I can give you, is to turn back at once." It was his own intention to
return, as we had now reached the point to which he had engaged to attend
me. In reply, I called up my men, and communicated to them fully the
information I had just received. I then expressed to them my fixed
determination to proceed to the end of the enterprise on which I had been
sent; but as the situation of the country gave me some reason to apprehend
that it might be attended with an unfortunate result to some of us, I
would leave it optional with them to continue with me or to return.

Among them were some five or six who I knew would remain. We had still ten
days' provisions; and should no game be found, when this stock was
expended, we had our horses and mules, which we could eat when other means
of subsistence failed. But not a man flinched from the undertaking. "We'll
eat the mules," said Basil Lajeunesse; and thereupon we shook hands with
our interpreter and his Indians, and parted. With them I sent back one of
my men, Dumes, whom the effects of an old wound in the leg rendered
incapable of continuing the journey on foot, and his horse seemed on the
point of giving out. Having resolved to disencumber ourselves immediately
of every thing not absolutely necessary to our future operations, I turned
directly in towards the river, and encamped on the left bank, a little
above the place where our council had been held, and where a thick grove
of willows offered a suitable spot for the object I had in view.

The carts having been discharged, the covers and wheels were taken off,
and, with the frames, carried into some low places, among the willows, and
concealed in the dense foliage in such a manner that the glitter of the
iron-work might not attract the observation of some straggling Indian. In
the sand, which had been blown up into waves among the willows, a large
hole was then dug, ten feet square and six feet deep. In the mean time,
all our effects had been spread out upon the ground, and whatever was