"Yes, sir, that suits me fine," replied be promptly, and in a tone that left no doubt of the fact that he was glad to go.

"Well, this is Thursday. I'll write my letters tomorrow, and you may go on Saturday."

"All right, sir."

The letters were all written and ready for Duncan on Friday night, and he packed sufficient provisions into a waterproof bag I gave him to carry him out, and prepared for an early start in the morning. But the rain that had been falling for several days still poured down on Saturday, and he decided to postpone his departure another day in the hope of better weather on Sunday. He needed the time anyway to mend his sealskin boots before starting back, for he had pretty nearly worn them out on the sharp rocks on the portages. The rest of us were well provided with oil-tanned moccasins (sometimes called larigans or shoe- packs), which I have found are the best footwear for a journey like ours. Pete's khaki trousers were badly torn; and Richards and Easton, who wore Mackinaw trousers, were in rags. This cloth had not withstood the hard usage of Labrador travel a week, and both men, when they bad a spare hour, occupied it in sewing on canvas patches, until now there was almost as much canvas patch as Mackinaw cloth in these garments. Richards, however, carried an extra pair of moleskin trousers, and I wore moleskin. This latter material is the best obtainable, so far as my experience goes, for rough traveling in the bush, and my trousers stood the trip with but one small patch until winter came.

Sunday morning was still stormy, but before noon the rain ceased, and Duncan announced his intention of starting homeward at once. We raised our flags and exchanged our farewells and Godspeeds with him. Then he left us, and as be disappeared down the trail a strange sense of loneliness came upon us, for it seemed to us that his going broke the last link that connected us with the outside world. Duncan was always so cheerful, with his quaint humor, and so ready to do his work to the very best of his ability, that we missed him very much, and often spoke of him in the days that followed.

We had made the best of our enforced idleness in this camp to repack and condense and dry our outfit as much as possible. The venison, at the first imperfectly cured, had been so continuously soaked that the most of what remained of it was badly spoiled and we could not use it, and with regret we threw it away. The erbswurst was also damp, and this we put into small canvas bags, which were then placed near the stove to dry.

A rising barometer augured good weather for Monday morning. A light wind scattered the clouds that had for so many days entombed the world in storm and gloom, and the sun broke out gloriously, setting the moisture-laden trees aglinting as though hung with a million pearls and warming the damp fir trees until the air was laden with the forest perfume. It was as though a pall had been lifted from the world. How our hearts swelled with the new enthusiasm of the returned sunshine! It was always so. It seemed as if the long-continued storms bound up our hearts and crushed the buoyancy from them; but the returning sunshine melted the bonds at once and gave us new ambition. A robin sang gayly from a near-by tree—a messenger from the kindlier Southland come to cheer us—and the "whisky jacks," who had not shown themselves for several days, appeared again with their shrill cries, venturing impudently into the very door of our tent to claim scraps of refuse.

I was for moving forward that very afternoon, but some of our things were still wet, and I deemed it better judgment to let them have the day in which to dry and to delay our start until Monday morning.

After supper, in accordance with the Sunday custom established by Hubbard when I was with him, I read aloud a selection from the Testament—the last chapter of Revelation—and then went out of the tent to take the usual nine o'clock weather observation. Between the horizon and a fringe of black clouds that hung low in the north the reflected sun set the heavens afire, and through the dark fir trees the lake stretched red as a lake of blood. I called the others to see it and Easton joined me. We climbed a low hill close at hand to view the scene, and while we looked the red faded into orange, and the lake was transformed into a mirror, which reflected the surrounding trees like an inverted forest. In the direction from which we had come we could see the high blue hills beyond the Nascaupee, very dim in the far distance. Below us the Crooked River lost itself as it wound its tortuous way through the wooded valley that we had traversed. Somewhere down there Duncan was bivouacked, and we wondered if his fire was burning at one of our old camping places.

Darkness soon came and we returned to the tent to find the others rolled in their blankets, and we joined them at once that we might have a good night's rest preparatory to an early morning advance.

Before seven o'clock on Monday morning (July twenty-fourth) we had made our portage to the water that we had supposed to be an arm of Lake Nipishish, but which proved instead to be an expansion of the river into which the lake poured its waters through a short rapid. This rapid necessitated another short portage before we were actually afloat upon the bosom of Nipishish itself. There was not a cloud to mar the azure of the sky, hardly a breath of wind to make a ripple on the surface of the lake, and the morning was just cool enough to be delightful.

It was the kind of day and kind of wilderness that makes one want to go on and on. I felt again the thrill in my blood of that magic something that had held possession of Hubbard and me and lured us into the heart of this unknown land two years before, and as I looked hungrily away toward the hills to the northward, I found myself repeating again one of those selections from Kipling that I had learned from him:

"Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges— Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!"



CHAPTER VII

SCOUTING FOR THE TRAIL

Lake Nipishish is approximately twenty miles in length, and at its broadest part ten or twelve miles in width. It extends in an almost due easterly direction from the place where we launched our canoes near its outlet. The shores are rocky and rise gradually into low, well-wooded hills, by which the lake is surrounded. Five miles from the outlet a rocky point juts out into the water, and above the point an arm of the lake reaches into the hills to the northward to a distance of six miles, almost at right angles to the main lake. In the arm there are several small, rocky islands which sustain a scrubby growth of black spruce and fir balsam.

Hitherto the Indian maps had been of little assistance to us. No estimate of distance could be made from them, and the lakes through which we had passed (not all of them shown on the map) were represented by small circles with nothing to indicate at what point on their shores the trail was to be found. Lake Nipishish, however, was drawn on a larger scale and with more detail, and we readily located the trail leading out of the arm which I have mentioned.

After a day's work through several small lakes or ponds, with short intervening portages, and a trail on the whole well defined and easily followed, we came one afternoon to a good-sized lake of irregular shape which Pete promptly named Washkagama (Crooked Lake).

A stream flowed into Washkagama near the place where we went ashore, and it seemed to me probable that our route might be along this stream, which it was likely drained lakes farther up; but a search in the vicinity failed to uncover any signs of the trail, and the irregu- lar shape of the lake suggested several other likely places for it. We were, therefore, forced to go into camp, disappointing as it was, until we should know our position to a certainty.

The next day was showery, but we began in the morning a determined hunt for the trail. Stanton remained in camp to make needed repairs to the outfit; Easton went with Pete to the northward, while Richards and I in one of the canoes paddled to the eastern side of the lake arm, upon which we were encamped, to climb a barren hill from which we hoped to get a good view of the country, and upon reaching the summit we were not disappointed. A wide panorama was spread before us. To the north lay a great rolling country covered with a limitless forest of firs, with here and there a bit of sparkling water. A mile from our camp a creek, now and again losing itself in the green woods, rushed down to join Washkagama, anxious to gain the repose of the lake. To the northeast the rugged white hills, that we were hoping to reach soon, loomed up grand and majestic, with patches of snow, like white sheets, spread over their sides and tops. From Nipishish to Washkagama we had passed through a burned and rocky country where no new growth save scant underbrush and a few scattering spruce, balsam and tamarack trees had taken the place of the old destroyed forest. The dead, naked tree trunks which, gaunt and weather-beaten, still stood upright or lay in promiscuous confusion on the ground, gave this part of the country from our hilltop view an appearance of solitary desolation that we had not noticed when we were traveling through it. But this unregenerated district ended at Washkagama; and below it Nipishish, with its green-topped hills, seemed almost homelike.

The creek that I have mentioned as flowing into the lake a mile from our camp seemed to me worthy to be explored for the trail, and I determined to go there at once upon our return to camp, while Richards desired to climb a rock-topped hill which held its head above the timber line three or four miles to the northwest, that he might make topographical and geological observations there.

We returned to camp, and Richards, with a package of erbswurst in his pocket to cook for dinner and my rifle on his shoulder, started immediately into the bush, and was but just gone when Pete and Easton appeared with the report that two miles above us lay a large lake, and that they had found the trail leading from it to the creek I had seen from the hill. The lake lay among the hills to the northward, and the bits of water I had seen were portions of it. I was anxious to break camp and start forward, but this could not be done until Richards' return. Easton, Pete and I paddled up to the creek's mouth, therefore, and spent the day fishing, and landed eighty-seven trout, ranging from a quarter pound to four pounds in weight. The largest ones Stanton split and hung over the fire to dry for future use, while the others were applied to immediate need.

When Richards came into camp in the evening he brought with him an excellent map of the country that he had seen from the hill and reported having counted ten lakes, including the large one that Easton and Pete had visited. He also had found the trail and followed it back.

The next morning some tracking and wading up the creek was necessary before we found ourselves upon the trail with packs on our backs, and before twelve o'clock we arrived with all our outfit at the lake, which we shall call Minisinaqua. It was an exceedingly beautiful sheet of water, the main body, perhaps, ten or twelve miles in length, but narrow, and with many arms and indentations and containing numerous round green islands. The shores and surrounding country were well wooded with spruce, fir, balsam, larch, and an occasional small white birch.

I took my place in the larger canoe with Pete and Easton and left Stanton to follow with Richards. Pete's eyes, as always, were scanning with keen scrutiny every inch of shore. Suddenly he straightened up, peered closely at an island, and in a stage whisper exclaimed "Caribou! Caribou! Don't make noise! Paddle, quick!"

