33 Sketches of the 



instance. One evening while I'esiding at tlie same post, 

 the party were intruded upon by two of the most frightfully 

 distorted and disgusting figures 1 have ever seen, in the 

 persons of two old men — lame, hump-backed, blackened 

 with gun-powder, and with white teeth protruding from 

 the upper jaw downwards, at least two inches ; they were 

 I'epresented to us as idiots and brothers, and seated them- 

 selves in the room, making violent gestures, expressive of 

 anger or impatience, and at intervals furiously striking 

 the floor with their paddles. Having been previously 

 prepared to expect a singular arrival at the post on that 

 evening, and the agents of the conspiracy against our 

 discernment having Avell performed their parts, two of us 

 were deceived, Mr. Ingall alone being sceptical. I myself 

 doubted them at first, but in the end I confess myself to 

 have been taken in by their inimitable acting, as on one of 

 the servants of the post pretending great alarm after they 

 had retired into the next room, and running into ours', appa- 

 rently for protection, I seriously asked him whether he was 

 so cowardly as to be afraid of such poor decripid creatures. 

 These two worthies were handsome lads, the eldest not 

 more than seventeen, and sons of an old Canadian hunter, 

 named Flamand, by his wife, a Tcte de Boule woman. — 

 The teeth they had cut out of wood, and so fixed them as 

 to resemble the long, curved upper cutting teeth of a 

 beaver. Never was deception more admirably managed. 



The Tetes de Boule Indians are very dirty in their 

 domestic habits, and in respect to their cookery, I shall 

 not easily forget peeping into one of their kettles, and 

 observing a large pike, so nearly done, that the bowels 

 and bladder had forced their way through the body ; but 

 this mode of boiling fish is, 1 believe, not particularly 



