not live more than half the year in the house, and has to
wander about, the rest of it, with her _tilicums_ (relations and
friends).

It was interesting to see how this cultivated man, accustomed to the
world as he had been, had adapted himself to life in this solitary spot
on the frontier, with his Indian children for his only companions. He
has about ten. In some of them the Scotch blood predominated, but in
most the Indian blood was more apparent. The oldest son, a grown man,
was a very dark Indian, decorated with wampum. Christine, the oldest
daughter, resembled her father most. She kept house for him, because, as
she explained to us, her mother could not be much in-doors. She spoke,
too, of disliking to be confined. I asked her where she liked best to
be; and she said, with the Blackfeet Indians, because they had the
prettiest dances, and could do such beautiful bead-work; and described
their working on the softened skins of elk, deer, and antelope, making
dresses for chiefs and warriors. We had a sumptuous meal of
Rocky-Mountain trout, buffalo-tongues, and pemmican. Although Christine
was, in some respects, quite a civilized young lady, she occasionally
betrayed her innocence of conventionalities, as when she came and
whispered to me, before the meal was announced, what the chief dishes
were to be. She mentioned, as one of the delicacies of the Blackfeet,
berries boiled in buffalo-blood.

Mr. McDonald told us many stories about the Canadian _voyageurs_
employed by the Hudson Bay Company, illustrating their power of
endurance and their elastic temperament. One of their men, he said, was
lost for thirty-five days in the woods, and finally discovered by the
Indians, crawling on his hands and feet towards a brook, nearly
exhausted, but still keeping up his courage. He asked us if we could
conjecture how he had kept alive all that time, with no means whatever,
outside of himself, to procure food. He had actually succeeded in making
a fine net from his own hair, with which he caught small fishes,
devouring them raw, accompanied by a little grass or moss; not daring to
eat any roots or berries, lest they might be poisonous, as the country
was new to him. These Canadians are as brown as Indians, from their
constant exposure to the sun and wind, and have adapted themselves
completely to Indian ways, wearing a blanket _capote_, leather trousers,
moccasins, and a fur cap, with a bright sash or girdle to hold a knife
and a