At wide intervals over the white
wastes mushroom cones of snow told where a stunted tree projected the
antlered branches of topmost bough through the depths of drift; but for
the most part camp was made by digging through the shallowest snow with
snow-shoes to the bottom of moss, which served the double purpose of
fuel for the night kettle and bed for travellers. In the hollow a
wigwam was erected, with the door to the south, away from the north
wind. Snared rabbits and partridges supplied the food. The way lay as
before--west-northwest--along a chain of frozen lakes and rivers
connecting Hudson Bay with the Arctic Ocean. By April the marchers
were on the margin of a desolate wilderness--the Indian region of
"Little Sticks,"--known to white men as the Barren Lands, where dwarf
trees project above the billowing wastes of snow like dismantled masts
on the far offing of a lonely sea. Game became scarcer. Neither the
round footprint of the hare nor the frost tracery of the northern
grouse marked the snowy reaches of unbroken white. Caribou had
retreated to the sheltered woods of the interior; and a cleverer hunter
than man had scoured the wide wastes of game. Only the wolf pack
roamed the Barren Lands. It was unsafe to go on without food. Hearne
kept in camp till the coming of the goose month--April--when birds of
passage wended their way north. For three days rations consisted of
snow water and pipes of tobacco. The Indians endured the privations
with stoical indifference, daily marching out on a bootless quest for
game.
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