and expected to reach the treaty point before dark, reckoning,
as usual, without our host. The wind suddenly wheeled to the
south-west, and a dangerous squall sprang up, which forced us
to run back for shelter fully five miles. There was barely time
to camp before the gale became furious, raging all night, and
throwing down tents like nine-pins. About one a.m. a cry arose
from the night-watch that the boats were swamping. All hands
turned out, lading was removed, and the scows hauled up on the
shingle, the rollers piling on shore with a height and fury
perfectly astonishing for such a lake. By morning the tempest
was at its height, continuing all day and into the night. The
sunset that evening exhibited some of the grandest and wildest
sky scenery we had ever beheld. In the west a vast bank of
luminous orange cloud, edged by torn fringes of green and gray;
in the south a sea of amethyst, and stretching from north to
east masses of steel gray and pearl, shot with brilliant shafts
and tufts of golden vapour. The whole sky streamed with rich
colouring in the fierce wind, as if possessed at once by the
genii of beauty and storm. The boatmen, noting its aspect,
predicted worse weather; but, fortunately, morning belied the
omens--our trials were over.

We were now nearing Shaw's Point, a long willowed spit of land,
called after a whimsical old chief-factor of the Hudson's Bay
Company who had charge of this district over sixty years before.
He appears to have been a man of many eccentricities, one
of which was the cultivation _a la Chinois_ of a very long
finger-nail, which he used as a spoon to eat his egg. But of
him anon. By four p.m. we had rounded his Point, and come into
view of Wyaweekamon--"The Outlet"--a rudimentary street with