The water is commonly knee deep, in some places up to the middle, and in the morning is usually covered with ice, which makes it tedious and even dangerous travelling.

Some of our men lose the use of their legs while still in the prime of life", wrote one eighteenth-century pioneer, in the Canadian spring.
Severe as were the winter conditions of climate, the explorers were just as willing to travel through the winter as the summer, because in the winter they were spared the awful plague of mosquitoes and midges which still renders summer and early-autumn travel throughout the whole of Canada, from the United States borders on the south to the Arctic Ocean on the north, a severe trial, and even an unbearable degree of physical suffering..