lay the two broad converging
rivers whose immense currents; hushed beneath the weight of ice, here
merged into the single channel of the Lower Saskatchewan--a wild, weird
scene it looked as the shadows closed around it. We descended with
difficulty the steep bank and crossed the river to the camp-fire on the
north shore. Three red-deer hunters were around it; they had some freshly
killed elk meat, and potatoes from Fort-a-la-Corne, eighteen miles below
the forks; and with so many delicacies our supper a-la-fourchette,
despite a snow-storm, was a decided success.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The Great Sub-Arctic Forest--The "Forks" of the Saskatchewan--An Iroquois
--Fort-a-la-Corne--News from the outside World--All haste for Home--The
solitary Wigwam--Joe Miller's Death.

AT the "forks" of the Saskatchcwan the traveller to the east enters the
Great Sub-Arctic Forest. Let us look for a moment at this region where
the earth dwells in the perpetual gloom of the pine-trees. Travelling
north from the Saskatchewan River at any portion of its course From
Carlton to Edmonton, one enters on the second day's journey this region
of the Great Pine Forest. We have before compared it to the shore of an
ocean, and like a shore it has its capes and promontories which stretch
far into the sea-like prairie, the indentations caused by the fires
sometimes forming large bays and open spaces won from the domain of the
forest by the fierce flames which beat against it in the dry days of
autumn. Some 500 or 600 miles to the north this forest ends, giving place
to that most desolate region of the earth, the barren grounds of the
extreme north, the lasting home of the musk-ox and the summer haunt of
the reindeer; but along the valley of the Mackenzie River the wooded
tract is continued close to the Arctic Sea, and on the shores of the
great Bear Lake a slow growth of four centuries scarce brings a
circumference of thirty inches to the trunks of the white spruce. Swamp
and lake, muskeg, and river rocks of the earliest formations, wild wooded
tracts of impenetrable wilderness combine to make this region the great
preserve of the rich fur-bearing animals whose skins are rated in the
marts of Europe at four times their weight in gold. Here the darkest
mink, the silkiest sable, the blackest otter are trapped and traded; here
are bred these rich furs whose possession women prize as second only to
precious stones. Into the extreme north of this re