of giving up the contest as useless.  I felt as if compressed into the size of a monkey; my hands appeared diminished in size one-half; and I certainly should (after I became cold and much exhausted) have fallen asleep, but for the waves that were passing over me, and obliged me to attend to my situation.  I had never descended the St. Lawrence before, but I knew there were more rapids a-head, perhaps another set of the Cascades, but at all events the La Chine rapids, whose situation I did not exactly know.  I was in hourly expectation of these putting an end to me, and often fancied some points of ice extending from the shore to be the head of foaming rapids.  At one of the moments in which the succession of waves permitted me to look up, I saw at a distance a canoe with four men coming towards me, and waited in confidence to hear the sound of their paddles; but in this I was disappointed; the men, as I afterwards learnt, were Indians (genuine descendants of the Tartars) who, happening to fall in with one of the passenger’s trunks, picked it up, and returned to shore for the purpose of pillaging it, leaving, as they since acknowledged, the man on the boat to his fate.  Indeed, I am certain I should have had more to fear from their avarice, than to hope from their humanity; and it is more than probable, that my life would have been taken to secure them in the possession of my watch and several half-eagles, which I had about me.

The accident happened at eight o’clock in the morning.  In the course of some hours, as the day advanced, the sun grew warmer, the wind blew from the south, and the water became calmer.  I got upon my knees, and found myself in the small lake St. Louis, about from three to five miles wide; with some difficulty I got upon my feet, but was soon convinced, by cramps and spasms in all my sinews, that I was quite incapable of swimming any distance, and I was then two miles from shore.  I was now going, with wind and current, to destruction; and cold, hungry, and fatigued, was obliged again to sit down in the water to rest, when an extraordinary circumstance greatly relieved me.  On examining the wreck, to see if it was possible to detach any part of it to steer by, I perceived something loose, entangled in a fork of the wreck, and so carried along.  This I found to be a small trunk, bottom upwards, which, with some difficulty, I dragged up upon the barge.  After near an hour’s work, in which I broke my pen-knife, trying to cut out the lock, I made a hole in the top, and, to my great satisfaction, drew out a bottle of rum, a cold tongue, some cheese, and a bag full of bread, cakes, &c., all wet.  Of these I made a very seasonable, though very moderate use, and the trunk answered the purpose of a chair to sit upon, elevated above the surface of the water.