138 : JOURNEY TO THE SHORES 
wise worthy of notice, for they have an insipid 
farinaceous taste, and are seldom gathered. 
The Crees extract some beautiful colours from 
several of their native vegetables. They dye 
their porcupine quills a beautiful scarlet, with the 
roots of two species of bed-straw, (galium tinc- 
torium, and boreale) which they indiscriminately 
term sawoyan. The roots, after being carefully 
washed, are boiled gently in a clean copper kettle, 
and a quantity of the juice of the moose-berry, 
strawberry,cranberry, orarcticraspberry, is added 
together with a few red tufts of pistils of the larch. 
The porcupine quills are plunged into the liquor 
before it becomes quite cold, and are soon tinged 
-of a beautiful scarlet. The process sometimes 
fails, and produces only a dirty brown, a circum 
stance which ought probably to be ascribed to the 
use of an undue quantity of acid. They dye black 
with an ink made of elder bark, and a little bog- - 
iron-ore, dried and pounded, and they have vati- 
ous modes of producing yellow. The deepest 
colour is obtained from the dried root of a plant, 
Which from their description appears to be the 
cow-bane (cicuta virosa.) An inferior colour is 
obtained from the bruised buds of the Dutch 
myrtle, and they have discovered methods of dye 
ing with various lichens. 
~The quadrupeds that are hunted for food it 
