of oil.  This dish is considered by these people as a great delicacy; and on examination, I discovered it to consist of the inner rind of the hemlock pine tree, taken off early in summer, and put into a frame, which shapes it into cakes of fifteen inches long, ten broad, and half an inch thick; and in this form I should suppose it may be preserved for a great length of time.  This discovery satisfied me respecting the many hemlock trees which I had observed stripped of their bark.”

Mackenzie found some of the older men here with long beards, and to one of them he presented a pair of scissors for clipping his beard.

After describing some remarkable oblong “tables” (as they might be called) of cedar wood—­twenty feet long by eight feet broad—­made of thick cedar boards joined together with the utmost neatness, and painted with hieroglyphics and the figures of animals; and his visit to a kind of temple in the village, into the architecture of which strangely carved and painted figures were interwoven; Mackenzie goes on to relate an episode giving one a very vivid idea of the helplessness of “native” medicine in many diseases.

He was taken to see a son of the chief, who was suffering from a terrible ulcer in the small of his back, round which the flesh was gangrened, one of his knees being afflicted in the same way.  The poor fellow was reduced to a skeleton, and apparently drawing very near to death.

“I found the native physicians busy in practising their skill and art on the patient.  They blew on him, and then whistled; at times they pressed their extended fingers with all their strength on his stomach; they also put their forefingers doubled into his mouth, and spouted water from their own with great violence into his face.  To support these operations the wretched sufferer was held up in a sitting posture, and when they were concluded he was laid down and covered with a new robe made of the skin of a lynx.  I had observed that his belly and breast were covered with scars, and I understood that they were caused by a custom prevalent among them of applying pieces of lighted touchwood to their flesh, in order to relieve pain or demonstrate their courage.  He was now placed on a broad plank, and carried by six men into the woods, where I was invited to accompany them.  I could not conjecture what would be the end of this ceremony, particularly as I saw one man carry fire, another an axe, and a third dry wood.  I was, indeed, disposed to suspect that, as it was their custom to burn the dead, they intended to relieve the poor man from his pain, and perform the last sad duty of surviving affection.  When they had advanced a short distance into the wood, they laid him upon a clear spot, and kindled a fire against his back, when the physician began to scarify the ulcer with a very blunt instrument, the cruel pain of which operation the patient bore with incredible resolution.  The scene afflicted me, and I left it.”