Field mice in this section were exceedingly troublesome. They would run over us at night, sample our food, and gnawed a hole as large as a man’s hand in the side of the tent. Porcupines, too, were something of a nuisance. One night one of them ate a piece out of my tumpline, which was partially under my head, while I slept.
The next morning we passed through the lakes to the river above, and for three days, in spite of an almost continuous rain and wind storm, worked our way up stream, “tracking” the canoes through a succession of rapids or portaging around them, with scarcely any opportunity to paddle.
On the afternoon of the third day, with the wind dashing the rain in sheets into our faces, we halted on a rough piece of ground just above the river bank and pitched our tent.
When camp was made Pete took me to a rise of ground a little distance away, and pointing to the northward exclaimed: “Look, Lake Nipishish! I know we reach him to-day.”
And sure enough, there lay Lake Nipishish close at hand! I was more thankful than I can say to see the water stretching far away to the northward, for I felt that now the hardest and roughest part of our journey to the height of land was completed.
“That’s great, Pete,” said I. “We’ll have more water after this and fewer and easier portages, and we can travel faster.”
“Maybe better, I don’t know,” remarked Pete, rather skeptically. “Always hard find trail out big lakes. May leave plenty places. Take more time hunt trail maybe now. Indian maps no good. Maybe easier when we find him.”
Pete was right, and I did not know the difficulties still to be met with before we should reach Michikamau.
Duncan was of comparatively little help to us now, and as I knew that he was more than anxious to return to Groswater Bay, I decided to dispense with his further services and send him back with letters to be mailed home. When I returned to the tent I said to him:
“Duncan, I suppose you would like to go home now, and I will let you turn back from here and take some letters out. Does that suit you?”