We saw them then—two old stags and a fawn—on an island, but they had seen us, too, or winded us more likely, and, rushing across the island, took to the water on the opposite side, making for the mainland. We bent to our paddles with all our might, hoping to get within shooting distance of them, but they had too much lead. We all tried some shots when we saw we could not get closer, but the deer were five hundred yards away, and from extra exertion with our paddles, we were unable to hold steady, and missed.

Our canoes were turned into an arm of the lake leading to the northward. Amongst some islands we came upon a flock of five geese— two old ones and three young ones. The old ones had just passed through the molting season, and their new wing feathers were not long enough to bear them, and the young ones, though nearly full grown, had not yet learned to fly. Pete brought the mother goose and two of her children down with the shotgun, but father gander and the other youngster escaped, flapping away on the surface of the lake at a remarkable speed, and they were allowed to go with their lives without a chase.

We stumbled upon the trail leading from Lake Minisinaqua, almost immediately upon landing. Its course was in a northerly direction through the valley of a small river that emptied into the lake. This valley was inclosed by low hills, and the country, like that between Washkagama and Lake Minisinaqua, was well covered with the same varieties of small trees that were found there. For a mile and three- quarters, the stream along which the trail ran was too swift for canoeing, but it then expanded into miniature lakes or ponds which were connected by short rapids. Each of us portaged a load to the first pond, where the canoes were to be launched, and I directed Pete and Stanton to remain here, pluck the geese, and prepare two of them for an evening dinner, while Richards, Easton and I brought forward a second load and pitched camp.

This was Easton's twenty-second birthday and it occurred to me that it would be a pleasant variation to give a birthday dinner in his honor and to have a sort of feast to relieve the monotony of our daily life, and give the men something to think about and revive their spirits; for "bucking the trail" day after day with no change but the gradual change of scenery does grow monotonous to most men, and the ardor of the best of them, especially men unaccustomed to roughing it, will become damped in time unless some variety, no matter how slight, can be brought into their lives. A good dinner always has this effect, for after men are immersed in a wilderness for several weeks, good things to eat take the first place in their thoughts and, to judge from their conversation, the attainment of these is their chief aim in life.

My instructions to Pete included the baking of an extra ration of bread to be served hot with the roast geese, and I asked Stanton to try his hand at concocting some kind of a pudding out of the few prunes that still remained, to be served with sugar as sauce, and accompanied by black coffee. Our coffee supply was small and it was used only on Sundays now, or at times when we desired an especial treat.

We were pretty tired when we returned with our second packs and dropped them on a low, bare knoll some fifty yards above the fire where Pete and Stanton were carrying on their culinary operations, but a whiff of roasting goose came to us like a tonic, and it did not take us long to get camp pitched.

"Um-m-m," said Easton, stopping in his work of driving tent pegs to sniff the air now bearing to us appetizing odors of goose and coffee, "that smells like home."

"You bet it does," assented Richards. "I haven't been filled up for a week, but I'm going to be to-night."

At length dinner was ready, and we fell to with such good purpose that the two birds, a generous portion of hot bread, innumerable cups of black coffee, and finally, a most excellent pudding that Stanton had made out of bread dough and prunes and boiled in a canvas specimen bag disappeared.

How we enjoyed it! "No hotel ever served such a banquet," one of the boys remarked as we filled our pipes and lighted them with brands from the fire. Then with that blissful feeling that nothing but a good dinner can give, we lay at full length on the deep white moss, peace- fully puffing smoke at the stars as they blinked sleepily one by one out of the blue of the great arch above us until the whole firmament was glittering with a mass of sparkling heaven gems. The soft perfume of the forest pervaded the atmosphere; the aurora borealis appeared in the northern sky, and its waves of changing light swept the heavens; the vast silence of the wilderness possessed the world and, wrapped in his own thoughts, no man spoke to break the spell. Finally Pete began a snatch of Indian song:

"Puhgedewawa enenewug Nuhbuggesug kamiwauw."

Then he drew from his pocket a harmonica, and for half an hour played soft music that harmonized well with the night and the surroundings; when he ceased, all but Richards and I went to their blankets. We two remained by the dying embers of our fire for another hour to enjoy the perfect night, and then, before we turned to our beds, made an observation for compass variation, which calculations the following morning showed to be thirty-seven degrees west of the true north.

Paddling through the ponds, polling and tracking through the rapids or portaging around them up the little river on which we were encamped the night before, brought us to Otter Lake, which was considerably larger than Lake Minisinaqua, but not so large as Nipishish. The main body was not over a mile and a half in width, but it had a number of bays and closely connected tributary lakes. Its eastern end, which we did not explore, penetrated low spruce and balsam-covered hills. To the north and northeast were rugged, rock-tipped hills, rising to an elevation of some seven hundred feet above the lake. The country at their base was covered with a green forest of small fir, spruce and birch, and near the water, in marshy places, as is the case nearly everywhere in Labrador, tamarack, but the hills themselves had been fire swept, and were gray with weather-worn, dead trees. On the summits, and for two hundred feet below, bare basaltic rock indicated that at this elevation they had never sustained any growth, save a few straggling bushes. On some of these hills there still remained patches of snow of the previous winter.

We paddled eastward along the northern shore of the lake. Once we saw a caribou swimming far ahead of us, but he discovered our approach and took to the timber before we were within shooting distance of him. A flock of sawbill ducks avoided us. No sign of Indians was seen, and four miles up the lake we stopped upon a narrow, sandy point that jutted out into the water for a distance of a quarter mile, to pitch camp and scout for the trail. All along the point and leading back into the bush, were fresh caribou tracks, where the animals came out to get the benefit of the lake breezes and avoid the flies, which torment them terribly. Natives in the North have told me of caribou having been worried to death by the insects, and it is not improbable. The "bulldogs" or "stouts," as they are sometimes called, which are as big as bumblebees, are very vicious, and follow the poor caribou in swarms. The next morning a caribou wandered down to within a hundred and fifty yards of camp, and Pete and Stanton both fired at it, but missed, and it got away unscathed.

After breakfast, with Pete and Easton, I climbed one of the higher hills for a view of the surrounding country. Near the foot of the hill, and in the depth of the spruce woods, we passed a lone Indian grave, which we judged from its size to be that of a child. It was inclosed by a rough fence, which had withstood the pressure of the heavy snows of many winters and a broken cross lay on it. From the summit of the hill we could see a string of lakes extending in a general northwesterly direction until they were lost in other hills above, and also numerous lakes to the south, southwest, east and northeast. We could count from one point nearly fifty of these lakes, large and small. To the north and northwest the country was rougher and more diversified, and the hills much higher than any we had as yet passed through.

Down by our camp it had been excessively warm, but here on the hilltop a cold wind was blowing that made us shiver. We found a few scattered dry sticks, and built a fire under the lee of a high bowlder, where we cooked for luncheon some pea-meal porridge with water that Pete, with foresight, had brought with him from a brook that we passed half way down the hillside. We then continued our scouting tour several miles inland, climbing two other high hills, from one of which an excellent view was had of the string of lakes penetrating the northwestern hills. Everywhere so far as our vision extended the valleys were comparatively well wooded, but the treeless, rock-bound hills rose grimly above the timber line.

When we returned to camp we were still unsettled as to where the trail left the lake, but there was one promising bay that had not been explored, and Richards and Easton volunteered to take a canoe and search this bay. They were supplied with tarpaulin, blankets, an ax and one day's rations, and started immediately.

I felt some anxiety as to our slow progress. August was almost upon us and we had not yet reached Seal Lake. Here, as at other places, we had experienced much delay in finding the trail, and we did not know what difficulties in that direction lay before us. I had planned to reach the George River by early September, and the question as to whether we could do it or not was giving me much concern.

Pete and Stanton had been in bed and asleep for an hour, but I was still awake, turning over in my mind the situation, and planning to- morrow's campaign, when at ten o'clock I heard the soft dip of paddles, and a few moments later Richards and Easton appeared out of the night mist that hung over the lake, with the good news that they had found the trail leading northward from the bay.



CHAPTER VIII

SEAL LAKE AT LAST

A thick, impenetrable mist, such as is seldom seen in the interior of Labrador, hung over the water and the land when we struck camp and began our advance. For two days we traveled through numerous small lakes, making several short portages, before we came to a lake which we found to be the headwaters of a river flowing to the northwest. This lake was two miles long, and we camped at its lower end, where the river left it. Portage Lake we shall call it, and the river that flowed out of it Babewendigash.

The portage into the lake crossed a sand desert, upon which not a drop of water was seen, and instead of the usual rocks there were uncovered sand and gravel knolls and valleys, where grew only occasional bunches of very stunted brush; the surface of the sand was otherwise quite bare and sustained not even the customary moss and lichens. The heat of the sun reflected from the sand was powerful. The day was one of the most trying ones of the trip, and the men, with faces and hands swollen and bleeding from the attacks of not only the small black flies, which were particularly bad, but also the swarms of "bulldogs," complained bitterly of the hardships. When we halted to eat our luncheon one of the men remarked, "Duncan said once that if there are no flies there, hell can't be as bad as this, and he's pretty near right."

The river left the lake in a rapid, and while Pete was making his fire, Richards, Easton and I went down to catch our supper, and in half an hour had secured forty-five good-sized trout—sufficient for supper that night and breakfast and dinner the next day.

