This Was Done After The Indian Fashion, By
Drawing Up The Edges Of The Skin With Thongs, And Keeping Them
Distended By Sticks Or Thwart Pieces.
In this frail bark,
Sardepie, one of the Canadians, carried over a portion of the
flesh of the horse to the famishing party on the opposite side of
the river, and brought back with him Mr. Crooks and the Canadian,
Le Clerc.
The forlorn and wasted looks and starving condition of
these two men struck dismay to the hearts of Mr. Hunt's
followers. They had been accustomed to each other's appearance,
and to the gradual operation of hunger and hardship upon their
frames, but the change in the looks of these men, since last they
parted, was a type of the famine and desolation of the land; and
they now began to indulge the horrible presentiment that they
would all starve together, or be reduced to the direful
alternative of casting lots!
When Mr. Crooks had appeased his hunger, he gave Mr. Hunt some
account of his wayfaring. On the side of the river along which he
had kept, he had met with but few Indians, and those were too
miserably poor to yield much assistance. For the first eighteen
days after leaving the Caldron Linn, he and his men had been
confined to half a meal in twenty-four hours; for three days
following, they had subsisted on a single beaver, a few wild
cherries, and the soles of old moccasins; and for the last six
days their only animal food had been the carcass of a dog.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 352 of 615
Words from 94742 to 95006
of 165649
