iling indication of
strong animal passions, and a weak understanding. On our compliance with
their demand they departed.

The next day, I went to the Warrior's tent, distant about eleven miles.
The country was materially changed: the pine had disappeared, and gentle
slopes, with clumps of large poplars, formed some pleasing groups:
willows were scattered over the swamps. When I entered the tent, the
Indians spread a buffalo robe before the fire, and desired me to sit
down. Some were eating, others sleeping, many of them without any
covering except the breech cloth and a blanket over the shoulders; a
state in which they love to indulge themselves till hunger drives them
forth to the chase. Besides the Warrior's family, there was that of
another hunter named _Long-legs_, whose bad success in hunting had
reduced him to the necessity of feeding on moose leather for three weeks
when he was compassionately relieved by the Warrior. I was an unwilling
witness of the preparation of my dinner by the Indian women. They cut
into pieces a portion of fat meat, using for that purpose a knife and
their teeth. It was boiled in a kettle, and served in a platter made of
birch bark, from which, being dirty, they had peeled the surface.
However, the flavour of good moose meat will survive any process that it
undergoes in their hands, except smoking.

Having provided myself with some drawing materials, I amused the Indians
with a sketch of the interior of the tent and its inhabitants. An old
woman, who was relating with great volubility an account of some quarrel
with the traders at Cumberland House, broke off from her narration when
she perceived my design; supposing, perhaps, that I was employing some
charm against her; for the Indians have been taught a supernatural dread
of particular pictures. One of the young men drew, with a piece of
charcoal, a figure resembling a frog, on the side of the tent, and by
significantly pointing at me, excited peals of merriment from his
companions. The caricature was comic; but I soon fixed their attention,
by producing my pocket compass, and affecting it with a knife. They have
great curiosity, which might easily be directed to the attainment of
useful knowledge. As the dirt accumulated about these people was
visibly of a communicative nature, I removed at night into the open air,
where the thermometer fell to 15 deg. below zero, although it was the next
day 60 deg. above it.

In the morning the Warr