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A prospector's gold-pan served as a tray, which contained a piece of tender moose-meat, nicely browned, some beans, a loaf of sourdough bread, and a pot of steaming tea. Pete did not tell that he had gone without bread and tea for weeks that he might have a little for the "Colonel" and Constance, whom he had intended to invite to his cabin for Christmas dinner.
The most esteemed fish is the Coregonus albus, the attihhawmeg of the Crees and the white-fish of the Americans. Its usual weight is between three and four pounds, but it has been known to reach sixteen or eighteen pounds. Three fish of the ordinary size is the daily allowance to each man at the fort and is considered as equivalent to two geese or eight pounds of solid moose-meat.
While they were lamenting this fact, and wondering what to do, the dogs set up a racket, and were answered by some others. Benham was coming along at a rattling pace, his dogs very angry to find other dogs there, putting on airs of possession. "We got all this moose-meat," says Potts, when Benham arrived on the scene, "but we can't cut it." "Of course not. Where's your hand-saw?"
Late at night the other two Indians came home from moose-hunting, not having been successful, aroused the fire again, lighted their pipes, smoked awhile, took something strong to drink, and ate some moose-meat, and, finding what room they could, lay down on the moose-hides; and thus we passed the night, two white men and four Indians, side by side.
After a dinner, at which apple-sauce was the greatest luxury to me, but our moose-meat was oftenest called for by the lumberers, I walked across the clearing into the forest, southward, returning along the shore. For my dessert, I helped myself to a large slice of the Chesuncook woods, and took a hearty draught of its waters with all my senses.
Joseph soon fell asleep; but Isaac, fully sensible of the danger and difficulty of the enterprise before him, lay awake, watchful for his opportunity. About midnight he rose, cautiously stepping over the sleeping forms of the family, and securing, as he went, his Indian master's flint, steel, and tinder, and a small quantity of dry moose-meat and corn-bread.
"An hour's sleep," said Daw, when they had wolfed pounds of straight moose-meat fried with bacon. Two hours he let his companion sleep, afraid himself to close his eyes. He occupied himself with making marks upon the soft-surfaced, shrinking snow. Visibly it shrank. In two hours the snow level sank three inches.
The lumberers sometimes cook them with molasses. They were used in Arnold's expedition. This sauce was very grateful to us who had been confined to hard bread, pork, and moose-meat, and, notwithstanding their seeds, we all three pronounced them equal to the common cranberry; but perhaps some allowance is to be made for our forest appetites.
After we had breakfasted by ourselves, one of our bedfellows, who had also breakfasted, came along, and, being invited, took a cup of tea, and finally, taking up the common platter, licked it clean. But he was nothing to a white fellow, a lumberer, who was continually stuffing himself with the Indians' moose-meat, and was the butt of his companions accordingly.
Jan had forgotten the taste of sun-dried salmon, and men and dogs together were living now on moose-meat chopped with an ax from the slabs and chunks that were stowed away on the sled. Willis occasionally treated himself to a dish of boiled beans, and when fortune favored he ate ptarmigan. But moose-meat was the staple for man and dogs alike.
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