of spruce boughs and ate tough boiled venison and drank the
broth; and, feeling we had made some progress, we were happy, despite
the fact that we were in the midst of a trackless wilderness with our
way to Michikamau and the Indians as uncertain as ever.

Sunday morning (August 30) broke superbly beautiful, and the day
continued clear and mild. We made an early start; for every hour had
become precious. While we were doing this cross-country work without
any streams to guide us, it was George's custom to go ahead all the way
from half a mile to two miles and blaze a trail, so that when we were
travelling back and forth bringing up the packs and the canoe we might
not go astray. In the course of the morning we came to two small
lakes, which we paddled over.

We had believed that our goose chases were over; for these birds now
having grown their feathers, could fly, and were generally beyond the
reach of our pistols and the uncertain aim of a rifle at anything on
the wing. For two days we had heard them flying, and now and then
would see them high in the air. But while we were crossing one of the
small lakes this Sunday, five geese walked gravely down the bank and
into the water ahead of the canoe. One of them we got with a pistol
shot; the others flew away. In another lake we reached late in the day
we came upon five or six ducks. They were not far away, but dived so
frequently we were unable to shoot them with pistol or rifle. A
shotgun might have enabled us to get nearly all the geese as well as
the ducks and other game we saw on the wing and in the water on other
occasions. We often expressed the regret that we had no shotgun with
us. At one time Hubbard had intended that one should be taken, but
later decided that the ammunition would be too bulky.

A low, semi-barren ridge running east and west lay just beyond the
small blue-green lake in which we saw the ducks towards evening. About
seven miles beyond the ridge to the north was a short range of high,
barren mountains that were perhaps a trifle lower than the Kipling
Mountains. Upon ascending the ridge we heard the rushing of water on
the other side, which sound proved to come from a small fall on a
stream expanding and stretching out, to the eastward in long, narrow
lakes. Apparently these lakes were the headquarters of a small river
flowing to the southeast, and in all probability here was the source of
the Red River, which, as I have described, flo