clamps two upright iron supports; between them with thumbscrews the
searchlight of a wrecked steam tractor which I got for a "Thank-you"
from a junk-pile. Into the buggy box I laid a borrowed acetylene
gas tank, strapped down with two bands of galvanized tin. I made the
connection by a stout rubber tube, "guaranteed not to harden in the
severest weather." To the side of the box I attached a short piece of
bandiron, bent at an angle, so that a bicycle lamp could be slipped over
it. Against the case that I should need a handlight, I carried besides
a so-called dashboard coal-oil lantern with me. With all lamps going, it
must have been a strange outfit to look at from a distance in the dark.

I travelled by this time in fur coat and cap, and I carried a robe for
myself and blankets for the horses, for I now fed them on the road soon
after crossing the creek.

Now on the second Friday of November there had been a smell of smoke in
the air from the early morning. The marsh up north was afire--as it had
been off and on for a matter of twenty-odd years. The fire consumes
on the surface everything that will burn; the ground cools down, a new
vegetation springs up, and nobody would suspect--as there is nothing to
indicate--that only a few feet below the heat lingers, ready to leap up
again if given the opportunity In this case I was told that a man had
started to dig a well on a newly filed claim, and that suddenly he found
himself wrapped about in smoke and flames. I cannot vouch for the truth
of this, but I can vouch for the fact that the smoke of the fire was
smelt for forty miles north and that in the afternoon a combination
of this smoke (probably furnishing "condensation nuclei") and of the
moisture in the air, somewhere along or above the lake brought about
the densest fog I had ever seen on the prairies. How it spread, I shall
discuss later on. To give an idea of its density I will mention right
here that on the well travelled road between two important towns a man
abandoned his car during the early part of the night because he lost his
nerve when his lights could no longer penetrate the fog sufficiently to
reach the road.

I was warned at noon. "You surely do not intend to go out to-night?"
remarked a lawyer-acquaintance to me at the dinner table in the hotel;
for by telephone from lake-points reports of the fog had already reached
the town. "I intend to leave word at the stable right now," I replied,
"to have team