derstand. Trailing by touch, however, when
not understood by the spectator, seems a marvellous performance. For
instance, when a husky dog, the leader of a sled-train, will come out
of the forest and with his head held high, and without a moment's
hesitation, trot across a lake that may be three or four miles wide,
upon the surface of which the wind and drifting snow have left
absolutely no visible sign of a trail, and when that dog will cross
that great unbroken expanse and enter the woods on the far shore
exactly where the trail appears in sight again, though no stick or
stone or any other visible thing marks the spot--it does seem a
marvellous feat. But it is done, not by sight, sound, or scent, but by
touch--the feel of the foot. In winter time man, too, follows a trail
in the same way, notwithstanding that he is generally handicapped by a
pair of snowshoes. Some unseen trails are not hard to follow--even a
blind man could follow them. It is done this way:

Suppose you come to a creek that you want to cross, yet you can see no
way of doing it, for there is nothing in sight--neither log nor
bridge--spanning the river. But suppose someone tells you that, though
the water is so muddy that you cannot see an inch into it, there is a
flat log spanning the creek about six inches below the surface, and
that if you feel about with your foot you can find it. Then, of
course, you would make your way across by walking on the unseen log,
yet knowing all the time that if you made a misstep you would plunge
into the stream. You would do it by the feel of the foot. It is just
the same in following an unseen trail in the snow--it lies hard-packed
beneath the surface, just as the log lay unseen in the river. What a
pity it is that the writers of northern tales so rarely understand the
life they have made a specialty of depicting.

But to return to the caribou we were trailing, and also to make a long
hunt short--for you now know most of the interesting points in the
sport--I must tell you that we spent a full day and a night before we
came up with them. And that night, too, a heavy fall of snow added to
our trouble, but it made the forest more beautiful than ever. It was
after sunrise when we picked up fresh tracks. A heavy rime was
falling, but though it screened all distant things, we espied five
caribou that were still lingering on a lake, over which the main band
had passed. They were east of us and were heading f