot wrappings soon froze stiff, as it 

 became colder, making them heavy and anything but warm. I 

 broke through the crust into the water standing on the ice too 

 often to keep them dry by changing. I found it necessary to 

 wear more on my feet than in midwinter to avoid blistering 

 them. The snow-shoes were kept continually wet and wore 

 rapidly away upon the sharp needles of the crust, so that I had 

 to renew the foot-lacing daily. On the 12th I camped upon a 

 little patch of bare sand, the first camp not made in the snow 

 since November. That day the ring-billed gulls were seen, 

 though there was as yet no open water except upon the surface 

 of the ice. 



I lost some time at the Big Slavey Point, in skirting two deep 

 bays, looking for a passage behind the little group of four 

 islands, which I found later to lie so far off shore that no mis- 

 take need have been made. 



On the 14th a dense fog compelled me to follow the shore of 

 the broad bay west of the point, where I could have saved sev- 

 eral miles by a traverse. 



During the night of the 15th a rain fell which prevented the 

 formation of a crust and made the traveling very slow and 

 fatiguing. I. fed the dogs the last fish that night, and, instead 

 of sleeping next day, pushed on until after midnight in the 

 hope of reaching the Big Island fishery. I started in the even- 

 ing across a traverse, of perhaps ten miles, to the outlet of the 

 lake where the dark line of trees was barely visible on the 

 shores of the bay, which I was crossing, lay below the northern 

 horizon. There were no landmarks whatever to guide me to 

 the fishery, and, to add to the difficulty, the low strip of timber 

 became distorted by mirage until it seemed to be a chain of 

 distant mountains, then three lines of coast appeared one above 

 another. These merged into one again, still slowly shifting 

 until obscured by the darkness. The point which I had left 



