Canadian Gardening: North of Churchill River, Saskatchewan, 1 by Lilypon

Lilypon wrote:
LOL........them tiny little northern devils will take rather large nibbles from you! ;) Truthfully they can be very nasty.........many a man has been brought to his knees by them.

Quoting:"When our provisions were running out, all the others went back to bring in provisions, with the exception of J. J. Heaslip and myself. This was about the first of June. They went to Brandon and expected to be back in about a week; instead of that, owing to bad roads, they were about two weeks, by which time the provisions of J. J. and myself had got down to nothing but porridge. Just then along came James Walsh, the old fur trader, Walter Walsh and Robert Grandy, and they gave us a little out of their supply, which was small. They were looking for land. They had a buckboard and a team of horses and came in from Moosomin. They did not have much to spare, but they gave us something, a little flour and a little bacon. They were very short but it helped us out until our men returned in four or five days. We had, however, to keep on short rations. Our tobacco ran out, but we had a few cigars which we used to smoke to keep the mosquitoes off when they got too bad. The mosquitoes and black flies were terrible for about two weeks; so bad that one man who was travelling through came near dying; he was all swelled up and in a bad state. He was bodily ill and was laid up for a couple of days.

http://www.rootsweb.com/~cansk/SaskatchewanAndItsPeople/Volu...

Do not underestimate them!

This picture was taken in early morning after the girl left her tent but prior to leaving the campsite:


This message was edited Jan 26, 2006 10:30 PM