, and got them ready for their places.
Then we hitched one end on a strong dog sled, and attached one dog to
this heavy load. How four dogs could drag these heavy sticks of timber
was indeed surprising. The principal pieces were thirty-six feet long
and ten inches square. Yet my gallant St. Bernards and Newfoundlands
would take these heavy loads along at a rate that was astounding. We
had thirty-two dogs at work, and rapidly did our piles of timber and
logs accumulate.

Dressed as one of the natives, with them I toiled incessantly for the
material upbuilding of the Mission. We had delightful services every
Sabbath. Nearly every Indian within some miles of the place attended,
and good results were continually cheering our hearts. Although it was
so late in the season when I arrived, yet there was not, for weeks
after, any sign of the spring, except in the lengthening days and
increasingly brilliant sun. For a long time the vast snowy wastes
remained crisp and hard. Very glorious was the atmosphere, for there
were no fogs, no mists, no damps. The sky seemed always cloudless, the
air was always clear.

Nearly every morning during those weeks of hard toil we were treated to
the strange sights which the beautiful and vivid mirage brought to us.
Islands and headlands, scores of miles away, were lifted up from below
the horizon, and shown to us as distinctly as though close at hand.
With but few exceptions our nights also were very glorious, especially
when the Northern Lights, taking this vast Lake Winnipeg as their field
of action, held one of their grand carnivals. Generally beginning in
the far north, with majestic sweep they came marching on, filling the
very heavens with their coloured bars, or flashing, ever-changing, yet
always beautiful clouds of brightness and glory. Sometimes they would
form a magnificent corona at the zenith, and from its dazzling splendour
would shoot out long columns of different coloured lights, which rested
upon the far-off frozen shores. Often have I seen a cloud of light flit
swiftly across these tinted bars, as if a hand were sweeping the strings
of some grand harp. So startling was the resemblance, that there was an
instinctive listening for the sound that we used to think ought to come.
Sometimes I have suddenly stopped my dogs and men, when we have been
travelling amidst these fascinating and almost bewildering glories of
the heavens above us, and we have listened for that