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THE MISSOURI RIVER JOURNALS 



137 



this gentle manner for two or three minutes, threw him 



upwards about six feet, when he lodged, to all appearance 



dead, in the fork of a tree. Le Brun, hearing the noise, 



ran to his assistance, and again shot the Bear and killed it. 



He then brought what he at first thought was the dead 



body of his friend to the ground. Little appearance of a 



human being was left to the poor man, but Le Brun found 



life was not wholly extinct. He made a travaille and carried 



him by short stages to the nearest trading-post, where the 



wounded man slowly recovered, but was, of course, the 



most mutilated-looking being imaginable. Carriere, in 



telling the story, says that he fully believes it to have been 



the Holy Virgin that lifted him up and placed him in the 



fork of the tree, and thus preserved his life. The Bear is 



stated to have been as large as a common ox, and must 



have weighed, therefore, not far from 1500 lbs." Mr. Dcnig 



adds that he saw the man about a year after the accident, 



and some of the wounds were, even then, not healed. 



Carriere fully recovered, however, lived a few years, and 



was killed by the Blackfeet near Fort Union. 



When Bell was fixing his traps on his horse this morn- 

 ing, I was amused to see Provost and La Fleur laughing 

 outright at him, as he first put on a Buffalo robe under his 

 saddle, a blanket over it, and over that his mosquito bar 

 and his rain protector. These old hunters could not 

 understand why he needed all these things to be comfort- 

 able; then, besides, he took a sack of ship-biscuit. Pro- 

 vost took only an old blanket, a few pounds of dried meat, 

 and his tin cup, and rode off in his shirt and dirty breeches. 

 La Flcur was worse off still, for he took no blanket, and 

 said he could borrow Provost's tin cup ; but he, being a 

 most temperate man, carried the bottle of whiskey to mix 

 with the brackish water found in the Mauvaises Terres, 

 among which they have to travel till their return. Harris 

 and I contemplated going to a quarry from which the 

 stones of the powder magazine were brought, but it 







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