QUI VIVE! From Land's End to John O' Groat's is a long tramp, but that from Montreal to Hudson's Bay is far longer, and yet many have made it; more, however, in the days of which we are writing than now, and with greater hardships also then.

But weighed against the greater hardships there was a bolder temper and a more romantic spirit.
How strange and severe a journey it was, only those can tell who have travelled those wastes, even in these later days, when paths have been beaten down from Mount Royal to the lodges of the North.

When they started, the ice had not yet all left the Ottawa River, and they wound their way through crowding floes, or portaged here and there for miles, the eager sun of spring above with scarcely a cloud to trail behind him.

At last the river cleared, and for leagues they travelled to the north-west, and came at last to the Lake of the Winds.

They travelled across one corner of it, to a point where they would strike an unknown path to Hudson's Bay.
Iberville had never before seen this lake, and, with all his knowledge of great proportions, he was not prepared for its splendid vastness.
They came upon it in the evening, and camped beside it.