IN QUEST OF TREASURE 65 



more dangerous to man than the wolves of the Great Northern 

 Forest. 



SUNDAY IN CAMP 



Next morning being Sunday, we did not strike camp, and the 

 first thing the women attended to, even while breakfast was 

 under way, was the starting of a fire of damp, rotten wood, 

 which smoked but never blazed, and over which, at a distance 

 of about four feet, they leant the stretched deerskins, hair side 

 up, to dry. Besides those, other frames were made and erected 

 over another slow fire, and here the flakes or slabs of moose 

 flesh were hung to be dried and smoked into what is called 

 jerked meat. The fat, being chopped up and melted in a pail, 

 was then poured into the moose bladder and other entrails to 

 cool and be handy for future use. Of course, it would take 

 several days to dry out the deerskins; so each morning when we 

 were about to travel, the skins were unlaced and rolled up, to 

 be re-stretched and placed over another fire the following 

 evening. 



Sunday was pleasantly spent, notwithstanding that so many 

 different religious denominations were represented in camp: for 

 while old Ojistoh counted her beads according to the Roman 

 Catholic faith, Amik and Naudin were singing hymns, as the 

 former was an English Churchman and his wife a Presbyterian; 

 but Oo-koo-hoo would join in none of it as he had no faith what- 

 ever in the various religions of the white men and so he re- 

 mained a pagan. Part of the day we spent in pottering about, 

 in doing a little mending here and there, smoking, telling 

 stories, or in strolling through the woods; as both Oo-koo-hoo 

 and Amik were opposed to doing actual work on Sunday. In 

 the afternoon I turned to sketching, and my drawing excited 

 so much interest that Amik tried his hand, and in a crude way 

 his sketches of animals and birds were quite graphic in charac- 

 ter. One sketch I made, that of the baby, so pleased Neykia, 



