evil makes an impression so evanescent as pain. It cannot be wholly
banished, nor recalled with the force of reality, by any act of the
mind, either to affect our determinations, or to sympathize with
another. The traveller soon forgets his sufferings, and at every
future journey their recurrence is attended with diminished acuteness.
It was not before the 10th or 12th of April, that the return of
the swans, geese, and ducks, gave certain indications of the advance
of spring. The juice of the maple-tree began to flow, and the
women repaired to the woods for the purpose of collecting it. This
tree, which abounds to the southward, is not, I believe, found to the
northward of the Saskatchawan. The Indians obtain the sap by
making incisions into the tree. They boil it down, and evaporate
the water, skimming off the impurities. They are so fond of sweets
that after this simple process, they set an extravagant price upon it.
On the 15th fell the first shower of rain we had seen for six
months, and on the 17th the thermometer rose to 77° in the shade.
The whole face of the country was deluged by the melted snow.
All the nameless heaps of dirt, accumulated in the winter, now
floated over the very thresholds, and the long-imprisoned scents
dilated into vapours so penetrating, that no retreat was any security
from them. The flood descended into the cellar below our house,
and destroyed a quantity of powder and tea ; a loss irreparable in our
situation. ,
The noise made by the frogs which this inundation produced, is
almost incredible. There is strong reason to believe that they outlive
the severity of winter. They have ofterTbeen found frozen and
revived by warmth, nor is it possible that the multitude which incessantly
filled our ears with its discordant notes could have been
matured in two or three days.
The fishermen at Beaver Lake, and the other detached parties
were ordered to return to the post. The expedients to which the
poor people were reduced, to cross a country so beset with
waters, presented many uncouth spectacles. The inexperienced
were glad to compromise, with the loss of property, for the safety
of their persons, and astride upon ill-balanced rafts with which
they struggled to be uppermost, exhibited a ludicrous picture
of distress. Happy were they who could patch up an old canoe,
though obliged to bear it half the way on their shoulders, through
miry bogs and interwoven willows. But the veteran trader, wedged
in a box of skin, with his wife, children, dogs, and furs, wheeled triumphantly
through the current, and deposited his heterogeneous
cargo safely on the shore. The woods re-echoed with the return of
their exiled tenants. An hundred tribes, as gaily dressed as any
burnished natives of the south, greeted our eyes in our accustomed
walks, and their voices, though unmusical, were the sweetest that
ever saluted our ears.
From the 19th to the 26th the snow once more blighted the resuscitating
verdure, but a single day was sufficient to remove it. On
the 28th the Saskatchawan swept away the ice which had adhered to
its banks, and on the morrow a boat came down from Carlton House
with provisions. We received such accounts of the state of vegetation
at that place, that Dr. Richardson determined to visit it, in
order to collect botanical specimens, as the period at which the ice
was expected to admit of the continuation of our journey was still
distant. Accordingly he embarked on the 1st of May.
In the course of the month the ice gradually wore away from the
south side of the lake, but the great mass of it still hung to the
north side with some snow visible on its surface. By the 21st the
elevated grounds were perfectly dry, and teeming with the fragrant
offspring of the season. When the snow melted, the earth was
covered with the fallen leaves of the last year, and already it was green
with the strawberry plant, and the bursting buds of the gooseberry,
raspberry, and rose bushes, soon variegated by the rose and the
blossoms of the choke cherry. The gifts of nature are disregarded