Since leaving Otter Lake, caribou signs had been plentiful, fresh trails running in every direction. Pete was anxious to halt a day to hunt, but I decreed otherwise, to his great disappointment.

The scenery at this point was particularly fine, with a rugged, wild beauty that could hardly be surpassed. Below us the great, bald snow hills loomed very close at hand, with patches of snow glinting against the black rocks of the hills, as the last rays of the setting sun kissed them good-night. Nearer by was the more hospitable wooded valley and the shining river, and above us the lake, placid and beautiful, and beyond it the line of low sand hills of the miniature desert we had crossed. One of the snow hills to the northwest had two knobs resembling a camel's back, and was a prominent landmark. We christened it "The Camel's Hump."

Heretofore the streams had been taking a generally southerly direction, but this river flowed to the northwest, which was most encouraging, for running in that direction it could have but one outlet-the Nascaupee River.

A portage in the morning, then a short run on the river, then another portage, around a shallow rapid, and we were afloat again on one of the prettiest little rivers I have ever seen. The current was strong enough to hurry us along. Down we shot past the great white hills, which towered in majestic grandeur high above our heads, in some places rising almost perpendicularly from the water, with immense heaps of debris which the frost had detached from their sides lying at their base. The river was about fifty yards wide, and in its windings in and out among the hills almost doubled upon itself sometimes. The scenery was fascinating. One or two small lake expansions were passed, but generally there was a steady current and a good depth of water. "This is glorious!" some one exclaimed, as we shot onward, and we all appreciated the relief from the constant portaging that had been the feature of our journey since leaving the Nascaupee River.

The first camp on this river was pitched upon the site of an old Indian camp, above a shallow rapid. The many wigwam poles, in varying states of decay, together with paddles, old snowshoes, broken sled runners, and other articles of Indian traveling paraphernalia, in- dicated that it had been a regular stopping place of the Indians, both in winter and in summer, in the days when they had made their pilgrimages to Northwest River Post. Near this point we found some beaver cuttings, the first that we had seen since leaving the Crooked River.

Babewendigash soon carried us into a large lake expansion, and six hours were consumed paddling about the lake before the outlet was discovered. At first we thought it possible we were in Seal Lake, but I soon decided that it was not large enough, and its shape did not agree with the description of Seal Lake that Donald Blake and Duncan McLean had given me.

During the morning I dropped a troll and landed the first namaycush of the trip—a seven-pound fish. The Labrador lakes generally have a great depth of water, and it is in the deeper water that the very large namaycush, which grow to an immense size, are to be caught. Our outfit did not contain the heavy sinkers and larger trolling spoons necessary in trolling for these, and we therefore had to content ourselves with the smaller fish caught in the shallower parts of the lakes. We had two more portages before we shot the first rapid of the trip, and then camped on the shores of a small expansion just above a wide, shallow rapid where the river swung around a ridge of sand hills. This ridge was about two hundred feet in elevation, and followed the river for some distance below. In the morning we climbed it, and walked along its top for a mile or so, to view the rapid, and suddenly, to the westward, beheld Seal Lake. It was a great moment, and we took off our hats and cheered. The first part of our fight up the long trail was almost ended.

The upper part of the rapid was too shallow to risk a full load in the canoes, so we carried a part of our outfit over the ridge to a point where the river narrowed and deepened, then ran the rapid and picked up our stuff below. Not far from here we passed a hill whose head took the form of a sphinx and we noted it as a remarkable landmark. Stopping but once to climb a mountain for specimens, at twelve o'clock we landed on a sandy beach where Babewendigash River emptied its waters into Seal Lake. We could hardly believe our good fortune, and while Pete cooked dinner I climbed a hill to satisfy myself that it was really Seal Lake. There was no doubt of it. It had been very minutely described and sketched for me by Donald and Duncan. We had halted at what they called on their maps "The Narrows," where the lake narrowed down to a mere strait, and that portion of it below the canoes was hidden from my view. It stretched out far to the northwest, with some distance up a long arm reaching to the west. A point which I recognized from Duncan's description as the place where the winter tilt used by him and Donald was situated extended for some distance out into the water. The entire length of Seal Lake is about forty miles, but only about thirty miles of it could be seen from the elevation upon which I stood. Its shores are generally well wooded with a growth of young spruce. High hills surround it.

We visited the tilt as we passed the point and, in accordance with an arrangement made with Duncan, added to our stores about twenty-five pounds of flour that he had left there during the previous winter. Five miles above the point where Babewendigash River empties into Seal Lake we entered the Nascaupee, up which we paddled two miles to the first short rapid. This we tracked, and then made camp on an island where the river lay placid and the wind blew cool and refreshing.

Long we sat about our camp fire watching the glories of the northern sunset, and the new moon drop behind the spruce-clad hills, and the aurora in all its magnificence light our silent world with its wondrous fire. Finally the others left me to go to their blankets.

When I was alone I pushed in the ends of the burning logs and sat down to watch the blaze as it took on new life. Gradually, as I gazed into its depths, fantasy brought before my eyes the picture of another camp fire. Hubbard was sitting by it. It was one of those nights in the hated Susan Valley. We had been toiling up the trail for days, and were ill and almost disheartened; but our camp fire and the relaxation from the day's work were giving us the renewed hope and cheer that they always brought, and rekindled the fire of our half-lost enthusiasm. "Seal Lake can't be far off now," Hubbard was saying. "We're sure to reach it in a day or two. Then it'll be easy work to Michikamau, and we 'll soon be with the Indians after that, and forget all about this hard work. We'll be glad of it all when we get home, for we're going to have a bully trip." How much lighter my pack felt the next day, when I recalled his words of encouragement! How we looked and looked for Seal Lake, but never found it. It lay hidden among those hills that were away to the northward of us, with its waters as placid and beautiful as they were to-day when we passed through it. I had never seen Michikamau. Was I destined to see it now?

The fire burned low. Only a few glowing coals remained, and as they blackened my picture dissolved. The aurora, like a hundred searchlights, was whipping across the sky. The forest with its hidden mysteries lay dark beneath. A deep, impenetrable silence brooded over all. The vast, indescribable loneliness of the wilderness possessed my soul. I tried to shake off the feeling of desolation as I went to my bed of boughs.

To-morrow a new stage of our journey would begin. It was ho for Michikamau!



CHAPTER IX

WE LOSE THE TRAIL

Saturday morning, August fifth, broke with a radiance and a glory seldom equaled even in that land of glorious sunrises and sunsets. A flame of red and orange in the east ushered in the rising sun, not a cloud marred the azure of the heavens, the moss was white with frost, and the crisp, clear atmosphere sweet with the scent of the new day. Labrador was in her most amiable mood, displaying to the best advantage her peculiar charms and beauties.

While we ate a hurried breakfast of corn-meal mush, boiled fat pork and tea, and broke camp, Michikamau was the subject of our conversation, for now it was ho for the big lake! A rapid advance was expected upon the river, and the trail above, where it left the Nascaupee to avoid the rapids which the Indians had told us about, would probably be found without trouble. So this new stage of our journey was begun with something of the enthusiasm that we had felt the day we left Tom Blake's cabin and started up Grand Lake.

We had gone but a mile when Pete drew his paddle from the water and pointed with it at a narrow, sandy beach ahead, above which rose a steep bank. Almost at the same instant I saw the object of his interests—a buck caribou asleep on the sand. The wind was blowing toward the river, and maintaining absolute silence, we landed below a bend that hid us from the caribou. Fresh meat was in sight and we must have it, for we were hungry now for venison. To cover the retreat of the animal should it take alarm, Pete was to go on the top of the bank above it, Easton to take a stand opposite it and I a little below it. We crawled to our positions with the greatest care; but the caribou was alert. The shore breeze carried to it the scent of danger, and almost before we knew, that we were discovered it was on its feet and away. For a fraction of a second I had one glimpse of the animal through the brush. Pete did not see it when it started, but heard it running up the shore, and away be started in that direction, running and leaping recklessly over the fallen tree trunks. Presently the caribou turned from the river and showed itself on the burned plateau above, two hundred yards from Pete. The Indian halted for a moment and fired—then fired again. I hastened up and came upon Pete standing by the prostrate caribou and grinning from ear to ear.

The carcass was quickly skinned and the meat stripped from the bones and carried to the canoe. Here on the shore we made a fire, broiled some thick luscious steaks, roasted some marrow bones and made tea. All the bones except the marrow bones of the legs were abandoned as an unnecessary weight. Pete broke a hole through one of the shoulder blades and stuck it on a limb of a tree above the reach of animals. That, you know, insures further good luck in hunting. It is a sort of offering to the Manitou. We took the skin with us. "Maybe we need him for something," said Pete. "Clean and smoke him nice, me; maybe mend clothes with him."

The larger pieces of our venison were to be roasted when we halted in the evening. We could not dally now, and I chose this method of preserving the meat, rather than "jerk" it (that is, dry it in the open air over a smoky fire), which would have necessitated a halt of three or four days.

Within three hours after we had first seen the caribou we were on our way again. The river up which we were passing was from two to four hundred yards in width, and with the exception of an occasional rock, had a gravelly bottom, and the banks were generally low and gravelly. A little distance back ridges of low hills paralleled the stream, and on the south side behind the lower ridge was a higher one of rough hills; but none of them with an elevation above the valley of more than three hundred feet. The country had been burned on both sides of the river and there was little new growth to hide the dead trees.

