Page:Across the sub-Arctics of Canada (1897).djvu/104

 CHAPTER VII.

A GREAT FROZEN LAKE.

Before leaving "Reindeer Camp" a cairn of rocks was built on the top of an immense boulder, conspicuously situated on the summit of a point reaching out into the waters of Carey Lake. A record of our journey to date was placed in it, and the "flag that for a thousand years has braved the battle and the breeze," left floating overhead.

On the 2nd of August the journey was resumed, and during the day a remarkable grove was found on the north shore of the lake, in latitute 62° 15['] north. As a whole the country was now a treeless, rocky wilderness, but here by a little brook grew a clump of white spruce trees, perhaps thirty in all, of which the largest measured eight feet in circumference at two feet above ground. Such a trunk would be considered unusually large in a forest a thousand miles to the south, but here it and its fellows stood far out in the Barren Grounds with their gnarly, storm-beaten tops, like veritable Druids of old.

In this grove many varieties of plants were found—among others wood violets, which were here seen for the last time on the trip. Not the least enjoyable feature of this little oasis was that it afforded us an oppor