nt, the dog-will follow it himself;
and when sight fails to show it, or storm has hidden it beneath drifts,
his sense of smell will enable him to keep straight. Thus through the
long waste we journey on, by frozen lakelet, by willow copse, through
pine forest, or over treeless prairie, until the winter's day draws to
its close and the darkening landscape bids us seek some resting-place
for the night. Then the hauling-dog is taken out of the harness, and his
day's work is at an end; his whip-marked face begins to look less rueful,
he stretches and rolls in the dry powdery snow, and finally twists
himself a bed and goes fast asleep. But the real moment of pleasure is
still in store for him When our supper is over the chopping of the axe,
on the block of pemmican, or the unloading of the frozen white-fish from
the provision-sled, tells him that his is about to begin. He springs
lightly up and watches eagerly these preparations for his supper. On
the plains he receives a daily ration of 2 lbs. of pemmican. In the
forest and lake country, where fish is the staple food, he gets two large
white-fish raw. He prefers fish to meat, and will work better on it too.
His supper is soon over; there is a short after-piece of growling and
snapping at hungry comrade, and then he lies down out in the snow to
dream that whips have been abolished and hauling is discarded for ever,
sleeping peacefully until morning, unless indeed some band of wolves
should prowl around and, scenting campfire, howl their long chorus to the
midnight skies.

And now, with this introductory digression on dogs, let us return to our
camp in the thick pine-bluff on the river bank.

The night fell very cold. Between supper and bed there is not much time
when present cold and perspective early-rising are the chief features of
the night and morning. I laid down my buffalo robe with more care than
usual, and got into my sack of deer-skins with a notion that the night
was going to be one of unusual severity. My sack of deer-skins--so far it
has been scarcely mentioned in this journal, and yet it played no
insignificant part in the nightly programme. Its origin and construction
were simply these. Before leaving Red River I had received from a
gentleman, well known in the Hudson Bay Company, some most useful
suggestions as to winter travel. His residence of many years in the
coldest parts of Labrador, and his long journey into the interior of that
most wild and sterile l