We have head-winds all the way. At four o'clock on the morning of August 14th, stress of weather causes us to run in under the lee of an island. We tie up at the base of some splendid timber. Spruce here will give three feet in diameter twenty feet from the ground. With an improvised tape-line I go ashore and measure the base-girth of three nearby big poplars (rough-backed). The first ran seven feet three inches, the second exactly eight feet, and the third eight feet four inches. Within view were fifty of these trees which would run the same average, and interspersed with them were spruce with a base-girth scarcely less.
Arrived at Chipewyan, we are able to arrange to be taken up the Peace in the same little tug Primrose which had before carried us so safely to Fond du Lac.
CHAPTER XIX
UP THE PEACE TO VERMILION
"What lies ahead no human mind can know,
To-morrow may bring happiness or woe.
We cannot carry charts, save the hope that's in our hearts
As along the unknown trail we blithely go."