9 .-- The day was clear and calm; the thermometer at sunrise at 49 degrees.

As is usual with the trappers on the eve of any enterprise, our people had made dreams, and theirs happened to be a bad one--one which always preceded evil--and consequently they looked very gloomy this morning; but we hurried through our breakfast, in order to make an early start, and have all the day before us for our adventure.
The channel in a short distance became so shallow that our navigation was at an end, being merely a sheet of soft mud, with a few inches of water, and sometimes none at all, forming the low water shore of the lake.

All this place was absolutely covered with flocks of screaming plover.

We took off our clothes, and, getting overboard, commenced dragging the boat--making, by this operation, a very curious trail, and a very disagreeable smell in stirring up the mud, as we sank above the knee at every step.

The water here was still fresh, with only an insipid and disagreeable taste, probably derived from the bed of fetid mud.
After proceeding in this way about a mile, we came to a small black ridge on the bottom, beyond which the water became suddenly salt, beginning gradually to deepen, and the bottom was sandy and firm.