Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 12

The gloom of a boisterous winter evening was settling over one of the wild, inhospitable tracts which lie to the north of the St Lawrence. The earth, far as the eye could reach, was covered, to the depth of many feet, by a continuous sheet of frozen snow; over which the bellying clouds, heavily charged with the materials of a fresh storm, hung in terrible array, fold beyond fold, as they descended on every side to mingle with the distant horizon. On the one hand, a frozen lake, deeply buried, like all the rest of the landscape, stretched its flat, unvaried surface for leagues along the waste; on the other, a winding shore, covered with stunted trees and bushes, alternately advanced into the level, in the form of low, long promontories, or retired into little hollow bays, edged with rock, and overhung by thickets of pine. All was sublimely wild and desolate. The piercing north wind went whistling in sudden gusts along the frozen surface of the lake, dashing against each other the stiff, brittle branches of the underwood, and shaking off their icicles, or whirling the lighter snow into huge columns, that ever and anon went stalking along the waste like giants, and seemed at times to thrust their foreheads into the very clouds. Not a single human habitation—not so much as the wigwam of an Indian, or aught that could give evidence of even the occasional visits of man—could be seen in the whole frozen circle, from the centre to the horizon. All seemed alike uninhabitable and uninhabited—a dreary unpeopled desert, the undisputed domain of solitude and winter.
And yet, on this dismal evening, the landscape was enlivened by two human figures. They were mounted on a rude sledge, drawn by four large dogs, that now, as the evening began to darken, were urging their way at full speed across one of the wider bays of the lake. The keen, penetrating wind blew right ahead, so intensely chill that it felt to the naked hand like a stream of ice; and the travellers, who were seated, with their backs to the blast, on the front part of the car, and who from time to time half turned their heads to direct the course of the dogs, drew closer and closer together as they felt their limbs stiffening, and a drowsy torpor stealing over all their faculties, under the deadening influence of the cold. They were dressed from head to foot in the skins of wild animals, with hoods, like those worn by the Esquimaux, projecting over their faces, and long strips of some thick, coarse fur wrapped in a spiral fashion round their limbs. One of them—a robust, dark-complexioned young man, rather above the middle size—had an Indian blanket bound round his shoulders; the other—who, though tall and well-made, was of a rather slighter form, and much less deeply bronzed by the climate—was closely enveloped in the folds of a Scottish plaid.