took part in their
games which generally continued to a late hour; in short we never found
the time to hang heavy upon our hands; and the peculiar occupations of
each of the officers afforded them more employment than might at first be
supposed. I recalculated the observations made on our route; Mr. Hood
protracted the charts, and made those drawings of birds, plants and
fishes, which cannot appear in this work but which have been the
admiration of everyone who has seen them. Each of the party sedulously
and separately recorded their observations on the Aurora Borealis; and
Dr. Richardson contrived to obtain from under the snow specimens of most
of the lichens in the neighbourhood, and to make himself acquainted with
the mineralogy of the surrounding country.

The Sabbath was always a day of rest with us; the woodmen were required
to provide for the exigencies of that day on Saturday and the party were
dressed in their best attire. Divine service was regularly performed and
the Canadians attended and behaved with great decorum although they were
all Roman Catholics and but little acquainted with the language in which
the prayers were read. I regretted much that we had not a French
Prayer-Book but the Lord's Prayer and Creed were always read to them in
their own language.

Our diet consisted almost entirely of reindeer meat, varied twice a week
by fish and occasionally by a little flour, but we had no vegetables of
any description. On the Sunday mornings we drank a cup of chocolate but
our greatest luxury was tea (without sugar) of which we regularly partook
twice a day. With reindeer's fat and strips of cotton shirts we formed
candles; and Hepburn acquired considerable skill in the manufacture of
soap from the wood-ashes, fat and salt. The formation of soap was
considered as rather a mysterious operation by our Canadians and in their
hands was always supposed to fail if a woman approached the kettle in
which the ley was boiling. Such are our simple domestic details.

On the 30th two hunters came from the leader to convey ammunition to him
as soon as our men should bring it from Fort Providence.

The men at this time coated the walls of the house on the outside with a
thin mixture of clay and water which formed a crust of ice that for some
days proved impervious to the air; the dryness of the atmosphere however
was such that the ice in a short time evaporated and gave admission to
the wind as before. It is a general