ents. Having eaten a tolerably
fat breakfast and swallowed a good many cups of hot tea, we packed the
sleds, harnessed the dogs, and got away from the pine bluff two hours
before daybreak. Oh, how biting cold it was! On in the grey snow light
with a terrible wind sweeping up the long reaches of the river; nothing
spoken, for such cold makes men silent, morose, and savage. After four
hours travelling, we stopped to dine. It was only 9:30, but we had
breakfasted six hours before. We were some time before we could make
fire, but at length it was set going, and we piled the dry driftwood fast
upon the flames. Then I set up my thermometer again; it registered 39
below zero, 71 degrees of frost. What it must have been at day break I
cannot say; but it was sensibly colder than at ten o'clock, and I do not
doubt must have been 45 below zero. I had never been exposed to any thing
like this cold before. Set full in the sun at eleven o'clock, the
thermometer rose only to 26 below zero, the sun seemed to have lost all
power of warmth; it was very low in the heavens, the day being the
shortest in the year; in fact, in the centre of the river the sun did not
show above the steep south bank, while the wind had full sweep from the
north-east. This portion of the Saskatchewan is the farthest north
reached by the river in its entire course. It here runs for some distance
a little north of the 51th parallel of north latitude, and its elevation
above the sea is about 1801 feet. During the whole day we journeyed on,
the wind still kept dead against us, and at times it was impossible to
face its terrible keenness. The dogs began to tire out; the ice cut
their feet, and the white surface was often speckled with the crimson
icicles that fell from their wounded toes. Out of the twelve dogs
composing my cavalcade, it would have been impossible to select four good
ones. Coffee, Tete Noir, Michinass, and another whose name I forget,
underwent repeated whalings at the hands of my driver, a half-breed from
Edmonnton named Frazer. Early in the afternoon the head of Tete Noir was
reduced to shapeless pulp from tremendous thrashings. Michinass, or the
"Spotted One," had one eye wherewith to watch the dreaded driver, and
coffee had devoted so much strength to wild lurches and sudden springs in
order to dodge the descending whip, that he had none whatever to bestow
upon his legitimate toil of hauling me. At length, so useless did he
become, that he had to