ming night. Two hours after dark the
thermometer stood at minus 38 degrees, or 70 degrees of frost. The wood
was small and poor; the wind howled through the scanty thicket, driving
the smoke into our eyes as we cowered over the fire. Oh, what misery it
was! and how blank seemed the prospect before me! 900 miles still to
travel, and to-day I had only made about twenty miles, toiling from dawn
to dark through blinding drift and intense cold. On again next morning
over the trackless plain, thermometer at minus 20 in morning, and minus
12 at midday, with high wind, snow, and heavy drift. One of my men, a
half-breed in name, an Indian in reality, became utterly done up from
cold and exposure-the others would have left him behind to make his own
way through the snow, or most likely to lie down and die, but I stopped
the doggs until he came up, and then let him lie on one of the sleds for
the remainder of the day. He was a miserable-looking wretch, but he ate
enormous quantities of pemmican at every meal. After four days of very
arduous travel we reached Carlton at sunset on the 12th January. The
thermometer had kept varying between 20 and 38 degrees below zero every
night, but on the night of the 12th surpassed any thing I had yet
experienced. I spent that night in a room at Carlton, a room in which a
fire had been burning until midnight, nevertheless at daybreak on the 13th
the thermometer showed -20 degrees on the table close to my bed. At
half-past ten o'clock, when placed outside, facing north, it fell to -44
degrees, and I afterwards ascertained that an instrument kept at the
mission of Prince Albert, 60 miles east from Carlton, showed the enormous
amount of 51 degrees below zero at daybreak that morning, 83 degrees of
frost. This was the coldest night during the winter, but it was clear,
calm, and fine. I now determined to leave the usual winter route from
Carlton to Red River, and to strike out a new line of travel, which,
though very much longer than the trail via Fort Pelly, had several
advantages to recommend it to my choice. In the first place, it promised a
new line of country down the great valley of the Saskatchewan River to its
expansion into the sheet of water called Cedar Lake, and from thence
across the dividing ridge into the Lake Winnipegosis, down the length of
that water and its southern neighbour, the Lake Manitoba, until the
boundary of the new province would be again reached, fully 700 miles from
Carlto