230 A HOME IX THE WILDERNESS. 



iury. The harassed animal undoubtedly thought me in 

 the right road, and relied on reaching its stable much 

 more quickly by following me. Nevertheless, we were 

 both compelled to await the arrival of the Indians from 

 the neighbouring house, who, provided with torches, 

 came at length to rescue us from the tortures of a cold 

 so excessive that it seemed to freeze the very marrow of 

 our bones. 



The owner of the house was named Joassin, and his 

 mansion could not well have passed for a palace. We 

 soon discovered, too, that it gained nothing by being 

 better known. We entered into a large hall, about thirty 

 feet square, furnished with a couple of beds placed in the 

 farthest corner, with six unfinished chairs, and a rocking 

 arm-chair or fauteuil. In the centre stood a red-hot iron 

 stove, choked with logs of wood ; so that the atmosphere 

 around us was almost suffocating. 



We found in readiness to receive us, and gathered close 

 around the stove, the owner of the house, his wife, three 

 tall, lean, and ugly daughters, three sons whom Nature 

 had favoured as little as their sisters, the five Indians 

 who had extricated me from my bed of snow, and half-a- 

 dozen dogs. 



While the men, with pipes in their mouths, filled the 

 interior of the hall with a dense cloud of tobacco smoke, 

 the women were preparing on the top of the stove, in a 

 dirty earthen pan, a tasteless ragout, and a soup of much 

 too Lacedemonian a character, judging by its colour, 

 which gave forth pungent odours of onions and garlic, 

 enough to have turned the stomach of the least fastidious 

 Provencal. 



Naturally, all those who smoked spat all around them \ 



