was smooth, though swift as a mill-race, and we determined to make a canoe.  Accordingly we set to work, and after many tedious days laboring with one axe and fire our canoe was completed.  I was something of an expert in the management of a canoe and when it had been placed in the river, made a trip across.  It was a success, and delighted with our achievement, we began ferrying over our effects.  One after another, everything but our clothing and cooking utensils were ferried over, provisions, that is, the flour and salt, rifles, ammunition, bedding, in fact all but the above articles.  My younger brother was assisting me with the canoe, and the last trip with the last load was being made.  Like the pitcher that goes often to the well, immunity had bred carelessness, with the result that the boat was turned over in the middle of the river, and we only saved our lives by swimming.  That night we camped beneath the forest giants.  A good fire was lighted, bread made on a piece of cedar bark and meat cooked on a stick and eaten out of our fingers.  That was indeed getting back to nature, but a more dire misfortune was to befall me the first night.  As before stated, we had pitched our camp beneath the shelter of forest giants.  Age after age the quills had been falling, forming a mould several inches thick.  Before retiring that night I laid my solitary pair of trousers and drawers on the ground before the fire to dry out by morning.  They dried.  I awoke in the middle of the night to find that my last garments had been consumed, leaving but the waistband of my trousers.  The mould slowly dried, the fire had followed, leaving me about the most forlorn individual that ever was blessed with white hide.  Now that was going back to nature with a vengeance.  In front rushed a roaring, foaming river, and relief was fifty miles away.  But what was I to do, but simply do the best I could with a shirt and the waist-band of my trousers.

The next day we constructed a shelter of cedar bark in the event of rain.  And now I am going to repeat a story at the risk of being denounced as a “nature fakir.”  We had with us a band of dogs, trained for hunting.  There were seventeen, all told, and of every breed, but with a mixture of bloodhound to give the “staying qualities.”  We, or rather I, had borrowed them of settlers living on the river fifty miles below.  They would chase a bear or cougar all day, and if treed, would remain and bay around the tree until I came.  The second night in camp an immense timber wolf came up close to camp and gave a prolonged howl.  The dogs all broke away, but they came back faster than they went out.  The wolf followed and caught one of them, a large, full-grown dog, and gave him one bite behind the shoulder.  The dog gave one yelp and when we reached the spot, ten feet from our bed, he was dead.  To make sure that the dog was bitten but once, the next morning I partly skinned him and found that the ribs were crushed and broken.  Now if a timber wolf can kill a dog with one bite on the back, why not a young caribou at one bite on the breast?  That question I leave to others to solve.