Having related how she shot a deer, skinning it
herself, made her snow-shoes and set her rabbit snares, she closes her
first entry with:

"Well, as I sed, I can't write much at a time now, for i am getting
blind and some mist rises up before me if i sew, read or write a little
while."

Lydia Campbell's mother was captured by Eskimo. She ran away when she
had grown up, to quote her own terse diary, "crossed a river on drift
sticks, wading in shallows, through woods, meeting bears, sleeping under
trees--seventy miles flight--saw a French boat--took off skirt and waved
it to them--came--took my mother on board--worked for them--with the
sealers--camped on the ice.

"As there was no other kind of women to marrie hear, the few English men
each took a wife of that sort and they never was sorry that they took
them, for they was great workers and so it came to pass that I was one
of the youngest of them." [Meaning, of course, that she was the daughter
of one of these marriages.]

* * * * *

"Our young man pretended to spark the two daughters of Tomas. He was a
one-armed man, for he had shot away one arm firing at a large bird....
He double-loaded his gun in his fright, so the por man lost one of his
armes,... he was so smart with his gun that he could bring down a bird
flying past him, or a deer running past he would be the first to bring
it down."

* * * * *

"They was holden me hand and telling me that I must be his mother now as
his own mother is dead and she was a great friend of mine although we
could not understand each other's language sometimes, still we could
make it out with sins and wonders."

* * * * *

"April 7, 1894.--Since I last wrote on this book, I have been what
people call cruising about here. I have been visiting some of my
friends, though scattered far apart, with my snow-shoes and axe on my
shoulders. The nearest house to this place is about five miles up a
beautiful river, and then through woods, what the french calls a
portage--it is what I call pretty. Many is the time that I have been
going with dogs and komatick 40 or 50 years ago with my husband and
family to N. W. River, to the Hon. Donald A. Smith and family to keep N.
Year or Easter."

* * * * *

"My dear old sister Hannah Mishlin who is now going on for 80 years old
and she is smart yet, she hunts fresh meat