Belanger Did Not Recover Sufficient Strength To Leave Us Before The 18th.
His Answers As To The Exact Part Of
Round-Rock Lake in which he had left
Mr. Back were very unsatisfactory, and we could only collect that it
Was
at a considerable distance, and that he was still going on with the
intention of halting at the place where Akaitcho was encamped last
summer, about thirty miles off. This distance appeared so great that I
told Belanger it was very unsafe for him to attempt it alone and that he
would be several days in accomplishing it. He stated however that, as the
track was beaten, he should experience little fatigue, and seemed so
confident that I suffered him to depart with a supply of singed hide.
Next day I received information which explained why he was so unwilling
to acquaint us with the situation of Mr. Back's party. He dreaded that I
should resolve upon joining it when our numbers would be so great as to
consume at once everything St. Germain might kill, if by accident he
should be successful in hunting. He even endeavoured to entice away our
other hunter, Adam, and proposed to him to carry off the only kettle we
had and without which we could not have subsisted two days. Adam's
inability to move however precluded him from agreeing to the proposal but
he could assign no reason for not acquainting me with it previous to
Belanger's departure. I was at first inclined to consider the whole
matter as a fiction of Adam's, but he persisted in his story without
wavering, and Belanger when we met again confessed that every part of it
was true.
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