Overhauling the nets, taking care of the fish, mending and drying your nets--all this keeps you busy almost all the time. In taking whitefish out of the net, one uses teeth and hands. You catch the fish in your hand, lift it to your mouth, and, taking hold of its head with your teeth, you press down its length with both hands meeting, and thus force the fish from the net without straining your net. When the fish is loose from the net, you give a swing with your head, and thus toss the fish into the boat behind you or away out on the ice beside you. All of this, except mending the nets in the tent, is desperately cold work. The ice makes on your sleeves and clothing. Your hands would freeze were it not that you keep them in the water as much as possible. In my time hundreds of thousands of whitefish were thus taken every year for winter use, the principal food for men and dogs being fish. When the lakes and rivers are frozen over, you take a long rope, about a quarter of an inch in thickness, and pass it under the ice to the length of your net. To do this you take a long dry pole, and fasten your rope at one end of this; then you cut holes in the ice the length of your pole apart in the direction you want to set your net; you then pass this pole under the ice using a forked stick to push it along, and in this way bring your line out at the far end of where your net will be when set. One pulls the rope and the other sets the net, carefully letting floats and stones go as these should in order that the net hang right. My man and I put up about two thousand white-fish, besides a number of jack-fish. These were hauled home by dog-train. My four pups which I bought from Mr. Sinclair over a year since were now fine big dogs, but as wild as wolves. I had put up a square of logs for a dog-house, and by feeding, and coaxing, and decoying with old dogs, I finally succeeded in getting them into it. Then I would catch one at a time, and hitch him with some old and trained dogs. Father would go with me, and fight off the other three while I secured the one I was breaking in, and by and by, I had the whole four broken, and they turned out splendid fellows to pull and go. Very few, if any, trains could leave me in the race, and when I loaded them with two hundred hung fish, they would keep me on the dead run to follow. I was very proud of my first train of dogs, and also of my success in breaking them. Many a flying trip I gave father or mother and my sisters over to the fort or out among the Indians. Sometimes I went with father to visit Indian camps, and also to the Hudson's Bay shanties away up Jack River, where their men were taking out timber and wood for the fort. What cared we for the cold! Father was well wrapped in the cariole, and I, having to run and keep the swinging cariole right side up, had not time to get cold. CHAPTER XV. Winter trip to Oxford--Extreme cold--Quick travelling.