o the
several bands of Indians whom he met with by the way, and generally
strengthened the hearts and hands of his agents. Passing the last
outpost on the river, he pushed on, until, finally, he reached his
intended winter-quarters on the 1st of November--not a day too soon, for
the river was already being covered with its winter coat of ice.

Here he found Reuben and Lawrence, bronzed and hardened with toil and
exposure. They had done good service during the previous summer, for
all the timber was prepared, a space marked out for the fort, and a deep
trench dug for the palisades. Here also were found a band of natives,
amounting to about seventy men, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the
Chief, as they styled Mackenzie, and thirsting especially for tobacco
and rum, both of which--unlike the natives of the far north--they were
particularly fond of.

To build a fort in a few weeks, consisting of a dwelling-house and
several stores, with palisades eighteen feet high, in the midst of frost
so intense that their axes sometimes became as brittle as glass, and
living in tents the while, exposed to the storms of wind and snow
peculiar to a hyperborean clime, was a feat which, if detailed, would
fill a volume. We are constrained to dismiss the subject in a line.
Thus curtly, also, must we treat the winter. Yet some points we cannot
forbear to touch on, illustrative as they are of some curious
experiences of the fur-traders.

The Indians there were unusually ignorant of medical science, and when
ill applied to Mackenzie, believing, with childlike simplicity, that he
certainly knew everything and could do anything!

One woman came to him with a swelled breast, which her friends had
lacerated with flints in order to cure it; this failing, they had blown
on it, but with similar want of success. Mackenzie knew not what to do,
but, bringing common sense to bear on the case, he made the poor
creature keep it clean (she was naturally dirty), poulticed it several
times, and anointed it with healing salve. In a short time a perfect
cure was effected. After that an Indian while at work in the woods was
attacked with a sudden pain near the first joint of his thumb, which
disabled him. He appealed to Mackenzie, who, to his surprise, found a
narrow red inflamed stripe about an inch wide, extending from the man's
thumb to his shoulder. The pain was very violent, and accompanied with
chilliness and shivering. Mackenzie admits th