around until eleven of them were with us in our little seven by nine
tent, while all the others crowded as near to the entrance as they
could. I treated everybody to hot tea. The men helped themselves
first, then passed their cups on to the women and children. The used
tea leaves from the kettle were carefully preserved by them to do
service again. The eagerness with which the men and women drank the
tea and smoked the tobacco aroused my sympathies, and I distributed
amongst them all of these that I could well spare from our store. In
appreciation of my gifts they brought us a considerable quantity of
fresh and jerked venison and smoked fat; and Toma, as a special mark
of favor presented me with a deer's tongue which had been cured by
some distinctive process unlike anything I had ever eaten before, and
it was delicious indeed, together with a bladder of refined fat so
clear that it was almost transparent.

The encampment consisted of two deerskin wigwams. One was a large one
and oblong in shape, the other of good size but round. The smaller
wigwam was heated by a single fire in the center, the larger one by
three fires distributed at intervals down its length. Chief Toma
occupied, with his family, the smaller lodge, while the others made
their home in the larger one.

This was a band of Mountaineer Indians who trade at Davis Inlet Post
of the Hudson's Bay Company, on the east coast, visiting the Post once
or twice a year to exchange their furs for such necessaries as
ammunition, clothing, tobacco and tea. Unlike their brothers on the
southern slope, they have not accustomed themselves to the use of
flour, sugar and others of the simplest luxuries of civilization, and
their food is almost wholly flesh, fish and berries. They live in the
crude, primordial fashion of their forefathers. To aid them in their