We Were 3 1/2 Days Covering The 8 Small Lakes And 9 Portages (30 Miles) That Lie Between The Two Great Highways, Great Slave Lake And Artillery Lake; And Camped On The Shore Of The Latter On The Night Of July 31.

Two of these 9 lakes had not been named by the original explorers. I therefore exercised my privilege and named them, respectively, "Loutit" and "Weeso," in honour of my men.

The country here is cut up on every side with caribou trails; deep worn like the buffalo trails on the plains, with occasional horns and bones; these, however, are not so plentiful as were the relics of the Buffalo. This, it proved, was because the Caribou go far north at horn-dropping time, and they have practically no bones that the Wolves cannot crush with their teeth.

Although old tracks were myriad-many, there were no new ones. Weeso said, however, "In about four days the shores of this lake will be alive with Caribou." It will show the erratic nature of these animals when I say that the old man was all wrong; they did not appear there in numbers until many weeks later, probably not for two months.

Here, at the foot of Artillery Lake, we were near the last of the timber, and, strange to say, we found some trees of remarkably large growth. One, a tamarac, was the largest and last seen; the other, a spruce - Pike's Lobstick - was 55 inches in girth, 1 foot from the ground.

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