high, barren ridge, and from this point Neewa first looked down
into the valley.  For a time, coming out of darkness into sunlight,
he was blinded.  He could hear and smell and feel many things
before he could see.  And Noozak, as though puzzled at finding
warmth and sunshine in place of cold and darkness, stood for many
minutes sniffing the wind and looking down upon her domain. 

For two weeks an early spring had been working its miracle of
change in that wonderful country of the northland between
Jackson's Knee and the Shamattawa River, and from north to south
between God's Lake and the Churchill. 

It was a splendid world.  From the tall pinnacle of rock on which
they stood it looked like a great sea of sunlight, with only here
and there patches of white snow where the winter winds had piled
it deep.  Their ridge rose up out of a great valley.  On all sides
of them, as far as a man's eye could have reached, there were blue
and black patches of forest, the shimmer of lakes still partly
frozen, the sunlit sparkle of rivulet and stream, and the greening
open spaces out of which rose the perfumes of the earth.  These