flakes have added to his sense of warmth by covering him completely beneath them.  Perhaps, too, he will remain unseen by the driver when the fatal moment comes for harnessing-up.  Not a bit of it.  He lies ever so quiet under the snow, but the rounded hillock betrays his hiding place; and he is dragged forth to the gaudy gear of bells and moose-skin lying ready to receive him.  Then comes the start.  The pine or aspen bluff is left behind, and under the grey starlight we plod along through the snow.  Day dawns, sun rises, morning wears into midday, and it is time to halt for dinner; then on again in Indian file, as before.  If there is no track in the snow a man goes in front on snow-shoes, and the leading dog, or “foregoer,” as he is called, trots close behind him.  If there should be a track, however faint, the dog-will follow it himself; and when sight fails to show it, or storm has hidden it beneath drifts, his sense of smell will enable him to keep straight.  Thus through the long waste we journey on, by frozen lakelet, by willow copse, through pine forest, or over treeless prairie, until the winter’s day draws to its close and the darkening landscape bids us seek some resting-place for the night.  Then the hauling-dog is taken out of the harness, and his day’s work is at an end; his whip-marked face begins to look less rueful, he stretches and rolls in the dry powdery snow, and finally twists himself a bed and goes fast asleep.  But the real moment of pleasure is still in store for him When our supper is over the chopping of the axe, on the block of pemmican, or the unloading of the frozen white-fish from the provision-sled, tells him that his is about to begin.  He springs lightly up and watches eagerly these preparations for his supper.  On the plains he receives a daily ration of 2 lbs. of pemmican.  In the forest and lake country, where fish is the staple food, he gets two large white-fish raw.  He prefers fish to meat, and will work better on it too.  His supper is soon over; there is a short after-piece of growling and snapping at hungry comrade, and then he lies down out in the snow to dream that whips have been abolished and hauling is discarded for ever, sleeping peacefully until morning, unless indeed some band of wolves should prowl around and, scenting campfire, howl their long chorus to the midnight skies.

And now, with this introductory digression on dogs, let us return to our camp in the thick pine-bluff on the river bank.

The night fell very cold.  Between supper and bed there is not much time when present cold and perspective early-rising are the chief features of the night and morning.  I laid down my buffalo robe with more care than usual, and got into my sack of deer-skins with a notion that the night was going to be one of unusual severity.  My sack of deer-skins—­so far it has been scarcely mentioned in this journal, and yet it played no insignificant part in the nightly programme.  Its origin and construction were simply