of making it on the track.

Conversation round a camp-fire in the North-west is limited to one
Subject--dogs and dog-driving. To be a good driver of dogs, and to be
able to run fifty miles in a day with ease, is to be a great man. The
fame of a noted dog-driver spreads far and wide. Night after night would
I listen to the prodigies of running performed by some Ba'tiste or Angus,
doughty champions of the rival races. If Ba'tiste dwelt at Cumberland, I
Would begin to hear his name mentioned 200 miles from that place, and his
fame would still be talked of 200 miles beyond it. With delight would I
hear the name of this celebrity dying gradually away in distance, for by
the disappearance of some oft-heard name and the rising of some new
constellation of dog-driver, one could mark a stage of many hundred miles
on the long road upon which I was travelling.

On the 29th January we reached the shore of Pine Island Lake, and saw in
our track the birch lodge of an Indian. It was before sunrise, and we
stopped the dogs to warm our fingers over the fire of the wigwam. Within
sat a very old Indian and two or three women and children. The old man
was singing to himself a low monotonous chant; beside him some reeds,
marked by the impress of a human form, were spread upon the ground; the
fire burned brightly in the centre of the lodge, while the smoke escaped
and the light entered through the same round aperture in the top of the
conical roof. When we had entered and seated ourselves, the old man
still continued his song. "What is he saying?" I asked, although the
Indian etiquette forbids abrupt questioning. "He is singing for his son,"
a man answered, "who died yesterday, and whose body they have taken to
the fort last night." It was even so. A French Canadian who had dwelt in
Indian fashion for some years, marrying the daughter of the old man, had
died from the effects of over-exertion in running down a silver fox, and
the men from Cumberland had taken away the body a few hours before.
Thus the old man mourned, while his daughter the widow, and a child sat
moodily looking at the flames. "He hunted for us; he fed us," the old man
said. "I am too old to hunt; I can scarce see the light; I would like to
die too." Those old words which the presence of the great mystery forces
from our lips-those words of consolation which some one says are "chaff
well meant for grain"--were changed into their Cree equivalents and duly
rendered to him, bu