After leaving White Stone Lake, we continued our course in the South West quarter, seldom walking more than twelve miles a day, and frequently not half that distance.
On the third of September, we arrived at a small river belonging to Point Lake, but the weather at this time proved so boisterous, and there was so much rain, snow, and frost, alternately, that we were obliged to wait several days before we could cross it in our canoes; and the water was too deep, and the current too rapid, to attempt fording it. During this interruption, however, our time was not entirely lost, as deer were so plentiful that the Indians killed numbers of them, as well for the sake of their skins, as for their flesh, which was at present in excellent order, and the skins in proper season for the sundry uses for which they are destined.
In the afternoon of the seventh, the weather became fine and moderate, when we all were ferried across the river; and the next morning shaped our course to the { 202} South West, by the side of Point Lake. After three days journey, which only consisted of about eighteen miles, we came to a few small scrubby woods,[88] which were the first that we had seen from the twenty-fifth of May, except those we had perceived at the Copper-mine River.
One of the Indian's wives, who for some time had been in a consumption, had for a few days past become so weak as to be incapable of travelling, which, among those people, is the most deplorable state to which a human being can possibly be brought. Whether she had been given over by the doctors, or that it was for want of friends among them, I cannot tell, but certain it is, that no expedients were taken for her recovery; so that, without much ceremony, she was left unassisted, to perish above-ground.
Though this was the first instance of the kind I had seen, it is the common, and indeed the constant practice of those Indians; for when a grown person is so ill, especially in the Summer, as not to be able to walk, and too heavy to be carried, they say it is better to leave one who is past recovery, than for the whole family to sit down by them and starve to death; well knowing that they cannot be of any service to the afflicted. On those occasions, therefore, the friends or relations of the sick generally leave them some victuals and water; and, if the situation of the place will afford it, a little firing. When { 203} those articles are provided, the person to be left is acquainted with the road which the others intend to go; and then, after covering them well up with deer skins, &c. they take their leave, and walk away crying.