The men boiled the whole of
the big fish, except a little that they fried for me. George ate
the head boiled, which be says is the best part. It was all
delicious. I cleaned my little one carefully, and placing some
willow boughs about it, laid it in the shade until we should be
starting. Then after all my care we went away and forgot it. On
the island we found the whitened antlers and skull of a young
caribou stag. Joe cut off one of the points, and I used it after
that to wind my trolling line.
During the afternoon there was more wind, and the lake grew
rougher. It was fine to see the way the men managed the canoes.
Sometimes we seemed almost to lose ourselves in the trough of the
big waves, but there was not a dipper of water taken in. There was
a head wind and hard paddling for a time, but towards evening it
grew calmer, and the lake became very beautiful. In the distance
we saw several large masses of floating ice, and lying far away in
the west were many islands. The sky above was almost covered with
big, soft, silver clouds and as the sun sank gradually towards the
horizon the lake was like a great field of light. Once we stopped
to listen to the loons calling [Great Northern Divers]. They were
somewhere out on the glittering water, and far apart. We could not
see them, but there were four, and one wild call answering another
rang out into the great silence. It was weird and beautiful beyond
words; the big, shining lake with its distant blue islands; the sky
with its wonderful clouds and colour; two little canoes so deep in
the wilderness, and those wild, reverberant voices coming up from
invisible beings away in the "long light" which lay across the
water. We listened for a long time, then it ceased.
We camped early that night south of the bay on the farther side of
which the hills reached out to the west, narrowing the lake to
about seven miles. The bay was between four and five miles wide,
and it was too late to risk crossing it that night. George said if
it were still calm in the morning they would take just a bite and a
cup of tea, and start. We could have breakfast on the other shore.
During the night a north wind sprang up, and though soon calm again
the lake was stirred up, and all the rest of the night and the
early morning we could hear the waves rolling in on the beach.
From dawn the men were out, now and again, to see if it were fit to
start, but it was 10 A.M. before we were on the water. On one of
the islands where we landed during the morning we found the first
"bake-apple" berries.
