limbs, but with considerable difficulty managed to keep up with the rest. After making a small day's march we camped for the night on the bank of a stream called by the Indians White Bear Creek. The weather having turned colder during the night, making the prospects for travel more favorable, we started down stream the next morning upon the ice of the creek, and then across country to Duck Creek, where we found a second Indian camp, occupied by two Crees and their families.
From one of these Indians, named Morrison, we purchased an additional dog with which to supplement our team. The price asked was a new dress for one of the squaws, but as we had no dress-goods with us, the best we could offer was that the dress should be ordered at the Hudson's Bay Company's store at York, and delivered when the first opportunity afforded. After some consideration, and several pipes of tobacco, the offer was accepted and with seven dogs in our team the journey resumed. We followed the creek till it led us out to the low, dreary coast at the mouth of the Nelson, where, having left the woods several miles inland, we were exposed to the full sweep of a piercingly cold, raw, south-west wind.
We are accustomed to thinking of a coast as a definite, narrow shore-line; but to the inhabitants of the Hudson Bay region the word conveys a very different meaning. There the coast is a broad mud and boulder flat, several miles in width, always wet, and twice during the day flooded by the tide. At this time of the year the mud flats were covered by rough broken ice and drifted snow, but above high-tide mark the surface of the country was level and the walking good. For several
