Great as Were the hardships and privations of this Winter journey, it had nevertheless many moments of keen pleasure, moments filled with those instincts of that long-ago time before our civilization and its servitude had commenced—­that time when, like the Arab and the Indian, we were all rovers over the earth; as a dog on a drawing-room carpet twists himself round and round before he lies down to sleep—­the instinct bred in him in that time when bhis ancestors thus trampled smooth their beds in the long grasses of the primeval prairies—­so man, in the midst of his civilization, instinctively goes back to some half-hidden reminiscence of the forest and the wilderness in which his savage forefathers dwelt.  My lord seeks his highland moor, Norvegian salmon river, or more homely coverside; the retired grocer, in his snug retreat at Tooting, builds himself an arbour of rocks and mosses, and, by dint of strong imagination and stronger tobacco, becomes a very Kalmuck in his back-garden; and it is by no means improbable that the grocer in his rockery and the grandee at his rocketers draw their instincts of pleasure from the same long-ago time “When wild in woods the noble savage ran.”  But be this as it may, -this long journey of mine, despite its excessive cold, its nights under the wintry heavens, its days of ceaseless travel, had not as yet grown monotonous or devoid of pleasure, and although there were moments long before daylight when the shivering scene around the camp-fire froze one to the marrow, and I half feared to ask myself how many more mornings like this will I have to endure? how many more miles have been taken from that long total of travel? still, as the day wore on and the hour of the midday meal came round, and, warmed and hungry by exercise, I would relish with keen appetite the plate of moose steaks and the hot delicious tea, as camped amidst the snow, with buffalo robe spread out before the fire, and the dogs watching the feast with perspective ideas of bones and pan-licking, then the balance would veer back again to the side of enjoyment; and I could look forward to twice 600 miles of ice and snow without one feeling of despondency.  These icy nights, too, were often filled with the strange meteors of the north.  Hour by hour have I watched the many-hued shafts of the aurora trembling from their northern home across the starlight of the zenith, till their lustre lighted up the silent landscape of the frozen river with that weird light which the Indians name “the dance of the dead spirits.”  At times, too, the “sun dogs” hung about the sun so close, that it was not always easy to tell which was the real sun and which the mock one; but wild weather usually followed the track of the sun dogs; and whenever I saw them in the heavens I looked for deeper snow and colder bivouacs.