hed brightness of
polished steel known only where unbroken sunlight meets unbroken snow
glare. On the 7th of December, 1770, Hearne left the fort, led by
Matonabbee and followed by the slave Indians with the dog sleighs. One
of Matonabbee's wives lay ill; but that did not hinder the iron
pathfinder. The woman was wrapped in robes and drawn on a dog sleigh.
There was neither pause nor hesitation. If the woman recovered, good.
If she died, they would bury her under a cairn of stones as they
travelled. Matonabbee struck directly west-northwest for some _caches_
of provisions which he had left hidden on the trail. The place was
found; but the _caches_ had been rifled clean of food. That did not
stop Matonabbee. Nor did he show the slightest symptoms of anger. He
simply hastened their pace the more for their hunger, recognizing the
unwritten law of the wilderness--that starving hunters who had rifled
the _cache_ had a right to food wherever they found it. Day after day,
stoical as men of bronze, the marchers reeled off the long white miles
over the snowy wastes, pausing only for night sleep with evening and
morning meals. Here nibbled twigs were found; there the stamping
ground of a deer shelter; elsewhere the small, cleft foot-mark like the
ace of hearts. But the signs were all old. No deer were seen. Even
the black marble eye that betrays the white hare on the snow, and the
fluffy bird track of the feather-footed northern grouse, grew rarer;
and the slave women came in every morning empty-handed from untouched
snares. In spite of hunger and cold, Matonabbee remained good-natured,
imperturbable, hard as a man of bronze, coursing with the winged speed
of snow-shoes from morning till night without pause, going to a bed of
rock moss on a meal of snow water and rising eager as an arrow to leave
the bow-string for the next day's march. For three days before
Christmas the entire company had no food but snow. Christmas was
celebrated by starvation. Hearne could not indulge in the despair of
the civilized man's self-pity when his faithful guides went on without
complaint.

[Illustration: Eskimo Family, taken by Light of Midnight Sun.--C. W.
Mathers.]

By January the company had entered the Barren Lands. The Barren Lands
were bare but for an occasional oasis of trees like an island of refuge
in a shelterless sea. In the clumps of dwarf shrubs, the Indians found
signs that meant relief from famine--tufts of hair