During the winter our mail was brought by men on snow-shoes with a dog train; they had to travel about 150 miles to a distant station, where they were met by other couriers, who exchanged bags with them and took them the remainder of the distance. The men go along at a jogging pace, and at night camp out in the snow. CHAPTER XVI. CHIEF BUHKWUJJENENE'S MISSION. It was sugar-making time, and Buhkwujjenene was at work three miles back in the bush collecting the sap from the maple-trees, and, with the assistance of his wife and a large family of daughters, boiling it down in huge black kettles to transform it into maple-sugar. It was rather a labour getting out there, and I had to take my snow-shoes. About two miles back from where our parsonage stood is a long range of low, rocky hills, about 300 feet high, nearly parallel with the course of the river, and for the most part bare and naked, only sprinkled with a few ragged balsams, pine, and birch. It was April, and the snow was gone from the exposed parts of the hill, but beyond, in the valley where sugar-making was going on, it was still a couple of feet deep. Wandering along through the bush, the first sign of your approach to a sugar-camp is generally the sound of an axe or the barking of a dog; these help to direct your steps; then, in a little while you see snow- shoe tracks, and then--here are the little birch-bark troughs, one or two to each maple-tree, and a slip of wood stuck in the tree about two feet from the ground, which serves as a spout to convey the sap from the tree to the trough. It does not run fast, about a drop in every three or four seconds, or sometimes much slower than that; however the little trough gets full in time, and then the Indians come round and pour it into birch-bark pails and carry it to the camp to be boiled. The sap is very nice when you are thirsty--slightly sweet and very cold, as the nights must be frosty during sugar-making time, and there is generally a little ice in each trough. Cold frosty nights and clear sunshiny days is what the Indians like for their sugar-making. As soon as the weather gets too warm the sap becomes bitter and is no longer of any use.