200 NARRATIVES. 



dishes. By ' dishes ' I do not mean such as are found at crock- 

 ery stores. We had just got our tin plates. (Previously we 

 had eaten off cedar shingles, with wooden spoons.) Then I 

 mended my pantaloons, which had sustained a damage one 

 night before, while I was lying near the fire in one of the 

 Canton-flannel bags that Mr. Newhouse recommended. Just 

 as I was going to sleep I felt something biting or stinging my 

 legs, and, on looking, found that I was on fire. With some 

 difficulty we put it out, after a large hole was burned in the 

 bag, and two small ones in my pantaloons. So, as I said, I 

 proceeded to patch these holes. After that I took hold of the 

 business of making a bag of my blanket. I like the idea of a 

 bag to sleep in, but it ought not to be made of cotton. Mr. 

 Pitt living up his overalls one night before the fire to dry, and 

 when he got up the next morning only a few little pieces and 

 the buttons were left. We found tliat cotton clothing about a 

 camp-fire is too liable to get burned up. So I took my woolen 

 blanket and sewed it up into a regular sack, which 1 liked 

 very much. After that I went through the work of jjut- 

 ting the muskrat-skins on the stretchers. Then I went and 

 got the fat off" the skunk, and tried it out in one of our 

 spiders or sauce-pans, and made a little tin tunnel and put the 

 oil into a bottle. Then I put the sauce-pan into the fire and 

 heated it red-hot, to take out the odor of the skunk. That 

 was my last work. By this time it was pretty well along in 

 the afternoon. I sat down and began to study. 



"It was evident from the failing health of John Hutchins, 

 on whom we had relied as the captain of the expedition, but 

 whose advanced age and former hardships in the army and 

 the woods, by flood and field, now told on him, and from the 

 comparative scarcity of game both for food and fur in the dis- 

 trict wliere we were, that the trapping part of the enterprise 

 would not be made to pay. We had had the advantage of a 

 month's "roughing it" in the woods, and had established 

 communication with frontiermen on their own ground ; and it 

 appeared clear that our true course now was to get out of the 

 woods and fall back upon the second object of the expedition, 

 namely, the buying of furs. I accordingly advised a retreat 