Twenty-five miles above Seal Lake we encountered a rapid which necessitated a mile and a half portage around it. Where we landed to make the portage I noticed along the edge of the sandy beach a black band about two feet in width. I thought at first that the water had discolored the sand, but upon a closer examination discovered that it was nothing more nor less than myriads of our black fly pests that had lost their lives in the water and been washed ashore.

We had much rain and progress was slow and difficult in the face of a strong wind and current. Seven or eight miles above the rapid around which we had portaged we passed into a large expansion of the river which the Indians at Northwest River Post had told us to look for, and which they called Wuchusknipi (Big Muskrat) Lake.

High gravelly banks, rising in terraces sometimes fully fifty feet above the water's edge, had now become the feature of the stream. The current increased in strength, and only for short distances above Wuchusknipi, where the river occasionally broadened, were we able to paddle. The tracking lines were brought into service, one man hauling each canoe, while the others, wading in the water, or walking on the bank with poles where the stream was too deep to wade, kept the canoes straight in the current and clear of the shore. Once when it became necessary to cross a wide place in the river a squall struck us, and Richards and Stanton in the smaller canoe were nearly swamped. The strong head wind precluded paddling, even when the current would otherwise have permitted it.

Finally the sky cleared and the wind ceased to blow; but with the calm came a cause for disquietude. A light smoke had settled in the valley and the air held the odor of it, suggesting a forest fire somewhere above. This would mean retreat, if not disaster, for when these fires once start rivers and lakes prove small obstacles in their path. From a view-point on the hills no dense smoke could be discovered, only the light haze that we had seen and smelled in the valley, and we therefore decided that the gale that had blown for several days from the northwest may have carried it for a long distance, even from the district far west of Michikamau, and that at any rate there was no cause for immediate alarm.

The ridges with an increasing altitude were crowding in upon us more closely. Once when we stopped to portage around a low fall we climbed some of the hills that were near at hand that we might obtain a better knowledge of the topography of the country than could be had from the confined river valley. Away to the northwest we found the country to be much more rugged than the district we had recently passed through. Observations showed us that the highest of the hills we were on had an elevation of six hundred feet above the river. We had but a single day of fine weather and then a fog came so thick that we could not see the opposite banks of the Nascaupee, and after it a cold rain set in which made our work in the icy current doubly hard. One morning I slipped on a bowlder in the river and strained my side, and for me the remainder of the day was very trying. That evening we reached a little group of three or four islands, where the Nascaupee was wide and shallow, but just above the islands it narrowed down again and a low fall occurred. Not far from the fall a small river tumbled down over the rocks a sheer thirty feet, and emptied into the Nascaupee. Since leaving Seal Lake we had passed two rivers flowing in from the north, and this was the second one coming from the south, marking the point on the Indian map where we were to look for the portage trail leading to the northward. Therefore a halt was made and camp was pitched.

During the night the weather cleared, and Pete, Richards and Easton were dispatched in the morning to scout the country to the northward in search of the trail and signs of Indians. The ligaments of my side were very stiff and sore from the strain they received the previous day, and I remained in camp with Stanton to write up my records, take an inventory of our food supply, and consider plans for the future.

It was August twelfth. How far we had still to go before reaching Michikamau was uncertain, but, in view of our experiences below Seal Lake and the difficulties met with in finding and following the old Indian trail there, our progress would now, for a time at least, if we traveled the portage route, be slower than on the river where we had done fairly well. True, our outfit was much lighter than it had been in the beginning, and we were in better shape for packing and were able to carry heavier loads. Still we must make two trips over every portage, and that meant, for every five miles of advance, fifteen miles of walking and ten of those miles with packs on our backs. Had we not better, therefore, abandon the further attempt to locate the trail and, instead, follow the river which was beyond doubt the quicker and the easier route? My inclinations rebelled against this course. One of the objects of the expedition, for it was one of the things that Hubbard had planned to do, was to locate the old trail, if possible. To abandon the search for it now, and to follow the easier route, seemed to me a surrender.

On the other hand, should we not find game or fish and have delays scouting for the trail, it would be necessary to go on short rations before reaching Michikamau, for enough food must be held back to take us out of the country in safety.

In my present consideration of the situation it seemed to me highly improbable that we could reach George River Post in season to connect with the Hudson's Bay Company's steamer Pelican, which touches there to land supplies about the middle of September, and that is the only steamer that ever visits that Post. Not to connect with the Pelican would, therefore, mean imprisonment in the north for an entire year, or a return around the coast by dog train in winter. The former of these alternatives was out of the question; the latter would be impossible with an encumbrance of four men, for dog teams and drivers in the early winter are usually all away to the hunting grounds and hard to engage. I therefore concluded that but one course was open to me. Three of the men must be sent back and with a single companion I would push on to Ungava. This, then, was the line of action I decided upon.

Toward evening gathering clouds augured an early renewal of the storm, and Stanton and I had just put up the stove in the tent in anticipation of it when Pete and Easton, the latter thoroughly fagged out, came into camp.

"Well, Pete," I asked, "what luck?"

"Find trail all right," he answered. "Can't follow him easy. Long carry. First lake far, maybe eleven, twelve mile. Little ponds not much good for canoe. Trail old. Not used long time. All time go up hill."

"Where's Richards?" I inquired, noticing his absence.

"Left us about four miles back to take a short cut to the river and follow it down to camp," said Easton. "He thought you might want to know how it looked above, and perhaps keep on that way instead of tackling the portage, for the trail's going to be mighty hard. It looks as though the river would be better."

We waited until near dark for Richards, but he did not come. Then we ate our supper without him.

The rain grew into a downpour and darkness came, but no Richards, and at length I became alarmed for his safety. I pushed back the tent flaps and peered out into the pitchy darkness and pouring rain.

"He'll never get in to-night," I remarked. "No," said some one, "and he'll have a hard time of it out there in the rain." There was nothing to do but wait. Pete rummaged in his bag and produced a candle (we had a dozen in our outfit), sharpened one end of a stick, split the other end for two or three inches down, forced open the split end and set the candle in it and stuck the sharpened end in the ground, all the while working in the dark. Then he lit the candle.

I do not know how long we had been sitting by the candle light and putting forth all sorts of conjectures about Richards and his uncomfortable position in the bush without cover and the probable reasons for his failure to return, when the tent front opened and in he came, as wet as though he had been in the river.

"Well, Richards," I asked, when he was comfortably settled at his meal, "what do you think of the river?"

"The river!" he paused between mouthfuls to exclaim, "that's the only thing within twenty miles that I didn't see. I've been looking for it for four hours, but it kept changing its location and I never found it till I struck camp just now."

"Now, boys," said I, when all the pipes were going, "I've something to say to you. Up to this time we've had no real hardships to meet. We've had hard work, and it's been most trying at times, but there's been no hardship to endure that might not be met with upon any journey in the bush. If we go on we shall have hardships, and perhaps, some pretty severe ones. There'll soon be sleet and snow in the air, and cold days and shivery nights, and the portages will be long and hard. On the whole, there's been plenty to eat—not what we would have had at home, perhaps, but good, wholesome grub—and we're all in better condition and stronger than when we started, but flour and pork are getting low, lentils and corn meal are nearly gone, and short rations, with hungry days, are soon to come if we don't strike game, and you know how uncertain that is. I cannot say what is before us, and I'm not going to drag you fellows into trouble. I'm going to ask for one volunteer to go on with me to Ungava with the small canoe, and let the rest return from here with the other canoe and what grub they need to take them out. Who wants to go home?"

It came to them like a shock. Outside, the wind howled through the trees and dashed the rain spitefully against the tent. The water dripped through on us, and the candle flickered and sputtered and almost went out. In the weird light I could see the faces of the men work with emotion. For a moment no one spoke. Finally Richards, in a tone of reproach that made me feel sorry for the very suggestion, asked: "Do you think there's a quitter here?"

The loyalty and grit of the men touched my heart. Not one of them would think of leaving me. Nothing but a positive order would have turned them back, and I decided to postpone our parting until we reached Michikaumau at least, if it could be postponed so long consistently with safety.

The next day was Sunday, and it was spent in rest and in preparation for our advance up the trail. The weather was damp and cheerless, with rain falling intermittently throughout the day.

To cover a possible retreat a cache was made near our camp of thirty pounds of pemmican in tin cans and forty-five pounds of flour and some tea in a waterproof bag. A hole was dug in the ground and the provisions were deposited in it, then covered with stones as a pro- tection from animals.

By Monday morning the storm had gained new strength, and steadily and pitilessly the rain fell, accompanied by a cold, northwest wind.

What narrowly escaped being a serious accident occurred when we halted that day for dinner. Easton was cutting firewood, when suddenly he dropped the ax he was using with the exclamation "That fixes me!" He had given himself what looked at first like an ugly cut near the shin bone. Fortunately, however, upon examination, it proved to be only a flesh wound and not sufficiently severe to interfere with his traveling. Stanton dressed the cut. Our adhesive plaster we found had become useless by exposure and electrician's tape was substituted for it to draw the flesh together.

