they would have to search for their game; and to this district they
confined their search.

On the fifth day they made a more extended excursion towards the
interior. It was now the season of midsummer, when the old males range
up the banks of the streams: partly with the design of catching a few
freshwater fish, partly to nibble at the sweet berries, but above all to
meet the females, who just then, with their half-grown cubs, come coyly
seaward to meet their old friends of the previous year, and introduce
their offspring to their fathers, who up to this hour have not set eyes
on them.

On the present excursion our hunters were more fortunate than before:
since they not only witnessed a reunion of this sort, but succeeded in
making a capture of the whole family,--father, mother, and cubs.

They had on this occasion gone up the Churchill river, and were
ascending a branch stream that runs into the latter, some miles above
the fort. Their mode of travelling was in a birch-bark canoe: for
horses are almost unknown in the territory of the Hudson's Bay Company,
excepting in those parts of it that consist of prairie. Throughout most
of this region the only means of travelling is by canoes and boats,
which are managed by men who follow it as a calling, and who are styled
"voyageurs." They are nearly all of Canadian origin--many of them
half-breeds, and extremely skilful in the navigation of the lakes and
rivers of this untrodden wilderness. Of course most of them are in the
employ of the Hudson's Bay Company; and when not actually engaged in
"voyaging" do a little hunting and trapping on their own account.

Two of these voyageurs--kindly furnished by the chief factor at the
fort--propelled the canoe which carried our young hunters; so that with
Pouchskin there were five men in the little craft. This was nothing,
however, as birch-bark canoes are used in the Territory of a much larger
kind--some that will even carry tons of merchandise and a great many
men. Along the bank of the stream into which they had now entered grew
a selvage of willows--here and there forming leafy thickets that were
impenetrable to the eye; but in other places standing so thinly, that
the plains beyond them could be seen out of the canoe.

It was a likely enough place for white bears to be found in--especially
at this season, when, as already stated, the old males go inland to meet
the females, as well as to indulge in a little vegetable di