Page:Across the sub-Arctics of Canada (1897).djvu/127

 During the whole of the 25th our course continued to be westerly and north-westerly, and because of this we began to feel anxious. We had now passed the latitude of Baker Lake, where, acording to information obtained from the Eskimos, we were expecting the river to take us. Instead of drawing nearer to it, we were heading away toward the Back or Great Fish River, which discharges its waters into the Arctic Ocean, and was, on our present course, distant only two days' journey.

Towards evening, however, a marked change was observed in the character of the river. The banks grew lower and consisted of soft, coarse-grained sandstone. The water became shallow and the channel broadened out into a little lake, containing numerous shoals and low islands of sand. Just beyond this, much to our surprise and pleasure, we suddenly came upon abundance of drift-wood—not little sticks of willow or ground birch, but the trunks of trees six or eight inches in diameter, as heavy as two men could carry. No growing trees were to be seen in the district, nor had we seen any during the previous three or four hundred miles of our journey. At first, therefore, the occurrence of the wood seemed unaccountable, but the theory soon suggested itself that we must be close to the confluence of some other stream flowing through a wooded country. No other could account for its existence in this remote region, and accordingly this theory was borne out by the discovery, within a short distance, of a river as large as the Telzoa, flowing in from the westward and with it mingling its dark-colored waters.

The abundance and condition of the drift-wood, which was not badly battered, would indicate that upon the