294 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 



numerous rivulets. Large tracts of ground are covered with the 



accompanied by a piercing wind ; however, I kept my road steadily, it 

 was one that led to a distant Gamass prairie or root-ground of the 

 Indians, frequented therefore by numbers of pack-horses, who had, in 

 passing with their loads, snatched the bark from the pine trunks, which 

 marks helped me to find the path again when I lost the track, Soon I 

 became uneasy again as to the right way, knowing that my course lay 

 northward, I found by my compass that I had pursued a south-easterly 

 direction for the last three days ; so that instead of wide plains and 

 rivers, I had met only small valley prairies with rivulets. I now returned 

 again, convinced that I must be wrong. This was the eighth day since I 

 started from the village, with provisions for four days only ; consisting of 

 dry buffaloe meat and Gamass bulbs ; these I had to manage now well, so 

 that a third part of a breakfast was now my ration for the whole day. 

 I had no rifle with me to kill game, nor did I meet any, except a moose- 

 deer, which by its lazy amble kept my tired horse soon out of shooting 

 distance, both with rifle and pistol. The snowing had now ceased ; but 

 the ground was covered two feet deep, and the labour I had every evening 

 to free a piece of grassy ground for my horse, was very tiresome. In the 

 evening, when I struck camp, I had first to gather wood for a fire for 

 the long night, which lasted from four o'clock in the afternoon to eight 

 in the morning. Above three hours passed in labour, the other long par 

 I passed in sleeping, smoking, stirring the fire, looking for my horse an 

 so on. When hunger pinched me, I smoked tobacco ; to allay thirst, 

 I kept several snow balls near the fire in front of my bed, the latter 

 consisted of spruce branches, which I licked when they were thawing. 

 Here I cannot omit to say at least something in favour of smoking 

 tobacco ; and in no other way, I think, can smoking be excused as any 

 thing like being useful or necessary. The most pinching hunger and that 

 peculiar faint feverish sensation accompanying it, is at once' removed, as 

 well as the sharp appetite, by smoking tobacco. The luxury of a pipe of 

 tobacco, in such cases, cannot be conceived by any smoker, if he has not 

 experienced it. The excitement is naturally soon over, and increases the 

 more the stomach is tortured by fasting. A frequent repetition is there- 

 fore necessary. True, that a certain debility of the stomach must be the 

 consequence; but this cannot outweigh an expediency so great, when 

 life is in the other scale. But little progress did I make in my return, 

 owing to the snow and the feebleness of mine as well as of my horse. 

 On the third day towards camping time, I noticed by the marks on the 

 pine trunks, that a path forked off to the right. Striking my camp at the 

 place, I walked a distance and convinced myself that it bore a nortn- 

 westerly course. Next morning I followed it, and found, to my gf ea 



