C Ihe Ladies c cu. V'VVAN - History and Classics, Department of

Nearingthe Divide 129before another. Several times that day we were cheered by coming across thewhite carpets of the lovely little Dryas octopetala, so familiar to us both in the Alpsand to Gwen in Norway. It seems to be one of the most adaptable plants in theworld, with a very wide range. I have seen it flourishing in Italy, Switzerland andCounty Clare, and also crouching on the northern tip of Europe, at Nordkapp,where hardly any other vegetation survives and it is but a flat and miniaturestarveling.The clouds had been low when we started, but after a while they cleared and wesaw mountains on every side, some blue in the distance, others, the nearer ones,displaying their barrenness. They seemed to accentuate the silence of that uplandworld. Half-way through the day we passed, on our right, a big river flowing intothe Rat-it was not marked on our inadequate little map. The country seemed tobe gradually levelling itself out. We had left the poplars behind us and were nowsurrounded by spruce and willows. Over and over again we had to push our waythrough thickets of these scrubby willows or to wade across muddy side creekswhich were now very frequent. How we managed to keep our feet in good conditionI do not know, for they were nearly always wet and once we had crawled intobed there was no means of drying them. Perhaps their sodden conditionprevented them from getting rubbed or sore; I only remember that one of mytoes became so water-logged that, at a later stage of the journey, the whole skinpeeled off like the sheath of an Eschscholtzia flower. Luckily, that was after themosquitoes had left us and I could with impunity sit still in the canoe or walkabout, shoeless, on sand or muskeg.We lunched royally that day on the usual pemmican and pork, with Gwen's"puftaloonas" for dessert. It was several days since we had eaten the last of SisterFirmin's bannock and now, when we wanted to eat bread, we had to make the bestof the hardtack biscuits which had the consistency of steel. Just as the Indianscraved for fresh meat, so did we crave for sweet food. But neither of us had anyaptitude for cooking. Gwen, however, made up her mind to produce doughnutsand she set to work with flour and sugar. There may have been other ingredientsbut I do not now remember the exact recipe for that memorable dish, yet I cansee her at work on it, in my mind's eye, to this very day. Her method was simpleand forceful. She would take the ingredients in the palm of a very horny handthat had been hardened by rowing sea-boats since infancy, she would then weldthem as if they were pieces of metal and she herself a blacksmith. Sooner or later,by hard pommelling the mixture became homogeneous, and when satisfied that