with the corpse. If any remains, it is given away from an aversion they
have to use any thing that belonged to their relations who have died.
Some of the graves are very neatly covered over with short sticks and
bark as a kind of canopy, and a few scalps are affixed to poles that
are stuck in the ground at the head of several of them. You see also
occasionally at the grave, a piece of wood on which is either carved or
painted the symbols of the tribe the deceased belonged to, and which
are taken from the different animals of the country.

APRIL 6.--One of the principal settlers informed me this morning, that
an Indian had stabbed one of his wives in a fit of intoxication at an
encampment near his house. I immediately went to the Lodge to inquire
into the circumstance, and found that the poor woman had been stabbed
in wanton cruelty, through the shoulder and the arm, but not mortally.
The Indians were still drunk, and some of them having knives in their
hands, I thought it most prudent to withdraw from their tents, without
offering any assistance. The Indians appear to me to be generally of an
inoffensive and hospitable disposition; but spirituous liquors, like
war, infuriate them with the most revengeful and barbarous feelings.
They are so conscious of this effect of drinking, that they generally
deliver up their guns, bows and arrows, and knives, to the officers,
before they begin to drink at the Company's Post; and when at their
tents, it is the first care of the women to conceal them, during the
season of riot and intoxication.

A considerable quantity of snow fell on the night of the 12th, and the
weather continuing very cold, it is not practicable yet to begin any
operations in farming. Though I see not as yet any striking effects of
my ministry among the settlers, yet, I trust, some little outward
reformation has taken place, in the better observance of the Sabbath.

MAY 2.--The rivers have broken up this spring unusually late, and the
ice is now floating down in large masses. The settlers, who went to
Pembina and the plains, for buffaloe meat in the Fall, are returning
upon rafts, or in canoes formed by hollowing the large trunks of trees:
many of them are as improvident of to-morrow as the Indians, and have
brought with them no dried provisions for the summer. This is not the
case however with the Scotch, who have been provident enough to bring
with them a supply of dried meat and pemican for a future day. Th