Having provided myself with some drawing materials I amused the Indians with a sketch of the interior of the tent and its inhabitants.  An old woman who was relating with great volubility an account of some quarrel with the traders at Cumberland House broke off from her narration when she perceived my design, supposing perhaps that I was employing some charm against her; for the Indians have been taught a supernatural dread of particular pictures.  One of the young men drew with a piece of charcoal a figure resembling a frog on the side of the tent and, by significantly pointing at me, excited peals of merriment from his companions.  The caricature was comic, but I soon fixed their attention by producing my pocket compass and affecting it with a knife.  They have great curiosity which might easily be directed to the attainment of useful knowledge.  As the dirt accumulated about these people was visibly of a communicative nature I removed at night into the open air where the thermometer fell to 15 degrees below zero although it was the next day 60 degrees above it.

In the morning the Warrior and his companion arrived; I found that, instead of hunting, they had passed the whole time in a drunken fit at a short distance from the tent.  In reply to our angry questions the Warrior held out an empty vessel as if to demand the payment of a debt before he entered into any new negotiation.  Not being inclined to starve his family we set out for another Indian tent ten miles to the southward, but we found only the frame or tent poles standing when we reached the spot.  The men, by digging where the fireplace had been, ascertained that the Indians had quitted it the day before and, as their marches are short when encumbered with the women and baggage, we sought out their track and followed it.  At an abrupt angle of it which was obscured by trees the men suddenly disappeared and, hastening forward to discover the cause, I perceived them both still rolling at the foot of a steep cliff over which they had been dragged while endeavouring to stop the descent of their sledges.  The dogs were gazing silently with the wreck of their harness about them and the sledges deeply buried in the snow.  The effects of this accident did not detain us long and we proceeded afterwards with greater caution.

SOJOURNS WITH AN INDIAN PARTY.

The air was warm at noon and the solitary but sweet notes of the jay, the earliest spring bird, were in every wood.  Late in the evening we descried the ravens wheeling in circles round a small grove of poplars and, according to our expectations, found the Indians encamped there.

The men were absent hunting and returned unsuccessful.  They had been several days without provisions and, thinking that I could depend upon the continuance of their exertions, I gave them a little rum; the next day their set out and at midnight they swept by us with their dogs in close pursuit.

In the morning we found that a moose had eaten the bark of a tree near our fire.  The hunters however again failed; and they attributed the extreme difficulty of approaching the chase to the calmness of the weather, which enabled it to hear them at a great distance.