On the evening of the second day after leaving the Nascaupee, our tent was pitched upon the site of an extensive but ancient Indian camp beside a mile-long lake, four hundred and fifty feet above the river. Five ponds had been passed en route, but all of them so small it was scarcely worth while floating the canoe in any of them.

In these two days we had covered but eleven miles, but during the whole time the wind had driven the rain in sweeping gusts into our faces and made it impossible for a man, single-handed, to portage a canoe. Thus, with two men to carry each canoe we had been compelled to make three loads of our outfit, and this meant fifty-five miles actual walking, and thirty-three miles of this distance with packs on our backs. The weather conditions had made the work more than hard— it was heartrending—as we toiled over naked hills, across marshes and moraines, or through dripping brush and timber land.

A beautiful afternoon, two days later, found us paddling down the first lake worthy of mention since leaving the Nascaupee River. The azure sky overhead shaded to a pearly blue at the horizon, with a fleecy cloud or two floating lazily across its face. The atmosphere was perfect in its purity, and only the sound of screeching gulls and the dip of our paddles disturbed the quiet of the wilderness. Lake Bibiquasin, as we shall call it, was five miles in length and nestled between ridges of low, moss-covered hills. It lay in a southeasterly and northwesterly direction, and rested upon the summit of a sub- sidiary divide that we had been gradually ascending. A creek ran out of its northwesterly end, flowing in that direction.

Until now we had found the trail with little difficulty, but here we were baffled. A search in the afternoon failed to uncover it, and we were forced to halt, perplexed again as to our course. Camp was pitched in a grove of spruces at the lower end of the lake. Not far from us was an old hunting camp which Pete said was "most hundred years old," and he was not far wrong in his estimate, for the frames upon which the Indians had stretched skins and the tepee poles crumbled to pieces when we touched them.

Strange to say, not a fish of any description had been seen for several days and not one could be induced to rise to fly or bait, and our net was always empty now. Game, too, was scarce. There were no fresh caribou tracks this side of the Nascaupee River, and but one duck and one spruce partridge had been killed. The last bit of our venison was eaten the day before. It was pretty badly spoiled and turning a little green in color, but Pete washed it well several times and we all avoided the lee side of the kettle while it was cooking. It was pronounced "not so bad."

Another day was lost on Lake Bibiquasin in an ineffectual hunt for the trail. I scouted alone all day and in my wanderings came upon the first ptarmigans of the trip and shot one of them with my rifle. The others flew away. They wore their mottled summer coat, as it was still too early for them to don their pure white dress of winter.

During my scouting trip I also discovered the first ripe bake-apple berries we had seen. This is a salmon-colored berry resembling in size and shape the raspberry, and grows on a low plant like the strawberry.

On Saturday morning, August nineteenth, the temperature was four degrees below the freezing point, and the ground was stiff with frost. In a further search on the north side of the lake opposite our camp we found an old blaze and a trail leading from it along a ridge and through marshes to a small lake. This was the only trail that we could find anywhere, so we decided to follow it, though it did not bear all the earmarks of the portage trail we had been tracing—it was decidedly more ancient. We started our work with a will. It was a hard portage and we sometimes sank knee deep into the marsh and got mired frequently, but finally reached the lake.

Indian signs now completely disappeared. Down the lake, where a creek flowed out, was a bare hill, and Pete and I climbed it. From its summit we could easily locate the creek taking a turn to the north and then to the northeast and, finally, flowing into one of a series of lakes extending in an easterly and westerly direction. The land was comparatively flat to the eastward and the lakes no doubt fed a river flowing out of that end, probably one of those that we had noted as joining the Nascaupee on its north side. To the north of these lakes were high, rugged ridges. It was possible there was an opening in the hills to the westward, where they seemed lower; we could not tell from where we were, but we determined to portage along the creek into the lakes with that hope.

Again the smoke of a forest fire hung in the valleys and over the hills, and the air was heavy with the smell of it, which revived the former uneasiness, but by the next day every trace of it had disappeared.

Another day found us afloat upon the first of the lakes. Several short carries across necks of land took us from this lake into the one which Pete and I had seen extending back to the ridges to the westward, and which we shall call Lake Desolation.

On the northern shore of Lake Desolation we stopped to climb a mountain. A decided change in the features of the country had taken place since leaving Lake Bibiquasin, and the low moss-covered hills had given place to rough mountains of bare rock. To the northward from where we stood nothing but higher mountains of similar formation met our view—a great, rolling vista of bare, desolate rocks. To the westward the country was not, perhaps, so rough, though there, too, in the far distance could be discerned the tops of rugged hills breaking the line of the horizon. Through a valley in that direction was distinguishable, with a considerable interval between them, a string of small lakes or ponds. This valley led up from the western end of Lake Desolation, and there was no other possible place for the trail to leave the lake. The valley was the only opening.

Our mountain climbing had consumed a good part of an afternoon, and it was evening when finally we reached the western end of the lake and pitched our camp near a creek flowing in. As we paddled we tried our trolls, but were not rewarded with a single strike. When camp was made the net was stretched across the creek's mouth and we tried our rods in the stream for trout, but our efforts were useless. No fish were caught.

The prospect for game had not improved, in fact was growing steadily worse. We were now in a country that had been desolated by a forest fire within four or five years. The moss under foot had not renewed itself and where any of it remained at all, it was charred and black. The trees were dead and the land harbored almost no life. It seemed to me that even the fish had been scalded out of the water and the streams had never restocked themselves.

A thorough search was made for Indian signs, but there were absolutely none. There was nothing to show that any human being had ever been here before us. Back on Lake Bibiquasin we had lost the trail and now on Lake Desolation we were far and hopelessly astray, with only the compass to guide us.

After supper the men sat around the camp fire, smoking and talking of their friends at home, while I walked alone by the lake shore. It was a wild scene that lay before me—the aurora, with its waves of changing color flashing weirdly as they swept and lighted the sky, the dead trees everywhere like skeletons gray and gaunt, the blazing camp fire in the foreground, with the figures lying about it and the little white tent in the background. Somewhere hidden in the depths of that vast and silent wilderness to the westward lay Michikamau.

There was no mark on the face of the earth to direct us on our road. We must blaze a new trail up that valley and over those ridges that looked so dark and forbidding in the uncertain light of the aurora. We must find Michikamau.



CHAPTER X

"WE SEE MICHIKAMAU"

"It's no use, Pete. You may as well go back to your blankets."

It was the morning of the second day after reaching the lake which we named Desolation. We had portaged through a valley and over a low ridge to the shores of a pond, out of which a small stream ran to the southeast. The country was devastated by fire and to the last degree inhospitable. Not a green shrub over two feet in height was to be seen, the trees were dead and blackened; not even the customary moss covered the naked earth, and loose bowlders were scattered everywhere about.

There was no fixed trail now to look for or to guide us, but by keeping a general westerly course, we knew that we must, sooner or later, reach Michikamau. Rough, irregular ridges blocked our path and it was necessary to look ahead that we might not become tangled up amongst them. One hill, higher than the others, a solitary bailiff that guarded the wilderness beyond, was to have been climbed this morning, but when Pete and I at daybreak came out of the tent we were met by driving rain and dashes of sleet that cut our faces, and a mist hung over the earth so thick we could not even see across the tiny lake at our feet. I looked longingly into the storm and mist in the direction in which I knew the big hill lay, and realized the hopelessness and foolhardiness of attempting to reach it.

"It's no use, Pete," I continued, "to try to scout in this storm. You could see nothing from the hill if you reached it, and the chances are, with every landmark hidden, you couldn't find the tent again. I don't want to lose you yet. Go back and sleep."

Later in the morning to my great relief the weather cleared, and Richards and Pete were at once dispatched to scout. We who remained "at home," as we called our camp, found plenty of work to keep us occupied. The bushes had ravaged our clothing to such an extent that some of us were pretty ragged, and every halt was taken advantage of to make much needed repairs.

It was nearly dark when Richards and Pete came back. They had reached the high hill and from its summit saw, some distance to the westward, long stretches of water reaching far away to the hills in that direction. A portage of several miles in which some small lakes occurred would take us, they said, into a large lake. Beyond this they could not see.

Pete brought back with him a hatful of ripe currants which he stewed and which proved a very welcome addition to our supper of corn-meal mush.

The report of water ahead made us happy. It was now August twenty- third. If we could reach Michikamau by September first that should give me ample time, I believed, to reach the George River before the caribou migration would take place.

The following morning we started forward with a will, and with many little lakes to cross and short portages between them, we made fairly good progress, and each lake took us one step higher on the plateau.

The character of the country was changing, too. The naked land and rocks and dead trees gave way to a forest of green spruce, and the ground was again covered with a thick carpet of white caribou moss.

We were catching no fish, however, although our efforts to lure them to the hook or entangle them in the net were never relinquished. Pork was a luxury, and no baker ever produced anything half so dainty and delicious as our squaw bread. A strict distribution of rations was maintained, and when the pork was fried, Pete, with a spoon, dished out the grease into the five plates in equal shares. Into this the quarter loaf ration of bread was broken and the mixture eaten to the last morsel. Sometimes the men drank the warm pork grease clear. Finally it became so precious that they licked their plates after scraping them with their spoons, and the longing eyes that were cast at the frying pan made me fear that some time a raid would be made on that.

