each of us with a small piece of meat which he had saved from
his allowance. It was received with great thankfulness, and such an act
of self-denial and kindness being totally unexpected in a Canadian
voyager filled our eyes with tears. In directing our course to a river
issuing from the lake we met Credit who communicated the joyful
intelligence of his having killed two deer in the morning. We instantly
halted and, having shared the deer that was nearest to us, prepared
breakfast. After which the other deer was sent for and we went down to
the river, which was about three hundred yards wide and flowed with great
velocity through a broken rocky channel. Having searched for a part where
the current was most smooth, the canoe was placed in the water at the
head of a rapid, and St. Germain, Solomon Belanger, and I embarked in
order to cross. We went from the shore very well, but in mid-channel the
canoe became difficult to manage under our burden as the breeze was
fresh. The current drove us to the edge of the rapid, when Belanger
unluckily applied his paddle to avert the apparent danger of being forced
down it, and lost his balance. The canoe was overset in consequence in
the middle of the rapid. We fortunately kept hold of it until we touched
a rock where the water did not reach higher than our waists; here we kept
our footing, notwithstanding the strength of the current, until the water
was emptied out of the canoe. Belanger then held the canoe steady whilst
St. Germain placed me in it and afterwards embarked himself in a very
dexterous manner. It was impossible however to embark Belanger, as the
canoe would have been hurried down the rapid the moment he should have
raised his foot from the rock on which he stood. We were therefore
compelled to leave him in his perilous situation. We had not gone twenty
yards before the canoe, striking on a sunken rock, went down. The place
being shallow we were again enabled to empty it and the third attempt
brought us to the shore. In the meantime Belanger was suffering
extremely, immersed to his middle in the centre of a rapid, the
temperature of which was very little above the freezing-point, and the
upper part of his body covered with wet clothes, exposed in a temperature
not much above zero to a strong breeze. He called piteously for relief
and St. Germain on his return endeavoured to embark him but in vain. The
canoe was hurried down the rapid and when he landed he was rendered by