Jón Bjarnason Academy - 01.05.1936, Blaðsíða 22

and it has changed from a freezing temperature to one quite
pleasant for bathing. There are other effects of this shallow-
ness— one of which we could well dispense with. Its summer
temperature of over sixty is an ideal one for certain species
of Algae or primitive plant life. That is the green scum that
may float on the surface to spoil the bathing in August. It is
this algae which forms the food for the small fry upon which
the w'hitefish and goldeyes feed. The other effect is the pres-
ence of fish flies. These only breed in water less than fifty feet
deep, so that the greater part of the lake is their breeding ground.
The Indian tradition attached to it accounts for its muddy
nature and its name—Wini—dirty and pi—water. They say
there was a spirit in the Lake who was always tormenting
them. After much trouble an old woman succeeded in catch-
ing him and called in all her friends to help punish him, leav-
ing him in so filthy a condition that it took all the water of
his lake to clean him. Since then the water has been muddy.
It is probable, though, that it was gouged out by glacial
action. While Lake Agassiz existed it drained to the south,
but eventually the waters escaped to the north and the three
prairie waters merely fill up the deeper places in the bottom
of their great predecessor.
Its history has been varied enough although it has never
been the scene of any battle. It was of course an Indian highway
and source of food, as it is today. The first white man to see
it was probably one of the La Verendrye expedition when they
came down the Red River in 1734. Later it was a French path
between the Lake of the Woods and the West. After the
French the Nor’Westers came to replace them. It was their
road from the Winnipeg River to the Saskatchewan and the
Red. You read in all sorts of old journals of how one stopped
for the night on Willow Point, another lost a canoe in crossing
the Narrows and another was ‘degraded’ or wind bound at
Grand Marais. So the canoes moved over it between those
rivers and the later York Boats of the Hudson’s Bay Company
moved in or out from Norway House loaded with ninety pound
packets of furs or trade goods. To quote D. A. Stewart of
Ninette:
“McTavishes, MacKenzies, MacDonalds, and McGillivrays,
With packages of blanket cloth, with duffel coats and spirit
dregs, . . .
Steel knives, flint locks, bear’s grease and powder kegs,
Adventuring and trading, exploring the North and Western Seas
Hardy men, wilful men, these.”
In the years about 1812 there was a new activity. Weary
men, women and children crow'ded into the boats at the north
end of the lake to cover the last stage towards their land of
promise. There were, unfortunately, those other movements
when discouraged settlers, driven out by the quarrels of the
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