Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 29).djvu/259

 *basca were exclusively appropriated to the chase by the Assiniboines of the forests: {192} the scarcity of game forced them to quit their land—since their departure the animals have increased in an astonishing manner. In various places on the river, we saw ravages of the beavers which I should have taken for recent encampments of savages, so great a quantity of felled trees was there. Many wandering families of the carrier tribe and Achiganes or Sock Indians of New Caledonia,[144] compelled by hunger, have quitted their country, traversed the last of the mountains, and now cross the valleys of this region in quest of food. They nourish themselves with roots, and whatever they can catch, many of them have their teeth worn to the gums by the earth and sand they swallow with their nourishment. In winter they fare well: for then the moose, elk and reindeer are plentiful. The reindeer feed on a kind of white moss, and the paunch is considered delicious when the food is half digested. By way of a dainty morsel, the Indians pluck out the eyes of fish with the end of the fingers and swallow them raw, likewise the tripes with their whole contents, without further ceremony than placing them an instant on the coals, from thence into the omnibus or general reservoir, without even undergoing the operation of the jaws.

{193} The Montagnees Indians[145] inhabit the lower part*