p. 202

212

Lake Kalakittekon

the potatoe fir for transportation and use during the severest frosts without injury. The squaws take great interest in preparing this article of food which is about the only vegetable they cultivate. This district is tolerably well provided with deer, beaver, otter, martin, mink, muskrat, ducks of various kinds, fish, teal, [ducks] wild geese and partridges. Deer however are not so plentiful as further south. Winter usually sets in about the 20th October in the Katakittekon country: this year from the 20th to the 28th October the mercury ranged as low as from [five] nine to twelve degrees below freezing, and for several days during the latter part of October, it was continually snowing. On the return of our party, Sandy Lake Outlet had become so much frozen as to make it necessary to drag the canoes on the ice; and the ice was making very fast in all the lakes and streams; this in the very last days of October." The Lake Katakittekon is about three miles in its extreme length from north to south and is very irregular in form.

118