I found on that occasion that no quantity of clothing will keep a man warm in that almost arctic climate. First my hands became cold, and then my feet, and then my ears. A thin film of ice closed up the fishing holes if the water was not constantly disturbed. The thermometer must have registered ten or fifteen degrees below zero. Our lines became quadrupled in thickness at the lower ends by the ice that formed upon them. When they coiled for an instant upon the ice at the edge of a hole, they stuck to it, frozen fast. By stamping my feet and putting my free hand in my pocket as fast as I shifted my pole from one hand to the other, I managed to persist in fishing. I noticed many interesting things as I stood there, almost alone in that almost pathless wilderness. First I saw that the Indian was not cold, though not half so warmly dressed as I. The circulation or vitality of those scions of nature must be very remarkable, for no sort of weather seemed to trouble them at all. Wet feet, wet bodies, intense cold, whatever came, found and left them indifferent. Night after night, in camp, in the open air, or in our log shanty, we white men trembled with the cold when the log fire burned low, but the Indians never woke to rebuild it. Indeed, I did not see one have his blanket pulled over his chest at any time. Woodcocks were drumming in the forest now and then, and the shrill, bird-like chatter of the squirrels frequently rang out upon the forest quiet. My Indian knew every noise, no matter how faint, yet never raised his head to listen. "Dat squirrel," he would say, when I asked him. Or, "Woodcock, him calling rain," he ventured. Once I asked what a very queer, distant, muffled sound was. "You hear dat when you walk. Keep still, no hear dat," he said. It was the noise the ice made when I moved. As I stood there a squirrel came down upon a log jutting out over the edge of the lake, and looked me over. A white weasel ran about in the bushes so close to me that I could have hit him with a peanut shell. That morning some partridge had been seen feeding in the bush close to members of our party. It was a country where small game is not hunted, and does not always hide at a man's approach. We had left our fish lying on the ice near the various holes from which we pulled them, and I thought of them when a flock of ravens passed overhead, crying out in their hoarse tones. They were sure to see the fish dotting the snow like raisins in a bowl of rice. "Won't they steal the fish?" I asked. "T'ink not," said the Indian. "I don't know anything about ravens," I said, "but if they are even distantly related to a crow, they will steal whatever they can lift." We could not see our fish around the bend of the lake, so the Indian dropped his rod and walked stolidly after the birds. As soon as he passed out of sight I heard him scolding the great birds as if they were unruly children.