North-West Continent of America. 



101 



country, and that part of the river that intervenes between 

 this place and the mountains, bear much the same appear- 

 ance as that around us ; that the former abounds with ani- 

 mals, but that the course of the latter is interrupted near, 

 and in the mountains, by successive rapids and consider- 

 able falls. These men also informed me, that there is 

 another great river towards the mid-day sun, whose cur- 

 rent rims in that direction, and that the distance from it is 

 not great across the mountains. 



The natives brought me plenty of furs. The small 

 quantity of snow, at this time, was particularly favourable 

 for hunting the beaver, as from this circumstance, those 

 animals could, with the greatest facility, be traced from 

 their lodges to their lurking places. 



On the 12th our hunter arrived, having left his mother- 

 in-law, who was lately become a widow with three small 

 children, and in actual labour of a fourth. Her daughter 

 related this circumstance to the women here, without the 

 least appearance of concern, though she represented her 

 as in a state of great danger, which probably might pro- 

 ceed from her being abandoned in this unnatural manner. 

 At the same time without any apparent consciousness of 

 her own barbarous negligence ; if the poor, abandoned wo- 

 man should die, she would most probably lament her with 

 great outcries, and, perhaps, cut off one or two joints of 

 her fingers as tokens of her grief. The Indians, indeed, 

 consider the state of a woman in labour as among the most 

 trifling occurrences of corporeal pain to which human nature 

 is subject, and they may be, in some measure, justified in 

 this apparent insensibility from the circumstances of that 

 situation among themselves. It is by no means uncommon 

 in the hasty removal of their camps from one position to 

 another, for a woman to be taken in labour, to deliver 

 herself in her way, without any assistance or notice from 

 her associates in the journey, and to overtake them before 

 they complete the arrangements of their evening station, 

 with her new-born babe on her back. 



I was this morning threatened with a very unpleasant 

 event, which, however, I was fortunately enabled to con- 

 trol. Two young Indians being engaged in one of their 

 games, a dispute ensued, which rose to such an height, 

 that they drew their knives, and if I had not happened to 

 have appeared, they would, I doubt not, have employed 

 them to very bloody purposes. So violent was their rage, 



