ovisions, they were again compelled to kill one of their horses to
appease their famishing hunger.

CHAPTER XXXV.

An Unexpected Meeting.--Navigation in a Skin Canoe.-Strange
Fears of Suffering Men.-Hardships of Mr. Crooks and His
Comrades.--Tidings of M'Lellan.--A Retrograde March.--A Willow
Raft.--Extreme Suffering of Some of the Party--Illness of
Mr. Crooks.--Impatience of Some of the Men.--Necessity of
Leaving the Laggards Behind.

THE wanderers had now accomplished four hundred and seventy-two miles
of their dreary journey since leaving the Caldron Linn; how much further
they had yet to travel, and what hardships to encounter, no one knew.

On the morning of the 6th of December, they left their dismal
encampment, but had scarcely begun their march when, to their surprise,
they beheld a party of white men coming up along the opposite bank of
the river. As they drew nearer, they were recognized for Mr. Crooks and
his companions. When they came opposite, and could make themselves heard
across the murmuring of the river, their first cry was for food; in
fact, they were almost starved. Mr. Hunt immediately returned to the
camp, and had a kind of canoe made out of the skin of the horse killed
on the preceding night. This was done after the Indian fashion, by
drawing up the edges of the skin with thongs, and keeping them distended
by sticks or thwart pieces. In this frail bark, Sardepie, one of the
Canadians, carried over a portion of the flesh of the horse to the
famishing party on the opposite side of the river, and brought back with
him Mr. Crooks and the Canadian, Le Clerc. The forlorn and wasted looks
and starving condition of these two men struck dismay to the hearts
of Mr. Hunt's followers. They had been accustomed to each other's
appearance, and to the gradual operation of hunger and hardship upon
their frames, but the change in the looks of these men, since last they
parted, was a type of the famine and desolation of the land; and they
now began to indulge the horrible presentiment that they would all
starve together, or be reduced to the direful alternative of casting
lots!

When Mr. Crooks had appeased his hunger, he gave Mr. Hunt some account
of his wayfaring. On the side of the river along which he had kept, he
had met with but few Indians, and those were too miserably poor to yield
much assistance. For the first eighteen days after leaving the Caldron
Linn, he and hi