One day, an owl was shot and went into the pot to keep company with a couple of partridges. Pete demurred. "Owl eat mice," said he. "Not good man eat him.

"You can count me out on owl, too," Richards volunteered.

"Oh! they're all right," I assured them. "The Labrador people always eat them and you'll find them very nice."

"Not me. Owl eat mice," Pete insisted.

"Well," I suggested, "possibly we'll be eating mice, too, before we get home, and it's a good way to begin by eating owl—for then the mice won't seem so bad when we have to eat them."

Stanton took charge of the kettle and dished out the rations that night.

"Partridge is good enough for me," said Richards, fearing that Stanton might forget his prejudice against owl.

"Me, too," echoed Pete.

"I'll take owl," said I.

Easton said nothing.

After we had eaten, Stanton asked: "How'd you like the partridge, Richards?"

"It was fine," said he. "Guess it was a piece of a young one you gave me, for it wasn't as tough as they usually are."

"Maybe it was young, but that partridge was owl." "I'll be darned!" exclaimed Richards. His face was a study for a moment, then he laughed. "If that was owl they're all right and I'm a convert. I'll eat all I can get after this."

After leaving Lake Desolation the owls had begun to come to us, and Richards was one of the best owl hunters of the party. At first one or two a day were killed, but now whenever we halted an owl would fly into a tree and twitter, and, with a very wise appearance, proceed to look us over as though he wanted to find out what we were up to anyway, for these owls were very inquisitive fellows. He immediately became a candidate for our pot, and as many as six were shot in one day. The men called them the "manna of the Labrador wilderness." Pete's disinclination to eat them was quickly forgotten, for hunger is a wonderful killer of prejudices, and he was as keen for them now as any of us.

An occasional partridge was killed and now and again a black duck or two helped out our short ration, but the owls were our mainstay. We did not have enough to satisfy the appetites of five hungry men, however; still we did fairly well.

The days were growing perceptibly shorter with each sunset, and the nights were getting chilly. On the night of August twenty-fifth, the thermometer registered a minimum temperature of twenty-five degrees above zero, and on the twenty-sixth of August, forty-eight degrees was the maximum at midday.

During the forenoon of that day we reached the largest of the lakes that the scouting party had seen three days before, and further scouting was now necessary. At the western end of the lake, about two miles from where we entered, a hill offered itself as a point from which to view the country beyond, and here we camped.

We were now out of the burned district and the scant growth of timber was apparently the original growth, though none of the trees was more than eight inches or so in diameter. In connection with this it might be of interest to note here the fact that the timber line ended at an elevation of two hundred and seventy-five feet above the lake. The hill was four hundred feet high and there was not a vestige of vegetation on its summit. The top of the hill was strewn with bowlders, large and small, lying loose upon the clean, storm-scoured bed rock, just as the glaciers had left them.

What a view we had! To the northwest, to the west, and to the southwest, for fifty miles in any direction was a network of lakes, and the country was as level as a table. The men called it "the plain of a thousand lakes," and this describes it well. To the far west a line of blue hills extending to the northwest and southeast cut off our view beyond. They were low, with but one high, conical peak standing out as a landmark. Another ridge at right angles to this one ran to the eastward, bounding the lakes on that side. I examined them carefully through my binoculars and discovered a long line of water, like a silver thread, following the ridge running eastward, and decided that this must be the Nascaupee River, though later I was convinced that I was mistaken and that the river lay to the southward of the ridge. To the cast and north of our hill was an expanse of rolling, desolate wilderness. Carefully I examined with my glass the great plain of lakes, hoping that I might discover the smoke of a wigwam fire or some other sign of life, but none was to be seen. It was as still and dead as the day it was created. It was a solemn, awe-inspiring scene, impressive beyond description, and one that I shall not soon forget.

We outlined as carefully as possible the course that we should follow through the maze of lakes, with the round peak as our objective point, for just south of it there seemed to be an opening through the ridge: beyond which we hoped lay Michikamau.

The next day we portaged through a marsh and into the lake country and made some progress, portaging from lake to lake across swampy and marshy necks. It was Sunday, but we did not realize it until our day's work was finished and we were snug in camp in the evening.

Monday's dawn brought with it a day of superb loveliness. The sky was cloudless, the earth was white with hoarfrost, the atmosphere was crisp and cool, and we took deep breaths of it that sent the blood tingling through our veins. It was a day that makes one love life.

Through small lakes and short portages we worked until afternoon and then—hurrah! we were on big water again. Thirty or forty miles in length the lake stretched off to the westward to carry us on our way. It was choked in places with many fir-topped islands, and the channels in and out amongst these islands were innumerable, so Pete called it Lake Kasheshebogamog, which in his language means "Lake of Many Channels."

As we paddled I dropped a troll and before we stopped for the night landed a seven-pound namaycush, and another large one broke a troll. The "Land of God's Curse" was behind us. We were with the fish again, and caribou and wolf tracks were seen.

The next day found us on our way early. A fine wind sent us spinning before it and at the same time kept us busy with a rough sea that was running on the wide, open lake when we were away from the shelter of the islands. At one o'clock we boiled the kettle at the foot of a low sand ridge, and upon climbing the ridge we found it covered with a mass of ripe blueberries. We ate our fill and picked some to carry with us.

At three o'clock we were brought up sharply at the end of the water with no visible outlet. The nature of the lake and the lateness of the season made it impracticable to turn back and look in other channels for the connection with western waters. Former experience had taught me that we might paddle around for a week before we found it, for these were big waters. Five miles ahead was the high, round peak that we were aiming for, and I had every confidence that from its top Michikamau could be seen and a way to reach the big lake. I decided that it must be climbed the next morning, and selected Pete and Easton for the work. A fall the day before had given me a stiff knee, and it was a bitter disappointment that I could not go myself, for I was nervously anxious for a first view of Michikamau. However, I realized that it was unwise to attempt the journey, and I must stay behind.

That night Stanton made two roly-polies of the blueberries we picked in the afternoon, boiling them in specimen bags, and we used the last of our sugar for sauce. This, with coffee, followed a good supper of boiled partridge and owl. It was like the old days when I was with Hubbard. We were making good progress, our hopes ran high, and we must feast. Pete's laughs, and songs and jokes added to our merriment. Rain came, but we did not mind that. We sat by a big, blazing fire and ate and enjoyed ourselves in spite of it. Then we went to the tent to smoke and every one pronounced it the best night in weeks.

On Wednesday rain poured down at the usual rising time and the men were delayed in starting, for we were in a place where scouting in thick weather was dangerous. It was the morning of the famous eclipse, but we had forgotten the fact. The rain had fallen away to a drizzle and we were eating a late breakfast when the darkness came. It did not last long, and then the rain stopped, though the sky was still overcast. Shortly after breakfast Pete and Easton left us. I gave Pete a new corncob pipe as he was leaving. When he put it in his pocket he said, "I smoke him when I see Michikaman, when I climb hill, if Michikamau there. Sit down, me, look at big water, feel good then. Smoke pipe, me, and call hill Corncob Hill."

"All right," said I, laughing at Pete's fancy. "I hope the hill will have a name to-day."

It was really a day of anxiety for me, for if Michikamau were not visible from the mountain top with the wide view of country that it must offer, then we were too far away from the lake to hope to reach it.

A mile from camp, Richards discovered a good-sized river flowing in from the northwest and set the net in it. Then he and Stanton paddled up the river a mile and a half to another lake, but did not explore it farther.

With what impatience I awaited the return of Pete and Easton can be imagined, and when, near dusk, I saw them coming I almost dreaded to hear their report, for what if they had not seen Michikamau?

But they had seen Michikamau. When Pete was within talking distance of me, he shouted exultantly, "We see him! We see him! We see Michikamau!"



CHAPTER XI

THE PARTING AT MICHIKAMAU

Pete and Easton had taken their course through small, shallow, rocky lakes until they neared the base of the round hill. Here the canoe was left, and up the steep side of the hill they climbed. "When we most up," Pete told me afterward, "I stop and look at Easton. My heart beat fast. I most afraid to look. Maybe Michikamau not there. Maybe I see only hills. Then I feel bad. Make me feel bad come back and tell you Michikamau not there. I see you look sorry when I tell you that. Then I think if Michikamau there you feel very good. I must know quick. I run. I run fast. Hill very steep. I do not care. I must know soon as I can, and I run. I shut my eyes just once, afraid to look. Then I open them and look. Very close I see when I open my eyes much water. Big water. So big I see no land when I look one way; just water. Very wide too, that water. I know I see Michikamau. My heart beat easy and I feel very glad. I almost cry. I remember corncob pipe you give me, and what I tell you. I take pipe out my pocket. I fill him, and light him. Then I sit on rock and smoke. All the time I look at Michikamau. I feel good and I say, 'This we call Corncob Hill.'"

And so we were all made glad and the conical peak had a name.

Pete told me that we should have to cut the ridge to the south of Corncob Hill, taking a rather wide detour to reach the place. A chain of lakes would help us, but some long portages were necessary and it would require several days' hard work. This we did not mind now. We were only anxious to dip our paddles into the waters of the big lake. At last Michikamau, which I had so longed to see through two summers of hardship in the Labrador wilds, was near, and I could hope to be rewarded with a look at it within the week.

