The men continued tracking until ten a.m. much of the time wading
along banks heavily overhung with alders, or along high, sheer
walls of rock, up to the armpits in the swift current. The country
passed through was one giant mass of forest, pine and poplar,
resting generally upon loamy clay--a good agricultural country
in the main, similar to many parts of Ontario when a wilderness.
We camped at the Joli Fou Rapids, having only made about fifteen
miles. It was a beautiful spot, a pebbly shore, with fine open
forest behind, evidently a favourite camping-place in winter.
Next morning the trackers, having recrossed for better footing,
got into a swale of the worst kind, which hampered them greatly,
as the swift river was now at its height and covered with gnarled
driftwood.
The foliage here and there showed signs of change, some poplars
yellowing already along the immediate banks, and the familiar
scent of autumn was in the air. In a word, the change so familiar
in Manitoba in August had taken place here, to be followed by a
balmy September and the fine fall weather of the North, said to
surpass that of the East in mildness by day, though perhaps sharper
by night. We were now but a few miles from the last obstruction,
the Pelican Rapids, and pushed on in the morning along banks of
a coal-like blackness, loose and friable, with thin cracks and
fissures running in all directions, the forest behind being the
usual mixture of spruce and poplar.
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