the animal.  His comrade follows, treading exactly in his footsteps and holding the guns of both in a horizontal position so that the muzzles project under the arms of him who carries the head.  Both hunters have a fillet of white skin round their foreheads and the foremost has a strip of the same kind round his wrists.  They approach the herd by degrees, raising their legs very slowly but setting them down somewhat suddenly after the manner of a deer, and always taking care to lift their right or left feet simultaneously.  If any of the herd leave off feeding to gaze upon this extraordinary phenomenon it instantly stops and the head begins to play its part by licking its shoulders and performing other necessary movements.  In this way the hunters attain the very centre of the herd without exciting suspicion and have leisure to single out the fattest.  The hindmost man then pushes forward his comrade’s gun, the head is dropped, and they both fire nearly at the same instant.  The herd scampers off, the hunters trot after them; in a short time the poor animals halt to ascertain the cause of their terror, their foes stop at the same instant and, having loaded as they ran, greet the gazers with a second fatal discharge.  The consternation of the deer increases, they run to and fro in the utmost confusion, and sometimes a great part of the herd is destroyed within the space of a few hundred yards.

A party who had been sent to Akaitcho returned bringing three hundred and seventy pounds of dried meat and two hundred and twenty pounds of suet, together with the unpleasant information that a still larger quantity of the latter article had been found and carried off, as he supposed, by some Dog-Ribs who had passed that way.

The weather becoming daily colder all the lakes in the neighbourhood of the house were completely, and the river partially, frozen over by the middle of the month.  The reindeer now began to quit us for more southerly and better-sheltered pastures.  Indeed their longer residence in our neighbourhood would have been of little service to us, for our ammunition was almost completely expended though we had dealt it of late with a very sparing hand to the Indians.  We had however already secured in the storehouse the carcasses of one hundred deer together with one thousand pounds of suet and some dried meat, and had moreover eighty deer stowed up at various distances from the house.  The necessity of employing the men to build a house for themselves before the weather became too severe obliged us to put the latter en cache, as the voyagers term it, instead of adopting the more safe plan of bringing them to the house.  Putting a deer en cache means merely protecting it against the wolves and still more destructive wolverines by heavy loads of wood or stones; the latter animal however sometimes digs underneath the pile and renders the precautions abortive.