276 A JOURNEY TO THE 



1772. well beaten between two stones, is something like spunk. The 

 former is called by the Northern Indians Jolt-thee, and is 

 known all over the country bordering on Hudson's Bay by 

 the name of Pesogan,* it being so called by the Southern 

 [279] Indians. The latter is only used by the Northern tribes, 

 and is called by them Clalte-ad-dee. 

 1st. By the first of March we began to leave the fine level 

 country of the Athapuscows, and again to approach the stony 

 mountains or hills which bound the Northern Indian country. 

 Moose and beaver still continued to be plentiful ; but no 

 buffaloes could be seen after the twenty-ninth of February. 

 As we were continuing our course to the East South East, 

 14th. on the fourteenth we discovered the tracks of more strangers, 

 and the next day came up with them. Among those Indians 

 was the man who had carried a letter for me in March one 

 thousand seven hundred and seventy-one, to the Chief at 

 Prince of Wales's Fort, and to which he had brought an 

 answer, dated the twenty-first of June. When this Indian 



* The Indians, both Northern and Southern, have found by experience, that 

 by boiling the pesogan in water for a considerable time, the texture is so much 

 improved, that when thoroughly dried, some parts of it will be nearly as soft as 

 spunge. 



Some of those funguses are as large as a man's head ; the outside, which is 

 very hard and black, and much indented with deep cracks, being of no use, is 

 always chopped off with a hatchet. Besides the two sorts of touchwood already 

 mentioned, there is another kind of it in those parts, that I think is infinitely 

 preferable to either. This is found in old decayed poplars, and lies in flakes of 

 various sizes and thickness ; some is not thicker than shammoy leather, others 

 are as thick as a shoe-sole. This, like the fungus of the birch-tree, is always 

 moist when taken from the tree, but when dry, it is very soft and flexible, and 

 takes fire readily from the spark of a steel ; but it is much improved by being 

 kept dry in a bag that has contained gunpowder. It is rather surprising that 

 the Indians, whose mode of life I have just been describing, have never acquired 

 the method of making fire by friction, like the Esquimaux. It is also equally 

 surprising that they do not make use of the skin-canoes. Probably deer-skins 

 cannot be manufactured to withstand the water ; ^ for it is well known that the 

 Esquimaux use always seal-skins for that purpose, though they are in the habit 

 of killing great numbers of deer. 



[1 The Eskimos met with on the banks of the Kasan River in 1894 make 

 their canoes entirely of deer-skin parchment.] 



