embroidered and edged with fringe. Above the collars projected pompons
of broken colours and clusters of streaming ribbons, while beneath hung
a number of bells. All the dogs were hitched tandem, and every train
was made up of four units. Except the dogs of the Factor's train,
there were few real "huskies," as Eskimo dogs are called, for most of
the brutes were the usual sharp-nosed, heavy-coated mongrels that in
the Strong Woods Country go by the name of _giddes_; some, however, had
been sired by wolves.

The track-beater's snowshoes, which were the largest used by any of the
brigade, were Wood Cree "hunting shoes" and measured nearly six feet in
length. The other men wore Chipewyan "tripping shoes" about three feet
long--the only style of Canadian snowshoes that are made in "rights and
lefts."

For a number of miles we passed through heavily timbered forest where
shafts of sunlight threw patches of brilliant white upon the woodland's
winter carpet, and where gentle breezes had played fantastically with
the falling snow, for it was heaped in all manner of remarkable forms.
Here and there long, soft festoons of white were draped about groups of
trees where the living stood interlocked with the dead. Among the
branches huge "snow-bosses" were seen, and "snow-mushrooms" of wondrous
shape and bulk were perched upon logs and stumps. "Snow-caps" of
almost unbelievable size were mounted upon the smallest of trees, the
slender trunks of which seemed ready to break at any moment. It was
all so strangely picturesque that it suggested an enchanted forest.

Early that afternoon we came upon an Indian lodge hiding in the woods,
and from within came three little children. It was then fully twenty
below zero, yet the little tots, wishing to watch the passing brigade,