of it, I dragged myself on the sound ice. But the danger was not yet
over; the weather was intensely cold, so that my clothes were soon
frozen solid upon me, and having no means of lighting a fire, I ran
into the woods; and in order to keep my body from being frozen into
the same mass with my clothes, continued running up and down with all
my might, till the rest of the party arrived.


I had a still more narrow escape in the month of March ensuing. I had
been on a visit to the post under my own immediate charge, termed
head-quarters _par excellence_; returning to the post alone, I came to
a place where our men, in order to avoid a long detour occasioned by a
high and steep hill coming close to the river, were accustomed to draw
their sledges upon the ice along the edge of a rapid. About the middle
of the rapid, where the torrent is fiercest, the banks of the river
are formed of rocks rising almost perpendicularly from the water's
edge; and here they had to pass on a narrow ledge of ice, between the
rock on the one side, and the foaming and boiling surge on the other.
The ledge, at no time very broad, was now reduced, by the falling in
of the water, to a strip of ice of about eighteen inches, or little
more, adhering to the rock. The ice, however, seemed perfectly solid,
and I made no doubt that, with caution, I should succeed in passing
safely this formidable strait.

The weather having been very mild in the fore-part of the day, my
shoes and socks had been saturated with wet, but were now frozen hard
by the cold of the approaching night. Overlooking this circumstance,
I attempted the dangerous passage; and had proceeded about halfway,
when my foot slipped, and I suddenly found myself resting with one hip
on the border of ice, while the rest of my body overhung the rapid