[RAYMOND] TRAVEL BETWEEN CANADA AND ACADIA 39 



Indian master to the Medoctec village where he remained six years a 

 captive. 



It was the custom of the Indians at the beginning of winter to 

 break up into small hunting parties, and Gyles' description of his 

 first winter's experience will serve to indicate the privations endured 

 by the savages and the nature of travelling through the woods in the 

 winter season. 



"When the winter came on," he writes, "jwe went up the river 

 till the ice came down, running thick in the river, when, according 

 to the Indian custom, we laid up our canoes till spring. Then we 

 travelled, sometimes on the ice and sometimes on land, till we came 

 to a river that was open but not fordable, when we made a raft and 

 passed over bag and baggage. I m^et with no abuse from them in 

 this winter's hunting, though I was put to great hardships in carrying 

 burdens and for want of food. But they underwent the same difhculty 

 and would often encourage me by sa^'ing, ' By and by great deal 

 moose.' Yet they could not answer any question I asked them; 

 and knowing very little of their customs and ways of life, I thought 

 it tedious to be constantly moving from place to place, yet it might 

 be in some respects an advantage, for it ran in my mind that we were 

 travelling to some settlement; and when my burden was over heavy, 

 and the Indians left me behind, and the still evening came on, I 

 fancied I could see through the bushes and hear the people of some 

 great town, which might be some support to me by day, though I 

 found not the town at night." 



As Dr. Hannay observes, there is something inexpressively 

 pathetic in this part of John Gyles' story. He was only a half-grown 

 boy, ill-fed and scantily clad, when he had thus to bear his burden in 

 mid-winter through the forest after his Indian master. The narrative 

 continues: 



"Thus we were hunting 300 miles from the sea and knew no 

 man within 50 or 60 miles of us. We were eight or ten in number and 

 had but two guns on which we wholl)' depended for food. If any 

 disaster had happened we must all have perished. Sometimes we 

 had no manner of sustenance for three or four days. . . . We moved 

 still further up the country after the moose, so that by the spring 

 we had got to the northward of the Lady Mountains (the mountains 

 of Notre Dame overlooking the St. Lawrence). 



"When the spring came and the rivers broke up we moved back 

 to the head of St. John's river and there made canoes of moose hides, 

 sewing three or four together and pitching the seams with balsam 

 mixed with charcoal. Then we went down the river to a place called 



