HUNT EES' SIGNS. — NIGHT. 



53 



tliem to steal swiftly on their wet and treacherous path 

 with a speed which we found it very difficult to maintain, 

 although they indulged no hope of coming within shot of 

 such noble game, in consequence of an unfavourable 

 wind, even if we had been able to preserve the necessary 

 silence in passing through the haunts of this wary animal. 



The timber on the hill at the foot of the mountain 

 consists of aspen, with a few small oak. The soil on the 

 plateau is of excellent quality and the underbrush very 

 luxuriant. 



The night promising to be very cold, ice forming on 

 the kettles within a few yards of the camp, we built two 

 large fires and slept between them, having previously 

 dried our wet clothes as far as circumstances would 

 permit. At 8 P. M., the sky was quite free from clouds ; 

 the comet shone with brilliant lustre, a flashing aurora 

 gradually spread over the northern sky, the stars glittered 

 like diamonds in the south, and the whole heavens 

 assumed that aspect of silent beauty which renders night 

 in the wilderness so impressive and sublime. 



October 10/A. — Soon after breakfast, we arrived at a 

 steep embankment about seventy feet high, which formed 

 the termination of a terrace about a mile broad, covered 

 with small aspens, and threaded with moose paths. The 

 terrace ascends very gradually and is abruptly bounded 

 by a steep bank, from which a broken hilly tract rises 

 towards the escarpment which forms the eastern limit of 

 the Eiding Mountain. This broken tract is covered with 

 aspens and spruce of large size, especially in the hollows. 

 We crossed the beds of two or three streams, which 

 flowed through deep gullies to the plain below. Thus 

 far, the soil consisted of drift clay with many large 

 boulders in the beds of the rivulets ; but at an altitude 

 of about 400 feet above Dauphin Lake we arrived at a 



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