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 CHAPTER IV. A FACTORY. ^^vv NE of the largest of the lakes beyond the 61st parallel is that <^rlj(^ called the Great Slave Lake; it is two hundred and fifty V^S^ miles long by fifty across, and is situated exactly at 61° 25' N. lat. and 114° W. long. The surrounding districts slope down to it, and it completely fills a vast natural hollow. The position of the lake in the very centre of the hunting districts, once swarming with game, early attracted the attention of the Company. Numerous streams either take their rise from it or flow into it — the Mackenzie, the Athabasca," <fec.; and several im- portant forts have been constructed on its shores — Fort Providence on the north, and Fort Resolution on the south. Fort Reliance is situated on the north-east extremity, and is about three hundred miles from the Chesterfield inlet, a long narrow estuary formed by the waters of Hudson's Bay. The Great Slave Lake is dotted with little islands, the granite and gneiss of which they are formed jutting up in several places. Its northern banks are clothed with thick woods, shutting out the barren frozen district beyond, not inaptly called the " Cursed Land." The southern regions, on the other hand, are flat, without a rise of any kind, and the soil is mostly calcareous. The large ruminants of the polar districts — the buffaloes oc bisons, the flesh of which forms almost the only food of the Canadian and native hunters — seldom go further north than the Great Slave Lake. The trees on the northern shores of the lake form magnificent forests. We need not be astonished at meetincr with such fine ve^eta- tion in this remote district. The Great Slave Lake is not really in a higher latitude than Stockholm or Christiania. We have only to remember that the isothermal lines, or belts of equal heat, along which heat is distributed in equal quantities, do not follow the terrestrial parallels, and that with the same latitude, America is ever 80 much colder than Europe. In April the streets of New York