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.
