Our Guide Led Us From The Top Of One Hill To The Top Of Another, Making As Straight A Course To The Northward As The Numerous Lakes With Which The Country Is Intersected, Would Permit.

At noon we reached a remarkable hill with precipitous sides, named by the Copper Indians the Dog-Rib Rock, and its latitude, 64 degrees 34 minutes 52 seconds South, was obtained.

The canoe-track passes to the eastward of this rock but we kept to the westward as being the more direct course. From the time we quitted the banks of the Winter River we saw only a few detached clumps of trees; but after we passed the Dog-Rib Rock even these disappeared and we travelled through a naked country. In the course of the afternoon Keskarrah killed a reindeer and loaded himself with its head and skin, and our men also carried off a few pounds of its flesh for supper; but their loads were altogether too great to permit them to take much additional weight. Keskarrah offered to us as a great treat the raw marrow from the hind legs of the animal, of which all the party ate except myself and thought it very good. I was also of the same opinion when I subsequently conquered my then too fastidious taste. We halted for the night on the borders of a small lake which washed the base of a ridge of sandhills about three hundred feet high, having walked in direct distance sixteen miles.

There were four ancient pine-trees here which did not exceed six or seven feet in height but whose branches spread themselves out for several yards and we gladly cropped a few twigs to make a bed and to protect us from the frozen ground, still white from a fall of snow which took place in the afternoon. We were about to cut down one of these trees for firewood but our guide solicited us to spare them and made us understand by signs that they had been long serviceable to his nation and that we ought to content ourselves with a few of the smaller branches. As soon as we comprehended his request we complied with it and our attendants, having with some trouble grubbed up a sufficient quantity of roots of the dwarf birch to make a fire, we were enabled to prepare a comfortable supper of reindeer's meat which we despatched with the appetites which travelling in this country never fails to ensure. We then stretched ourselves out on the pine brush and, covered by a single blanket, enjoyed a night of sound repose. The small quantity of bed-clothes we carried induced us to sleep without undressing. Old Keskarrah followed a different plan; he stripped himself to the skin and, having toasted his body for a short time over the embers of the fire, he crept under his deer-skin and rags, previously spread out as smoothly as possible and, coiling himself up in a circular form, fell asleep instantly.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 161 of 339
Words from 83138 to 83644 of 176017