In spite of hunger and cold, Matonabbee remained good-natured,
imperturbable, hard as a man of bronze, coursing with the winged speed
of snow-shoes from morning till night without pause, going to a bed of
rock moss on a meal of snow water and rising eager as an arrow to leave
the bow-string for the next day's march. For three days before
Christmas the entire company had no food but snow. Christmas was
celebrated by starvation. Hearne could not indulge in the despair of
the civilized man's self-pity when his faithful guides went on without
complaint.
[Illustration: Eskimo Family, taken by Light of Midnight Sun.--C. W.
Mathers.]
By January the company had entered the Barren Lands. The Barren Lands
were bare but for an occasional oasis of trees like an island of refuge
in a shelterless sea. In the clumps of dwarf shrubs, the Indians found
signs that meant relief from famine--tufts of hair rubbed off on tree
trunks, fallen antlers, and countless heart-shaped tracks barely
puncturing the snow but for the sharp outer edge. The caribou were on
their yearly traverse east to west for the shelter of the inland woods.
The Indians at once pitched camp. Scouts went scouring to find which
way the caribou herds were coming. Pounds of snares were constructed
of shrubs and saplings stuck up in palisades with scarecrows on the
pickets round a V-shaped enclosure. The best hunters took their
station at the angle of the V, armed with loaded muskets and long,
lank, and iron-pointed arrows.
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