BEAR-HUNT. 195 
covery; and it was agreed that all the fa- 
mily should go together, in the morning, to 
assist in cutting down the tree, the girth of 
which was not less than three fathoms. The 
women, at first, opposed the undertaking, 
because our axes, being only of a pound and 
a half weight, were not well adapted to so 
heavy a labour; but the hope of finding a 
large Bear, and obtaining from its fat a great 
quantity of oil, an article at the time much 
wanted, at length prevailed. Accordingly, 
in the morning, we surrounded the tree, 
both men and women, as many at a time as 
could conveniently work at it; and there we 
toiled, like Beavers, till the sun went down. 
The day’s work carried us about half-way 
through the trunk; and the next morning 
habitant of Montreal, in Lower Canada, whose “‘ Tra- 
vels and Adventures in the Indian Territories” are 
here quoted by Dr. Richardson, and who was known 
to the writer of this note, was a very young man at 
the date of the transactions to which the work refers ; 
and, as a consequence of some disasters of climate, 
which befel his first beginnings in travelling the 
fur-countries, he was, at the date of the discoveries 
of the Bear, passing the winter in the Jodge or wig- 
wam of an Indian hunter and his family. 
