beings alone, to say nothing of the thirty dogs, would have put an end to our supplies.

From this lake the country was level, and the women were quite able to manage the dog-sleighs, while the men scoured the country on either side of the track in search of caribou or ptarmigan. The birds were fairly plentiful, but of course at this season were all paired, and there was no chance of making a slaughter at a single shot, as one can do in the fall of the year when the birds are in big packs; this shooting at separate birds was a serious strain on our ammunition, but the ptarmigan helped us out till we fell in with the caribou. It was almost a certainty to find these birds in every bunch of pines, and they kept up such a constant crowing round the camp at night that they had a poor chance of escaping the hungry man's gun. After the snow has melted the male bird gets pugnacious and runs up to meet the hunter, with his feathers puffed out, offering a fair mark for a stone; but before this happened we disdained ptarmigan, and would only kill the fattest-looking caribou. We eked out a precarious existence in this manner for a week, making short days' journeys, as the dogs could not travel fast or far. Pierre Lockhart deserted one morning when breakfast was particularly scanty, and taking his gun and blanket started back for Fond du Lac; we were depending on him for guide, but it was rather a relief when he went, as he was inclined to steal food, and had several disgusting habits that made his absence from the lodge rather acceptable than otherwise. Marlo's brother-inlaw disappeared about the same time, but we thought

they had gone off together and did not trouble ourselves further about them.

On the last day of May, acting on Capot Blanc's advice, we forked from our canoe-route, and took a more easterly course, to fall on the chain of lakes by which Anderson and Stewart had reached the Great Fish River. We hoped to find caribou in this direction, and on the same day that we made this change in our course the indefatigable Saltatha, having made a much longer round than the rest of us, came into camp late at night with a load of caribou-meat on his back; he had seen snow-shoe tracks to the east, but falling in with the caribou had turned back to the camp without following the tracks.

Sunday, June 1st, brought a distinct change in the weather; a mild south-west wind was melting the snow rapidly, and several flocks of geese and ducks passed to the north. A few geese were called up to the camp and killed from the doors of the lodges; the Indians imitate to perfection the cry of any bird, and at this time of year the geese are easy to call, as they are always in search of open water, and seem not a bit surprised to hear their friends calling to them from a group of deer-skin lodges. In the morning we sent two men to bring in the rest of Saltatha's meat, with orders to investigate the tracks, and see if there was another encampment of Indians to the east, as none of the caribou hunters had intended to leave the Great Slave Lake till the thaw came. Our peaceful Sunday was greatly disturbed by a royal row in one of the lodges, and we sent for Capot Blanc to ask him what

the trouble was.

The old fellow was glad enough to

get into our lodge away from the clamour, and explained the cause of the disturbance in his even lowpitched voice, so pleasantly contrasted with the Yellow Knife Billingsgate that was being freely used outside. 'It is the women,' he said; 'the wife of Syene has called the wife of Saltatha by a bad name, because she would not give her some meat; the wife of Saltatha has taken the wife of Syene by the hair and beaten her in the face with a snow-shoe till her nose bleeds very much; the men have tried to separate them, but that only makes things worse. It is always like this in our camps when we starve. If the men are alone they are quiet; but when there are women there is no peace. Is it so also in your country?'

Late in the night the men who had gone to fetch the meat came back, hauling on the sleigh Marlo's brotherin-law José, whom they had found lying in the snow, without fire, in a bunch of dwarf pines; the snow-shoe tracks were his, and but for the lucky chance of Saltatha's killing the caribou in that direction he must have perished in a day or two, as he was too weak to travel. He had left us to hunt ptarmigan, and lost himself eight days ago, and, as we supposed he had deserted with Pierre, we had taken no trouble to look for him. He was one of the unlucky ones, believed to have seen 'the Enemy' in his youth, and it certainly says little for his wits that he was unable to follow the tracks of such a large party. José had used up what little ammunition he started with on the first day, and since then had eaten nothing; he was without

matches or touchwood to make fire, and as the weather had been cold he must have suffered greatly. We fed him up to the best of our ability, and he recovered rapidly when meat was abundant in the camp.

CHAPTER XI.

On the following day we made an easy day's travel to the east, and most of us succeeded in killing caribou while the women drove the dogs. From this time, all through the summer till we again reached the Great Slave Lake late in August, we had no difficulty about provisions; although there was many a time when we could not say where we might find our next meal, something always turned up, and we were never a single day without eating during the whole journey. I really believe it is a mistake to try to carry enough food for a summer's work in the Barren Ground, as the difficulty of transport is so great, and after the caribou are once found there is no danger of starvation.

We were now travelling with the bull caribou, which had just left the thick woods, and made easy marches from lake to lake in a north-east direction; the weather became cold again for the last time, and June 7th was like a bad winter's day with a strong north wind and snowstorms. Then the summer came suddenly, and on the 11th we were obliged to camp on a high gravel ridge to await le grand dégel, which rendered travelling impossible, till the deep water had run off the ice.