North America

The wild sheep ranks highest among the animal mountaineers of the Sierra. Possessed of keen sight and scent, and strong limbs, he dwells secure amid the loftiest summits, leaping unscathed from crag to crag, up and down the fronts of giddy precipices, crossing foaming torrents and slopes of frozen snow, exposed to the wildest storms, yet maintaining a brave, warm life, and developing from generation to generation in perfect strength and beauty.

Murphy's camp is a curious old mining-town in Calaveras County, at an elevation of 2400 feet above the sea, situated like a nest in the center of a rough, gravelly region, rich in gold. Granites, slates, lavas, limestone, iron ores, quartz veins, auriferous gravels, remnants of dead fire-rivers and dead water-rivers are developed here side by side within a radius of a few miles, and placed invitingly open before the student like a book, while the people and the region beyond the camp furnish mines of study of never-failing interest and variety.

Beyond this point our progress was slow and difficult. There were days when we made less than two miles, and these were the discouraging days for me, because there was ever hanging over me the thought of the necessity of reaching Ungava by the last week in August - if I meant to catch the ship there. However, by poling and tracking, by lifting and dragging the canoe through the shallow waters near the shore, or again by carrying the entire outfit over the sand-hills or across boulder-strewn valleys, we won gradually forward.

It was still raining Tuesday morning, and camp was not moved till afternoon, when we crossed the river. Though smooth here, it flowed with fearful rapidity, and in midstream carried the canoe, as if it had been a feather, at locomotive speed. Three-quarters of a mile above where we crossed the course of the river bent away to the east, and we could see the water leaping and tossing in a wild rapid as it came round through the opening in the hills. I had a great wish to see the fifteen miles of it which flows between this point and Seal Lake.

It was well for me that a mind at rest, on at least one very important point, was my portion that night, else the nightlong fight with the mosquitoes had been horrible indeed. They seemed to come out of the ground. When despair of getting any sleep had taken possession of me, I turned with such calmness as I could muster to the task of killing them off. By diligent application I hoped in the end to secure a little respite. To interest myself I began to count my kill; but when it had reached one hundred and fifty, and yet they came, I gave it up.

I awoke on Friday at 2.30 A.M. The morning was clear as diamonds, and from the open front of my tent I could see the eastern sky. It glowed a deep red gold, and I lay watching it. An hour later the sun appeared over the hills touching the peak of my tent with its light, and I got up to look out. The mists had gathered on our little lake, and away in the distance hung white over the river.

Gilbert was busy getting wood and preparing the breakfast. Soon I heard him at the door of the men's tent saying, "All aboard."

"Any mosquitoes this morning, Gilbert?"

The day following no one was astir early. I think no one slept much. I could hear from the other tent the low hum of the men's voices far into the night. Mosquitoes kept me awake. About 2 A.M. I got up, lighted my candle, and killed all I could find, and after that I had a little peace, but did not sleep much. It was then growing light.

It was the sun that did it, or else it was a scheme on the part of George and Job to work in an extra pudding. However that may have been, we found ourselves on Wednesday morning not yet on Lake Michikamau, and we did not reach it until 5.15 P.M. that day.

We had not reached our haven too soon. Almost immediately the wind rose again, and by noon was blowing so strong that we could have done nothing in any part of Lake Michikamau, not to speak of crossing the upper end in a heavy south wind. Around the point I did not find things look as I expected. It was only a very shallow bay, and where we looked for the islands a long, narrow point of land stretched out from the west shore to the northeast.

Tuesday morning, August 8th, dawned clear and calm, and Gilbert came forth to light the fire, singing: "Glory, glory, hallelujah! as we go marching along." Yet before the tents were taken down the wind had sprung up from the southwest, and it was with difficulty that the canoes were launched and loaded.