But with the joy of it there was also a sadness, for I must part from three of my loyal companions. The condition of our commissariat and the cold weather that was beginning to be felt made it imperative that the men be sent back from the big lake.

The possibility of this contingency had been foreseen by me before leaving New York, and I had mentioned it at that time. Easton had asked me then, if the situation would permit of it, to consider him as a candidate to go through with me to Ungava. When the matter had been suggested at the last camp on the Nascaupee River be had again earnestly solicited me to choose him as my companion, and upon several subsequent occasions had mentioned it. Richards was the logical man for me to choose, for he had had experience in rapids, and could also render me valuable assistance in the scientific work that the others were not fitted for. He was exceedingly anxious to continue the journey, but his university duties demanded his presence in New York in the winter, and I had promised his people that he should return home in the autumn. This made it out of the question to keep him with me, and it was a great disappointment to both of us. That I might feel better assured of the safety of the returning men, I decided to send Pete back with them to act as their guide. Stanton, too, wished to go on, but Easton had spoken first, so I decided to give him the opportunity to go with me to Ungava, as my sole companion.

That night, after the others had gone to bed, we two sat late by the camp fire and talked the matter over. "It's a dangerous undertaking, Easton," I said, "and I want you to understand thoroughly what you're going into. Before we reach the George River Post we shall have over four hundred miles of territory to traverse. We may have trouble in locating the George River, and when we do find it there will be heavy rapids to face, and its whole course will be filled with perils. If any accident happens to either of us we shall be in a bad fix. For that reason it's always particularly dangerous for less than three men to travel in a country like this. Then there's the winter trip with dogs. Every year natives are caught in storms, and some of them perish. We shall be exposed to the perils and hardships of one of the longest dog trips ever made in a single season, and we shall be traveling the whole winter. I want you to understand this."

"I do understand it," he answered, "and I'm ready for it. I want to go on."

And so it was finally settled.

It was not easy for me to tell the men that the time had come when we must part, for I realized how hard it would be for them to turn back. The next morning after breakfast, I asked them to remain by the fire and light their pipes. Then I told them. Richards' eyes filled with tears. Stanton at first said he would not turn back without me, but finally agreed with me that it was best he should. Pete urged me to let him go on. Later he stole quietly into the tent, where I was alone writing, and without a word sat opposite me, looking very woe- begone. After awhile he spoke: "To-day I feel very sad. I forget to smoke. My pipe go out and I do not light it. I think all time of you. Very lonely, me. Very bad to leave you."

Here he nearly broke down, and for a little while he could not speak. When he could control himself he continued:

"Seems like I take four men in bush, lose two. Very bad, that. Don't know how I see your sisters. I go home well. They ask me, 'Where my brother?' I don't know. I say nothing. Maybe you die in rapids. Maybe you starve. I don't know. I say nothing. Your sisters cry." Then his tone changed from brokenhearted dejection to one of eager pleading:

"Wish you let me go with you. Short grub, maybe. I hunt. Much danger; don't care, me. Don't care what danger. Don't care if grub short. Maybe you don't find portage. Maybe not find river. That bad. I find him. I take you through. I bring you back safe to your sisters. Then I speak to them and they say I do right."

It was hard to withstand Pete's pleadings, but my duty was plain, and I said:

"No, Pete. I'd like to take you through, but I've got to send you back to see the others safely out. Tell my sisters I'm safe. Tell everybody we're safe. I'm sure we'll get through all right. We'll do our best, and trust to God for the rest, so don't worry. We'll be all right."

"I never think you do this," said he. "I don't think you leave me this way." After a pause be continued, "If grub short, come back. Don't wait too long. If you find Indian, then you all right. He help you. You short grub, don't find Indian, that bad. Don't wait till grub all gone. Come back."

Pete did not sing that day, and he did not smoke. He was very sad and quiet.

We spent the day in assorting and dividing the outfit, the men making a cache of everything that they would not need until their return, that we might not be impeded in our progress to Michikamau. They would get their things on their way back. Eight days, Pete said, would see them from this point to the cache we had made on the Nascaupee, and only eight days' rations would they accept for the journey. They were more than liberal. Richards insisted that I take a new Pontiac shirt that he had reserved for the cold weather, and Pete gave me a new pair of larigans. They deprived themselves that we might be comfortable. Easton and I were to have the tent, the others would use the tarpaulin for a wigwam shelter; each party would have two axes, and the other things were divided as best we could. Richards presented us with a package that we were not to open until the sixteenth of September—his birthday. It was a special treat of some kind.

Some whitefish, suckers and one big pike were taken out of the net, which was also left for them to pick up upon their return. A school of large pike had torn great holes in it, but it was still useful.

We were a sorrowful group that gathered around the fire that night. The evening was raw. A cold north wind soughed wearily through the fir tops. Black patches of clouds cast a gloom over everything, and there was a vast indefiniteness to the dark spruce forest around us. I took a flashlight picture of the men around the fire. Then we sat awhile and talked, and finally went to our blankets in the chilly tent.

September came with a leaden sky and cold wind, but the clouds were soon dispelled, and the sun came bright and warm. Our progress was good, though we had several portages to make. On September second, at noon, we left the larger canoe for the men to get on their way back, and continued with the eighteen-foot canoe, which, with its load of outfit and five men, was very deep in the water, but no wind blew and the water was calm.

Here the character of the lakes changed. The waters were deep and black, the shores were steep and rocky, and some labradorite was seen. One small, curious island, evidently of iron, though we did not stop to examine it, took the form of a great head sticking above the water, with the tops of the shoulders visible.

Sunday, September third, was a memorable day, a day that I shall never forget while I live. The morning came with all the glories of a northern sunrise, and the weather was perfect. After two short portages and two small lakes were crossed, Pete said, "Now we make last portage and we reach Michikamau." It was not a long portage—a half mile, perhaps. We passed through a thick-grown defile, Pete ahead, and I close behind him. Presently we broke through the bush and there before us was the lake. We threw down our packs by the water's edge. We had reached Michikamau. I stood uncovered as I looked over the broad, far-reaching waters of the great lake. I cannot describe my emotions. I was living over again that beautiful September day two years before when Hubbard had told me with so much joy that he had seen the big lake—that Michikamau lay just beyond the ridge. Now I was on its very shores—the shores of the lake that we had so longed to reach. How well I remembered those weary wind-bound days, and the awful weeks that followed. It was like the recollection of a horrid dream—his dear, wan face, our kiss and embrace, my going forth into the storm and the eternity of horrors that was crowded into days. Pete, I think, understood, for he bad heard the story. He stood for a moment in silence, then he fashioned his hat brim into a cup, and dipping some water handed it to me. "You reach Michikamau at last. Drink Michikamau water before others come." I drank reverently from the hat. Then the others joined us and we all stood for a little with bowed uncovered beads, on the shore.

Our camp was pitched on an elevated, rocky point a few hundred yards farther up—the last camp that we were to have together, and the forty-sixth since leaving Northwest River. We had made over half a hundred portages, and traveled about three hundred and twenty-five miles.

The afternoon was occupied in writing letters and telegrams to the home folks, for Richards to take out with him; after which we divided the food. Easton and I were to take with us seventy-eight pounds of pemmican, twelve pounds of pea meal, seven pounds of pork, some beef extract, eight pounds of flour, one cup of corn meal, a small quantity of desiccated vegetables, one pound of coffee, two pounds of tea, some salt and crystallose. Richards gave us nearly all of his tobacco, and Pete kept but two plugs for himself.

Toward evening we gathered about our fire, and talked of our parting and of the time when we should meet again. Every remaining moment we had of each other's company was precious to us now.

The day had been glorious and the night was one of rare beauty. We built a big fire of logs, and by its light I read aloud, in accordance with our custom on Sunday nights, a chapter from the Bible. After this we talked for a while, then sat silent, gazing into the glowing embers of our fire. Finally Pete began singing softly, "Home, Sweet Home" in Indian, and followed it with an old Ojibway song, "I'm Going Far Away, My Heart Is Sore." Then he sang an Indian hymn, "Pray For Me While I Am Gone." When his hymn was finished he said, very reverently, "I going pray for you fellus every day when I say my prayers. I can't pray much without my book, but I do my best. I pray the best I can for you every day." Pete's devotion was sincere, and I thanked him. Stanton sang a solo, and then all joined in "Auld Lang Syne." After this Pete played softly on the harmonica, while we watched the moon drop behind the horizon in the west. The fire burned out and its embers blackened. Then we went to our bed of fragrant spruce boughs, to prepare for the day of our parting.

The morning of September fourth was clear and beautiful and perfect, but in spite of the sunshine and fragrance that filled the air our hearts were heavy when we gathered at our fire to eat the last meal that we should perhaps ever have together.

When we were through, I read from my Bible the fourteenth of John—the chapter that I had read to Hubbard that stormy October morning when we said good-by forever.

The time of our parting had come. I do not think I had fully realized before how close my bronzed, ragged boys had grown to me in our months of constant companionship. A lump came in my throat, and the tears came to the eyes of Richards and Pete, as we grasped each other's hands.

Then we left them. Easton and I dipped our paddles into the water, and our lonely, perilous journey toward the dismal wastes beyond the northern divide was begun. Once I turned to see the three men, with packs on their backs, ascending the knoll back of the place where our camp had been. When I looked again they were gone.



