I could not help laughing at the alarm I had created, but obediently sat down on the pile of outfit by the rifles, strongly suspecting, however, that the bear tracks were invented, and that the real fear was on account of the river.  It began to be somewhat irksome to be so well taken care of.

The mosquitoes and flies were now coming thick and fast.  I thought them very bad, but George insisted that you could not even call this a beginning.  I wore a veil of black silk net, but the mesh was hardly fine enough, and the flies managed to crawl through.  They would get their heads in and then kick and struggle and twist till they were all through, when they immediately proceeded to work.  The men did not seem to care to put their veils on even when not at work, and I wondered how they could take the little torments so calmly.

On the morning of July 6th we reached the Seal Islands expansion.  Around these islands the river flows with such force and swiftness that the water can be seen to pile up in ridges in the channel.  Here we found Donald Blake’s tilt.  Donald is Gilbert’s brother, and in winter they trap together up the Nascaupee valley as far as Seal Lake, which lies 100 miles from Northwest River post.  Often in imagination I had pictured these little havens so far in the wilderness and lonely, and now I had come to a real one.  It was a tiny log building set near the edge of the river bank among the spruce trees.  Around it lay a thick bed of chips, and scattered about were the skeletons of martens of last winter’s catch.  One had to stoop a good deal to get in at the narrow doorway.  It was dark, and not now an attractive-looking place, yet as thought flew back to the white wilderness of a few months before, the trapper and his long, solitary journeys in the relentless cold, with at last the wolfish night closing round him, it made all different, and one realised a little how welcome must have seemed the thought and the sight of the tiny shelter.

In the tilt there was no window and no floor.  All the light came in through the doorway and a small hole in the roof, meant to admit the stove pipe.  Hanging on the cross beams were several covered pails containing rice, beans, flour, lard, and near them a little cotton bag with a few candles in it.  Thrown across a beam was a piece of deerskin dressed for making or mending snow-shoes; and on a nail at the farther end was a little seal-skin pouch in which were found needle, thread, and a few buttons.  A bunk was built into the side of the room a few feet above the ground, and lying in it an old tent.  Beside a medley heap of other things piled there, we found a little Testament and a book of Gospel Songs.  The latter the men seemed greatly pleased to find, and carried it away with them.  We took the candles also, and filled one pail with lard, leaving one of the pieces of bacon in its place.  Already we were regretting that we had no lard or candles with us.  They had been cut out of the list when we feared the canoes would not hold all the outfit, and later I had forgotten to add them.  The men were hungry for fried cakes, and the lard meant a few of these as a treat now and then.