per the same time), consisting of flour, camas roots, and some buffalo tallow, called depouille by the Canadian mountaineers, is thrown into a large kettle nearly filled with water. The great heat obliging the cook to stand at a respectable distance from the fire, a long pole serves as a ladle to stir about the contents until the mixture has acquired the proper density, when a vigorous attack is made upon it after a singular fashion indeed. On the present occasion we were six in number, trusting to a single spoon, but necessity soon supplied the deficiency. Two of the company used pieces of bark; two others, scraps of leather;
and the fifth a small turtle-shell. Grace being said, a circle is formed round the kettle, and the instruments plunge and replunge into it with as much regularity and address as a number of smiths' hammers plying at the anvils - a few moments, and the contents of the large kettle are gone, leaving not a vestige behind. We found this repast deli
cious, thanks to our keen appetites. Making due allowance for the tastes of others, " de gustibus enim nil disputandum," I confess I have never enjoyed a feast more heartily than such as I have now described, prepared in the open air, after the Indian fashion. All the refined inventions of the art culinary, as sauces, pickles, preserves, pies, etc., designed to quicken or restore weak appetites, are here utterly useless. Loss of appetite, which among the wealthy forms the reigning complaint, furnishing abundant employment to apothecaries and doctors, is here unheard of. If these patients would have the courage to abandon for a time their high living and traverse the wilds of this region on horseback, breakfasting at daybreak and dining at sunset, after a ride of forty miles, I venture to predict that they will not need any refined incitements to relish as I did a simple dish prepared by the Indians.
Having dried our blankets and said night prayers, our repose was not the less sound for having fared so simply, or lain upon a rough couch of brushwood. We started early the next morning, and about mid-day arrived at the