There were eight men besides Mr. Prudens and his clerk belonging to Carlton House.  At La Montee there were seventy Canadians and half-breeds and sixty women and children who consumed upwards of seven hundred pounds of buffalo meat daily, the allowance per diem for each man being eight pounds:  a portion not so extravagant as may at first appear when allowance is made for bone and the entire want of farinaceous food or vegetables.

There are other provision posts, Fort Augustus and Edmonton farther up the river, from whence some furs are also procured.  The Stone Indians have threatened to cut off the supplies in going up to these establishments to prevent their enemies from obtaining ammunition and other European articles; but as these menaces have been frequently made without being put in execution the traders now hear them without any great alarm though they take every precaution to prevent being surprised.  Mr. Back and I were present when an old Cree communicated to Mr. Prudens that the Indians spoke of killing all the white people in that vicinity this year which information he received with perfect composure and was amused as well as ourselves with the man’s judicious remark which immediately followed, “A pretty state we shall then be in without the goods you bring us.”

GOITRES.

The following remarks on a well-known disease are extracted from Dr.
Richardson’s Journal: 

Bronchocele or Goitre is a common disorder at Edmonton.  I examined several of the individuals afflicted with it and endeavoured to obtain every information on the subject from the most authentic sources.  The following facts may be depended upon.  The disorder attacks those only who drink the water of the river.  It is indeed in its worst state confined almost entirely to the half-breed women and children who reside constantly at the fort and make use of river water drawn in the winter through a hole cut in the ice.  The men, being often from home on journeys through the plain, when their drink is melted snow, are less affected; and if any of them exhibit during the winter some incipient symptoms of the complaint the annual summer voyage to the sea-coast generally effects a cure.  The natives who confine themselves to snow-water in the winter and drink of the small rivulets which flow through the plains in the summer are exempt from the attacks of this disease.

These facts are curious inasmuch as they militate against the generally received opinion that the disease is caused by drinking snow-water; an opinion which seems to have originated from bronchocele being endemial to subalpine districts.