p.

It happened just at this time that a brigade of inland boats was on the
eve of starting for the distant regions of the interior; and as the
little canoe, destined to carry myself, was much too small to take such
an unwieldy article as my "cassette," I gladly availed myself of the
opportunity to forward it by the boats, as they would have to pass
Norway House _en route_. It would be endless to detail how I spent the
next three days: how I never appeared in public without walking very
fast, as if pressed with a superhuman amount of business; how I rummaged
about here and there, seeing that everything was prepared; looking
vastly important, and thinking I was immensely busy, when in reality I
was doing next to nothing. I shall, therefore, without further preface,
proceed to describe my travelling equipments.

The canoe in which I and two Indians were to travel from York Factory to
Norway House, a distance of nearly three hundred miles, measured between
five and six yards long, by two feet and a half broad in the middle,
tapering from thence to _nothing_ at each end. It was made of birch
bark, and could with great ease be carried by one man. In this we were
to embark, with ten days' provisions for three men, three blankets,
three small bundles, and a little travelling-case belonging to myself;
besides three paddles wherewith to propel us forward, a tin kettle for
cooking, and an iron one for boiling water. Our craft being too small
to permit my taking the usual allowance of what are called luxuries, I
determined to take pot-luck with my men, so that our existence for the
next eight or ten days was to depend upon the nutritive properties
contained in a few pounds of pemmican, a little biscuit, one pound of
butter, and a very small quantity of tea and sugar. With all this, in
addition to ourselves, we calculated upon being pretty deeply laden.

My men were of the tribe called Swampy Crees--and truly, to judge merely
from appearance, they would have been the very last I should have picked
out to travel with; for one was old, apparently upwards of fifty, and
the other, though young, was a cripple. Nevertheless, they were good,
hard-working men, as I afterwards experienced. I did not take a tent
with me, our craft requiring to be as light as possible, but I rolled up
a mosquito-net in my blanket, that being a light affair of gauze,
capable of compression into very small compass. Such were our
equipments; and on th