“As we turned northward this evening just above camp a wind came up the valley, that felt as if straight from the Arctic.  Fire in an open place to-night, and I do not like to go out to supper.  It is so cold.  Thinking now we may possibly get to the post day after to-morrow.  George says be thinks the river must be pretty straight from here.  I rather think it will take us a little more than two days.  All feel that we may have good hope of catching the steamer.  Perhaps we shall get to tide water to-morrow.  There have been signs of porcupine along the way to-day, and one standing wigwam.  There is a big bed of moss berries (a small black berry, which grows on a species of moss and is quite palatable) right at my tent door to-night.  So strange, almost unbelievable, to think we are coming so near to Ungava.  I begin to realise that I have never actually counted on being able to get there.”

The country grew more and more mountainous and rugged and barren.  The wood growth, which is of spruce and tamarack, with here and there a little balsam, was for some distance below the Barren Grounds Water rather more abundant than it had been along the lake shores.  At best it was but a narrow belt along the water edge covering the hills to a height of perhaps two hundred feet and dwindling gradually toward the north, till in some places it was absent altogether and our tents were pitched where no trees grew.  The ridges on either side crossed each other almost at right angles, turning the river now to the northeast, again to the northwest.  Down the mountain sides, broad bands of white showed where the waters of numberless lakes and streams on the heights came tumbling down to join the river, or again a great gap in the solid mountain of rock let through a rush of blue-green, foaming water.  The hills have the characteristic Cambrian outline and it is the opinion of Mr. Low that this formation extends continuously eastward from the Kaniapiscau to the George.  The mountains on the right bank were more rugged and irregular than those on the left, and Bridgman Mountains in places stand out to the river quite distinct and separate, like giant forts.  On the morning of August 24th they had closed round us as if to swallow us up, and gazing back from our lunching place George said, with something of awe in his tone, “It looks as if we had just got out of prison.”

And still the river roared on down through its narrow valley, at Helen Falls dropping by wild and tempestuous cascades, and then by almost equally wild rapids, to a mile below where it shoots out into an expansion with such terrific force as to keep this great rush of water above the general level for some distance out into the lake.  Here we made the longest portage of the journey down the George River, carrying the stuff one and a quarter mile.