yet it might be
in some respects an advantage, for it ran still in my mind that we
were traveling to some settlement; and when my burden was over heavy,
and the Indians left me behind, and the still evening came on, I
fancied I could see thro' the bushes and hear the people of some great
town; which hope might be some support to me in the day, though I
found not the town at night.

"Thus we were hunting three hundred miles from the sea and knew no man
within fifty or sixty miles of us. We were eight or ten in number, and
had but two guns on which we wholly depended for food. If any disaster
had happened we must all have perished. Sometimes we had no manner of
sustenance for three or four days; but God wonderfully provides for
all creatures. * * *

"We moved still farther up the country after the moose when our store
gave out; so that by the spring we had got to the northward of the
Lady Mountains [near the St. Lawrence]. When the spring came and the
rivers broke up we moved back to the head of St. John's river and
there made canoes of moose hides, sewing three or four together and
pitching the seams with balsam mixed with charcoal. Then we went down
the river to a place called Madawescok. There an old man lived and
kept a sort of a trading house, where we tarried several days; then we
went further down the river till we came to the greatest falls in
these parts, called Checanekepeag[16], where we carried a little way
over land, and putting off our canoes we went down stream still, and
as we passed the mouths of any large branches we saw Indians, but when
any dance was proposed I was bought off.

[16] The Grand Falls of the St. John river, which the Indians still
call Chik-seen-eag-i-beg, meaning "a destroying giant."

"At length we arrived at the place where we left our canoes in the
fall and, putting our baggage into them, went down to the fort. There
we planted corn, and after planting went a fishing and to look for and
dig roots till the corn was fit to weed. After weeding we took a
second tour on foot on the same errand, then returned to hill up our
corn. After hilling we went some distance from the fort and field up
the river to take salmon and other fish, which we dried for food,
where we continued till the corn was filled with milk; some of it we
dried then, the other as it ripened."

The statement has been made by the author in the opening chapter that
exaggerated ideas have prevailed concerning