eyond where we got the berries we went into camp.
Trolling on the way, we caught a namaycush (lake trout), the first we
had seen on the trip. In our camp on Lost Trail Lake we were held all
of Monday (August 24) by a gale that beat the water into a fury. We
took advantage of the opportunity to try our gill net, sinking it on
the lee shore, but it was so rotten it would not hold a fish large
enough to get fast in it, and we finally threw it away as a useless
encumbrance.

In the course of the day Hubbard and climbed a hill not far away, while
I remained in camp to do some "chores." They found bake-apple berries
in abundance--the only spot we came across where they grew in any great
quantity--and had a good look at a lake we had previously sighted two
miles to the north. This lake was larger than the one we were on,
being about twenty-five miles long; it was, in fact, the largest body
of water by far that we had seen since leaving Grand Lake. Its size
impressed Hubbard with the fatal belief that it, rather than Lost Trail
Lake, was connected with Michikamau, and to it he decided to go. Our
experience there led us to call it Lake Disappointment.

We portaged into it on Tuesday morning (August 25). Our course was
over a neck of land which was mostly soft marsh partially covered with
spruce. We did not know then that in abandoning Lost Trail Lake for
Lake Disappointment we were wandering from the Indian trail to
Michikamau. Some Indians I met during the winter at Northwest River
Post told me that a river flowed out of the western end of Lost Trail
Lake into the very southeast bay of Lake Michikamau we were longing so
much to see. This was the trail. And we lost it.

We ate our luncheon on the southern shore of Lake Disappointment. That
afternoon and the next two days (August 26 and 27) we spent in paddling
about the lake in a vain search for a river. Thirty or more miles a
day we paddled, and found nothing but comparatively small creeks. One
of these we followed almost to its source, and then returned to the
lake again. We were living pretty well. While we were on these lakes
near the mountains we killed four geese and one spruce-grouse, and
caught about eighty half-pound trout, two two-pound namaycush and a
five-pound pike.

The pike we got in this unsportsmanlike manner: We were fishing for
trout in a creek that emptied into Lake Disappointment in a succession
of falls, and found that while there were some