It was rather windy, and therefore Joe concluded to hunt after midnight, if the wind went down, which the other Indians thought it would not do, because it was from the south.  The two mixed bloods, however, went off up the river for moose at dark, before we arrived at their camp.  This Indian camp was a slight, patched-up affair, which had stood there several weeks, built shed-fashion, open to the fire on the west.  If the wind changed, they could turn it round.  It was formed by two forked stakes and a cross-bar, with rafters slanted from this to the ground.  The covering was partly an old sail, partly birch-bark, quite imperfect, but securely tied on, and coming down to the ground on the sides.  A large log was rolled up at the back side for a headboard, and two or three moose-hides were spread on the ground with the hair up.  Various articles of their wardrobe were tucked around the sides and corners, or under the roof.  They were smoking moose-meat on just such a crate as is represented by With in De Bry’s “Collectio Peregrinationum,” published in 1588, and which the natives of Brazil called boucan, (whence buccaneer,) on which were frequently shown pieces of human flesh drying along with the rest.  It was erected in front of the camp over the usual large fire, in the form of an oblong square.  Two stout forked stakes, four or five feet apart and five feet high, were driven into the ground at each end, and then two poles ten feet long were stretched across over the fire, and smaller ones laid transversely on these a foot apart.  On the last hung large, thin slices of moose-meat smoking and drying, a space being left open over the centre of the fire.  There was the whole heart, black as a thirty-two pound ball, hanging at one corner.  They said, that it took three or four days to cure this meat, and it would keep a year or more.  Refuse pieces lay about on the ground in different stages of decay, and some pieces also in the fire, half buried and sizzling in the ashes, as black and dirty as an old shoe.  These last I at first thought were thrown away, but afterwards found that they were being cooked.  Also a tremendous rib-piece was roasting before the fire, being impaled on an upright stake forced in and out between the ribs.  There was a moose-hide stretched and curing on poles like ours, and quite a pile of cured skins close by.  They had killed twenty-two moose within two months, but, as they could use but very little of the meat, they left the carcasses on the ground.  Altogether it was about as savage a sight as was ever witnessed, and I was carried back at once three hundred years.  There were many torches of birch-bark, shaped like straight tin horns, lying ready for use on a stump outside.