THE WOLVERINE AT JASPER HOUSE. 243 



up Ms tent close to our lodge. His hunt liad not been 

 a very successful one, and as he had only a few days' 

 supply of bighorn mutton, w^ould be compelled to set 

 out again almost immediately. He was therefore 

 quite unable to replenish our stock, but invited us to 

 sup on some delicious trout which he had caught in 

 one of the mountain lakes the day before. He in- 

 formed us that a winter rarely passed now without a 

 great scarcity of provisions at Jasper House, and their 

 being driven to horse-flesh as a last resource. From him 

 we also heard another anecdote of our old enemy, the 

 wolverine. When returning to the Fort from a hunting 

 expedition at the beginning of the previous vv^inter, 

 Mr. Macaulay was surprised to find that all the win- 

 dows of the building, which are of parchment, were 

 gone. He fancied that some one had broken in to 

 rob the place. On entering he searched about, yet 

 found nothing ; but hearing a noise in the room over- 

 head, he went up, and there discovered a wolverine, 

 which was chased and killed. He had lived on the 

 parchment windows in default of more usual food, and 

 had been so satisfied wdth his diet, that his natural 

 curiosity had slept, and strangely enough, he had not 

 investigated the packages of goods which lay about. 



We learnt from Mr. Macaulay that the three 

 miners, of w^hom we had heard at Edmonton as ha\dng 

 gone to prospect the sources of the North Saskatchewan, 

 and whose notice we had seen on the tree when we first 

 struck the Athabasca, had already passed on their way 

 across the mountains to Cariboo. At Mr. Macaulay 's 

 suggestion, we engaged an old Iroquois half-breed to 



Q 2 



