That morning I got away from the camp of Chicag, and crossing one arm of Cedar Lake reached at noon the Mossy Portage.  Striking into the cedar Forest at this point, I quitted for good the Saskatchewan.  Just three Months earlier I had struck its waters at the South Branch, and since that day fully 1600 miles of travel had carried me far along its shores.  The Mossy Portage is a low swampy ridge dividing the waters of Cedar Lake from those of Lake Winnipegoosis.  From one lake to the other is a distance of about four miles.  Coming from the Cedar Lake the portage is quite level until it reaches the close vicinity of the Winnipegoosis, when there is a steep descent of some forty feet to gain the waters of the latter lake.  These two lakes are supposed to lie at almost the same level, but I shall not be surprised if a closer examination of their respective heights proves the Cedar to be some thirty feet higher than its neighbour the Winnipegoosis.  The question is one of considerable interest, as the Mossy Portage will one day or other form the easy line of communication between the waters of Red River and those of Saskatchewan.

It was late in the afternoon when we got the dogs on the broad bosom of Lake Winnipegoosis, whose immense surface spread out south and west until the sky alone bounded the prospect.  But there were many islands scattered over the sea of ice that lay rolled before us; islands dark with the pine-trees that covered them, and standing out in strong relief from the dazzling whiteness amidst which they lay.  On one of these islands we camped, spreading the robes under a large pine-tree and building up a huge fire from the wrecks of bygone storms.  This Lake Winnipegoosis, or the “Small Sea,’” is a very large expanse of water measuring about 120 miles in length and some 30 in width.  Its shores and islands are densely wooded with the white spruce, the juniper, the banksian pine, and the black spruce, and as the traveller draws near the southern shores he beholds again the dwarf white-oak which here reaches its northern limit.  This growth of the oak-tree may be said to mark at present the line between civilization and savagery.  Within the limit of the oak lies the country of the white man; without lies that Great Lone Land through which my steps have wandered so far.  Descending the Lake Winnipegoosis to Shoal Lake, I passed across the belt of forest which.  Lies between the two lakes, and emerging again upon Winnipegoosis crossed it in a long day’s journey to the Waterhen River.  This river carries the surplus water of Winnipegosis into the large expanse of Lake Manitoba.  For another hundred miles this lake lays its length towards the south, but here the pine-trees have vanished, and birch and poplar alone cover the shores.  Along the whole line of the western shores of these lakes the bold ridges of the Pas, the Porcupine, Duck, and Riding Mountains rise over the forest-covered swamps which lie immediately along the water.