The Arctic Prairies | Page 9

as well as the Crees.
That night we camped far down the river and on the side opposite the Fort, for experience soon teaches one to give the dogs no chance of entering camp on marauding expeditions while you rest. About ten, as I was going to sleep, Preble put his head in and said: "Come out here if you want a new sensation."
In a moment I was standing with him under the tall spruce trees, looking over the river to the dark forest, a quarter mile away, and listening intently to a new and wonderful sound. Like the slow tolling of a soft but high-pitched bell, it came. Ting, ting, ting, ting, and on, rising and falling with the breeze, but still keeping on about two "tings" to the second; and on, dulling as with distance, but rising again and again.
It was unlike anything I had ever heard, but Preble knew it of old. "That", says he, "is the love-song of the Richardson Owl. She is sitting demurely in some spruce top while he sails around, singing on the wing, and when the sound seems distant, he is on the far side of the tree."
Ting, ting, ting, ting, it went on and on, this soft belling of his love, this amorous music of our northern bell-bird. .
Ting, TING, ting, ting, ting, TING, ting, ting, ting, ting, TING, ting--oh, how could any lady owl resist such strains?--and on, with its ting, ting, ting, TING, ting, ting, ting, TING, the whole night air was vibrant. Then, as though by plan, a different note--the deep booming "Oho-oh-who-oh who hoo" of the Great Homed Owl--was heard singing a most appropriate bass.
But the little Owl went on and on; 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes at last had elapsed before I turned in again and left him. More than once that night I awoke to hear his "tinging" serenade upon the consecrated air of the piney woods.
Yet Preble said this one was an indifferent performer. On the Mackenzie he had heard far better singers of the kind; some that introduce many variations of the pitch and modulation. I thought it one of the most charming bird voices I had ever listened to--and felt that this was one of the things that make the journey worth while.
On June 1 the weather was so blustering and wet that we did not break camp. I put in the day examining the superb timber of this bottom-land. White spruce is the prevailing conifer and is here seen in perfection. A representative specimen was 118 feet high, 11 feet 2 inches in circumference, or 3 feet 6 1/2 inches in diameter 1 foot from the ground, i.e., above any root spread. There was plenty of timber of similar height. Black spruce, a smaller kind, and tamarack are found farther up and back in the bog country. jackpine of fair size abounds on the sandy and gravelly parts. Balsam poplar is the largest deciduous tree; its superb legions in upright ranks are crowded along all the river banks and on the islands not occupied by the spruce. The large trees of this kind often have deep holes; these are the nesting sites of the Whistler Duck, which is found in numbers here and as far north as this tree, but not farther. White poplar is plentiful also; the hillsides are beautifully clad with its purplish masses of twigs, through which its white stem gleam like marble columns. White birch is common and large enough for canoes. Two or three species of willow in impenetrable thickets make up the rest of the forest stretches.
At this camp I had the unique experience of showing all these seasoned Westerners that it was possible to make a fire by the friction of two sticks. This has long been a specialty of mine; I use a thong and a bow as the simplest way. Ordinarily I prefer balsam-fir or tamarack; in this case I used a balsam block and a spruce drill, and, although each kind failed when used with drill and block the same, I got the fire in half a minute.
On June 3 we left this camp of tall timber. As we floated down we sighted a Lynx on the bank looking contemplatively into the flood. One of the police boys seized a gun and with a charge of No. 6 killed the Lynx. Poor thing, it was in a starving condition, as indeed are most meat-eaters this year in the north. Though it was fully grown, it weighed but 15 pounds.
In its stomach was part of a sparrow (white-throat?) and a piece of rawhide an inch wide and 4 feet long, evidently a portion of a dog-harness picked up somewhere along the river. I wonder what he did with the bells.
That night we