IVE
IN--ORDERED TO LA CHINE--TREATMENT ON MY ARRIVAL--MANNERS, HABITS,
AND SUPERSTITIONS OF THE INDIANS--FEROCIOUS REVENGE OF A SUPPOSED
INJURY--DIFFERENT METHODS OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT
MISSIONARY--INDIAN COUNCILS--TRADITION OF THE FLOOD--BEAVER-HUNTING--
LANGUAGE.

Finding that my presence was more wanted at the outpost than
elsewhere, I resolved on taking up my residence there for the winter
1831-32. Our active opponent gave us much annoyance, causing great
expense to the Company, without any benefit to himself; on the
contrary, it ultimately ruined him.

While accompanying our party on a trading excursion in the beginning
of winter, I had a very narrow escape. We were travelling on the
Gatineau, a very rapid stream that joins the Ottawa, a little below
Hull. A young lad, interpreter to the opposition, and I, had one
morning gone considerably in advance of the others, walking smartly
to keep ourselves warm, when I suddenly broke through the ice. The
current here running strong, I should soon have been swept under the
ice, had I not, by extending my arms upon it on either side of me,
kept my head above water. At the hazard of his own life, my companion
came to my assistance; but the ice was too weak to admit of his
approaching sufficiently near to reach me his hand; he therefore cut a
long pole, and tying his belt to it, threw it to me; and laying hold
of it, I dragged myself on the sound ice. But the danger was not yet
over; the weather was intensely cold, so that my clothes were soon
frozen solid upon me, and having no means of lighting a fire, I ran
into the woods; and in order to keep my body from being frozen into
the same mass with my clothes, continued running up and down with all
my might, till the rest of the party arrived.

I had a still more narrow escape in the month of March ensuing. I had
been on a visit to the post under my own immediate charge, termed
head-quarters _par excellence_; returning to the post alone, I came to
a place where our men, in order to avoid a long detour occasioned by a
high and steep hill coming close to the river, were accustomed to draw
their sledges upon the ice along the edge of a rapid. About the middle
of the rapid, where the torrent is fiercest, the banks of the river
are formed of rocks rising almost perpendicularly from the water's
edge; and here they had to pass on a narrow ledge of ice, between the
rock on the one side, and the foaming and boiling s