Our First Night, Distance About Twenty Miles After
Luncheon, We Spent Alongside Of A Small Store-House On The Oak
River; we had passed some very comfortable-looking settlements
that afternoon, one, where we got information about our road,
belonging
To a man called Shank, who had been settled about four
years, and had quite a homely-looking shanty covered with
creepers, and garden fenced in. At Oak River we had rather
speculated on getting both food and lodging; but when we found the
fare offered no better than ours, we decided to have our own
supper, getting the woman to boil us some water for our tea. We
also refused the lodging. The house was scrupulously clean, ditto
the woman, but we couldn't quite make up our minds to share the
only bedroom with her, her husband and two other men, one ill with
inflammation of the lungs, rejoicing in an awful cough, and rather
given to expectoration; so we had our first experience of real
camping out. Our tent was an A tent, just big enough to allow of
two people sleeping side by side; the only place to stand up in,
was exactly in the middle, but we arranged it very fairly
comfortably by putting some straw under our buffalo robes, and our
clothes as pillows. The men had to make their couch under the
carriage with whatever cloaks we didn't want, to keep the dew off
them; and by lighting a large "smudge" to keep off the mosquitoes,
we all slept pretty well, though Mother Earth is very unrelenting.
If, however, we wanted to change our position we were sure to
awake.
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