BUSINESS AND ROMANCE 305 



son's Bay officer, knew of sixteen trackers who, in a few days, 

 consumed eight bears, two moose, two bags of pemmican, two 

 sacks of flour, and three sacks of potatoes. Bishop Grouard 

 vouched for four men eating a reindeer at a sitting. Our friend, 

 Mr. d'Eschambault, once gave Oskinnegu, — 'The Young 

 Man' — six pounds of pemmican. He ate it all at a meal, 

 washing it down with a gallon of tea, and then complained 

 that he had not had enough. Sir George Simpson states that 

 at Athabasca Lake, in 1820, he was one of a party of twelve 

 who ate twenty-two geese and three ducks at a single meal. 

 But, as he says, they had been three whole days without food. 

 The Saskatchewan folk, however, known of old as the Gens de 

 Blaireaux — 'The People of the Badger Holes' — ^were not 

 behind their congeners. That man of weight and might, our 

 old friend Chief Factor Belanger, once served out to thirteen 

 men a sack of pemmican weighing ninety pounds. It was 

 enough for three days; but there and then they sat down and 

 consumed it aU at a single meal, not, it must be added, without 

 some subsequent and just pangs of indigestion. Mr. B., having 

 occasion to pass the place of eating, and finding the sack of 

 pemmican, as he supposed, in his path, gave it a kick; but, to 

 his amazement, it bounded aloft several feet, and then fit. 

 It was empty! When it is remembered that in the old buffalo 

 days the daily ration per head at the Company's prairie posts 

 was eight pounds of fresh meat, which was all eaten, its equiva- 

 lent being two pounds of pemmican, the enormity of this 

 Gargantuan feast may be imagined. But we ourselves were 

 not bad hands at the trencher. In fact, we were always hungry. 

 So I do not reproduce the foregoing facts as a reproach, but 

 rather as a meagre tribute to the prowess of the great of old — 

 the men of unbounded stomach!" 



And yet, strange as it may seem, fat men are seldom seen in 

 the northern wilderness. That is something movie directors 

 should remember. 



