Il6 THE FUR COUNTRY. members of the little community were attacked by frost-bite, but tbe parts affected being rubbed in time they escaped without serious injury. It will readily be understood that all manual labour had now become impossible. The days were extremely short, the sun was only above the horizon for a few hours and the actual winter, imply- ing entire confinement within doors; was about to commence. The last Arctic birds forsook the gloomy shores of the Polar Sea, only a few pairs of those speckled quails remained which the Indians appropriately call " winter birds," because they wait in the Arctic regions until the commencement of the Polar night, but they too were soon to take their departure. Lieutenant Hobson, therefore, urged on the setting of the traps and snares which were to remain in different parts of Cape Bathurst throughout the winter. These traps consisted merely of rough joists supported on a square, formed of three pieces of wood so balanced as to fall on the least touch— in fact, the same sort of trap as that used for snaring birds in fields on a large scale. The end of the horizontal piece of wood was baited with venison, and every animal of a moderate height, a fox or a marten, for instance, which touched it with its paw, could not fail to be crushed. Such were the traps set in the winter over a space of several miles by the famous hunters whose adventurous life has been so poetically described by Cooper. Some thirty of these snares were set round Fort Hope, and were to be visited at pretty frequent intervals. On the 12th November a new member was bom to the little colony. Mrs Mac-Nab was safely confined of a fine healthy boy, of whom the head carpenter was extremely proud. Mrs Barnett stood god-mother to the child, which received the name of Michael Hope. The ceremony of baptism was performed with considerable solemnity, and a kind of fete was held in honour of the little creature which had just come into the world beyond the 70th degree N. Lat. A few days afterwards, on November 20th, the sun sunk below the horizon not to appear again for two months. The Polar night had commenced I
