The largest number of fish caught here are what the natives call "cow-e-sil-lik," and are peculiar to these waters. They are something like very large herring, and the flesh much coarser than salmon or trout. All the fish here are quite fat, the salmon especially. We bought several bags of salmon oil from the natives, which we used, so long as it lasted, as a substitute for reindeer tallow, which is all gone now. The weather is intensely cold -62 degrees Fahrenheit on the 10th, the day the remainder of our party rejoined us at this camp. There was scarcely any wind, and it did not seem so cold as at -10 degrees or -20 degrees, with the wind blowing in one's face, as it was the last few days of our travelling, with the thermometer at -46 degrees and -48 degrees. Yet we were so well fortified against the cold by the quantities of fat we had eaten that we did not mind it. The prospect was that now we were out of fat we would suffer a great deal with the intense cold that we might expect in going across land from Back's River to Hudson's Bay. The rapids on Back's River are all marked by open water, and are recognizable at a long distance by the column of black smoke arising from them like steam from a boiling caldron. The ice in the vicinity is dangerous to travel upon, there often being thin places, where the moving water has nearly, but not quite, cut through, and not distinguishable from the surrounding ice, which may be four or five feet thick. The natives test it, before going upon it, with a knife or stick, and know from the sound whether or not it is safe to travel upon. In some of the many open water places that we found in our journey up the river we could walk boldly up to the very edge and lie down and quench our thirst from the rushing torrent, while in other places it was not safe to go within several hundred yards of the open water. On the 20th we passed open rapids about half a mile long, where we had to take the land. From the top of the hill it was a grand spectacle to look down upon the seething torrent and see the great cakes of ice broken off above and crushed to atoms as they passed through and under the ice below. [Illustration: THE DANGEROUS RAPIDS, BACK'S RIVER.] We had hoped to have Narleyow go with us to Depot Island, as he had previously been up Back's River and knew a route overland by which in three days we could reach a river where some Kinnepatoos were encamped all the year round. Here we could refit with meat and clothing and follow the river, which flows into Chesterfield Inlet, and then keep upon the salt-water ice to Depot Island. But with true Inuit perverseness he decided at the last minute not to go. He, however, gave Toolooah minute directions for finding the place where to leave Back's River, which is nearly as far west as Lake McDougal, and the route overland, where we would find sledge tracks and footprints to guide us to the camp.