I think you had better sit right down there by the rifles. There
are fresh bear tracks about here, and Job says they run down there
by the river."

I could not help laughing at the alarm I had created, but
obediently sat down on the pile of outfit by the rifles, strongly
suspecting, however, that the bear tracks were invented, and that
the real fear was on account of the river. It began to be somewhat
irksome to be so well taken care of.

The mosquitoes and flies were now coming thick and fast. I thought
them very bad, but George insisted that you could not even call
this a beginning. I wore a veil of black silk net, but the mesh
was hardly fine enough, and the flies managed to crawl through.
They would get their heads in and then kick and struggle and twist
till they were all through, when they immediately proceeded to
work. The men did not seem to care to put their veils on even when
not at work, and I wondered how they could take the little torments
so calmly.

On the morning of July 6th we reached the Seal Islands expansion.
Around these islands the river flows with such force and swiftness
that the water can be seen to pile up in ridges in the channel.
Here we found Donald Blake's tilt. Donald is Gilbert's brother,
and in winter they trap together up the Nascaupee valley as far as
Seal Lake, which lies 100 miles from Northwest River post. Often
in imagination I had pictured these little havens so far in the
wilderness and lonely, and now I had come to a real one. It was a
tiny log building set near the edge of the river bank among the
spruce trees. Around it lay a thick bed of chips, and scattered