Nature was sheeted in funereal white. Lakes and ponds were frozen,
rivulets sealed up, torrents encased with stalactites of ice; the black
rocks and the black trunks of the pine-trees were beplastered with snow,
and its heavy masses crushed the dull green boughs into the drifts
beneath. The forest was silent as the grave.

Through this desolation the long file of Indians made its way, all on
snow-shoes, each man, woman, and child bending under a heavy load,
or dragging a sledge, narrow, but of prodigious length. They carried
their whole wealth with them, on their backs or on their sledges,--
kettles, axes, hides of meat, if such they had, and huge rolls of
birch-bark for covering their wigwams. The Jesuit was loaded like the
rest. The dogs alone floundered through the drifts unburdened. There
was neither path nor level ground. Descending, climbing, stooping
beneath half-fallen trees, clambering over piles of prostrate trunks,
struggling through matted cedar-swamps, threading chill ravines, and
crossing streams no longer visible, they toiled on till the day began to
decline, then stopped to encamp. [ 1 ] Burdens were thrown down, and
sledges unladen. The squaws, with knives and hatchets, cut long poles of
birch and spruce saplings; while the men, with snow-shoes for shovels,
cleared a round or square space in the snow, which formed an upright wall
three or four feet high, inclosing the area of the wigwam. On one side,
a passage was cut for an entrance, and the poles were planted around the
top of the wall of snow, sloping and converging. On these poles were
spread the sheets of birch-bark; a bear-skin was hung in the passage-way
for a door; the bare ground within and the surrounding snow were covered
with spruce boughs; and the work was done.

[ 1 "S'il arriuoit quelque degel, o Dieu quelle peine! Il me sembloit
que ie marchois sur vn chemin de verre qui se cassoit a tous coups soubs