stle and effervescence until
autumn, when ship and brigades finally depart, leaving the residents
(about thirty in number) shut up for eight long, dreary months of
winter, with a tenantless wilderness around and behind them, and the
wide, cold, frozen sea before. This was among the first of Harry's
disappointments. He suffered many afterwards, poor fellow!

Neither shall we accompany Charley up the south branch of the
Saskatchewan, where his utmost expectations in the way of hunting were
more than realised, and where he became so accustomed to shooting ducks
and geese, and bears and buffaloes, that he could not forbear smiling
when he chanced to meet with a red-legged gull, and remembered how he
and his friend Harry had comported themselves when they first met with
these birds on the shores of Lake Winnipeg! We shall pass over all
this, and the summer, autumn, and winter too, and leap at once into the
spring of the following year.

On a very bright, cheery morning of that spring, a canoe might have been
seen slowly ascending one of the numerous streams which meander through
a richly-wooded, fertile country, and mingle their waters with those of
the Athabasca River, terminating their united career in a large lake of
the same name. The canoe was small--one of the kind used by the natives
while engaged in hunting, and capable of holding only two persons
conveniently, with their baggage. To any one unacquainted with the
nature or capabilities of a northern Indian canoe, the fragile, bright
orange-coloured machine that was battling with the strong current of a
rapid must indeed have appeared an unsafe and insignificant craft; but a
more careful study of its performances in the rapid, and of the immense
quantity of miscellaneous goods and chattels which were, at a later
period of the day, disgorged from its interior, would have convinced the
beholder that it was in truth the most convenient and serviceable craft
that could be devised for the exigencies of such a country.

True, it could only hold two men (it _might_ have taken three at a
pinch), because men, and women too, are awkward, unyielding baggage,
very difficult to stow compactly; but it is otherwise with tractable
goods. The canoe is exceedingly thin, so that no space is taken up or
rendered useless by its own structure, and there is no end to the amount
of blankets, and furs, and coats, and paddles, and tent-covers, and
dogs, and babies, that can be stowed a