The Long Miles Which Separated Me From The World Did Not Make Me Feel Far Away - Just Far Enough To Be Nice - And Many Times I Found Myself Wishing I Need Never Have To Go Back Again.

But the work could not all be done here.

Half the distance across the peninsula had been passed, and now on August 11th we were beginning the descent of the George River. Would the Labrador skies continue to smile kindly upon me? It would be almost if not quite a three hundred mile journey to Ungava, and it might be more. Could we make the post by the last week in August? The men appeared confident; but for me the days which followed held anxious hours, and the nights sleepless ones as I tried to make my decision whether in case it should become evident we could not reach Ungava in time, I should turn back, leaving the work uncompleted, or push on, accepting the consequent long winter journey back across Labrador, or round the coast, and the responsibility of providing for my four guides for perhaps a full year. At least the sun shone on the beginning of the journey, and about nine o'clock, the last pack having gone forward, I set off down the portage below Lake Hubbard, a prayer in my heart that the journey might be swift.

The prayer seemed doomed to remain unanswered at first. Before noon of that day the sun was hidden, and for nearly a week we did not again see his face. Violent storms of wind and rain and snow made progress difficult or impossible, and on August 16th we were camped only thirty miles from the Height of Land.

The upper river proved a succession of lake expansions of varying sizes, their waters dropping from one to the other down shallow rapids. At the Height of Land, and for some miles beyond, the country is flat and boggy, and sparsely wooded with tamarack and spruce, many of the tall, slender tops of the former being bent completely over by the storms. The spruce was small and scant, increasing in size and quantity as we descended from the highest levels, but nowhere on the northern slope attaining the size reached in the valley of the Nascaupee.

Gradually low, barren ridges began to appear, their white mossy sides marked by caribou trails which formed a network over the country we were passing through, and all were freshly cut with hoof marks. Every day there were herds or single deer to be seen along the way, and at a number of points we passed long piles of whitened antlers. Other game too, ducks, geese, and ptarmigan had become plentiful since we entered the caribou country, and now and then a few were taken to vary the monotony of the diet of dried caribou meat. Loons were about us at all hours, and I grew to love their weird call as much almost as the Indians do.

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