I Accidentally Passed The Body Of The Men And Followed The Tracks Of Two Persons Who Had Separated From The

Rest until two P.M. when, not seeing any person, I retraced my steps, and on my way met Dr.

Richardson who had also missed the party whilst he was employed gathering tripe de roche, and we went back together in search of them. We found they had halted among some willows where they had picked up some pieces of skin and a few bones of deer that had been devoured by the wolves last spring. They had rendered the bones friable by burning and eaten them as well as the skin; and several of them had added their old shoes to the repast. Peltier and Vaillant were with them, having left the canoe which they said was so completely broken by another fall as to be rendered incapable of repair and entirely useless. The anguish this intelligence occasioned may be conceived but it is beyond my power to describe it. Impressed however with the necessity of taking it forward, even in the state these men represented it to be, we urgently desired them to fetch it, but they declined going and the strength of the officers was inadequate to the task. To their infatuated obstinacy on this occasion a great portion of the melancholy circumstances which attended our subsequent progress may perhaps be attributed. The men now seemed to have lost all hope of being preserved and all the arguments we could use failed in stimulating them to the least exertion.

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