es,
with the thermometer varying between 70 and 80 degrees of frost I must
candidly admit to having entertained very grave feelings at the
contemplation of these family liabilities. A baby at any period of a
man's life is a very serious affair, but a baby below zero is something
appalling.

The first night passed over without accident.` I resigned my deerskin bag
to the lady and her infant, and Mrs. Winslow herself could not have
desired a more peaceful state of slumber than that enjoyed by the
youthful traveller. But the second night was a terror long to be
remembered; the cold was intense. Out of the inmost recesses of my
abandoned bag came those dire screams which result from infantile
disquietude. Shivering, under my blanket, I listened to the terrible
commotion going on in the interior of that cold-defying construction that
so long had stood my warmest friend.

At daybreak, chilled to the marrow, I rose, and gathered the fire together
in speechless agony: no wonder, the thermometer stood at 40 degrees
below zero; and yet, can it be believed? the baby seemed to be perfectly
oblivious to the benefits of the bag, and continued to howl unmercifully.
Such is the perversity of human nature even at that early age! Our
arrival at the mission put an end to my family responsibilities, and
restored me once more to the beloved bag; but the warm atmosphere of a
house soon revealed the cause of much of the commotion of the night.
"Wasn't-it-its-mother's-pet" displayed two round red marks upon its
chubby countenance! "Wasn't-it-its-mother's-pet" had, in fact, been
frost-bitten about the region of the nose and cheeks, and hence the
hubbub. After a delay of two days at the mission, during which the
thermometer always showed more than 60 degrees of frost in the early
morning, I continued my journey towards the east, crossing over from the
North to the South Branch of the Saskatchewan at a point some twenty
miles from the junction of the two rivers--a rich and fertile land, well
wooded and watered, a region destined in the near future to hear its
echoes wake to other sounds than those of moose-call or wolf-howl. It was
dusk in the evening of the 19th of January when we reached the high
ground which looks down upon the "forks" of the Saskatchewan River. On
some low ground at the farther side of the North Branch a camp-fire
glimmered in the twilight. On the ridges beyond stood the dark pines of
the Great Sub-Arctic Forest, and below