Camp was pitched on the point among the spruce and tamarack, preparatory to scouting for George River waters, and lunch over, Job and Joe were off to the task, while George and Gilbert built a stage and put the caribou meat over the fire to smoke and dry again.  It was my golden opportunity to air my camp stuff, and bags were emptied and everything spread out in the sunshine and wind.  Later my washing, neglected on Sunday on account of the storm, was added to the decorations.

How very much I wanted to go scouting with Job and Joe!  Here I expected difficulties in finding the way.  The map I carried indicated a number of detached lakes stretching miles northward from Lake Michikamats, and to find among the lakes of this upper plain the one which should prove the source of the George River, promised to be interesting work.  Inwardly impatient I waited for the return of the men.  Less than two hours later I saw them come down across the marsh to where they had left the canoe.  There mounting a huge boulder they sat down to watch the caribou.

This was trying, when I had so eagerly waited for the news they were to bring; but a little reflection convinced me that it meant simply—­nothing definite about the George River.  Otherwise they would have come immediately to camp.  The conclusion proved correct, and when towards evening they came in, the report was—­ more streams and lakes leading northward up the slope of the plateau.  We had not yet reached the real head of the Nascaupee River.

Thursday morning, August 10th, we began our portage across the marsh.  Before leaving, the men had a few careless, ineffectual shots at a crow which had alighted near the camp, the first of its kind we had seen on the trip.  The marsh was one mile wide from east to west, and reached almost two miles northward from the upper end of the lake.  It was cut by many little streams, which, issuing from a tiny lake one mile and a half above camp, wound about among the grassy hummocks of the marsh, collecting half a mile below in a small pond, to break again into innumerable tiny channels leading down to Lake Michikamats.

The pond and streams above gave us some paddling.  Then came more portaging to the little lake.  Below it lay a stretch of higher ground which was a queer sort of collection of moss-covered hummocks, crisscrossed by caribou trails cut deep into the soft soil.  Here cloudberries grew in abundance, and though not yet ripe, they were mature enough to taste almost as good as the green apples I used to indulge in surreptitiously in the days of my youth.  They seemed a great treat now, for they were the first fruit found in abundance on the trip, though we had seen a few that were nearly ripe on an island in Lake Michikamau, and on the 8th of August Gilbert had gathered a handful of ripe blueberries on Caribou Hill.