They are so
fond of sweets that after this simple process they set an extravagant
price upon it.
On the 15th fell the first shower of rain we had seen for six months, and
on the 17th the thermometer rose to 77 degrees in the shade. The whole
face of the country was deluged by the melted snow. All the nameless
heaps of dirt accumulated in the winter now floated over the very
thresholds, and the long-imprisoned scents dilated into vapours so
penetrating that no retreat was any security from them. The flood
descended into the cellar below our house and destroyed a quantity of
powder and tea; a loss irreparable in our situation.
The noise made by the frogs which this inundation produced is almost
incredible. There is strong reason to believe that they outlive the
severity of winter. They have often been found frozen and revived by
warmth, nor is it possible that the multitude which incessantly filled
our ears with its discordant notes could have been matured in two or
three days.
The fishermen at Beaver Lake and the other detached parties were ordered
to return to the post. The expedients to which the poor people were
reduced to cross a country so beset with waters presented many uncouth
spectacles. The inexperienced were glad to compromise with the loss of
property for the safety of their persons and, astride upon ill-balanced
rafts with which they struggled to be uppermost, exhibited a ludicrous
picture of distress. Happy were they who could patch up an old canoe
though obliged to bear it half the way on their shoulders through miry
bogs and interwoven willows. But the veteran trader, wedged in a box of
skin with his wife, children, dogs, and furs, wheeled triumphantly
through the current and deposited his heterogeneous cargo safely on the
shore. The woods reechoed with the return of their exiled tenants. A
hundred tribes, as gaily dressed as any burnished natives of the south,
greeted our eyes in our accustomed walks, and their voices, though
unmusical, were the sweetest that ever saluted our ears.
From the 19th to the 26th the snow once more blighted the resuscitating
verdure, but a single day was sufficient to remove it. On the 28th the
Saskatchewan swept away the ice which had adhered to its banks, and on
the morrow a boat came down from Carlton House with provisions. We
received such accounts of the state of vegetation at that place that Dr.
Richardson determined to visit it in order to collect botanical
specimens, as the period at which the ice was expected to admit of the
continuation of our journey was still distant. Accordingly he embarked on
the 1st of May.
In the course of the month the ice gradually wore away from the south
side of the lake but the great mass of it still hung to the north side
with some snow visible on its surface.
