The camp was very prettily situated on a small flat a few feet above the edge of a frozen lake; and when the sun rose over the hill, lighting up the brown deer-skin lodges with their columns of blue smoke rising straight up in the frosty air, the snow-laden pine-trees, and the silver-barked birches, the whole scene seemed a realization of one of Fenimore Cooper's descriptions of an Indian camp in winter.
Much talking had to be got through, and the story of our musk-ox hunt was told many times over. I was the object of great interest, and was closely questioned as to my experiences in the Barren Ground and the contrast between life there and in my own country. After Zinto had satisfied himself on these points he broached more abstruse subjects, insisting on knowing my opinion with regard to the differences of the Protestant and Roman Catholic faiths, and seeming pleased to hear that he was by no means the first man who had found this point hard to fully understand. Many other things there were about which he desired information; but I am afraid some of my answers conveyed little meaning to him, as I was myself rather hazy about many of the topics of conversation, and had only Michel, who was the worst Frenchman of all, for interpreter, Paul having gone off to see his wife who was camped a few miles to the east. But when Zinto got on to trading he was quite at home, and before leaving I had to give him an order for many beaver-skins (the medium of trade in the North), to be paid at Fort Resolution. He was very good in providing me with everything I wanted for my journey, and gave me a new pair of snow-shoes and a sleigh, besides lending a dog to replace one that had fallen lame; meat he was short of, but he had heard that the Beaulieus had been killing caribou, so that I was likely to find _caches_ by the way; a track was broken to Fond du Lac, and we ought to get there easily in three days. Zinto thought the Great Slave Lake would be entirely frozen over and fit to travel on by this time, as lately the sky had been clear in the south; when there is any open water a perpetual mist rises from it and lies like a huge fog-bank over the lake.