"SMALL TALK." 175 



healed the sore with wonderful rapidity. It reminds one how rare 

 serious cases are in this region, where physicians are so " few and 

 far between." The people are seldom sick, and when they are 

 nature is its own nurse assisted by the experience of the " old wo- 

 men " of the coast. 



-Saturday all hands amused themselves making molasses candy, 

 a great treat in this region ; it tasted very good and homelike I 

 assure you. A little luxury of this kind is highly appreciated in 

 3uch a region, and especially since so little sweetening of any kind 

 can be procured. This year provisions have been unusually high 

 every^vhere along the coast. Flour, which usually sells for from seven 

 to eight dollars a barrel, has already reached twelve dollars, and is 

 still going up ; it is hard to be obtained even at this price. Many 

 of the poorer families are feeding on corn meal, which is generally 

 refused here until the last extremity, since the majority of the peo- 

 ple regard it as hardly fit to feed the dogs with. I suppose, in this 

 case, the climate has a great deal to do with the prejudice. Corn 

 meal is evidently and eminently a southern dish, and suitable to 

 the warm cHmates. Besides what I have mentioned, the saltfish 

 has already given out in the majority of the families along the 

 coast, and the preserv'ed salmon, trout, herring, and mackerel, 

 are being used up fast. Last year the game was so abundant that 

 not half of it could be eaten ; this year there are no indications 

 of any, and the Indians, from two hundred miles in the interior, 

 are telling the same story. Some of the old inhabitants say that 

 they never knew such a dearth of game during thirty or forty years' 

 residence on the coast. 



Several cases have come to my knowledge where whole families 

 have been obliged to separate and hire around in turn to their 

 more fortunate neighbors for the winter for their board alone, to 

 escape the poverty and destitution which would surely have over- 

 taken some of them had they continued living together for any 

 length of time during this excessively cold weather. Add to this 

 the wrangling of families and often members of the same family 

 (happening in several cases, over the cargo of the wrecked Edward 



