Thursday:—Salt horse and macaroni.
Friday:—Sow-belly and bannock.
Saturday:—Blue-fish and beans.
Sunday:—Repeat.
Dragged ashore, the moose proved to be a male of two prongs, about eighteen months old, and weighed perhaps four or five hundred pounds. A full-grown moose of this country will sometimes dress half a ton. We are to learn that there are many viewpoints from which to approach a moose. The Kid wants its photograph, Chiboo and Mrs. Gaudet each eloquently argue for the skin, the rest of us are gross enough to want to eat it, and Se-li-nah, looking demurely off into the pines, murmurs gently in Cree, "Marrow is nice." Poor young stripling of the Royal House of Moose, you could not have fallen into more appreciative hands!
The first thing Baptiste does is to plunge his penknife into the back to see how deep the fat is. We had noticed this testing process before. A bunch of feathers is always plucked off the new-killed bird that one can immediately gauge the gastronomic niche at which to set one's waiting stomach. No more voyaging to-night. The moose is cleaned and skinned. Mrs. Gaudet draws the skin. I claim the head. A little Indian boy, who with his mother had been added to our ship's crew at Carcajou Point, appropriates the kidneys, which he proceeds to roast in the ashes. Ten-year-old Bill evidently likes his devilled kidneys rare, for within three minutes we see him prancing round the camp, nibbling his dripping dainty from the point of an impaling stick.
Beaver Camp, on Paddle River
Having sat round the barbecue half the night, we pull out late the next morning. And now, apprised by moccasin telegraph, we are all on the qui vive to catch sight of a floating bride. A fur-trader attached to "The French Company" at Vermilion has been out on six months' leave and is bringing in a bride from Paris. We are to expect them to cross our course on a raft, floating in with the current of the Peace as we make our way upstream. We see the raft. All is excitement. We direct the steersman to draw close in, and the men prime their rifles for a salute. She is not visible,—floating brides on the Peace shrink evidently from being the cynosure of passing eyes. Our men fire their salute, the steersman on the raft looks puzzled when we, smiling our sympathy, peer over the edge of his craft, and see, instead of the Parisian bride,—a load of Poland pigs for Vermilion! It is the wrong raft. The real bride passes us in the gloaming ten hours later, when it is too dark to get a satisfactory photograph!