It was not before the 10th or 12th of April that the return of the swans, geese, and ducks gave certain indications of the advance of spring.  The juice of the maple-tree began to flow and the women repaired to the woods for the purpose of collecting it.  This tree which abounds to the southward is not I believe found to the northward of the Saskatchewan.  The Indians obtain the sap by making incisions into the tree.  They boil it down and evaporate the water, skimming off the impurities.  They are so fond of sweets that after this simple process they set an extravagant price upon it.

On the 15th fell the first shower of rain we had seen for six months, and on the 17th the thermometer rose to 77 degrees in the shade.  The whole face of the country was deluged by the melted snow.  All the nameless heaps of dirt accumulated in the winter now floated over the very thresholds, and the long-imprisoned scents dilated into vapours so penetrating that no retreat was any security from them.  The flood descended into the cellar below our house and destroyed a quantity of powder and tea; a loss irreparable in our situation.

The noise made by the frogs which this inundation produced is almost incredible.  There is strong reason to believe that they outlive the severity of winter.  They have often been found frozen and revived by warmth, nor is it possible that the multitude which incessantly filled our ears with its discordant notes could have been matured in two or three days.

The fishermen at Beaver Lake and the other detached parties were ordered to return to the post.  The expedients to which the poor people were reduced to cross a country so beset with waters presented many uncouth spectacles.  The inexperienced were glad to compromise with the loss of property for the safety of their persons and, astride upon ill-balanced rafts with which they struggled to be uppermost, exhibited a ludicrous picture of distress.  Happy were they who could patch up an old canoe though obliged to bear it half the way on their shoulders through miry bogs and interwoven willows.  But the veteran trader, wedged in a box of skin with his wife, children, dogs, and furs, wheeled triumphantly through the current and deposited his heterogeneous cargo safely on the shore.  The woods reechoed with the return of their exiled tenants.  A hundred tribes, as gaily dressed as any burnished natives of the south, greeted our eyes in our accustomed walks, and their voices, though unmusical, were the sweetest that ever saluted our ears.

From the 19th to the 26th the snow once more blighted the resuscitating verdure, but a single day was sufficient to remove it.  On the 28th the Saskatchewan swept away the ice which had adhered to its banks, and on the morrow a boat came down from Carlton House with provisions.  We received such accounts of the state of vegetation at that place that Dr. Richardson determined to visit it in order to collect botanical specimens, as the period at which the ice was expected to admit of the continuation of our journey was still distant.  Accordingly he embarked on the 1st of May.