216 NEWFOUNDLAND 



and its fitness or otherwise for canoes. He said nothing 

 to me, but at four the next morning I detected him lighting 

 his pipe by the fire. He slipped silently past my bed and, 

 making his way to a canoe, paddled away swiftly into the 

 darkness. At half-past eight Joe was sitting at breakfast 

 with the others. He had run six miles up the river and 

 back, twelve miles in all, and knew all about the stream. I 

 liked that, because it showed a strict attention to business 

 and proved that he had our interests at heart. 



The heavy rains of the previous day had made it possible 

 for the canoes to be dragged up the brook, but they required 

 careful management, the men beingf in the water the whole 

 time. McGaw and I walked on ahead, reaching Little Dog 

 Lake about 4 p.m. Here we saw smoke curling up from the 

 lake shore, and knew this must be made by the two Matthews 

 boys, sons of Noel Matthews, a Micmac Indian who lived at 

 Bay Despair, and whose hunting-ground we were now passing 

 through. Accordingly I sent Joe to their camp to invite them 

 to accompany us for a week or eight days, to help us to pack 

 over the difficult country between the two watersheds. This 

 they agreed to do, and so met us on the following morning 

 by the brook side, where they at once took pack to help 

 lighten the canoes. 



The two Matthews boys were regular wild Indians of 

 the woods. Martin, the eldest, was a youth of nineteen, with 

 a perfectly expressionless face and an insatiable appetite. I 

 have never seen a man eat so much in so short a time. A 

 stag breast and ribs were a comfortable meal for him, and 

 such trifles as cans of butter and milk seemed to disappear 

 down his capacious throat as if by magic. We possessed 

 some wonderful liquid called " St. Charles evaporated cream," 

 and never fully understood its grandiloquent tide until Martin 



