them a lantern and started them over in a boat to investigate. Their
lantern had blown out on the way--that was when we missed the light.

With the lantern to guide us we descended the slippery rocks to their
boat and in ten minutes landed on the mud flat opposite, where we were
met by Ford and a group of curious Eskimos. We were immediately con-
ducted to the agent's residence, where Mrs. Ford received us in the
hospitable manner of the North, and in a little while spread before us
a delicious supper of fresh trout, white bread such as we had not seen
since leaving Tom Blake's, mossberry jam and tea. It was an event in
our life to sit down again to a table covered with white linen and eat
real bread. We ate until we were ashamed of ourselves, but not until
we were satisfied (for we had emerged from the bush with unholy
appetites) and barely stopped eating in time to save our reputations
from utter ruin. And now our hosts told us--and it shows how really
generous and open-hearted they were to say nothing about it until we
were through eating--that the _Pelican_, the Hudson's Bay Company's
steamer, had not arrived on her annual visit, that it was so late in
the season all hope of her coming had some time since been
relinquished, and the Post provisions were reduced to forty pounds of
flour, a bit of sugar, a barrel or so of corn meal, some salt pork and
salt beef, and small quantities of other food stuffs, and there were a
great many dependents with hungry mouths to feed. Molasses, butter
and other things were entirely gone. The storehouses were empty.

This condition of affairs made it incumbent upon me, I believed, in
spite of a cordial invitation from Ford to stay and share with them
what they had, to move on at once and endeavor to reach Fort Chimo
ahead of the ice. Fort Chimo is the chief establishment of the fur
trading companies on Ungava Bay, and is the farthest off and most