No artist's imaginative brush ever pictured such gorgeous sunsets and
sunrises as Nature painted for us here on the Great Lake of the
Indians. Every night the sun went down in a blaze of glory and left
behind it all the colors of the spectrum. The dark hills across the
lake in the west were silhouetted against a sky of brilliant red which
shaded off into banks of orange and amber that reached the azure at
the zenith. The waters of the lake took the reflection of the red at
the horizon and became a flood of restless blood. The sky colorings
during these few days were the finest that I ever saw in Labrador, not
only in the evening but in the morning also.

Michikamau has a bad name amongst the Indians for heavy seas,
particularly in the autumn months when the northwest gales sometimes
blow for weeks at a time without cessation, and the Indians say that
they are often held on its shores for long periods by high running
seas that no canoe could weather. These were the same winds that held
Hubbard and me prisoners for nearly two weeks on the smaller Windbound
Lake in 1903, bringing us to the verge of starvation before we were
permitted to begin our race for life down the trail toward Northwest
River. Fate was kinder now, and but one day's rough water interfered
with progress.

Early on the third day after parting from the other men, we found
ourselves at the end of Michikamau where a shallow river, in which
large bowlders were thickly scattered, flowed into it from the north.
This was the stream draining Lake Michikamats, the next important
point in our journey. Michikamau, it might be explained, means, in
the Indian tongue, big water--so big you cannot see the land beyond;
Michikamats means a smaller body of water beyond which land may be