The first thing Baptiste does is to plunge his penknife into the back to see how deep the fat is.  We had noticed this testing process before.  A bunch of feathers is always plucked off the new-killed bird that one can immediately gauge the gastronomic niche at which to set one’s waiting stomach.  No more voyaging to-night.  The moose is cleaned and skinned.  Mrs. Gaudet draws the skin.  I claim the head.  A little Indian boy, who with his mother had been added to our ship’s crew at Carcajou Point, appropriates the kidneys, which he proceeds to roast in the ashes.  Ten-year-old Bill evidently likes his devilled kidneys rare, for within three minutes we see him prancing round the camp, nibbling his dripping dainty from the point of an impaling stick.

[Illustration:  Beaver Camp, on Paddle River]

Having sat round the barbecue half the night, we pull out late the next morning.  And now, apprised by moccasin telegraph, we are all on the qui vive to catch sight of a floating bride.  A fur-trader attached to “The French Company” at Vermilion has been out on six months’ leave and is bringing in a bride from Paris.  We are to expect them to cross our course on a raft, floating in with the current of the Peace as we make our way upstream.  We see the raft.  All is excitement.  We direct the steersman to draw close in, and the men prime their rifles for a salute.  She is not visible,—­floating brides on the Peace shrink evidently from being the cynosure of passing eyes.  Our men fire their salute, the steersman on the raft looks puzzled when we, smiling our sympathy, peer over the edge of his craft, and see, instead of the Parisian bride,—­a load of Poland pigs for Vermilion!  It is the wrong raft.  The real bride passes us in the gloaming ten hours later, when it is too dark to get a satisfactory photograph!

On the evening of September 22nd we arrive at Peace River Crossing, or Peace River Landing, just a week out from Vermilion.  Our course from there has been almost due south.  We turn the little Messenger back here and regretfully bid good-bye to our staunch and friendly boatmen.  No people in the world could be pleasanter to travel with than these splendid men of the North.  Indefatigable and ready for any emergency, they know their business and are always master of the situation; moreover, nature has dowered them with an intuitive delicacy as rare as it is pleasing.  Through all these weeks, intensely interested as they are in everything that is new, never for a moment have they intruded upon us or our doings.  At night there is not a man of them who will not walk a quarter of a mile through the woods rather than pass between our occupied tent and the camp fire.  But let us offer to show them pictures or to explain the workings of the camera or the typewriter and it is a different story, for then every man Jack drops his oar or tump-line and rushes to our side like an excited schoolboy.