otherwise have permitted it.

Finally the sky cleared and the wind ceased to blow; but with the calm
came a cause for disquietude. A light smoke had settled in the valley
and the air held the odor of it, suggesting a forest fire somewhere
above. This would mean retreat, if not disaster, for when these fires
once start rivers and lakes prove small obstacles in their path. From
a view-point on the hills no dense smoke could be discovered, only the
light haze that we had seen and smelled in the valley, and we
therefore decided that the gale that had blown for several days from
the northwest may have carried it for a long distance, even from the
district far west of Michikamau, and that at any rate there was no
cause for immediate alarm.

The ridges with an increasing altitude were crowding in upon us more
closely. Once when we stopped to portage around a low fall we climbed
some of the hills that were near at hand that we might obtain a better
knowledge of the topography of the country than could be had from the
confined river valley. Away to the northwest we found the country to
be much more rugged than the district we had recently passed through.
Observations showed us that the highest of the hills we were on had an
elevation of six hundred feet above the river. We had but a single
day of fine weather and then a fog came so thick that we could not see
the opposite banks of the Nascaupee, and after it a cold rain set in
which made our work in the icy current doubly hard. One morning I
slipped on a bowlder in the river and strained my side, and for me the
remainder of the day was very trying. That evening we reached a
little group of three or four islands, where the Nascaupee was wide
and shallow, but just above the islands it narrowed down again and a
low fall occurred. Not far from the fall a small river tumbled down