About noon on August 5, after a two-mile portage, we reached Lake
Elson. On the way Hubbard sighted two caribou. He dropped his
pack and grabbed his rifle. They were 250 yards away and partially
hidden by the timber, and as they were approaching him, he waited,
believing he would get a better shot. But, while he was waiting,
what he called a "cussed little long-legged bird" scared them off,
by giving a sharp, shrill cry of alarm, which the deer evidently
were clever enough to construe as meaning that something out of the
ordinary was happening.

Lake Elson proved to be about three and a half miles long and a
half mile wide. It lay in a basin surrounded by wooded hills. The
northerly portion was dotted with low, mound-like islands of drift,
with two or three irregular, rocky islands, all completely wooded.
It was a beautiful sheet of water, and, like all the lakes in
Labrador, as clear as crystal and very cold. On the northerly side
there were narrow straits and inlets, doubtless connecting the lake
with others to the northwest that were hidden by the growth.

The outlet was at the southern end. It flowed through a pass in a
low ridge of hills that extended for a great distance east and
west, and emptied into a small lake, the waters of which were
discharged through a creek that flowed through a pass in another
low ridge that ran parallel with the first as far as we could see.
Between the two ridges was a marsh that extended westward for many
miles. The ridges and the hills surrounding the lakes were covered
with spruce and balsam. Nowhere along our route since we left
Northwest River Post, however, had we seen any timber of commercial
value; the largest trees did not exceed eight inches in diameter,