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But the wind veered round, and for nine days blew a strong gale against their progress in this direction, making the waves of the lake so high that they were obliged to take refuge on the shore. Henry went out perpetually to hunt, but all he got during those nine days were two small snow-buntings. The Canadian half-breeds with him then calmly proposed to kill and feed upon the young woman.
But in winter, if we start a flock of birds from the ground, we can hardly avoid taking notice of all the peculiarities of their movements. I have alluded to the descent of Snow-Buntings upon the landscape as singularly picturesque; but the motions of a flock of Quails, when suddenly aroused from a thicket, are not less so.
Few sights are more picturesque than these flocks of Snow-Buntings, whirling with the subsiding winds, and moving as if they were guided by an eddying breeze, now half-concealed by the direction in which they meet the rays of the sun, then suddenly flashing with a simultaneous turn they present the under white side of their wings to the light of heaven.
Here a fox track ran over the snow. There a coyote skulked from cover, to lope away the next instant for brushwood or hollow, and snow-buntings or whiskey-jacks might have followed the marchers for pickings of waste; but east, west, north, and south was nothing but the wide, white wastes of drifted snow.
Several times some of the pretty little snow-buntings attempted to alight on our rigging; but, like thistle-downs, before they could reach it, they were blown to leeward, and, exhausted and weary, were soon overwhelmed by the waves.
Still others are seen only in winter, as the brown and shore larks, the crossbills, redpolls, snow-buntings, pine grosbeak, and some of the hawks and owls; and of these some are merely accidental, as the pine grosbeak, which in 1836 appeared here in great numbers in October, and remained until May.
The birds seen by our people were many brent-geese and ptarmigans, several golden plovers, one or two "boatswains," and abundance of snow-buntings. One or two mice were caught; like several others we had seen, these were turning brown about the belly and head, and the back was of a dark gray colour.
Toward the middle of February we saw a mirage of the coming sun above the horizon; there were flights of Arctic petrels and snow-buntings; and spring was with us. In an ice-pack of big hummocks and narrow lanes we made good progress all the summer.
Indeed, the hills were so covered in most parts with soft and deep snow that a spot could seldom be found on which to pitch their tent. A few snow-buntings and some ivory gulls were all the animals they met with to enliven this most barren and desolate country; and nothing was observed in the geological character differing from that about Port Bowen.
The sight of a flock of Snow-Buntings descending, like a shower of meteors, upon a field of grass, and eagerly devouring the seeds contained in its drooping pannicles that extend above the snow-drifts, of a company of Crows rejoicing with noisy sociability over some newly-discovered feast in the pine-wood, of the party-colored Woodpeckers winding round the trees and hammering upon their trunks, all these, and many other sights and sounds, are associated with our ideas of the happiness of these creatures; and while our benevolent feelings are thus agreeably exercised, the objects that cause our emotions add a positive charm to the dreary aspects of winter.
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