Page:Across the sub-Arctics of Canada (1897).djvu/275

 team, the guide running before, and the two Iroquois sometimes before and sometimes behind, we travelled on an almost due south course over the ice along the shore of Lake Winnipeg. About the same time that we started for the south, the other section set out across the lake to the westward for the mouth of the Saskatchewan River.

Our teams, of four dogs each, were for the most part fine powerful animals, and we soon found there was no necessity for my brother or myself exerting ourselves more than we desired. The teams travelled all day, and, indeed, day after day, at a rapid trot, sometimes breaking into a run, so that it gave the Indians all they could do to keep up with them.

Taking smooth and rough together we made an average of about forty miles per day, and some days as much as forty-six or forty-seven miles. When we had made about half the distance to Selkirk, and were in the neighborhood of a fishing station at the mouth of Berens River, poor Pierre played out; but, most opportunely, we met a man teaming fish to Selkirk and secured a passage for him, while we ourselves pushed on. When we had made another hundred miles Louis, the remaining Iroquois, also became crippled. Arrangements were made to have him, too, driven in with a horse and sleigh, and without delay we pursued our journey.

At length, after a long and rapid trip, which occupied ten days, on the evening of the 1st of January, 1894, under the light of the street lamps of the little town, our teams trotted up the streets of West Serkirk, and