oing back to the Red River settlement, and
obtaining another canoe, as well as a fresh stock of provisions and
implements. But they all believed that getting back would be a toilsome
and difficult matter. There was a large lake and several extensive
marshes on the route, and these would have to be got round, making the
journey a very long one indeed. It would take them days to perform it
on foot, and nothing is more discouraging on a journey than to be forced
by some accident to what is called "taking the back-track." All of them
acknowledged this, but what else could they do? It is true there was a
post of the Hudson's Bay Company at the northern end of Lake Winnipeg.
This post was called Norway House. How were they to reach that afoot?
To walk around the borders of the lake would be a distance of more than
four hundred miles. There would be numerous rivers to cross, as well as
swamps and pathless forests to be threaded. Such a journey would occupy
a month or more, and at Norway House they would still be as it were only
at the beginning of the great journey on which they had set out.
Moreover, Norway House lay entirely out of their way. Cumberland
House--another trading post upon the River Saskatchewan--was the next
point where they had intended to rest themselves, after leaving the Red
River settlements. To reach Cumberland House _afoot_ would be equally
difficult, as it, too, lay at the distance of hundreds of miles, with
lakes, and rivers, and marshes, intervening. What, then, could they do?

"Let us _not_ go back," cried Francois, ever ready with a bold advice;
"let us make a boat, and keep on, say I."

"Ha! Francois," rejoined Basil, "it's easy to say `make a boat;' how is
that to be done, I pray?"

"Why, what's to hinder us to hew a log, and make a dugout? We have
still got the axe, and two hatchets left."

Norman asked what Francois meant by a dugout. The phrase was new to
him.

"A canoe," replied Francois, "hollowed out of a tree. They are
sometimes called `dugouts' on the Mississippi, especially when they are
roughly made. One of them, I think, would carry all four of us well
enough. Don't you think so, Luce?"

"Why, yes," answered the student; "a large one might: but I fear there
are no trees about here of sufficient size. We are not among the great
timber of the Mississippi bottom, you must remember."

"How large a tree would it require?" asked Norman, who knew but little
of this ki