There Was One Old Lady, Exactly The Hotesse In Gil Blas, Elle Me Prit La Mesure Du Pied Jusqu'a La

Tete, and told me there was one room, without a stove or bed, next a billiard room, which I might

Have if I pleased, and when I her told we were gentlemen, she very quietly said, "I dare say you are," and off she went. However, at last we got lodgings in an ale house, and you may guess ate well and slept well, and went next day well dressed, with one of Lord Dorchester's aide-de-camps to triumph over the old lady; in short, exactly the story in Gil Blas.

We are quite curiosities here after our journey, some think we were mad to undertake it, some think we were lost; some will have it we were starved; there were a thousand lies, but we are safe and well, enjoying rest and good eating, most completely. One ought really to take these fillips now and then, they make one enjoy life a great deal more.

The hours here are a little inconvenient to us as yet; whenever we wake at night we want to eat, the same as in the woods, and as soon as we eat we want to sleep. In our journey we were always up two hours before day, to load and get ready to march, we used to stop between three and four, and it generally took us from that till night to shovel out the snow, cut wood, cook and get ready for night, so that immediately after our suppers we were asleep, and whenever any one awakes in the night, he puts some wood on the fire, and eats a bit before he lies down again; but for my part, I was not much troubled with waking in the night.

"I really do think there is no luxury equal to that of lying before a good fire on a good spruce bed, after a good supper, and a hard moose chase in a fine clear frosty moonlit starry night. But to enter into the spirit of this, you must understand what a moose chase is: the man himself runs the moose down by pursuing the track. Your success in killing depends on the number of people you have to pursue and relieve one another in going first (which is the fatiguing part of snow- shoeing), and on the depth and hardness of the snow, for when the snow is hard and has a crust, the moose cannot get on, as it cuts his legs, and then he stops to make battle. But when the snow is soft, though it be above his belly, he will go on three, four or five days, for then the man cannot get on so fast, as the snow is heavy and he only gets his game by perseverance - an Indian never gives him up." Then follows a most graphic description of a hunt - closing with the death of the noble quarry.

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