ndians worshipped, so froze up that the whole of it fell to the
floor in beautiful snow so plentifully that in one place, near a cold
window, it was over a foot deep."

"Supposing he survived that, or rather let you survive, what next would
you cram him with?" said Frank.

Sam, glib of tongue and ever ready, at once answered:

"Well, if that son of the sun, or whatever his Oriental title may be,
wanted any more information about our liquids, I would enlighten him
with the information that here, as a pastime or scientific experiment,
we take quicksilver or mercury and cast it into bullets that become as
hard and solid as lead, and then shoot them through stable doors."

"Anything more?" said Mr Ross, who had been an amused listener, and had
been much pleased with Sam's ready answers, which showed how well he was
gathering up the facts of the country to use them in other lands in
years to come.

"Well, yes," said Sam, "I would tell his bibulous majesty, if he were in
the habit of imbibing moisture of a fiery kind, that on one of our long
journeys with our dogs I had with me on my sled, for purposes that need
not concern his majesty, a bottle of the strongest wine. One day, when
no eyes were on me, for good and honest purposes I made a visit to the
aforesaid bottle, and to my horror and grief I found the bottle burst
into a hundred pieces. Feeling carefully around--for it was in the dark
when I had made this visit--I discovered that the wine itself was frozen
into a solid mass exactly the shape of the bottle. I carefully wrapped
it up in a handkerchief, and thus carried it along. Suffice to say,
none of it was lost."

"Well," said Frank, "if just about water, milk, mercury, and wine we
will be able to tell such things, shall we not have lots of fun when we
talk of our dogs and their doings, and of many other things that at
first seemed so marvellous to us, but are now everyday occurrences and
have in a measure lost their force and novelty?"

"I fancy," said Alec, "that some of the things we can also tell them
about the cunning and cleverness of the wild animals we have been
hunting, or seeing the Indians hunt, will open their eyes."

"After all," said Frank, "the cleverness of the Indian guides in finding
their way through the pathless forests, day or night, where there was
not the least vestige of a trail, sometimes for hundreds of miles, and
often when blizzard storms howled around them for days together, was