Sam, glib of tongue and ever ready, at once answered:
“Well, if that son of the sun, or whatever his Oriental title may be, wanted any more information about our liquids, I would enlighten him with the information that here, as a pastime or scientific experiment, we take quicksilver or mercury and cast it into bullets that become as hard and solid as lead, and then shoot them through stable doors.”
“Anything more?” said Mr Ross, who had been an amused listener, and had been much pleased with Sam’s ready answers, which showed how well he was gathering up the facts of the country to use them in other lands in years to come.
“Well, yes,” said Sam, “I would tell his bibulous majesty, if he were in the habit of imbibing moisture of a fiery kind, that on one of our long journeys with our dogs I had with me on my sled, for purposes that need not concern his majesty, a bottle of the strongest wine. One day, when no eyes were on me, for good and honest purposes I made a visit to the aforesaid bottle, and to my horror and grief I found the bottle burst into a hundred pieces. Feeling carefully around—for it was in the dark when I had made this visit—I discovered that the wine itself was frozen into a solid mass exactly the shape of the bottle. I carefully wrapped it up in a handkerchief, and thus carried it along. Suffice to say, none of it was lost.”
“Well,” said Frank, “if just about water, milk, mercury, and wine we will be able to tell such things, shall we not have lots of fun when we talk of our dogs and their doings, and of many other things that at first seemed so marvellous to us, but are now everyday occurrences and have in a measure lost their force and novelty?”
“I fancy,” said Alec, “that some of the things we can also tell them about the cunning and cleverness of the wild animals we have been hunting, or seeing the Indians hunt, will open their eyes.”
“After all,” said Frank, “the cleverness of the Indian guides in finding their way through the pathless forests, day or night, where there was not the least vestige of a trail, sometimes for hundreds of miles, and often when blizzard storms howled around them for days together, was to me as wonderful and unaccountable as anything I have witnessed.”
“Yes,” said Mr Ross, “that is indeed wonderful. I have been studying it all my life, and am just as much puzzled to-day as I was at first with these first-class guides. They are not all thus gifted, but there are some who never blunder, or even hesitate, under the most difficult circumstances. The sky may be leaden with clouds all day, and an ordinary person get so bewildered that he does not know north from south, or east from west, but the guide never hesitates for an instant, but on and on, with unerring accuracy, he pushes day after day, or even night after night.”
“That is wonderful indeed,” replied Alec, “but the cleverness with which the wolves tried to get ahead of me by cutting across the necks of land in the river, and their other deviltries, are what I will never forget.”
Here this most interesting conversation was ended by the arrival of Paulette and Mustagan, with the word that the melting snow had exposed the houses of the muskrats, and that they were off on a hunting excursion to a great pondlike swamp where these animals were known to be very numerous. At once it was decided that a party would be made up to join them at a designated spot in the forest on the edge of this great swamp. The distance was between twenty and thirty miles, and as the greater part of the route would be on the ice, it was decided not to start until the chill of the evening had hardened the snow, which now nearly every day softened in the midday sun. Travelling with dog-trains in half-melted snow, or even when it is just soft enough to stick, is very heavy, laborious work. However, as soon as the sun ceases to shine upon it, at this season, it hardens up again very quickly.