Our diet consisted almost entirely of reindeer meat, varied twice a week by fish and occasionally by a little flour, but we had no vegetables of any description.  On the Sunday mornings we drank a cup of chocolate but our greatest luxury was tea (without sugar) of which we regularly partook twice a day.  With reindeer’s fat and strips of cotton shirts we formed candles; and Hepburn acquired considerable skill in the manufacture of soap from the wood-ashes, fat and salt.  The formation of soap was considered as rather a mysterious operation by our Canadians and in their hands was always supposed to fail if a woman approached the kettle in which the ley was boiling.  Such are our simple domestic details.

On the 30th two hunters came from the leader to convey ammunition to him as soon as our men should bring it from Fort Providence.

The men at this time coated the walls of the house on the outside with a thin mixture of clay and water which formed a crust of ice that for some days proved impervious to the air; the dryness of the atmosphere however was such that the ice in a short time evaporated and gave admission to the wind as before.  It is a general custom at the forts to give this sort of coating to the walls at Christmas time.  When it was gone we attempted to remedy its defect by heaping up snow against the walls.

January 1, 1821.

This morning our men assembled and greeted us with the customary salutation on the commencement of the new year.  That they might enjoy a holiday they had yesterday collected double the usual quantity of firewood and we anxiously expected the return of the men from Fort Providence with some additions to their comforts.  We had stronger hope of their arrival before the evening as we knew that every voyager uses his utmost endeavour to reach a post upon or previous to the jour de l’an that he may partake of the wonted festivities.  It forms, as Christmas is said to have done among our forefathers, the theme of their conversation for months before and after the period of its arrival.  On the present occasion we could only treat them with a little flour and fat; these were both considered as great luxuries but still the feast was defective from the want of rum although we promised them a little when it should arrive.

The early part of January proved mild, the thermometer rose to 20 degrees above zero, and we were surprised by the appearance of a kind of damp fog approaching very nearly to rain.  The Indians expressed their astonishment at this circumstance and declared the present to be one of the warmest winters they had ever experienced.  Some of them reported that it had actually rained in the woody parts of the country.  In the latter part of the month however the thermometer again descended to minus 49 degrees and the mean temperature for the month proved to be minus 15.6 degrees.  Owing to the fogs that obscured the sky the Aurora Borealis was visible only upon eighteen nights in the month.