s beef, mutton, or venison, and occasionally buffalo
meat, was sent us from the Swan River district. Of tea, sugar, butter,
and bread we had more than enough; and besides the produce of our garden
in the way of vegetables, the river and lake contributed white-fish,
sturgeon, and pike, or jack-fish, in abundance. The pike is not a
delicate fish, and the sturgeon is extremely coarse, but the white-fish
is the most delicate and delicious I ever ate. I am not aware of their
existence in any part of the Old World, but the North American lakes
abound with them. It is generally the size of a good salmon trout, of a
bright silvery colour, and tastes a little like salmon. Many hundreds
of fur-traders live almost entirely on white-fish, particularly at those
far northern posts where flour, sugar, and tea cannot be had in great
quantities, and where deer are scarce. At these posts the Indians are
sometimes reduced to cannibalism, and the Company's people have, on more
than one occasion, been obliged to eat their beaver-skins! The
beaver-skin is thick and oily, so that, when the fur is burned off, and
the skin well boiled, it makes a kind of soup that will at least keep
one alive. Starvation is quite common among the Indians of those
distant regions; and the scraped rocks, divested of their covering of
_tripe-de-roche_ (which resembles dried-up seaweed), have a sad meaning
and melancholy appearance to the traveller who journeys through the
wilds and solitudes of Rupert's Land.

Norway House is also an agreeable and interesting place, from its being
in a manner the gate to the only route to Hudson Bay, so that during the
spring and summer months all the brigades of boats and canoes from every
part of the northern department must necessarily pass it on their way to
York Factory with furs: and as they all return in the autumn, and some
of the gentlemen leave their wives and families for a few weeks till
they return to the interior, it is at this sunny season of the year
quite gay and bustling; and the clerks' house, in which I lived, was
often filled with a strange and noisy collection of human beings, who
rested here a while ere they started for the shores of Hudson Bay, for
the distant region of Mackenzie River, or the still more distant land of
Oregon.

During winter our principal amusement was white-partridge shooting.
This bird is a species of ptarmigan, and is pure white, with the
exception of the tips of the wings and