42 TIic Home of the Wolvcraic and Beaver. 



then ready for eating, and is a wholesome, palatable 

 food, pleasant to the taste, and easy of digestion. 

 The above quantity is fully sufficient for a man's 

 subsistence during twenty-four hours, and, as I said 

 before, with the exception of any fish they may 

 catch or game they may shoot, is all the Company's 

 canoe men ever get. 



But to return to the fort. If, leaving the 

 picturesque groups of voyageiirs and their Indian 

 belongings, we stroll into the large wooden build- 

 ing that stands nearly in the centre of the enclosure 

 we shall witness a curious and pleasing sight. At 

 some half a dozen long rough tables are seated at 

 least a hundred men, a few of them in the garb of 

 civilisation, but by far the greater number in a 

 nondescript dress, half European half Indian, but 

 in which buckskin is the main constituent. At the 

 head of the two principal tables, situated at the 

 opposite end of the hall to the door by which we 

 entered, are seated two gentlemen, one rather bald, 

 the other with a palpable wig, and both when they 

 speak betraying that the land of their birth lay 

 north of the Tweed. These are the agents from. 

 Montreal, and the reason of one of them wearing a 

 wig, not an uncommon article in the civilised world 

 in 1788, but rather out of place on the shores of 

 Lake Superior — is that he lost his scalp when a 



