OUR STOCK OF PROVISIONS. 305 



wish that the act of a bad woman might not be 

 the means of his losing the promised reward for 

 carrying it ; " for," added he, " I beat her well ; 

 and if you do not believe me, ask those who 

 stood by. Oh ! she has a bad head — Sass! That 

 very evening she went away from my lodge ; 

 nobody knew where. Two nights I remained 

 silent ; but as she did not come on the third, 

 fearing she miffht be lost, some of us went in 

 search of her, and, after a long and fatiguing 

 walk for miles in every direction, and looking in 

 every nook and cranny that we could see — would 

 you think it? we found her hid among the large 

 rocks close to the lodge. Oh ! she has a bad 

 head! but I drubbed her well — Sass ! " The 

 poor fellow evidently regarded this summary 

 chastisement as an expiatory offering to appease 

 our resentment. 



We had altogether twenty-seven bags of 

 pemmican, weighing about eighty pounds each ; 

 two boxes of maccaroni, some flour, a case 01 

 cocoa, and a two-gallon keg of rum : an adequate 

 supply, if all good, for the three months of our 

 operations. It does not become me to enlarge 

 upon the difficulty and danger of transporting a 

 weight, all things included, of near five thousand 

 pounds over ice and rock, by a circuitous route 

 of full two hundred miles ; but, when the pain 

 endured in walking on some parts, where the ice 



x 