CHAPTER XII

OVER THE NORTHERN DIVIDE

Michikamau is approximately between eighty and ninety miles in length, including the unexplored southeast bay, and from eight to twenty-five miles in width. It is surrounded by rugged hills, which reach an elevation of about five hundred feet above the lake. They are generally wooded for perhaps two hundred feet from the base, with black spruce, larch, and an occasional small grove of white birch. Above the timber line their tops are uncovered save by white lichens or stunted shrubs. The western side of the lake is studded with low islands, but its main body is unobstructed. The water is exceedingly clear, and is said by the Indians to have a great depth. The shores are rocky, sometimes formed of massive bed rock in which is found the beautifully colored labradorite; sometimes strewn with loose bowlders. Our entrance had been made in a bay several miles north of the point where the Nascaupee River, its outlet, leaves the lake and we kept to the east side as we paddled north.

No artist's imaginative brush ever pictured such gorgeous sunsets and sunrises as Nature painted for us here on the Great Lake of the Indians. Every night the sun went down in a blaze of glory and left behind it all the colors of the spectrum. The dark hills across the lake in the west were silhouetted against a sky of brilliant red which shaded off into banks of orange and amber that reached the azure at the zenith. The waters of the lake took the reflection of the red at the horizon and became a flood of restless blood. The sky colorings during these few days were the finest that I ever saw in Labrador, not only in the evening but in the morning also.

Michikamau has a bad name amongst the Indians for heavy seas, particularly in the autumn months when the northwest gales sometimes blow for weeks at a time without cessation, and the Indians say that they are often held on its shores for long periods by high running seas that no canoe could weather. These were the same winds that held Hubbard and me prisoners for nearly two weeks on the smaller Windbound Lake in 1903, bringing us to the verge of starvation before we were permitted to begin our race for life down the trail toward Northwest River. Fate was kinder now, and but one day's rough water interfered with progress.

Early on the third day after parting from the other men, we found ourselves at the end of Michikamau where a shallow river, in which large bowlders were thickly scattered, flowed into it from the north. This was the stream draining Lake Michikamats, the next important point in our journey. Michikamau, it might be explained, means, in the Indian tongue, big water—so big you cannot see the land beyond; Michikamats means a smaller body of water beyond which land may be seen. So somebody has paradoxically defined it "a little big lake."

Barring a single expansion of somewhat more than a mile in length the Michakamats River, which runs through a flat, marshy and uninteresting country, was too shallow to float our canoes, and we were compelled to portage almost its entire length.

In the wide marshes between these two lakes we met the first evidences of the great caribou migration. The ground was tramped like a barnyard, in wide roads, by vast herds of deer, all going to the eastward. There must have been thousands of them in the bands. Most of the hoof marks were not above a day or two old and had all been made since the last rain had fallen, as was evidenced by freshly turned earth and newly tramped vegetation. We saw none of the animals, however, and there were no hills near from which we might hope to sight the herds.

Evidences of life were increasing and game was becoming abundant as we approached the height of land. Some geese and ptarmigans were killed and a good many of both kinds of birds were seen, as well as some ducks. We began to live in plenty now and the twittering owls were permitted to go unmolested.

Lake Michikamats is irregular in shape, about twenty miles long, and, exclusive of its arms, from two to six miles wide. The surrounding country is flat and marshy, with some low, barren hills on the westward side of the lake. The timber growth in the vicinity is sparse and scrubby, consisting of spruce and tamarack. The latter had now taken on its autumnal dress of yellow, and, interspersing the dark green of the spruce, gave an exceedingly beautiful effect to the landscape.

Where we entered Michikamats, at its outlet, the lake is very shallow and filled with bowlders that stand high above the water. A quarter of a mile above this point the water deepens, and farther up seems to have a considerable depth, though we did not sound it. The western shore of the upper half is lined with low islands scantily covered with spruce and tamarack.

During two days that we spent here in a thorough exploration of the lake, our camp was pitched on an island at the bottom of a bay that, half way up the lake, ran six miles to the northward. This was selected as the most likely place for the portage trail to leave the lake, as the island had apparently, for a long period, been the regular rendezvous of Indians, not only in summer, but also in winter. Tepee poles of all ages, ranging from those that were old and decayed to freshly cut ones, were numerous. They were much longer and thicker than those used by the Indians south of Michikamau. Here, also, was a well-built log cache, a permanent structure, which was, no doubt, regularly used by hunting parties. Some new snowshoe frames were hanging on the trees to season before being netted with babiche. On the lake shore were some other camping places that had been used within a few months, and at one of them a newly made "sweat hole," where the medicine man had treated the sick. These sweat holes are much in favor with the Labrador Indians, both Mountaineers and Nascaupees. They are about two feet in depth and large enough in circumference for a man to sit in the center, surrounded by a circle of good-sized bowlders. Small saplings are bent to form a dome-shaped frame for the top. The invalid is placed in the center of this circle of bowlders, which have previously been made very hot, water is poured on them to produce steam, and a blanket thrown over the sapling frame to confine the steam. The Indians have great faith in this treatment as a cure for almost every malady.

On the mainland opposite the island upon which we were encamped was a barren hill which we climbed, and which commanded a view of a large expanse of country. On the top was a small cairn and several places where fires had been made—no doubt Indian signal fires. The fuel for them must have been carried from the valley below, for not a stick or bush grew on the hill itself. "Signal Hill," as we called it, is the highest elevation for many miles around and a noticeable landmark.

To the northward, at our feet, were two small lakes, and just beyond, trending somewhat to the northwest, was a long lake reaching up through the valley until it was lost in the low hills and sparse growth of trees beyond. Great bowlders were strewn indiscriminately everywhere, and the whole country was most barren and desolate. To the south of Michikamats was the stretch of flat swamp land which extended to Michikaman. Petscapiskau, a prominent and rugged peak on the west shore of Michikamau near its upper end, stood out against the distant horizon, a lone sentinel of the wilderness.

The head waters of the George River must now be located. There was nothing to guide me in the search, and the Indians at Northwest River had warned us that we were liable at this point to be led astray by an entanglement of lakes, but I felt certain that any water flowing northward that we might come to, in this longitude, would either be the river itself or a tributary of it, and that some such stream would certainly be found as soon as the divide was crossed.

With this object in view we kept a course nearly due north, passing through four good-sized lakes, until, one afternoon, at the end of a short portage, we reached a narrow, shallow lake lying in an easterly and westerly direction, whose water was very clear and of a bottle- green color, in marked contrast to that of the preceding lakes, which had been of a darker shade.

This peculiarity of the water led me to look carefully for a current when our canoe was launched, and I believed I noticed one. Then I fancied I heard a rapid to the westward. Easton said there was no current and he could not hear a rapid, and to satisfy myself, we paddled toward the sound. We had not gone far when the current became quite perceptible, and just above could be seen the waters of a brook that fed the lake, pouring down through the rocks. We were on the George River at last! Our feelings can be imagined when the full realization of our good fortune came to us, and we turned our canoe to float down on the current of the little stream that was to grow into a mighty river as it carried us on its turbulent bosom toward Ungava Bay.

The course of the stream here was almost due east. The surrounding country continued low and swampy. Tamarack was the chief timber and much of it was straight and fine, with some trees fully twelve inches in diameter at the butt, and fifty feet in height.

A rocky, shallow place in the river that we had to portage brought us into an expansion of considerable size, and here we pitched our first camp on the George River. This was an event that Hubbard had planned and pictured through the weary weeks of hardship on the Susan Valley trail and the long portages across the ranges in his expedition of 1903.

"When we reach the George River, we'll meet the Indians and all will be well," he used to say, and how anxiously we looked forward for that day, which never came.

At the time when he made the suggestion to turn back from Windbound Lake I at first opposed it on the ground that we could probably reach the George River, where game would be found and the Indians would be met with, in much less time than it would take to make the retreat to Northwest River. Finally I agreed that it was best to return. On the twenty-first of September the retreat was begun and Hubbard died on the eighteenth of October. Now, two years later, I realized that from Windbound Lake we could have reached Michikamau in five or six days at the very outside, and less than two weeks, allowing for delays through bad weather and our weakened condition, would have brought us to the George River, where, at that time of the year, ducks and ptarmigans are always plentiful. All these things I pondered as I sat by this camp fire, and I asked myself, "Why is it that when Fate closes our eyes she does not lead us aright?" Of course it is all conjecture, but I feel assured that if Hubbard and I had gone on then instead of turning back, Hubbard would still be with us.

Below the expansion on which our first camp on the river was pitched the stream trickled through the thickly strewn rocks in a wide bed, where it took a sharp turn to the northward and emptied into another expansion several miles in length, with probably a stream joining it from the northeast, though we were unable to investigate this, as high winds prevailed which made canoeing difficult, and we had to content ourselves with keeping a direct course.

It seemed as though with the crossing of the northern divide winter had come. On the night we reached the George River the temperature fell to ten degrees below the freezing point, and the following day it never rose above thirty-five degrees, and a high wind and snow squalls prevailed that held traveling in check. On the morning of the fifteenth we started forward in the teeth of a gale and the snow so thick we could not see the shore a storm that would be termed a "blizzard" in New York—and after two hours' hard work were forced to make a landing upon a sandy point with only a mile and a quarter to our credit.