efore steered for
the Sault de Sainte Marie. But the wind veered round, and for nine
days blew a strong gale against their progress in this direction,
making the waves of the lake so high that they were obliged to take
refuge on the shore.

Henry went out perpetually to hunt, but all he got during those nine
days were two small snow-buntings. The Canadian half-breeds with him
then calmly proposed to kill and feed upon the young woman. One of
these men, indeed, admitted that he had had recourse to
this expedient for sustaining life when wintering in the north-west
and running out of food. But Henry indignantly repudiated the
suggestion. Though very weak, he searched everywhere desperately for
food, and at last found on a very high rock a thick lichen, called by
the French Canadians _tripe de roche_,[10] looking, in fact, very much
like slices of tripe. Henry fetched the men and the Indian woman, and
they set to work gathering quantities of this lichen. The woman was
well acquainted with the mode of preparing it, which was done by
boiling it into a thick mucilage, looking rather like the white of an
egg. On this they made hearty meals, though it had a bitter and
disagreeable taste. After the ninth day of their sufferings the wind
fell, they continued their journey, and met with kindly Indians, who
supplied them with as many fish as they wanted. Nevertheless, they all
were so ill afterwards that they nearly died, from the effects of the
lichen diet.

[Footnote 10: See p. 128.]

Some time after this Henry resolved to search for the marvellous
island of Yellow Sands,[11] an island of Lake Superior which, it is
true, the French had discovered, but about which they kept up a good
deal of mystery. The Indian legend was that the sands of this small
island consisted of gold dust, and the Ojibwe Indians, having
discovered this, and attempting to bring some away, they were
disturbed by a supernatural being of amazing size, sixty feet in
height, which strode into the water and commanded them to deliver back
what they had taken away. Terrified at his gigantic stature, they
complied with his request, since which time no Indian has ever dared
to approach the haunted coast. Henry, however, with his men, finally
discovered this Island of Yellow Sands in 1771, in the north-east part
of Lake Superior. It was much smaller than he had been led to expect,
and very low and studded with small lakes, probably made by the action
of beavers d