post, having been insufficient for the demand, had become exhausted, and the Indians who had come in to barter their furs were thus far unable to obtain food in exchange, and were obliged, with their families, to subsist upon the few rabbits that might be caught in the woods. We were also out of supplies, but now the scows were hourly expected. Expectations, however, afforded poor satisfaction to hungry stomachs, and no less than five days passed before these materialized. In the meantime, though we were not entirely without food ourselves, some of the natives suffered much distress. At one Cree camp visited I witnessed a most pitiable sight. There was the whole family of seven or eight persons seated on the ground about their smoking camp-fire, but without one morsel of food, while children, three or four years old, were trying to satisfy their cravings at the mothers breast. We had no food to give them, but gladdened their hearts by handing around some pieces of tobacco, of which all Indians, if not all savages, are passionately fond.
In addition to the unpleasantness created by lack of provisions, our stay at Fort McMurray was attended with extremely wet weather, which made it necessary to remain in camp most of the time, and to wade through no end of mud whenever we ventured out.
On the evening of the 14th the long-looked-for scows with the supplies arrived. It will readily be imagined we were not long in getting out the provisions and making ready a supper more in keeping with our appetites than the meagre meals with which we had for several days been forced to content ourselves. The cause of delay, as Schott informed us, was the grounding of
