stuff to keep the stove going," said Easton. With nothing else to do
we climbed a knoll to look at the river below, and there on the knoll
what should we find but several lengths of nearly worn-out but still
serviceable pipe that some Indian had abandoned. "It's like Robinson
Crusoe," said Easton. "Just as soon as we need something that we
can't get on very well without we find it. A special Providence is
surely caring for us." We appropriated that pipe, all right, and it
did not take us long to get a fire in the stove, which we had clung
to, useless as it had seemed to be.

A mass of ripe cranberries, so thick that we crushed them with every
step, grew on the hills, and we picked our pailful and stewed them,
using crystallose (a small phial of which I had in my dunnage bag) as
sweetening. A pound of pemmican a day with a bit of tallow is
sustaining, but not filling, and left us with a constant, gnawing
hunger. These berries were a godsend, and sour as they were we filled
up on them and for once gratified our appetites. We had a great
desire, too, for something sweet, and always pounced upon the stray
raisins in the pemmican. When either of us found one in his ration it
was divided between us. Our great longing was for bread and molasses,
just as it had been with Hubbard and me when we were short of food,
and we were constantly talking of the feasts we would have of these
delicacies when we reached the Post--wheat bread and common black
molasses.

The George River all the way down to this point had been in past years
a veritable slaughter house. There were great piles of caribou
antlers (the barren-ground caribou or reindeer), sometimes as many as
two or three hundred pairs in a single pile, where the Indians had
speared the animals in the river, and everywhere along the banks were