FEW Reverses In This Changeful World Are More Complete And
Disheartening Than That Of A Traveller, Suddenly Unhorsed, In The
Midst Of The Wilderness.
Our unfortunate travellers contemplated
their situation, for a time, in perfect dismay.
A long journey
over rugged mountains and immeasurable plains lay before them,
which they must painfully perform on foot, and everything
necessary for subsistence or defense must be carried on their
shoulders. Their dismay, however, was but transient, and they
immediately set to work, with that prompt expediency produced by
the exigencies of the wilderness, to fit themselves for the
change in their condition.
Their first attention was to select from their baggage such
articles as were indispensable to their journey; to make them up
into convenient packs, and to deposit the residue in caches. The
whole day was consumed in these occupations; at night, they made
a scanty meal of their remaining provisions, and lay down to
sleep with heavy hearts. In the morning, they were up and about
at an early hour, and began to prepare their knapsacks for a
march, while Ben Jones repaired to an old beaver trap which he
had set in the river bank at some little distance from the camp.
He was rejoiced to find a middle-sized beaver there, sufficient
for a morning's meal to his hungry comrades. On his way back with
his prize, he observed two heads peering over the edge of an
impending cliff, several hundred feet high, which he supposed to
be a couple of wolves.
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