white wolf, and approaching them within arrow-shot to pick off one at a time.] Sometimes dried meat is preferred, the bones being taken out and the flesh hung up in the sun; but, if pemmican be the order of the day, the lean, after being dried, is pounded into dust, which being put into a bag made of the hide, is enriched with nearly an equal weight of melted fat. The buffaloes are incredibly numerous. In the year 1829, for instance, I saw as many as ten thousand putrid carcasses lying mixed in a single ford of the Saskatchewan, and contaminating the air for many miles round. They make yearly migrations from one part of the country to another, reversing, in this respect, the ordinary course of birds of passage. During the winter, they go north in order to obtain the shelter of the woods against the severity of the weather; while, on the approach of summer, they proceed to the open plains of the south, with the view of eluding the attacks of the musquitoes. At this time of the year they had deserted the country through which we had been travelling of late; and the wolves, thus deprived of their staple food, were so wretchedly thin, that we could have easily counted their ribs with the eye alone. |