Page:Narrative of the Discoveries on the North Coast of America.djvu/357

OF 1838-39. exploring it, replied, "Ten days' journey," pointing to the north-east, "without a tree to make fire." On my telling him that such a distance was impossible, from the situation of the Coppermine River, and requesting him to make a chart of the inlet on the snow, as our slender supply of provisions did not admit of penetrating farther into it, he drew the figure copied in the map (which I have reduced to the modest estimate of twenty miles), with this essential difference from his prior statement, that I could encamp half-way the first night—at a mountain of the shape of the white men's houses, containing a cave wherein the Indians practise their most solemn necromancy. The country south-eastward of M'Tavish Bay is very hilly, with granite rocks protruding through the snow, but becomes better wooded the farther we recede from Great Bear Lake. Birch here begins to mingle with the pines; and at Leg Lake, where we slept, I found the wood close enough to afford some shelter against the piercing winds, for the first time during all my winter journeys from Fort Confidence. Widely different, indeed, are the hardships of such travelling in the barren lands, from those endured in the well-wooded countries of Athabasca and Mackenzie River. During the day our road lies over bare mountains, or on the no less unsheltered and stormy lake—one