if Indians don't come in by Sunday, we are to be sent off to hunt for
ourselves and the wives and children are to go to Little Lake where
they may live on fish."

"We have plenty of fish, it is true," said Accomba; "we dried a good
number last Fall, besides having one net in the lake all the winter;
but I would not leave the Company, Peter, if I were you,--you are
better off here, man, in spite of your 'starving times!' You _do_ get
your game every day, come what may, and a taste of flour every week, and
a little barley and potatoes. I call that living like a 'big master.'"

"I had rather be a free man and hunt for myself," put in another
speaker; "the meat does not taste half so good when another hand than
your own has killed it; and as for flour and barley and potatoes,
well, our forefathers got on well enough without them before the
white man came into our country, I suppose we should learn to do
without them again? For my part, I like a roe cake as well as any
white man's bread."

"But the times are harder than they used to be for the Tene Jua
(Indian men) in the woods," said Accomba with a sigh; "the deer and
the moose go off the track more than they used to do; it is only at
Fort Rae, on the Big Lake, that meat never seems to fail; for us poor
Mackenzie River people there is hardly a winter that we are far from
starvation."

"But you can always pick up something at the Forts:" replied a
former speaker; "the masters are not such bad men if we are really
starving, and then there is the Mission: we are not often turned away
from the Mission without a taste of something."