Far away towards the north-west we could trace the windings of the stream to a ridge of blue hills, which formed the horizon under the setting sun. How these blue ridges in the distance tempt one to push on and see what lies on the far side! And the experience that nine times out of ten you would have done better to stay where you were is never sufficient to overcome this feeling; to this day I can seldom resist it, although game may be plentiful at the door of my lodge and everything that one desires in a wild country is close at hand. Below us lay a broad valley, so green and fertile in appearance that we could hardly realise that for nine months in the year it lay frost-bound and snow-covered under the rigour of an Arctic climate. In the middle of this valley, close to the bank of the stream, was a black object that we had long ago learnt to recognise at a glance, an old bull musk-ox feeding in a patch of willow-scrub; he was sacrificed for our night's rations, and, loaded with meat and marrow-bones, we returned to the cañon where we had left our blankets. There was a distinct twilight, and late in the night David awoke me to draw my attention to the first star that we had seen for many weeks. "See," he said, "a star already; it is past middle summer, and we have not yet seen the sun all night." It was the first summer he had ever spent without seeing the midnight sun, as, since he had been left at the Peel River Fort by a band of Esquimaux who come there annually to trade, he had passed his life within the Arctic circle.
The only signs that we saw of people having travelled along this valley were occasional cache-marks made by piling up a heap of small stones in a conspicuous position, to denote the carcass of an animal hidden in the rocks close by; but it seems such an easy route and leads so nearly in the direction of Bathurst Inlet, the nearest point on the sea-coast, that it is probably used regularly by wandering bands of Esquimaux on their way to and from their inland hunting-ground.
This was the end of our voyage of discovery, though I should have liked to have pushed on another day or two; but we wanted a small canoe to be certain of reaching the coast, which must have been within sixty miles of us, as there are sure to be many lakes to cross _en route_, and making long detours on foot would be an endless task. The fine weather also had broken, and heavy showers of rain came driving in front of the north wind, while the rest of our crew that had remained with the canoe were not too trustworthy, and, with the exception of Saltatha, in whom both Mackinlay and myself had great confidence, were quite capable of leaving us to find our way out of the country on foot. We had to content ourselves with the hope that in a future summer, with an earlier season and a better crew, we might find an opportunity of exploring thoroughly this promising valley in the Barren Ground. But now I must turn my attention to my long journey of seventeen hundred miles, mostly up-stream, to cross the Rocky Mountains by the head-waters of the Peace River before the winter set in; and even if I could manage this there were still many hundred miles of mountain and forest to be crossed before I saw the shores of the Pacific and the abodes of civilization.