One day we saw two otters coming toward us on the ice.  We shot one, but as the other gun missed fire, the other one escaped, for I could not overtake it in the woods.  We kept on up the river till we began to hear the Indians’ guns, and then we camped and did not fire a gun for two days, for we were afraid we might be discovered and robbed, and we knew we could not stay long after our grub was gone.  All the game we could catch was the marten or sable, which the Indians called Waubusash.  The males were snuff color and the female much darker.  Mink were scarce, and the beaver, living in the river bank, could not be got at till the ice went out in the spring.

We now began to make marten traps or dead-falls, and set them for this small game.  There were many cedar and tamarack swamps, indeed that was the principal feature, but there were some ridges a little higher where some small pines and beech grew.  Now our camp was one place where there was no large timber caused by the stream being dammed by the beaver.  Here were some of the real Russian Balsam trees, the most beautiful in shape I had ever seen.  They were very dark green, the boughs very thick, and the tree in shape like an inverted top.  Our lines of trips led for miles in every direction marked by blazed trees.  We made a trap of two poles, and chips which we split from the trees.  These were set in the snow and covered with brush, We sometimes found a porcupine in the top of a pine tree.  The only signs of his presence were the chips he made in gnawing the bark for food.  They never came down to the ground as we saw.  They were about all the game that was good to eat.  I would kill one, skin it and drag the carcass after me all day as I set traps, cutting off bits for bait, and cooking the rest for ourselves to eat.  We tried to eat the marten but it was pretty musky and it was only by putting on plenty of salt and pepper that we managed to eat them.  We were really forced to do it if we remained here.  We secured a good many of these little fellows which have about the the best fur that is found in America.

We were here about three weeks, and our provisions giving out and the ice becoming tender in the swamp were two pretty strong reasons for our getting out, so we shouldered our packs of fur and our guns and, getting our course from a pocket-compass, we started out.  As we pushed on we came to some old windfalls that were troublesome to get through.  The dense timber seemed to be six feet deep, and we would sometimes climb over and sometimes crawl under, the fallen trees were so thickly mixed and tangled.