forced imprisonment, and he produced
fiddlers and half-breed women for dancing. He gave us every day a dinner
party composed of viands unknown outside of the frontier of North
America. One day we would have the tail of the beaver, always regarded
as a great delicacy on the border; the next, the paws of the bear
soused, which, when served on a white dish, very much resembled the foot
of a negro, but were good; then, again, roasted muskrat, which in the
winter is as delicate as a young chicken; then fricasseed skunk, which,
in season, is free from all offensive odor, and extremely delicate,--all
served with _le riz sauvage_. In fact, he exhausted the resources of the
country to make us happy.

But Robertson's menu was the least part of it. Every evening he would
assemble us, and read Shakespeare and the poetry of Burns to us. I never
understood or enjoyed Burns until I heard it read and expounded by
Robertson.

The time passed in this pleasant fashion until we commenced to think we
were "snowed in" for the winter, and I began to devise ways and means
for getting out. I had to get out; but how, was the question. To cross
the prairie was not to be thought of; we could not get an Indian to
venture over it on snowshoes, let alone driving over it. Nothing had
been heard of us below, and, as we learned afterwards, the St. Paul
papers had published an account of our all being frozen to death, with
full details of Andrew Myrick being found dead in his sleigh, with the
lines in his hands and his horses standing stiff before him.

I decided that an expedition might work its way through on the river
bottoms, and we could follow in its trail. So I sent out a party with
several heavy sleds, loaded with hay, and each drawn by four or five
yoke of oxen to beat a track. They returned after several days' absence,
and reported that the thing was impossible, and they could not get
through. I then called for volunteers, and the French Canadians came to
the front. I allowed them to organize their own expedition. They took
their fiddles with them, and the agreement was, that if we didn't hear
from them in five days, we were to consider that they were through, and
we could follow. The days passed one after the other, and at the
expiration of the time, we all started, and laboriously followed the
trail they had beaten. We noticed their camps from day to day, and saw
that they had not been distressed, and found them, at the end of the
journey,