I travelled by this time in fur coat and cap, and I
carried a robe for myself and blankets for the horses,
for I now fed them on the road soon after crossing the
creek.

Now on the second Friday of November there had been a
smell of smoke in the air from the early morning. The
marsh up north was afire--as it had been off and on for
a matter of twenty-odd years. The fire consumes on the
surface everything that will burn; the ground cools down,
a new vegetation springs up, and nobody would suspect
--as there is nothing to indicate--that only a few feet
below the heat lingers, ready to leap up again if given
the opportunity In this case I was told that a man had
started to dig a well on a newly filed claim, and that
suddenly he found himself wrapped about in smoke and
flames. I cannot vouch for the truth of this, but I can
vouch for the fact that the smoke of the fire was smelt
for forty miles north and that in the afternoon a
combination of this smoke (probably furnishing "condensation
nuclei") and of the moisture in the air, somewhere along
or above the lake brought about the densest fog I had
ever seen on the prairies. How it spread, I shall discuss
later on. To give an idea of its density I will mention
right here that on the well travelled road between two
important towns a man abandoned his car during the early
part of the night because he lost his nerve when his
lights could no longer penetrate the fog sufficiently
to reach the road.