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Its furniture was in keeping with its appearance a stool, a couple of blankets, two little heaps of brushwood for beds, a kettle or two, a bag of pemmican, an old flint gun, two pairs of snow-shoes, a pair of canoe-paddles, a couple of very dirty bundles, and an old female. The latter was the dirtiest piece of furniture in the establishment.
One is almost ashamed to write of all the titbits one has picked up here, but it is enough to say that when the cook upset some pemmican on to an old sooty cloth and threw it outside his galley, one man subsequently made a point of acquiring it and scraping off the palatable but dirty compound."
Starving Bull had succeeded in killing a skunk during his journey. This performance, while highly creditable to his energy as a hunter, was by no means conducive to his success, as a cook. Bitterly did that skunk revente himself upon us who had borne no part in his destruction. Pemmican is at no time a delicacy; but pemmican flavoured with skunk was more than I could attempt.
This cheerfulness and the fragrant smell of the cooking pemmican are the two redeeming features of a dreadful existence, but the discomforts are only a foretaste of what is to come one night the temperature fell to 77 degrees below zero, that is 109 degrees of frost.
Two kinds of prunus also grow here, one of which , a handsome small tree, produces a black fruit, having a very astringent taste, whence the term choke-cherry applied to it. The Crees call it tawquoy-meena, and esteemed it to be when dried and bruised a good addition to pemmican. The other species is a less elegant shrub, but is said to bear a bright red cherry, of a pleasant sweet taste.
Leaving the majority of the Indians of that country to continue their capturing of the reindeer and the manufacturing of pemmican while they remained in that section of the land, Frank, Alec, and Sam, with their travelling companions, returned to Oxford House. There they made a visit of a few days at the home of the missionary.
Both were first-rate workmen, but indeed the same may be said of nearly all our men, who had been chosen very much because of their readiness and ability to turn their hands to anything. Soon the kettles boiled. In one we infused tea. In another we prepared that thick soup so familiar to the Nor'-wester, composed of pemmican and flour, which is known by the name of robbiboo.
There is rubeiboo and richot, and pemmican plain and pemmican raw, this last method being the one most in vogue amongst voyageurs; but the richot, to me, seemed the best; mixed with a little flour and fried in a pan, pemmican in this form can be eaten, provided the appetite be sharp and there is nothing else to be had this last consideration is, however, of importance.
The flesh of the animal dried in the sun, or pounded with its fat into pemmican, is their chief article of food; while its skin serves as a covering for their tents, a couch at night, or for clothing by day, and is manufactured into bags for carrying their provisions, and numerous other articles. Physically, they are superior to the Wood Indians.
"Good; I shall be glad when I see it," returned Lumley, arranging a rustic tripod over the fire, "for I long to begin the building of our house, and getting a supply of fish and meat for winter use. Now then, Salamander, fetch the big kettle." "Cut the pemmican up small, Max. I've a notion it mixes better, though some fellows laugh at the idea and say that hungry men are not particular."
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