The Delay However Enabled Us To Obtain
Some Lunar Observations.
The wind having subsided we left our resting
place the following morning, crossed the remainder of the lake, and in
the afternoon arrived at Muddy Lake which is very appropriately named as
it consists merely of a few channels winding amongst extensive mudbanks
which are overflowed during the spring floods.
We landed at an Indian
tent which contained two numerous families amounting to thirty souls.
These poor creatures were badly clothed and reduced to a miserable
condition by the whooping-cough and measles. At the time of our arrival
they were busy in preparing a sweating-house for the sick. This is a
remedy which they consider, with the addition of singing and drumming, to
be the grand specific for all diseases. Our companions having obtained
some geese in exchange for rum and tobacco, we proceeded a few more miles
and encamped on Devil's Drum Island, having come during the day twenty
miles and a half. A second party of Indians were encamped on an adjoining
island, a situation chosen for the purpose of killing geese and ducks.
On the 16th we proceeded eighteen miles up the Saskatchewan. Its banks
are low, covered with willows, and lined with drift timber. The
surrounding country is swampy and intersected by the numerous arms of the
river. After passing for twenty or thirty yards through the willow
thicket on the banks of the stream we entered an extensive marsh, varied
only by a distant line of willows which marks the course of a creek or
branch of the river.
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