When they
started, the ice had not yet all left the Ottawa River, and they wound
their way through crowding floes, or portaged here and there for miles,
the eager sun of spring above with scarcely a cloud to trail behind him.
At last the river cleared, and for leagues they travelled to the north-
west, and came at last to the Lake of the Winds. They travelled across
one corner of it, to a point where they would strike an unknown path to
Hudson's Bay.
Iberville had never before seen this lake, and, with all his knowledge of
great proportions, he was not prepared for its splendid vastness. They
came upon it in the evening, and camped beside it. They watched the sun
spread out his banners, presently veil his head in them, and sink below
the world. And between them and that sunset was a vast rock stretching
out from a ponderous shore--a colossal stone lion, resting Sphinxlike,
keeping its faith with the ages. Alone, the warder of the West, stormy,
menacing, even the vernal sun could give it little cheerfulness. But to
Iberville and his followers it brought no gloom at night, nor yet in the
morning when all was changed, and a soft silver mist hung over the "great
water," like dissolving dew, through which the sunlight came with a
strange, solemn delicacy.
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