midday
The dogs , too , were large , and more like wolves in appearance than those the Bay folk used , and the komatik was narrower but much longer and heavier than those he was accustomed to . He was surely in a new and strange land . More igloos were seen during the afternoon , but they were passed as the first had been , and at night the party bivouacked in the open as they had done the night before . On the morning of the third day they passed into a stretch of barren , treeless , rolling country , and before midday turned upon a well-beaten komatik trail , which they followed for a couple of miles , when it swung sharply to the left towards the river , and as they turned around a ledge of rocks at the top of a low ridge a view met Bob that made him shout with joy , and hasten his pace . At his feet , in the field of snow , lay a post of the Hudson 's Bay Company . As Bob looked down upon the whitewashed buildings of the Post , his sensation was very much like that of a shipwrecked sailor who has for a long time been drifting hopelessly about upon a trackless sea in a rudderless boat , and suddenly finds himself safe in harbour . The lad had never seen anything in his whole life that looked so comfortable as that little cluster of log buildings with the smoke curling from the chimney tops , and the general air of civilization that surrounded them .