Owing To The Effect That The Tripe De Roche
Invariably Had When He Ventured To Taste It, He Undoubtedly Suffered More
Than Any Of The Survivors Of The Party.
Bickersteth's Scripture Help was
lying open beside the body as if it had fallen from his hand, and it is
probable that he was reading it at the instant of his death.
We passed
the night in the tent together without rest, everyone being on his guard.
Next day, having determined on going to the fort, we began to patch and
prepare our clothes for the journey. We singed the hair off a part of the
buffalo robe that belonged to Mr. Hood and boiled and ate it. Michel
tried to persuade me to go to the woods on the Copper-Mine River and hunt
for deer instead of going to the fort. In the afternoon, a flock of
partridges coming near the tent, he killed several which he shared with
us.
Thick snowy weather and a head-wind prevented us from starting the
following day but on the morning of the 23rd we set out, carrying with us
the remainder of the singed robe. Hepburn and Michel had each a gun and I
carried a small pistol which Hepburn had loaded for me. In the course of
the march Michel alarmed us much by his gestures and conduct, was
constantly muttering to himself, expressed an unwillingness to go to the
fort, and tried to persuade me to go to the southward to the woods where
he said he could maintain himself all the winter by killing deer. In
consequence of this behaviour and the expression of his countenance I
requested him to leave us and to go to the southward by himself. This
proposal increased his ill-nature, he threw out some obscure hints of
freeing himself from all restraint on the morrow, and I overheard his
muttering threats against Hepburn whom he openly accused of having told
stories against him. He also for the first time assumed such a tone of
superiority in addressing me as evinced that he considered us to be
completely in his power and he gave vent to several expressions of hatred
towards the white people or as he termed us in the idiom of the voyagers,
the French, some of whom he said had killed and eaten his uncle and two
of his relations. In short, taking every circumstance of his conduct into
consideration, I came to the conclusion that he would attempt to destroy
us on the first opportunity that offered, and that he had hitherto
abstained from doing so from his ignorance of his way to the fort, but
that he would never suffer us to go thither in company with him. In the
course of the day he had several times remarked that we were pursuing the
same course that Mr. Franklin was doing when he left him and that, by
keeping towards the setting sun, he could find his way himself.
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