k to make pemmican, for we must leave a
supply concealed here against our return."

Louis Blanc superintended the making of this pemmican, which consisted
of fish dried in the sun and pounded between two stones. Pemmican is
also made of meat, in which case the pounded meat is put into a bag made
of the raw hide of the animal; the bag is then filled with melted fat
and the mouth sewed up with raw sinews. This style of pemmican will
keep fresh for years.

"Where did English Chief go when we landed?" asked Mackenzie.

"Don't know, monsieur," replied Louis.

"After game, probably," observed the leader, as he sat down on the stump
of a fallen tree and began to make notes in his journal.

Some time thereafter, Reuben's canoe returned laden with two deer,
besides two swans, a number of ducks and hares, and several brace of
ptarmigan, which latter were quite grey at that season, with the
exception of one or two pure white feathers in the tail. They said that
wild-fowl were innumerable among the islands; but this, indeed, was
obvious to all, for everywhere their plaintive and peculiar cries, and
the whirring or flapping of their wings, were heard even when the leafy
screen over the encampment hid themselves from view. Darkeye also
contributed her share to the general supplies, in the shape of several
large birch-baskets full of gooseberries, cranberries, juniper-berries,
rasps, and other wild berries, which, she said, grew luxuriantly in many
places.

Meanwhile, the night (as regards _time_) advanced, although the daylight
did not disappear, or even much diminish, but English Chief, with
Coppernose and his two squaws, did not return, and their prolonged
absence became at length a cause of no little anxiety to the leader of
the expedition. The fact was that English Chief was fond of a little
fun, and despite the dignified position which he held, and the maturity
of his years, he could not resist availing himself of any little chance
that came in his way of having what is more pithily than elegantly
styled "a spree."

It happened to be the particular period at which the wild-fowl of those
regions begin to cast their feathers. Knowing this, English Chief
quietly slipped off with his canoe when Mackenzie landed, and soon found
a colony of swans afflicted with that humiliating lack of natural
clothing, which is the cause, doubtless, of their periodically betaking
themselves to the uttermost ends of the earth in order to